Melissa Louise
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Posts posted by Melissa Louise
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4 hours ago, ArtHaus said:
I wonder if the Palestinians felt as if the Nakba in ‘48 was a “terrorist” attack? Or perhaps the Gaza Massacre? Or maybe when Gaza was bombed last year?
Hamas wouldn’t exist without Israeli occupation. You might want to marinate on that. It was created as an antidote, to Israeli oppression.
Apartheid makes me queasy.
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Freedom fighters?
No.
Heartsick.
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Terrorists don't commit terror out of desperation though.
They commit it to further political and/or religious aims, and to satisfy their backers.
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10 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:
I have to say, this makes me feel kind of queasy. Are Jewish people who are NOT pleading for a ceasefire complicit? What if, given the fact that the Hamas attack took place during a supposed ceasefire, the idea of a ceasefire scares some of us? Who ceases fire, exactly? Is it really a ceasefire or just a chance for Hamas to regroup and do this again?
Good questions.
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9 minutes ago, Heartstrings said:
I think small mercies are all you can hope for in those situations. All things equal I’d rather be a hostage with access to a toilet and food than not. I’d rather endure one day of beatings than 3 weeks worth. I hope it’s a small measure of comfort to the families that their loved ones aren’t enduring terrible conditions and treatment.
I do hope we or the Israeli’s find the rest of the hostages and bring them home soon.
I just hate the way it's being used as propaganda - see how kind Hamas are!
Not saying you were using it that way, of course.
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In the extended interview, the released woman also describes being beaten, dragged and confined to tunnels. And her husband is still a hostage.
So, small mercies, I guess, that the beatings ceased while in stationary captivity, while being used as a political bargaining chip by terrorists.
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I've never thought this song had a happy ending. Power anthem?
Woman now in slightly less poverty than earlier due to slightly better job than earlier check out role, although now with kids, kicks out dead beat husband...I mean, good, but not exactly rags to riches!
It's a sad song, to me.
To me it's about poverty, and how corrosive it is, and how the 'dream' is just hard work, and maybe loss too, if you need to leave behind others who understand what it's like to come from poverty.
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29 minutes ago, regentrude said:
College administrators are pressuring faculty to lower the rates of students who fail a course, because students are paying customers who must be kept happy, academic standards be damned.
The availability of online courses makes this worse. Students can take difficult classes remotely at another institution that is known for handing out easy A's but whose credit transfers because the class has been declared equivalent, based on the list of topics covered. (Merely comparing syllabi doesn't allow an *actual* evaluation of equivalence, since it doesn't contain information about the actual assignments, the complexity of exams, whether the exam problems have been drilled beforehand, how much extra credit is handed out.)
Then the administration at the college where the students are actually getting their degrees will pressure faculty to dumb down their courses to recoup the tuition dollars. It's ugly. And because of the intrinsic difficulty of STEM courses, it totally happens in STEM.
Now do we have thousands of totally unqualified engineers? Probably not. But do we have engineers who received a less rigorous foundation than graduates from their institution used to have, because they opted to take the hard math and physics at an easier school? Absolutely.
This happens here as well, with pressure particularly brought to bear on passing full fee paying international students.
The people I know who teach in universities are in humanities, though, so perhaps the downstream consequences to this profit-first approach are less immediately troubling.
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11 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:
I also don't understand all the quibbling. It was obviously a brutal attack that didn't spare children or other vulnerable people. Does it matter exactly how many babies were beheaded?
This.
Can we not with the babies?
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Just now, Heartstrings said:
The only thing I’ve seen questioned is the 40 infants slaughtered, which I thought saw Israel had backed off of. It’s not included in the article there, does anyone know if that was verified one way or the other?
I guess I’ve been spared seeing any denials of the attack all together. I have seen conspiracy theories about how Israel was warned in advance, but we had all that here after 9/11 too. Hopefully there will be a full investigation and accounting at some point, like our 9/11 commission.I'm not going to go looking for the exact number of murdered infants and delve into the world of nit picking over how said infants became murdered/ burned/potentially headless.
Because honestly, I don't want to do that to myself.
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*One still image from a distance in the link, one video which does not play automatically and all other atrocities described in text only.
I think this is another case, though, where those who deny the atrocities will not be convinced by evidence, and those who can be don't need video evidence to know that Hamas are terrorists.
