Azeem

South Africa vs Afghanistan in the semifinal. First time both of these teams will play a final if they win.

Portugal already qualified and playing a weak opponent ? Ronaldo hatrick coming

16 minutes ago, Michael said:

With the exception of maybe Georgia and Albania as well as perhaps Turkey and Scotland, most of the teams at these Euros have proven how tough they can be. Portugal rightfully earned their tough win at Euro 2016. That was a Croatia team where the golden generation were at their peak and so were Bale and Ramsey in that Welsh side of Euro 2016. Those weren't mediocre teams, they had world class players. Credit should be given where credit is due.

It rewards mediocre performance by the team in question in the group stages by giving them an easier bracket. Like the original post said how four group topers will end up on the same side of the bracket 

18 hours ago, The Palace Fan said:

Noticed earlier that if Holland match France's score then France, Germany, Portugal and Spain should be on the other side of the Knockout bracket.

Got no idea what everyone's panicking about.

One of the reasons why Portugal had it relatively easy in 2016, no disrespect to Croatia Wales etc

This 24 team format awards mediocrity in the KO bracket. 

1980s some Palestinians in West Bank started a dairy farm of their own for self-sufficiency but Israel declared them 18 cows as a national security threat for harming Israeli business interests launching a military operation to find and confiscate the cows.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/mar/22/the-wanted-18-a-tale-of-talking-cows-and-palestinian-rebellion

1 hour ago, Spike said:

Why are you posting like this is 4chan lol

How do they post on 4chan ?

0-0 draw

Pirlo freekick 2012

shouldn't the ref banned for fixing ?

Pretty dull from Turkey

> acknowledges Zionists used force out of resentment against whom they deemed as an oppressive entity (Brits)

> doesn't get the whole point that also same can be applied to Palestinians

by the way Zionist militias didn't just target Brits. I was going to include this in the original post but it was getting too long. Folke Bernadotte was a Swedish official who saved many Jews and non-Jews from Nazi concertation camps. He was appointed as a mediator by UN in Palestine, there he saw the cleansing and displacement of Palestinians first hand and was reporting back to what he deemed as an appropriate solution when he was assassinated by Zionists.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folke_Bernadotte

On 19/06/2024 at 18:34, Beelzebub said:

1-1 draw or 1-0 win for Spain after they maintain 70% of possession

was I right on the possession part ?

Not watching the game but what's wrong with the pitch ?

0-0

Scotland just needs to beat Hungary. They'll have 4 pts which almost guarantee best third place shit

Greece hasn't qualified for anything since 2014

1-1 draw or 1-0 win for Spain after they maintain 70% of possession

Sunday 23rd June, 2024
Group A
Switzerland 1-1 Germany, 20.00
Scotland 1-2 Hungary, 20.00

Monday 24th June, 2024
Group B
Croatia 1-1 Italy, 20.00
Albania 0-4 Spain, 20.00

Tuesday 25th June, 2024
Group C
England 2-1 Slovenia, 20.00
Denmark 0-0 Serbia, 20.00

Group D
Netherlands 2-0 Austria, 17.00
France 2-1 Poland, 17.00

Wednesday 26th June, 2024
Group E
Ukraine 3-2 Belgium, 17.00
Slovakia 2-2 Romania, 17.00

Group F
Czech Republic 3-2 Turkey, 20.00
Georgia 0-3 Portugal, 20.00

Just as I've said Belgium's wasted golden generation is over and they are back to being mediocre

And this militancy/terrorism by Zionists was not aimed at the Palestinians but chiefly at the British. To understand this the key event was the White Paper of 1939 about Palestine issued by the British parliament.

In early 1939, it was clear that another world war was on the horizon, British were worried about their two prized colonies Palestine and subcontinent. There were fears Germany Italy will aid the Arabs in Middle East and the Japanese would aid the Indians in subcontinent against Britain and the locals had all the reasons to take their support since Brits had duped and molested them so many times ,the Arab revolt of 1936 and Indian revolt of 1857 which although failed but left lasting acrimony in the local populations.

Eventually many figures like Mufti Hussaini and Chandra Bose from India who indeed sought help from Axis powers to liberate their countries, even Gandhi once threatened that he will consider allying with Japan if Brits don't give Indian demands.

To placate the situations above British knew the issue of Palestine was one of the main reasons why the Arabs and Indian Muslims loathed the Brits. So in Feb 1939 House of Commons passed the White Paper on Palestine which practically said that the Balfour declaration of 1917 was unfair and never actually meant that a Jewish state must be established, restricted Jewish immigration and sale of land for 5 years and insured creation of a Palestinian state in 10 years with representative bodies based on population proportion which obviously meant Palestinian majority. 

While eventually none of these promises apart from restricted immigration were fulfilled, but this paper greatly pissed off the Zionists. Ben-Gurion famously said in a speech that now we will act as the state in Palestine until we actually become the state and if Brits try to supress us, our rebellion will be more unpleasant than the Arab rebellion. 

After this the Zionists concluded that

a) Britain was no longer the patron for their Zionist ambitions and they need a new patron

b) Britain intends to keep Palestine like other colonies and they need to force the British out of Palestine even through violence

For the first, they started to shift their overseas lobbying efforts from Britain to you guessed it right, USA. A conference was held at Biltmore Hotel in NY in 1942 to signal this shift.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biltmore_Conference

For the second,multiple Zionist militias started attacks on British personnel and assests in Palestine. They attacked British rail networks, killed British soldiers and civilians, destroyed ships which were meant to stop illegal immigration. These gradual attacks kept happening throughout WW2 with varying intensity.

Infamous among of these acts of militancy/terrorism by Zionists was the assassination of British minister of Middle East affairs in Cairo, Lord Moyne in 1944.

