It’s hard for the whole world to do anything when the largest economy on Earth will undo any small step, political statement or protest with large amounts of cash, weapons and strong arming allied countries to agree with them via trade and sanctions, such as via the Anti Israel Boycott act H.R. 6940 which even affects the European Union. The whole world isn’t just standing aside. It’s just hard to stand on the path of the freight train that is the USA.

Nevertheless the ICC is proceeding, protest are occurring in many cities worldwide to embargo Israel and the UN is trying to prevent the US from sweeping this under the rug with constant world affirmations of rights of a Palestinian state and condemnations of Israeli actions, despite the US voting against.

Nobel prize winners are using their time in the spotlight to speak about it, presidents and prime ministers are urging more countries to stop trading with Israel, universities are refusing collaboration with Israel universities and exchange programs, investment capital is refusing to invest in Israeli companies and even Israeli tourists are being shunned abroad in several countries, including mine where they were booed on the streets. All this in the face of potential retaliatory action from the US.

Of course, it’s not what we hoped it would be or as effective as we need it to be for our dying Palestinian and Lebanese brothers and sisters, but it is a far cry from standing aside doing nothing. People are doing things and it would be a hell of a lot easier if the US either stopped helping the enemy or at the very least did nothing. I don’t wanna be writing “America bad” posts, I’ve been trying to make an effort to avoid making sweeping hot take statements about the US in general, but hot damn, in this case, i can’t help it. America very bad on Israel support and this will tarnish US international image for ages to come, even worse than the war on terror did.

The international community sees the US right now as the americans see Harris. It’s better than the alternative, sure, but we’d sure enjoy a whole lot less of genocide right about now.

From the point of view of efficiency, solar heaters beat pv. With pv you need to convert the sun’s energy into electrical energy, with losses, then convert electrical energy into heat by extracting it from the outside with the heat pump. If you store it in batteries to heat up water later, there’s even more losses. Depending on the outside temperature, there’s a limit to what the heat pump can do, which an internal electric heater inside the water tank takes over to reach usable shower temperature.

With solar heating the sun heats water, that’s it. Not only you can yield energy from the sun more efficiently, this doesn’t need complex electronics or semiconductors, so it’s also better from an environmental impact point of view.

And it doesn’t have to be either/or. In my country, solar heating usually comes as a package deal with pv heating. Some companies are making hybrid pvs. Solar panels become less efficient as they heat up, so a hybrid pv would use coolant to keep them within their most efficient working temperature and extract that heat to be used for space heating, using radiators or floor heating or forced air systems, and/or water heating. Having both just makes sense, since it makes your pv needs (and your upfront investment) smaller and the maintenance on solar heaters is much simpler.

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It goes both ways. Like Guterres said, Hamas doesn’t exist in a vacuum. This is not to say that terrorism is justified, or that i agree with Hamas’ actions, but Hamas in itself only has the power it has because of the antagonizing of so many peoples ever since Israel was founded. I believe there is a place for Israel in the world, but probably never as a Jewish nation. Simply put, the region was never just Jewish or just Muslim, it was always multi cultural and multi religious along different parts of history. As such the future of Israel lies as a multi cultural and multi religious nation.

I understand other Muslim states are also organized towards mainly Muslims as Israel wants to be organized mainly towards Jews, but the way Israel was founded, by taking a land that had a strong Muslim presence, there is no possible way to create a state like Israel wants without a tremendous amount of bloodshed and cruelty that will tarnish the entire history of Judaism and Israel itself, as well as the US by association, ever worse than it already has. And even if Israel and the US accept the shame of the absolute bloodshed and genocide of an entire peoples, i doubt the nation of Israel will ever know peace and the US taxpayers will ever stop having to constantly pay to keep Israel from being destroyed.

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If that peeves you, what until you find out how much of your tax dollars are funding a rogue country hellbent on the genocide of people from 2 countries, while bombing them and 2 other and dragging the US into another long term regional war, which has been overwhelmingly criticized by nearly every other country on Earth. This pales in comparison.

This specic post October attack Israeli incursion, genocide and massive land grab will be Joe Biden’s legacy. Nothing he did or will do will shine a candle light on this.

I guess you could consider Israel strong if you remember that this strength comes from the US taxpayers being swindled out of their healthcare, social support and education money, which is funneled into donations to Israel and a massive armed forces that keeps its genocide regime propped up, while US tuition prices skyrocket and schools barely have teachers and facilities in many places, certainly not to the same level as it used to be.

Meanwhile hordes of people live in tents, work 60 hours a week living paycheck to paycheck and have no medical, paternity leave or sometimes even the same number of paid time off days as the rest of the world. Even the president takes a huge crap all over protesting rail workers, who wanted some sick leave and some safety in their workplace, which sees American railways eroding in quality and safety in favor of bigger trains and less personnel operating them.

I guess genocide has a price that someone has to pay. Honestly, i wouldn’t see that necessarily as strength. More like outright exploitation of the American people, the Palestinians and now the Lebanese for an old fairly tale that some magic being told a long time ago.

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Cuba - sponsor of terrorism, hasn’t done a single act of terror in generations.

