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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 5th, 2023

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  • In this case you may be right, but region protected products can be quite ridiculous. For example Bourbon:

    • Produced in the U.S. and its Territories (Puerto Rico), as well as the District of Columbia
    • Made from a grain mixture that is at least 51% corn
    • Aged in new, charred oak containers
    • Distilled to no more than 160 (U.S.) proof (80% alcohol by volume)
    • Entered into the container for aging at no more than 125 proof (62.5% alcohol by volume)
    • Bottled (like other whiskeys) at 80 proof or more (40% alcohol by volume)

    (Source Wikipedia)

    That’s pretty fucking generic except for the made in USA portion. If I’m not mistaken Champagne has similarly silly restrictions with no significant difference.




  • Barak replied “It’s already been known for many years that they have a bunker that originally was built by Israeli constructors underneath Shifa,” which was used as a “command post” for Hamas and as a “junction of several tunnels”

    “I don’t know to say to what extent it is a ‘major.’ It’s probably not the only…command post. Several others are under hospitals or in other sensitive places.”

    Barak, who was Israel’s prime minister from 1999 to 2001, responded, “decades ago, we were running the place, so we helped them.” The Gaza Strip has been controlled by Hamas since 2007.

    “It was many decades ago…that we helped them build these bunkers in order to enable more space for the operation of the hospital within the very limited size of these compounds.”





  • Does anyone actually care what New Zealand thinks? If New Zealand cares so much they can start taking more people in. From what I understand New Zealand is one of the few countries that takes more quota refugees than asylum seekers. That means they take in less asylum seekers than the UN mandated quota of refugees. The UN quota is 1500 per year so their total intake per year is less than 3000 people.

    I wouldn’t say New Zealand is xenophobic, but they are extremely restrictive on immigration, asylum seekers, and refugees. I play a lot of Path of Exile which is based out of New Zealand and they’ve stated that to get a job there you have to move to New Zealand because New Zealand law prohibits companies from hiring from outside of New Zealand unless the company can prove that the needed job can’t be filled by a New Zealander.

    The standard of living in New Zealand is fairly high, but it’s mostly because they are NIMBY and I Got Mine.


  • Oh that’s cool, I ran across the same website while making a comment to another user here.

    I’m not super sure how reliable they should be considered to be honest. Looking at Mediabiadfactcheck.com they state that they are mostly factual in reporting but points to their lack of transparency on funding and strongly loaded emotional wording that may be misleading.

    Based on the rest of the review it seems that they are really good about being very specific in their statements to avoid inaccuracies. Looking through this article and a few of their other articles they mostly focus on local accounts (X person said this, they live in Gaza) or third party references (Y on Twitter said this based on an article by Z at the BBC).

    Another representation of this style of reporting would be this example:

    Headline: “The Election Was Stolen!”

    Body: New information has come out about an investigation into the legitimacy of the 2020 election. SOUTHERN boy on Twitter shows a video of FBI officials going into the election offices to perform an investigation. SOUTHERN boy also recently posted a potential connection between the investigation and the Trump 2020 election, but it hasn’t been picked up by the mainstream media.

    We also spoke to Melissa Simpson in Mississippi and she says she and all her neighbors believe the election was stolen.

    Since 2020 Trump has been telling everyone that, “The Election Was Stolen!” Does SOUTHERN boys information show the proof to Trump’s claim?

    End example

    Technically nothing I posted is false, I’m not making any claims myself, but anyone reading this would know the subtext to my article.


  • A lot of people have no objection about receiving news about Palestinians from blatantly pro Israeli outlets. So yeah, there is one Pro Palestinian source, surely the balanced person would take info from both.

    In the real world this is certainly true, there are way more Pro-Israel publications and listening to an opposing opinion is wise, but on Lemmy it seems that the vast majority of active persons have been unwilling to accept any Israel source, no matter how tangential.

    The double standards have to stop. Either object against both, or read both and decide for yourself.

    There’s nothing to say this person doesn’t, and given the amount of flak Israel related sources get it’s worth noting the bias here as well.

    But to always call out just Palestinian sources, it smells of cultural oppression

    I completely agree, but I am somewhat thrown by the choice of name by this publication. It just lacks a certain professionalism associated with good journalism. This isn’t to say it’s not a worthwhile source, it’s just not the best name. It’s kinda like if someone named their publication the Digital Revolution, the Uprising, or something similar, I’m just gonna cringe a bit and be skeptical from the start.