Churchill was livid after the murder of Moyne bcz not only was he a high ranking official but also a personal friend. He gave the following angry speech in the parliament following his murder.

" If the dreams of Zionism are to end in the smoke of assassin's pistols and our labor for its future only to produce a new set of gangsters worthy of Nazi Germany, many like myself will have to reconsider our position... "

This was a serious threat and many Zionist leaders like Ben-Gurion condemned the murder, disassociating with it but that was temporary as Ben-Gurion a year later was in full support of violence and contacted affluent Zionists in US to send ammunition and even setup plants in Palestine.

In 1946, Zionists first carried out a series of attacks on bridges that connected Palestine to neighboring areas which were vital for logistics for the British. The Brits had enough after that and started to crackdown on Zionist settlements, confiscated enough ammunition to arm whole infantries, some documents outlying Zionist plans and arrested a number of Zionists including one future Israeli PM.

In retaliation to this, Zionists carried out the most famous incident of militancy/terrorism, the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. The hotel housed many British offices and was the primary seat of British administration. Multiple bombs rocked the building killing around a hundred people, destroyed many offices and the documents confiscated by Brits outlying Zionist plans were also destroyed. 

The attacks continued in 1947, Zionists attacked a British officer's club killing around 38 people and tried a jail break to free the captured Zionist militant/terrorists. During the jail-break the British captured 5 militants/terrorists, two of them were pardoned due to being underage but rest three were sentenced to death. In retaliation, Zionists captured two British sergeants as hostages and demanded the release of their comrades. Brits didn't kowtowed and executed the three and the Zionists also keeping their word hanged the two sergeants, booby trapped their hanging bodies with explosives in case anyone tried to cut them down. 

It was under these circumstances the Brits decided to take the case of Palestine to U.N themselves. Then British foreign minister, Ervin Bevin, openly denounced the creation of a Jewish state and gave a sarcastic livid speech aimed at the Americans for supporting Zionist militancy/terrorism and forwarded his case to UN that Palestine should remain in a trusteeship under British assurance. However Zionists and Americans wanted to partition Palestine with the lion's share going to Zionists and rest is history.

One less understood point from all this is that Brits and Zionists was a transactional relationship, they went from best chumps to active hostilities and one cannot help but think that US-Israel bromance will also go down the same route one day ? with younger American generation more aware of the ground situation due to social media and boomer politician class like Biden Trump one feet in the grave, Zionists lobby groups will eventually decide to ditch US as hub of their activities. 

Wednesday 19th June, 2024
Group A
Germany 3-0 Hungary, 17.00
Scotland 1-3 Switzerland, 20.00

Group B
Croatia 1-1 Albania, 14.00

Thursday 20th June, 2024
Group B
Spain 2-0 Italy, 20.00

Group C
Slovenia 1-2 Serbia, 14.00
Denmark 1-1 England, 17.00

Friday 21st June, 2024
Group D
Poland 2-0 Austria, 17.00
Netherlands 2-2 France, 20.00

Group E
Slovakia 3-2 Ukraine, 14.00

Saturday 22nd June, 2024
Group E
Belgium 1-2 Romania, 20.00

Georgia 0-3 Czech Republic, 14.00
Turkey 1-3 Portugal, 20.00

This is the fourth such act recently, three of them related to Palestine. 

We were having the discussion on Discord about boycotting Boeing and how we can't boycott everything since we'll end up giving up almost everything then. It's true but there is also a dark message in it that the more you percept how the world works on a macro level the more evil you start seeing from corporations to governments. This can make people lose their sanity. 

People just brush off these cases ah they must've been wackos but it's much deeper than that

48 minutes ago, Spike said:

I’d say the difference is that Lithuania wasn’t colonised during its occupation and partitioning, as far as I know. Correct me if I’m wrong but even as a Soviet state Lithuanians weren’t displaced(?). @nudge

a lot Lithuanians along with others were taken to those Gulags if I'm not wrong which imo is displacing them

On 15/02/2022 at 02:04, nudge said:

"Allowed self-determination"  Gee, I guess we should be thankful that we were "allowed" to restore our legitimate 980 year old state after 200 years of oppressive yet unsuccessful Russification policies.

On 15/02/2022 at 02:22, nudge said:

Lithuania. First mention of Lithuania in 1009, unified under one Duke in the 13th century, Kingdom of Lithuania founded in 1253. Grand Duchy of Lithuania was the largest country in Europe by the 14th century, then it was transformed into the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania in 1569, then got partitioned three times by the Russian Empire, Prussia, and the Habsburg Monarchy in the late 18th century. Two unsuccessful uprisings in the mid 19th century, and then finally regained independece in 1918, only to lose it thanks to  Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and be occupied first by the Germans and then given to the Soviets after the WWII. Then after ongoing partisan and dissident activities for over 40 years, the first Soviet-occupied state to announce the restitution of independence in 1990. 

Was going through the Russia-Ukraine thread and came across these posts by nudge with regards to Lithuania which a lot of members were up-voting. And my mind immediately went to Palestine. Literally replace Lithuania with Palestine and everything feels the same.

'I guess Palestine should be thankful that they were "allowed" to restore their legitimate state after nearly 100 years of oppressive yet unsuccessful Israelification policies'

Similarly Palestine was unified and partitioned by many empires over time, then were promised a unified Arab state by Brits who duped them, occupied it and then gave it to Israelis after WWII. Then partisan and dissident activities are ongoing for 70 something years now. 

But people who would be up-voting these posts bring up flimsy apologetic arguments to justify Israel's creation muh but Holocaust etc as if Palestinians had anything to do with it. 

It took Lithuania 200 years to take its independence so give Palestinians time they have a bigger uphill task since they are mostly abandoned by every relevant power circle and have the full might of current superpower against them.