I think Bin Zayed is starting to get cold feet that his people eventually could turn on him too. But the greed remains stronger as we see in continued dealings with Israel, the pillaging of Sudan, destabilizing Libya…

DW is funded and run by the German government to improve Germanys image abroad. It is not a public broadcaster as those are financed through a government independent but obligatory system.

In regards to Palestine it ran a terrible hack job of Israeli propaganda until about earlier this year, when they realized that this is harming the image of Germany abroad much stronger than at least pretending balanced coverage.

The “practical leftists” were fighting the people who wanted the supposedly better party to not be this cruel and abominable evil. The division was caused by the “practical leftists” who willfully employed themselves to spread the propaganda, that genocide should be acceptable as a “lesser” evil. The “practical leftists” were integral to the strategy of the oligarchy, that is financing and dictating bot mayor US political parties what to do, in waging their war against the people in the US and people abroad.

The only strategy not to loose, is not to play that game. We see some initiatives into that direction with people like Mamdani and we see that the “lesser” evil and the “bigger” evil are largely working together to fight against anything that could not be evil.

These “permissive interpretations” also mean that if someone is fighting for example for Russia or some mercenary organization, they could justify it based on the right to equal treatment in the face of the law. These are the kind of laws that must have no exemption.

They should arrest those dual citizens upon arrival in the country and charge them accordingly.

So for all the people saying they voted the “lesser evil”. Your lesser evil is justifying the slaughter of children based on who their parents supposedly are or were.

Also hist claims that the casualties would then show to be lower and much less civilians is ridiculous in the face of even the IDFs internal database showing that they murdered 83% Civilians.

Jacob Lew is just saying here that he has been feeding blindly on Israel propaganda and then regurgitating it through his administration to the general public.

China produces about 3/4 of the worlds neodymium magnets and those are the strongest permanent magnets. As such they are critical components for all sorts of electrical devices.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neodymium_magnet#Applications

China has the monopoly or practically the monopoly on many rare earth extraction and refinement, as well as a strong presence in the manufacture of components out of it. China’s industrial strategy has identified critical industries for the 21st century and is building to become the global leader in all of them. China is way past the point of letting the US bully it and so they are calling Trumps bluffs.

Imagine the worlds strongest military nation, with a budget larger than the next 5 countries, with bases around the globe, the largest economy in the world, spanning over a continent with access to two oceans, hundreds of millions of people…

Is pathetically enslaved to a small state of a few million violent extremists who humiliate the US in every possible way at every possible turn. And the US willfully lets itself be humiliated in the face of the world over and over and over again. No matter the administration in the US or in Israel, no matter the claims of “MAGA”. When the Israelis government unzips its pants and starts peeing, the US government is rushing on its knees to let the pee go in their face.

“Hasbara” is a term for Israeli propaganda.

The public diplomacy of Israel, or hasbara (Hebrew: הַסְבָּרָה), includes mass communication and individual interaction with foreign nationals through social and traditional media, as well as cultural diplomacy. Organizations involved include the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, Prime Minister’s Office, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and pro-Israel civil society organizations.

Historically, these efforts have evolved from being called “propaganda” by early Zionists (when the term was considered neutral), with Theodor Herzl advocating such activities in 1899,[1] to the more contemporary Hebrew term hasbara introduced by Nahum Sokolow, which translates roughly to “explaining”. This communicative strategy seeks to justify actions and is considered reactive and event-driven.

Since the rise of social media, Israel is building its propaganda efforts both on paid and volunteering organizations, similar to the infamous Russian “troll farms”.

https://www.apnews.com/article/2b9d37b6d0ab4916bd5df9498ae4118f

In the case of journalists, they go even further, using intelligence units to smear journalists, like the murdered Anas Al-Sharif. We can expect this information then to be disseminated through various channels

https://www.972mag.com/israel-gaza-journalists-hamas-hasbara/

It should be noted that a lot of people are not paid or otherwise organized actors when it comes to Hasbara, but have fallen victim to the propaganda they then help to spread.

There simply is no “good option” in ethnic cleansing and genocide.