The kind of brainwashing that can make men do these things and think they are serving God is terrifying, and I'm sorry, it's more terrifying than vaccine deniers.
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This is not the thread I expected!
Songs aren't 'girl' or 'boy' songs.
People cover other people's songs all the time, they don't have to gender match.
I have no idea how people got into the whole lesbians IVF thing.
I like the original song, haven't heard the cover, not really interested - the guy is a country singer? Yeah, nah.
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4 hours ago, KSera said:
I don’t know which of these threads this is most relevant to, but I just saw The New York Times issued an editorial note against themselves for their initial coverage of the hospital strike in Gaza and acknowledging they should have covered it differently with so much unknown.
Gifted link: Editors’ Note: Gaza Hospital Coverage
concluding paragraph:
”Given the sensitive nature of the news during a widening conflict, and the prominent promotion it received, Times editors should have taken more care with the initial presentation, and been more explicit about what information could be verified. Newsroom leaders continue to examine procedures around the biggest breaking news events — including for the use of the largest headlines in the digital report — to determine what additional safeguards may be warranted.”
Honestly, I think there are no sources at the moment which are not attempting to manipulate in one direction or another. Editorial bias is on very clear display everywhere you look.
This 'error' from the NYT, the BBC and other media whose influence rests of a legacy of quality journalism has done irreparable harm, not only to themselves but to the trust readers/listeners/viewers can put in them, or in any media.
These are bad times. Journalism has been sidelined for the main game of getting those clicks (media as profit making machine) for quite some time, and in periods of world crisis, we see just how lacking we are.
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I think it's OK to make a distinction between undesirable propaganda (say, that might stop someone getting a vaccine) and abhorrent propaganda (say, that might make someone torture and set alight small children thinking they are doing a Noble Thing).
Otherwise you end up with this ridiculous flattening effect where living under Hamas is functionally the same as living in a democracy where your human rights are (imperfectly) protected.
Or narratives that gloss over just how terrible an organization like Hamas (backed by Iran, home of beating girls into comas for having hair visible on the street) is for its own people.
Meanwhile, as a direct result of the October 7 massacre, thousands of children are dead who were alive mere weeks ago, and more will die. Israeli, Palestinian, each one worth the same and deserving of better than the willfully naive excusing of terrorism as 'punching up'.
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5 hours ago, popmom said:
What can be done? Is it too political to say that Hamas needs to be wiped off the face of the earth? Clearly, Palestinians have no options. There is no democratic process to effect change even though at least half of the population (according to the many surveys I read) is fed up with the lack of quality of life, the unemployment, poverty, lack of healthcare, etc, that they currently have. Even when I read stats that say 57% support Hamas. Well, they haven’t exactly been presented with any alternatives! They are highly susceptible to propaganda. Anyone living in such circumstances would be susceptible to that sort of human baseness that we all feel from time to time.
Still, it is NO excuse for the atrocities of the attack by Hamas. I unequivocally support Israel. I am horrified at the unabashed displays of antisemitism I am seeing in the news—everywhere. 😞
It's easy to abhor the horrors inflicted by Hamas, both on Israelis and their own population, support the right of Israel to exist, protest against world-wide hatred of Jews, but also criticize the current Israeli government and their actions (or support Israelis who do), believe in a two state solution where Palestinians can freely govern themselves, think West Bank settlements are illegal, and believe that children and other civilians in Gaza and Israel should be protected from harm.
At no point is antisemitism required, but boy, there seems to be a lot of it about. I don't know how people can't be genuinely shocked by it. I think many believe that if they just substitute the word 'Zionist' for Jew, the antisemitism goes away. It really doesn't.
There's enough dehumanization to go around, that's for sure.
I'm pretty old; I remember many attempts at negotiation a two state solution, all of which failed. It seems an intractable crisis. I believe Palestinians are entitled to their own state but so are Israelis.
There are peacemakers and warmongers on both sides.
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I would argue about most of these topics, with the exception of beards - don't care.
I would be for the beach in winter, the mountains in summer, caffeine as the most mild of vices, and tattoos as a personal choice.
Strongly against cult sci fi TV of any description, excluding TV whose primary focus is travel in time.
I am probably reflexively for Lady Gaga.
