President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

Understood. It's also understood that Palestinians living in Jerusalem and in other areas that are not necessary contested, are just people trying to go about their lives. They would like to do that with humane conditions. Clearly terrorists and militants who are trying to destroy Israel don't fall into that category.

 

They've been pretty well locked up here, or kept behind the counter, for years.

 

You can go back as far as Herzl and the beginnings of modern Zionism and still not figure it out. Balfour. Ben-Gurion.

Israeli ultra-c0nservativism certainly precedes Netanyahu and the Rabin assassination. But Rabin's killing set it loose.

Has a lot to do with the Intifada and the American evangelical right. Worth remembering that Rabin - along with Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat - had won the Nobel Peace Prize for the Oslo Accords the year before he was killed.

 

I think that there was a lot of sympathy for European Jewry after the Nazi genocide. During the Fifties and Sixties things were fairly uncomplicated. There was still a lot of prejudice, all you have to do is look at how the British handled themselves when they held Palestine. There was also support, and things like Leon Uris' book "Exodus" educated people about what the Zionists faced in terms of being surrounded by people who both vocally and overtly wanted to kill every Jewish man, woman, and child. It didn't hurt that when the movie was filmed the lead Jew was portrayed by Paul Newman. Then there was admiration over how the Israeli military won wars when attacked by multiple neighboring countries simultaneously.

After they captured the Gaza Strip and West Bank and the troubles got rolling there, things got a lot more complicated. The actions of the Israelis toward the Palestinians since have been heavy handed to imperialist, and their Settlement grabs of Palestinian land have made it a lot harder to see them as the good guys. Obviously there are plenty of other bad actors involved. They've been fighting each other in that region for a couple of thousand years.

 

I can say with complete sincerity that the thought of people stealing baby formula has never entered my mind.

 

Had no idea ... on all of your points. Thanks.

 

What's attractive to a "professional" shoplifter/thief can really surprise you. Laundry detergent is one that stunned me.

 

Similac and Enfamil - the infant formula duopoly - are very expensive.

 

Diapers too. Stuff is expensive, yo.

 

Texas has declared open season on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube with censorship law - CNN


"Texas residents can now sue Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for allegedly censoring their content after a federal appeals court sided Wednesday with the state’s law restricting how social media sites can moderate their platforms.

The 15-word ruling allowing the law, which had been blocked last year, to take effect has significant potential consequences. Most immediately, it creates new legal risks for the tech giants, and opens them up to a possible wave of litigation that legal experts say would be costly and difficult to defend.

Texas’s law makes it illegal for any social media platform with 50 million or more US monthly users to “block, ban, remove, deplatform, demonetize, de-boost, restrict, deny equal access or visibility to, or otherwise discriminate against expression.”

 

Speaking of which.

Israeli police beat mourners with batons at funeral procession for veteran journalist - CNN