What should be done is forcing Israel to end the genocide and provide full access for humanitarian help. Then Israel needs to pay for the rebuilding of Gaza and all the war criminals need to be brought to justice in The Hague. European countries could easily enforce that by ending all weapons shipments and economic and diplomatic support for the illegal occupation as well as blocking all land, sea and air routes for any shipment to Israel that is beyond food, medicine and other basic necessities for life. Bonus points for threatening sanctions against the Arab states complicit in helping Israel such as the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Even more bonus points for breaking the naval blockade and allowing unhindered humanitarian access by Sea.

We have seen with the US that Trump actually doesn’t fight, once someone stands up to him. China stood up to him and he stepped down quickly in the tariff bullshit. Russia isn’t even bothering to pretend anymore and Trump is instead bullying Ukraine on behalf of Russia. If the US would be the only one left supporting Israel in the West, the Arab traitor regimes would also reconsider, if they want to go with the US down this path or quickly switch sides, which is in line with what their populations want.

The continued treachery of the Arab regimes will blow into their face and has the possibility to bring on a new Arab spring in Egypt and Jordan, which could spiral out of control for Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states quickly. Ethnically cleansing millions of Palestinians into Egypt or Jordan would certainly be the tipping point for these regimes.

If the EU countries get their shit together, they will realize that they are in the process of setting a region with hundreds of millions of people ablaze by continuing their lackluster response to Israels crimes and could face down a “refugee crisis” compared to which everything before was a walk in the park on a sunny day in May.

The regime change in Libya was primarily motivated by France, not the US. It is tied to France continuous presence in its former colonies in North and West Africa.
There is currently a scandal ongoing in France as the Sarkozy Government was probably bankrolled by Gaddafi .

The US is far from the only “player” meddling in Africa and West Asia and they don’t need Israel to “order” them in many cases. What is special about the US Israel relationship is that the US is still doing what Israel wants most of the time, even if it is contrary to US interests. Many times their interests unfortunately did align in the past.

In this case it is even more insidious in my eyes. After Gaddafi has been ousted, Libya has been effectively split and maintained dysfunctional. Now they try to exploit this split and dysfunctionality to promise recognition to whichever side is willing to play their evil game.

The same is don in talks with South Sudan and Somaliland, exploiting weakened countries that have split off and struggle for international recognition. Of course all of the “candidates” are wholly unprepared to provide any sort of safety to the ethnically cleansed people. In my eyes this has strong resemblance to the Madagascar plan of the Nazis, where the inability of the receiving land to adequately care for the people and subsequent large numbers of people killed by starvation and/or conflict with the local population is by design.

In a way it is offshoring further genocide through ethnic cleansing.

After sucking up to Trump in the tariffs shenanigans?

So far the EU hit with styrofoam peanuts at Trump.

Look at Mr. fancy-pants having an EQ in his rack.

Being a woman, or a queer person, or ethnicity are not belief systems, they are biological traits.

There is many bigots who claim the contrary and there is an entire culture war going on right now on the claim that whether people being openly queer or women doing “manly” things are doing so from an agenda. Making the same claims against religious people or “deeply religious people” is equally wrong. Also “deeply religious” is an arbitrary concept similar to saying someone is “too queer” or that a women would be “too much out of line” or similar nonsense.

Even financial status is not a belief system.

There is a lot of empirical results that show a strong correlation between wealth and ideologies. Also just very basically, judges for the most part come from higher financial classes which limits the life experience they have to understand the situation of poor people. Again the point is to move from the generalization to look at the specific person in question. E.g. a judge that has a track record of decisions favoring wealthy people probably has a problematic bias, but there is judges who do not show such biases.

But politics can be studied historically and analised socially and economically, and can be chosen based on data and evidence.

Economists literally have “schools of thought” that they choose to follow. Those are believe systems. Any good sociologist, ethnologist, historian, anthropologist and other humanities researcher will acknowledge that they are biased and that their analysis and interpretation remain subjective. It is very common to have two diametrically opposed interpretations of the same set of “data and evidence”.

There are thousands of religions in the world, each one believing different things, each one claiming to be The Ultimate Truth and - what’s worse- to be above human laws. Picking one is completely arbitrary (usually determined by upbringing).

