Dr. Gonzo

Reports now of Hamas shooting Gazan civilians who try to evacuate Jabaliya. Unbelievable what the people caught in between Hamas and the IDF have to put up with.

There are loads of people who say they’re “Muslim” but they don’t live super devout lives and “break the rules” all the time. These people are definitely not Islamists and I think most Islamists would say “these people are not real Muslims.” But I don’t think these people can speak for all Muslims. People’s spirituality is down to them as individuals. If people want to take the word of the Quran, Torah, Bible, etc… as a general guideline on how they approach life but they don’t want to be super devout or follow every rule from some very old text as their political compass… that doesn’t make them suddenly drop their view of being religious. If you’re truly guided in all ways by your faith then yes, you are an Islamist. And I think that way of thinking is just generally dangerous. The world has seen the societies Islamists end up imposing if they take power in the modern era. And that doesn’t just go for Islam alone. Anyone in a position of power that believes in governance through their faith is dangerous. People guided entirely by faith don’t believe in compromise, they have righteous conviction that everything they’re doing is right and justified. From GWB, to Khamenei, to the Pope - and any other modern figure that is guided primarily by their faith: they’ve all done horrible things to humanity in the name of their god. They’re dangerous.

My point was that the two situations aren’t really comparable. Despite right wingers in the west, especially in America, constantly trying to use Hamas’s bullshit to justify why they hate certain immigrants attempts to make the situations seem similar… the history and reality of the situation loudly suggest they are full of shit.

Considering how young your team is, I think today would be more than encouraging. Played pretty well overall. Made some mistakes that might be the result of inexperience, but that comes with having a young squad. I think things like Palmer going missing a bit in this game and in some other matches I remember last season are in part because he’s so young but has kind of found himself a face of the team. And with that comes some expectations of leadership and an expectation to be able to influence games. I think you played really well and definitely made us uncomfortable, but we played pretty well too and I think overall we defended well. Tough match overall. And probably a good experience for your young squad. If Chelsea actually stick with Maresca long term, I think Chelsea could build something pretty impressive.

Shouldn’t we get a corner from that though?

Non contact injuries are always a concern, hope it’s nothing serious for Jackson

Lol I think that’s less of a penalty than the Salah foul

The world is such a pile of shit

Mexico literally had to deal with the US rolling in, stealing their land, and giving out citizenships to the land owning Mexican ranchers Btw the two nations now have friendly ties.

I think there's a solution without genocide, but it requires the international community actually doing something to enforce international law... rather than just sitting by and letting two people that have demonstrated for decades they don't respect the other side existing. The loudest voices in this conflict are the ones who have been driving the conflict. Imho it's time the rest of the world tells them to shut up and actually do something to end the conflict, rather than amplify all their bullshit.

lol the Daily Mail calling it a dark day for England... the only Germans they've ever liked are the royal family & the Germans who worked for that dodgy Austrian fuck with the stupid mustache.

I didn't call them "low IQ NPCs" - they just have a limited amount of information they're working with, not that they're irredeemably stupid or "NPCs". Most people aren't going to be up to speed with the history of the region, most people aren't even up to speed with the history of their own countries. It's one reason why propaganda is so effective, it's targeting people that don't have anywhere near of an idea of what the full picture of the situation is and then filling their head with bullshit. Both sides are guilty of weaponising low info westerners for support, just like both sides are guilty of horrific human rights abuses.