    Looking online I found this site (https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/electronic-intifada/) which reviews the bias of various media sources. Based on this it’s just a group of international journalists with their publication based out of Chicago. Their information seems to be mostly from grass roots reporting or third and fourth party accounts.

    EDIT: I wanted to quickly follow up, I’m reading through the article now and it’s a real shit show for navigating. In general I’m not familiar enough with the people they reference that it’s really hard to get a good read on this article. It’s kinda like if I said that a guy I know named Billy works at the city and he said he spoke with the Mayor who said that crime is on the rise, but the Chief of Police released a report to the contrary. Billy could be worthwhile, but I don’t know Billy and I can’t readily find good references to the Mayor’s statement.

    Even the representation of the original referenced article by YNet is kinda shit. For example, they use a reference to Syrian Girl on Twitter who is referencing Yoav Zitun on YNet, who is referencing a paraphrased statement from Lieutenant Colonel A. Zitun states that the Lieutenant ordered the Fighters to shoot everything near the fence and later attacked their own installation so that other troops could move up to it. Syrian Girl makes the connection that Zitun’s reporting indicates that the military was blindly killing everything that moves (including their own troops) and EI runs with that sentiment.

    In Zitun’s own article (included at the bottom of the EI article) it is clear that unrestricted firing was only in proximity to the fence itself but other bypasses of firing restrictions were approved separately as needed or were taken by Fighters without approval.


  • In all honesty, if this wasn’t serving as a proxy war that might have been possible, but I think with China, Iran, and Russia squaring up to support Palestine there’s no way we’re going to cut off Israel. From a big picture perspective Israel is the only real ally the US or western powers have in the middle east and even if we dumped them for the crimes they commit it would ultimately hurt the US and western powers to abandon or sanction them.

    I saw an article saying that Belgium is considering sanctions against Israel, but Belgium is also a NATO country and only has 24k active troops with an additional 6k in reserves. In 2022 Belgium had the third lowest % GDP military investment out of the NATO countries.

    Whether we like it or not the big players in the game aren’t looking at the atrocities Israel commits in Gaza, they’re looking at whether they will have a foothold and ally in the middle east if we have a World War.

    We as individuals can take a stance on the conflict without considering the geopolitical outcomes, but to be able to do so we should admit that we are in a place of privilege. I imagine that if news came out that Ukraine blew up a school Poland still would still support Ukraine, because they’re right next door.

    At the same time, countries which don’t meaningfully contribute to their own defense should recognize their privilege when it comes to the world stage.

    EDIT: Had accidentally called Ukraine Russia, fixed now.



  • I kinda wish there was more discussion about the long term outcomes. I personally don’t think a two state option is going to work, especially those that hinge on control of Jerusalem. An independent Palestinian state could be established, but would almost certainly be controlled by Hamas or other like minded groups.

    Hamas believes in a two state solution so far as it gains territory, but I think that as soon as that is accomplished the long term plan would be to eventually destroy Israel and make a Reunified Palestine.

    If this is true then there will never be peace until either Palestine or Israel is utterly destroyed.

    Conversely, if Israel doesn’t just take over Palestine completely things are likely to continue as they have since the 60’s. Hamas does a terrorist attack, Israel responds by blowing up a school, rinse and repeat forever because the groups in control of each side are fucking extremist conservative monsters that believe their magical space daddy is right.

    I’m not making excuses for the atrocities committed by Israel or Hamas, I’m just laying out the road map for the next 100 years. If you had to pick between Hamas (or Hamas like) controlled Palestine or Zionist controlled Israel which would you prefer?

    I guess there is a third and fourth option, the third option is to have no opinion and whatever happens happens. The fourth option would be to, somehow, maintain the status quo and wait till a time where both sides stop believing in the extremist religious dogma. The fourth option could be something like a UN occupation of Israel Palestine to prevent the two sides from killing each other?

    EDIT: Also, if you look at the proposed maps for a two state solution you should already know that a two state solution wouldn’t work, it’s like if Cold War Germany had a baby with the Michigan UP and somehow the offspring was even worse.