That is a very generalized claim that seems to come from a place of anti-religious belief, rather than an empirical analysis. Very basically there is more than 4 billion religious people in the world. If a relevant number of them would believe to be above human laws, society would look very different.

Judges working under the influence of different religions rule differently on the same topics.

So do judges of different gender, ethnicity and other group identities. If you believe that these play no role, then you would see no need for representation in higher courts.

I’ll prove you that qualifications alone are not enough: if I had the appropriate qualifications to become a Supreme Court judge, but I claimed that the Sacred Pink Unicorn,

You are arguing against a straw man here. I said: “we should look by their qualifications and act if they show clear biases making them unfit”
As you make up the straw man as a generalization against religious people as a whole, or your arbitrary category of “deeply religious people”, you are engaging in bigotry as you generalize onto a broad group of people. The same can be seen by the culture warriors attacking women, queers, racialized groups…

All of your arguments are subjective and the result of your prejudice against religious people. I think these prejudice are working by the same mechanisms like prejudice against other group identities and i hope that this helps you to question and overcome them.

All laws written by humans are a common belief system and “inherently unprovable”. There is no proof why the constitution of the United States would be better or worse than the constitution of France. There is no proof why international law would be right or wrong. Try explaining the Geneva convention to the emperors of the past… All of these are based on shared values and entirely dependent on the human subjects, not some objective fact.

You are constructing a justification for bigotry, by saying that it is acceptable to exclude one group of people based on your generalizations against them. I tried to show you that it is arbitrary as all bigotry is.

My point exactly. Bigotry is wrong and making up reasons why bigotry against one group would be acceptable is just more bigotry and equally wrong.

Would you say the same about women? What about queer people? What about the social class? What about ethnicity? What about deelpy atheist people?

For any group identity you can make such claims of biases. Instead of excluding everyone from becoming judges, because everyone will have some form of bias, we should look by their qualifications and act if they show clear biases making them unfit. In this case the ICJ vice-president showed a clear bias making her unfit. However before making religious claims she already was a mouth-piece for Israel in the court and there is reason to believe her being blackmailed or bribed.

There is a reason why there is so many judges on the ICJ and why most supreme courts have a high number of judges. It is to limit biases going into the decision by having a wide range of people, whose inevitable biases are cancelled out against each other.

It didn’t show when i posted the article, that it already has been posted here. I think that is because @[email protected] is instance banned on my instance.

I am not sure what is the best way of dealing with these situations, since that means instance-bans fracture the possible audience. I will leave the decision to the mod team. @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]

God commanded us good things to do and prohibited us from doing bad things.

You should just life your life in accordance with that as good as possible and don’t concern yourself with when the end times are, or when your life ends. It is important not to postpone doing good things, or to continue doing bad things thinking “i’ll just make up for them later.” Because God might decide to end your life in an accident or other sudden way.

There is no indication afaik. in any of the Abrahamic scriptures that you should try to fulfill any prophecies and it certainly does not take priorities over doing what is good in on itself and abstaining from what is bad in on itself.

I am religious. I find the idea of purposefully bringing on the end of times strongly contradictory to my understanding of the Abrahamic religions. It is not the place of humans to decide, when the end times come, nor do humans have the power to do so. And the idea that purposefully bringing on the end of the world would be rewarded, instead of punished, by God is incomprehensible to me.

There is a narration both in Judaism and Islam, that emphasizes this:

https://bliis.org/essay/planting-a-tree-in-the-end-times-an-analysis-of-an-islamic-and-jewish-saying/

“If the [Day of] Resurrection were established upon one of you, and in his hand is a sapling, then he should plant it.”
عَنْ أَنَسِ بْنِ مَالِكٍ قَالَ قَالَ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ إِنْ قَامَتْ عَلَى أَحَدِكُمْ الْقِيَامَةُ وَفِي يَدِهِ فَسْلَةٌ فَلْيَغْرِسْهَا[1][2]

“If you are holding a sapling in your hand and someone tells you, ‘Come quickly, the Messiah is here!’, first finish planting the tree and then go to greet the Messiah.” – Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai (30 BC – 90 CE),