Israel - not a sponsor of terrorism, used pagers and walkie talkies to kill several hundreds of people, some of which literal children.

Yeah, ok US.

I’d say it has more to do with mismanagement of economies and how that impacted fertility, the consequences of which the population is facing right now rather than islam or melanin, pressed further by climate change, the Ukrainian invasion and covid.

It’s just easier to say it’s the migrants, rather than the mismanagement of economies to privilege the old and wealthy, all the while migrants are being exploited to support an economic status quo that is unsustainable, since young people are difficult to exploit even further, what with the supporting of an aging population and all. We structured an economy that expected an unending baby boom and since that’s impossible, now we have social instability.

And thrown a flashbang into a nearby stroller with a sleeping baby inside.

Hell I’m European and the unwavering support of the genocide in Gaza by Von Der Leyen and other key players in our governments and the brutal crackdown across Europe on pro Palestinian free speech and environmental protesting is making me lose trust in our own governing bodies. I’m with the Global South on this. I’m not proud of what we are accomplishing as of late or the kind of messaging we’re putting out on the world. How much genocide is acceptable genocide ? How much protesting crackdown can you do on legitimate issues and still call yourself a free speech country?

I also agree with the arguments put forward regarding the Iraqi invasions. There were no weapons of mass destruction and we should not have been there.

And there are also other issues. The European governments at large seem to have given up on younger generations. How the hell can you even have kids when you’re being squeezed this much for basic things like rent and food all across Europe ? How is it that in many places across Europe the youth is being exploited with these unpaid internships just to be allowed a decent job? Seems like most governmental action since covid has been to support the rich and old and neglect the struggling youth. If Europe doesn’t want kids, then i won’t have kids. That’s my protest. Let the rich and old people who get so much solve the fertility issue, I say.

You’re correct, my apologies. I was confusing my Middle Eastern history. In my comment, where it reads that the French and British are to blame for the divisions through ethnic and religious lines, it should be the Russians and the British, during their sphere of influence games, which eventually coalesced Afghanistan’s borders into the Durand line, with further meddling by the Soviets later on. But the whole comment still maintains pretty much the same sentiment. Nevertheless, thank you for pointing out my mistake and helping me remember it correctly. I will try to do better to reinforce my weaknesses in history knowledge.

I may be misunderstanding the point on your last paragraph, but i wouldn’t consider it is an inherent quality of the country, culture or people that prevents stability within the country, but the countless meddling with its affairs by different countries. None of these countries (including the US) have meaningfully attempted to change anything in the country with the purpose to make it more stable. Instead, the changes that have been attempted have been more towards making the country more useful/pliable to the sphere of influence of the country that is occupying/influencing it for purposes other than the country’s best interests.

That may be a nature of its geographical location and the importance it had throughout history, but nevertheless i sure hope we will arrive at some point in the future where the country will be able to stabilize and stand on its own and it will never be through the means of the establishment of a puppet government. I believe it’s precisely by leaving it alone and providing humanitarian aid that the country will find stability, as previously said.

In 1916 France and the UK create the Sykes-Picot secret agreement with agreement of Russia and Italy to divide the middle east in a way so they would never be able to pose any threat and could be easily manipulated into their spheres of influence, by cutting through areas of ethnic and religious affiliations.

108 years later on Lemmy “Afghanistan actively rejects civilization”. It’s just unfair to say such a thing when so many civilizations have contributed so much to ensure Afghanistan would never be able to be politically and economically stable.

If anything, everyone should stop sending soldiers to Afghanistan and simply support them humanitarily throughout the long road of recovery ahead of them from what has been done to them for the last 100 years. Ideally, France and the UK should be bearing the brunt of the cost of that humanitarian effort, but in practice, it’s difficult to pin the blame on modern day France and UK of their forefathers’ sins.

That would be possible but it would take a long time and one of the bigger issues that has persisted in this war is, will Ukraine last long enough that when a new coalition is made or even when new equipment is delivered, those efforts will still be there on time to be useful ? I think this has been the crux of the question for all delays we’ve seen on war support on this war.

I think most world leaders didn’t really believe Ukraine would still be fighting today back when the war started and didn’t want to deliver tanks and jets to a soon to be occupied Ukraine. This is why we’re in this hodgepodge of inefficiency. And we still don’t know if Ukraine will still be fighting in 2 years from now, but i feel world leaders are more confident on it than 2 years ago, so things should probably come to a more streamlined solution as time goes by.

I’m thinking a terrorist attack of this magnitude with the amount of collateral casualties it had will have international implications that reach far beyond convincing Hezbollah from escalating into a war, if it’s actually going to achieve that at all. We’re talking about a terrorist group, not an army. Personally i think this will probably just delay it and strengthen their resolve to actually go to war and be even more cruel. Terror groups thrive in terror conditions. The strongest military force on the world couldn’t make a dent in terrorist groups operating in the middle east. Peace and stability, however, destroy terror groups.

I’m pretty sure everyone has realized that further atrocities are not the way out of this war. I just hope the belligerent parties can realize it faster and start coming to terms that they will have to share the land and make concessions. Until then i guess we’ll keep seeing innocents die for motivations that make less sense each time, like Fatima Abdullah, who was just 9.