  • I’d really like to know what the level of input creators have over the ads that appear in their videos is. It feels like some videos are just whatever Google throws out there while some videos seem to have no ads and finally some seem to have very limited ads.

    Is there some sort of dial that the creator has behind the scenes that determines how shitty the ads for their video are?

    Ads on YouTube used to not be so bad, a 5 second ad that was so unintrusive that I’d just let it play, a 15 second with a 3 second skip, and it also didn’t feel like the same quantity of ads.

    Before an ad would roll at the beginning of the video and I’d likely quickly skip it. If the video was fairly long there might be an extra ad in the middle. Sometimes the creator might also have an embedded ad, but I generally don’t mind those.

    Now it’s a double 15 second ad at the beginning, only the first one is skippable. Then there is another double ad every 15 minutes, plus the embedded creator ad, and if you make it to the end of the video there is an end of video double ad before it auto plays to the start of the next video and next set of double ads.

    Make the ads short and unintrusive or make them long, skippable, but rare. I hate having to constantly tab out to go click the skip button every few minutes.

    When the YouTube ad blocker ban started I was on chrome with uBlock and it seemed to be refreshing the block even with uBlock. I thought to myself, “Hey let’s try it with the ads, I’ll whitelist YouTube and support the content creators.” After about 3 days I said fuck it, dropped Chrome and updated uBlock again; I haven’t seen an ad since.


  • 1.) Presented with sources, definitions, and a fairly detailed description of war crimes.

    2.) Presented with third party sources about claims.

    3.) Clearly told that the person they are arguing with doesn’t support the IDF

    4.) Uses strawman attacks on the person they are arguing with

    5.) Provides no real source, argument, or rebutall

    6.) Says they refuted my argument

    7.) Puts words in my mouth

    8.) Calls me a genocide apologist when I clearly am not

    You’re clearly a troll and I’m done feeding you


  • It absolutely 100% is.

    The Geneva Convention disagrees: “Geneva Convention IV: Article 28 of the 1949 Geneva Convention IV provides: ‘The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations.’”

    “Additional Protocol I: Article 51(7) of the 1977 Additional Protocol I provides: The presence or movements of the civilian population or individual civilians shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield, favour or impede military operations. The Parties to the conflict shall not direct the movement of the civilian population or individual civilians in order to attempt to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield military operations”

    Which Israel doesn’t do either, not even close

    That’s not true, obviously Israel is using the principal of proportionality or else they would have just leveled the entire place. Whether this constitutes a war crime would be if their level of response was appropriate enough, that’s why people say it “may” constitute a war crime. The truth is that this is a subjective argument that would need to be determined in an international court of law to be certain of.

    Which we only have the word of a notoriously dishonest government that there always is

    Amnesty International reported the same in 2014 (https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/05/gaza-palestinians-tortured-summarily-killed-by-hamas-forces-during-2014-conflict/) and the Palestinian Health Ministry in 2009 (www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3668018,00.html).

    You mean like when Israel told Palestinians to go somewhere and then bombed them as they complied?

    Maybe you should actually check the news, Hamas leadership has been telling it’s people to stay and, while you don’t believe the IDF, they have satellite and surveillance footage of vehicles and barricades to block travel in Gaza. Also, reporters inside of Gaza are reporting that Hamas is shooting evacuating people.

    https://www.ynetnews.com/article/ryjyna7qa

    You can try all the whataboutism you’d like to excuse the atrocities of the apartheid regime but, apart from the fact that the atrocities of Hamas doesn’t justify any of those of Israel, most of the time the IDF have done the same thing (including for example using human shields) or something even worse.

    I’ve not tried to excuse any atrocities, I’m clearly pointing out that the term “War Crime” has a specific meaning of which you have twice incorrectly used. Throughout our discussions I have used a number of reasonable sources and references. It funny you accuse me of an argument I haven’t made and for using whataboutisms, but the only whataboutisms have come from your own post. I don’t like what the IDF is doing either, but you can’t call things war crimes that would literally take a prolonged international league case to determine (principle of proportionality). Likewise when something is very clearly defined as a war crime, you can’t say that it isn’t (perfidy). Also, it’s a really poor argument to say that sources (albeit biased) are illegitimate because they came from Israel (I showed that an outside entity and the Palestinian Health Ministry backed up the IDFs claims a decade earlier).