The US wouldn’t stop military aid to Israel while the IDF destroyed hospitals and killed children and journalists among many other war crimes. They will freeze aid to Ukraine as it defends itself in a war of conquest. Evidence suggests the USA would rather align with criminals like Putin and Netanyahu than war victims.

Reminds me of a quote from a Warhammer 40k book. “When the stars fell, when the seas boiled and the earth burned, my faith didn’t die. That is when I began to believe. God was real, and he hated us.”

My mistake, deleting it.

deleted by creator

I really missed my deceased emotional support cat this week. (Don’t feel bad, he lived an excellent life and was happy. I hope I get to say the same years down the road.)

For a second I thought “self-ruling” = driven by one of those sovereign citizen idiots. You know, the kind that think they don’t need license plates or to pay tickets because they are nations unto themselves. In which case it’s almost a ghost car in that it’s not guided by an intelligent life form. Then I saw the board.

I have yet to encounter an self-driving car (not yet legal in Canada) but it probably feels wild driving near one.

Biden has talked about ceasefires for a year now, and proven it’s just talk. Israel has crossed so many red lines it’s impossible to keep count, all with no consequences. Harris said she wouldn’t change a thing and her campaign made sure people knew she didn’t support an arms embargo on Israel. You can gaslight yourself all you want about her intentions, but her actual words -promised- more of the same.

Trump is awful, but telling people the Dems presented any meaningful opposition to ethnic cleansing or that Harris made it clear she’d be better is propagating a convenient lie.

I loathe the comments saying some version of “I hope everyone who didn’t vote for Harris gets what they deserve”. Dem bullying and refusal to stop 100% support of war crimes (including domestic protest suppression/condemnation) alienated a crucial part of their base, but apparently it’s still not their fault. Now there’s bitter folks here taking a sick satisfaction telling people they’re going to suffer and consoling themselves by viciously insulting everyone who didn’t fall in line.

Apparently when the horrors happen it’s not because Harris ran a shit campaign courting conservatives, didn’t listen, and promised more of the same (or even a slide right) as Biden, a president with an approval rating in the 30-40% range. It’s not because she refused to promise an immediate stop to support of war crimes as per America’s own laws. It’s the fault of everyone who refused to vote against their conscience because a “lesser evil” platform didn’t convince them to support a party of unrepentant war criminals.

Downvote me all you want and tell me how idiotic I am. I told people urgently to vote Harris right up until the election, but I also always spoke out against bullying on Lemmy and it’s only gotten worse post-election. The people in this thread talking about how others are going to get what they deserve are abusive people and I don’t want to be associated with them anyways. Their disapproval is something I’m proud of.

Foreign Minister Israel Katz, known for his hawkish stance, is set to replace Gallant.

If Katz is even worse, that’s bad news. It’s not like Gallant was a kind or just man. Gallant is the one who announced a “complete siege” on Oct. 9th, 2023 with no electricity, food, or fuel allowed into Gaza. He said the Gazans were “human animals” and would be treated as such. He set the stage and attitude for many of the Israeli war crimes of the last year.

• Take time off from social media once in a while, or at least avoid doomscrolling all day. Bad stories generate FAR more engagement than good stories, and every form of media knows this. If 100,000 people in your area have an average-to-good day and 5 people have terrible days, all 5 stories presented to you will detail how things are in your area are terrible.

• Physical health affects mental health and vice versa. Eat healthy (or healthier). Stay hydrated. Get 7-9 hours of sleep regularly and use sleep hygeine. Get 90+ minutes of exercise (anything that raises your heartrate) a week which is like 15 minutes/day. Don’t worry about doing it all immediately - if you try to change everything at once you’re more likely to get overwhelmed and burn out. It’s way better to make slow, sustainable changes over months than it is to do a difficult crash course for a short time and get fed up with the process.

• Do thankfulness exercises. When I go to bed at night I think of 3 things I’m thankful for in the day. On average or bad days it may be that I wasn’t in constant/chronic pain, that I got to eat and drink, and that I’m in a safe place and a soft bed. Just remembering those basics (that many of us take for granted) helps keep me aware of good things in my life.

• Find ways to enjoy hobbies that require participation - arts, sports, board/video games, whatever. Just something other than passively taking in TV/online media. This will help you feel engaged and double points if it’s something that allows for improvement because you’ll feel rewarded as you get better.

Good luck getting ring-laden sweets away from invisible kids.

No worries friend.