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2 hours ago, popmom said:
But it appears that they (Hamas) have the support of the vast majority of Palestinians. I’m not sure what to make of that.
I haven't seen a poll showing vast majority support for Hamas amongst Palestinians.
I have definitely seen more than one poll showing a majority though - in the 55%+ region.
I did see a recent poll with much higher % in favour of action against Israel etc, which I assume is a function of being at war.
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I've never had Covid symptoms and/or a positive Covid test.
I assume I must have had it at some point; I have had illnesses since I stopped masking at the beginning of the year.
Or maybe I just haven't, yet, for some reason, and after posting on this thread, I will bring down the evil coronavirus eye upon me.
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16 minutes ago, Amira said:
I get that it's hard to integrate lots of new people into any country. But the costs of NOT doing so are worse for worldwide peace and security, and the countries with more resources should bear more of the burden. But most refugees currently live in countries with fewer resources.
I realize that I've turned this discussion toward refugees more broadly, and that isn't really the point of this specific thread, but trying to figure out what to do about the world's oldest unsettled refugee population is definitely part of this thread. Overall, Palestinian refugees are not asking to leave the area. Instead, they want to be safe in their own homes and free to send their children to decent schools and be able to work and to travel more than 5 miles from their homes, which is what most refugees everywhere in the world want. And Israelis want to be safe in their homes and free from terror forever which they absolutely deserve. But if we continue to treat all of this like a zero sum game - that only Israelis OR Palestinians can be safe, that the only way to destroy Hamas is to also put 2 million innocent people at risk, that refugees and asylum seekers are a threat - then we can never do the hard work to actually make things better because we're operating from fear rather than a shared desire for peace. Hamas thrives on that fear.
Honestly, 'we' can do.little other than vote, call our political reps etc
None of us here have any impact on resumption of 2 state solutions or whatever.
I guess people with money to spare can send money.
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My feeling on resettling refugees is that it is best done locally, where humanly possible. AU, for example, should be taking Pacific Island climate refugees. It was right that we took both Vietnamese and Chinese refugees/asylum seekers. Our backyard. I
The thing that bugs me about emotional or moral appeals on this issue to ordinary people (and I've made a lot of them in the past) is that ordinary people aren't stupid - they are sensitive to resource allocation and community cohesion.
It isn't those with the big piece of any national pie who'll be having to share; it's everyone else getting crumbs.
It's easy to moral grandstand from SE privilege (and yes, I know globally we in the West are all privileged - please tell to the malnourished unhoused many in our own communities).
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1 minute ago, popmom said:
There may be a strategic delay on Hamas’ part.
Oh, I'm sure there is.
I'm.more thinking about how quickly the fact of hostage taking disappeared from - activist - view.
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6 minutes ago, Terabith said:
Oh, believe me, I know. It’s not simple at all. Immigration issues are just hard, and frankly the border states have legitimate complaints because here the rest of the country doesn’t help, and even with people who chose to leave their homes (often for the excellent reason of people trying to kill them), it’s very hard for the first couple of years. Language issues, cultural issues, economic issues, housing issues… It is a lot, although as areas in which to do social work go, frankly immigration is very encouraging simply because there almost always IS (often very fast) improvement. Frankly, being an immigrant or a refugee is very, very hard, and you don’t make it to a new country without resources of some kind (economic, social, intellectual, etc). And in this case, radicalization is a legitimate fear as well.
But the US (and other western countries, but I speak about the US because it’s my country and because we have a whole entire mythology built around being a nation of immigrants/ colonizers) is especially egregious in how few people we allow in and how much we actively punish even the people we legally deem meet our almost impossible to meet standards of being in fear of their lives for religious or political reasons. There’s no way to follow the law and survive without assistance or working for the length of time we require people to not work to maintain their eligibility. (It’s years before they can get work permits and they can’t ever receive any government assistance.)
It’s inhumane.
Yeah, my only point is that the US is n not unusually egregious.
These things are standard in the majority of other Western and non-Western countries.
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It goes without saying that Hamas should release all hostages.
It's been remarkable to me that this most basic of demands has seemingly slipped out of the general discourse, though not diplomatic discourse, thankfully.
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in The Chat Board
Posted
You have denied and minimized the Holocaust on this site in your own words.
Where I'm from, that's a hate crime.