Schmoo

I think responding to the question with "Israel has a right to exist as a state with equal rights" is the best way he could have phrased it. I know the preferred way for those on the left is "no state has a right to exist," but that's not a sentiment that's going to resonate with liberals, and many would see it as "scary radical wants to burn it all down."

His answer is a clever way of proposing a one-state solution without freaking people out.

For the record, I don't really support these strikes, but neither am I terribly passionate in opposing them for reasons I've stated.

You should be more passionate in opposing them because this shit is the closest we've ever been to WW3 and Israel only seems interested in further escalation.

I wouldn't be too surprised if the US and Israel were doing a little of such, though the contributions would hardly be significant.

wp:International Railroad for Queer Refugees doesn't seem to be getting much support from Israel.

Gee, I wonder why that is. It couldn't be that Israel doesn't give a shit about equal rights, being a fascist ethnostate themselves, surely. This isn't a "both sides" situation, Israel is clearly the aggressor, and no good can possibly come from this.

Such places might have stuff and people of interest, but yeah, they've been saying that a lot about their targets in Gaza.

It's interesting that your instinct is to assume some level of good faith on Israel's part. Perhaps you should examine that?

and if Hamas, Islamic Jihad, et al narrowed their attacks to just soldiers, cops, many of the politicians, and settlers, I wouldn't have much of a problem with it.

The standard of violence is set by the oppressor. It's a clear double standard that you speak charitably about Israel's attacks on civilians immediately before dismissing others for theirs. Not to mention the massive difference in scale.

If Iran's mode of government were really the casus belli of Israel's attacks, they would be providing support for revolutionary movements within Iran, not bombing their capital city including civilian apartment buildings and claiming that they're only targeting nuclear sites. If having a government that denies equal rights to certain groups is justification enough for attacks on civilian populations in the capital, think about what that means for Tel Aviv.

When she first got into activism she was a 16yo child of privilege and mistakenly believed the influential people who organized annual climate conferences actually wanted change.

The neoliberal media used her passion and desire for change to make themselves look good (greenwashing) by taking advantage of her naïveté, and made her famous as a result. She pretty quickly realized what was happening and was radicalized by the experience. She started giving speeches outside the climate conferences to protestors instead of giving them to wealthy neoliberals inside the climate conferences, which resulted in the neoliberal media joining in on the conservatives' smear campaign against her.

Of course, there's no way to know what is actually happening in her head, but the change in her actions indicates a radical shift in her worldview. She has become a truly radical activist for social justice. Using her fame as leverage does not discredit her in the eyes of anyone who supports her cause. It is strategic and necessary for protecting herself and her comrades from retaliation for their activism.

VPN companies and data brokers have a financial incentive to lobby for intrusive age-verification and restrictions, and prudish politicians are conveniently present in every political system. The porn lobby is powerful, but it seems they've been losing this battle recently. Or maybe they're cutting deals with the data brokers, who knows.

Legal ≠ moral. Both instances of mobilizing the national guard against the wishes of the states' governors were illegal, but one was moral and the other is not. One could argue that by breaking the law the first time a precedent was set that allowed it to be done again for a less noble cause, but I disagree. The fact that it was possible for Eisenhower to federalize the national guard without the state governor's approval in the first place means that nothing would stop it from happening in the future regardless of whether or not a precedent was set.

The drug that has the most negative impact on empathy is money, and that is his primary addiction.

I was raised in a deeply conservative fanatically religious culture and I put out a sarcastic and "too cool for school" energy a lot of the time. What do you think counterculture is? I remember in the movie she's got a whole social circle of people who are on the same page as her.

Personally I think Zendaya plays Chani pretty well, and her character doesn't feel out of place to me.

As someone who left the Southern Baptist cult as soon as my brain developed, this is nothing new.

You might try stepping away from your keyboard and checking for yourself.

Isn't Chani a non-believer in the movie, at least at first?