Sinwar's dead

I don't think there's any doubt that of pro-Palestine propagandists have been targeting low info people to try to get drone-like support for their cause. This person's been so taken in by it she's a million miles away from the conflict in complete safety, harassing a Greek restaurant for... it's display of Greek flag decorations. In another reality where people aren't fighting for the hearts and minds of westerners to have blind pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian support, you don't get some idiot pumped full of this shit to the point where seeing any flag with blue and white on it sends her into a rage. Honestly, the global reach of this shit scares me. People are right to be concerned about human rights abuses. They aren't right to be so worked up about a conflict that has existed since before they were born and will most likely continue to exist well after we die (because the internatinoal community persists with letting Israel and Palestine try to handle this themselves, while they have no regard for each others humanity) to the point where they start dragging in other immigrant communities into this shit. There's people around the west baying for war between Israel and Iran on behalf of the Palestinians or Israelis - knowing that at the end of the day they'll be safe in their homes in Johannesburg, London, or wherever and it'll be other people dying for the cause they so passionately support from a million miles away. And that shit doesn't happen without the Israeli and Palestinian propaganda machines churning away every day trying to win over the "hearts and minds" of the west.

I think Southgate doing decently with the best England squads in our lifetime was more in spite of him than because of the way he had England set up, tbh. He very well may do worse, but I doubt he'll have England sides set up to defend for 90 minutes with hopes of getting a freak goal against the run of play to save his arse. And if we do end up with an England like that... no real change lol

I think that's a wild take.

E. Saudi Arabia

I'm never really surprised when pop music I don't think is very good is super popular.

The US media fucking loves Trump because he’s good for their ratings - you’d never know it because he bitches and moans about “fake news”, but they’re the ones promoting his second candidacy better than he is. I don’t think Covid is really an issue in this election at all. Aftershocks of Covid are, things like inflation… but the American electorate isn’t smart enough to really associate that with Covid. Identity politics are driving this election honestly. It’s hardly a battle of politicians and their policies.

Yeah what he said is simply insane imo. If the Nazis had as much time as Israel’s been around (and imo committing loads of human rights violations in the process)… so multiple decades vs however long the Nazis were around… there’s almost no doubt many ethnicities would probably have been totally erased from Europe. There’s ways to recognise Israel have commit atrocities without making a comparison that really fails to recognise the scale of how the Nazis went about mass killing. Honestly if anything it’s more close to how America treated the natives, with reservations and forced relocations and slowly stealing more and more land as years pass.

Most people who are being tortured just want to stop being tortured. Like @Spike says, they might want to be killed because... they just want the torture to end. They might have told the truth, then had to flip their story because they think if they say what the torturer wants to hear, it will stop. I highly doubt Qaani wanted to die. I also haven't seen anything from anywhere reputable that suggests he is in fact dead. Just that his family is unaware of his whereabouts. Given that we know Israel got the Iranians who helped with the Haniyeh assassinated (and their families), I suspect if Qaani was seriously a double agent (or seriously suspected of being one)... his family is under heavy surveillance. Unlike the CIA, who have been famously negligent with how they treat Iranians who work for them (https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-spies-iran/)... Mossad's got a decent track record of getting Iranians who are willing to fight back against their oppressive government out of harms way. I think unless he turns up somewhere... he probably has been "disappeared" and his death won't even be acknowledged by the IR, and he probably was a double agent. It seems like Mossad had good inside information from at least 1 very senior IRGC officer. I wonder how hard it is to get someone that high up in the IRGC to turn... because despite the sanctions, the higher ups in Sepah always get their cut from whatever money Iran makes. It's easier to find turncoats in the rank and file of the IRGC who aren't as well off, even easier to get soldiers from Artesh to turn in theory since they're not in the IRGC and don't get the same privileges. But high-ranking officers, I imagine would be pretty tough to turn. I wonder how many of Iran's elites that send their kids to the UK, US, Canada, and around the EU, go visit these places and think "wow these places really really really benefit from not being international pariahs" & are actually willing to fight against the shit system they are a part of.

He certainly doesn't give any.

I think all these cold war torture tactics have been proven to be awful at getting reliable information generally.

I think whether or not he was a double agent, the IR would always say he wasn't working with Mossad. Heart attack while being interrogated. Assuming they learned how to interrogate from the CIA trained SAVAK (which I would assume because when they took over they'd have all the training manuals), I'd bet he was getting so electricity sent into his body while being questioned.

Oh looks like she’s not underaged, he just comes off looking very horny lol