Dammit, Lemmy says you beat me to the joke by literally 30 seconds. Which is the time I took to look up this:

Great minds think alike.

yttrium aluminum garnet

Making me look up obscure gems first thing in the morning… and now I know it’s used in optics and lasers which is knowledge I’ll never, ever need. #Grumble #ComeOnIt’sJustAColorlessRock

How dare Israel do this immediately after receiving a strongly worded letter from the US administration about letting aid into Gaza? Don’t they realize they’re on track to get another stern warning, or maybe even a disapproving phone call?

Strawman much? Care to explain how you arrived at that accusation of dehumanization based on what was written about the technical details of missiles?

Nowhere did I say it was offensive. If you skipped the article and assumed, that’s on you. Yes you are being pedantic because you’re trying to discredit me on a technicality that does not have any merit to anyone who spends even 30 seconds reading the details I explicitly provide. By any reasonable definition it’s a multi-billion dollar set of batteries that use missiles, and no one who reads the article thinks it’s being used for offense.

Edit: I see that you changed the post to say it screams bias/agenda. My bias is against huge amounts of funding enabling the slaughter and starvation of some of the poorest and most desparate people in the world. Given that US military aid is at 17.9 billion since Oct. 7th, and the conservative death toll is over 42k + starvation, abuse, etc. that’s not even hyperbole. My agenda with that post is to point out the escalation of US involvement which this deployment definitely is, and how it’s happening simultaneous to the strongly worded letter. I’m fully willing to own both.

I’m not a weapons expert, the article I linked identifies what it’s meant for by the 2nd paragraph, and if you want to be pedantic THAADs exclusively fire missiles. Unit cost: $1.25 billion per battery $12.6 million per missile. Same page has diagrams detailing the “THAAD missiles”.

Also: “Although the actual figures are classified, THAAD missiles have an estimated range of 125 miles (200 km), and can reach an altitude of 93 miles (150 km). A THAAD battery consists of at least six launcher vehicles, each equipped with eight missiles…”

On the same week they moved a multi-billion dollar set of missile systems into Israel along with putting US troops on the ground there for the first time. The Biden administration and Congress in general have been issuing warnings and “expressing concerns” for almost a year now. Stories about blocked aid and US demands to fix it go back for months. Actions speak louder than words, and by now all credibility has been squeezed out of responses like this.

Biden is a self-proclaimed unshakable Zionist, the politically potent arms manufacturers are having a field day, and the US has been ignoring both international law and their own laws like Leahy for a while now. I’ll believe this letter is more than just election season pageantry when the arms and money actually stops, not before (and I don’t think I’m alone in that regard).

P.S. Don’t let either party or relevant PACs off the hook, don’t stop pointing out this BS, but if you’re American still vote to keep Trump out of office for many obvious reasons.

Just to get it out of the way at the start - Hamas is terrible. They are violent fundamentalists and do not deserve support. Neither Israel nor Hamas are “good” and the only side that deserves support and recognition are the civilians, Israeli or Palestinian, suffering because of/under their evil regimes. Now on to the rebuttal.

Israel needs no “baiting” to kill or otherwise abuse Palestinians - it’s their policy and has been for a long time. From the Nakba until today, the history of Israeli human rights violations, violence, lies, etc. is well-established. “Look at what you made me do” is such a typical excuse used by abusers that it’s almost a trope. Moreover, Netanyahu’s government deliberately kept Hamas in power as a useful bogeyman and an way to divide/foil Palestinian statehood. There is ample evidence that Israel has directly supported Hamas and other extremists for decades.

“Hamas, for its part, is alleged to have emerged out of the Israeli-financed Islamist movement in Gaza, Israel’s then-military governor in that territory, Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, disclosing in 1981 that he had been given a budget for funding Palestinian Islamists to counter the rising power of Palestinian secularists.”

"In a 1994 book, “The Other Side of Deception,” Mossad whistleblower Victor Ostrovsky contended that aiding Hamas meshed with “Mossad’s general plan” for an Arab world “run by fundamentalists” that would reject “any negotiations with the West,” thereby leaving Israel as “the only democratic, rational country in the region.” Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official involved in Gaza for over two decades, told a newspaper interviewer in 2009 that, “Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation.”

As far as the nature of the demands: “one-sided deals” is a matter of opinion, but “we need guarantees you’ll actually leave, stop killing/injuring many tens of thousands of civilians, destroying hospitals/schools/aid, etc.” seems like a pretty standard request at peace negotiations. Especially since Israel has repeatedly promised to continue to prosecute the war and establish long-term armed forces in Gaza.