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Rayvin

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Everything posted by Rayvin

  1. I'm still not voting for them btw despite that inspiring intervention
  2. Your principles are your own, mine are my own. I'm going to ask though, are you happy you voted for him? And if not, what is the lesson to be learned?
  3. The nerve of this considering his pre-match predictions in recent times mind
  4. I think they could push their advantage here, they could be proposing some really strong stuff and still get a landslide IMO. But they're so traumatised by recent history that apparently we're going to get the safest of safe. I would do it differently yes but then I'm not a politician.
  5. So the question I have here, is that given Labour doesn't need a 236 seat majority to form a government, how much more left wing and progressive could they be while still having a majority? I'd rather they had a few more useful policies than 200 seats they don't need. Anyway clearly my vote isn't going to be missed
  6. This. Russia is perfectly set up to be the second coming of the Nazis, right down to the far right philosophical bullshit.
  7. Good point. Its frustrating in a way because we all know we can and should be winning this game but with injuries as they are and the number of games to contend with, this just feels like a somewhat inevitable reality. We'll get there in the end in terms of squad depth but yeah, not yet. I'm impressed we didn't lose. I do feel like I agree the subs should have been made earlier but that's only really based on what everyone was saying in here during the game.
  8. This game sounds stressful as fuck just from reading everyone's comments in here
  9. If that's what you took from my post then I'm sorry. But I agree on leaving it.
  10. But if you apply that logic back the other way it makes everyone who won't defend Hamas an Islamophobe. What is actually needed here is to focus compassionately on why this has happened so that we can save people's lives, and not continue in a cycle of death.
  11. Are the left defending Hamas? Do you think I'm defending Hamas? No one who accepts killing children as part of their solution to anything can be considered to be "the good guys".
  12. Any idea of the particular flavour of crazy for this one?
  13. I agree that Hamas are not protecting the Palestinian people, but that's not the point here. He has aimed that article at the global left and essentially set out that the 'noise' coming from left wing politics is "pro Hamas" rather than being "anti subjugation and death".
  14. And I do want to make clear that every time I say 'what about the Palestinians' it isn't in an attempt to downplay what happened to Israel, it's actually a doubtless vain hope that we can prevent it repeating. Fundamentally I think 'what about the Palestinians' is a crucially important question in this to safeguard innocent lives on both sides - as much as 'what about the Israelis'. There cannot be peace unless both sides accept it, so the experience of both in this conflict is relevant even if all we cared about was Israeli lives.
  15. He's trying to reposition this so that the argument is around why the left is supporting Hamas, rather than what they are actually doing, which is trying to defend the lives of Palestinians. His opening question attempts the same thing by asking us to ignore all the death on the Palestinian side as inflicted by Israel - I found it interesting that you could flip that whole point around and it would apply to him. "How many Jewish lives will it take for your to accept that Israel are not to blame for this" is just as easily transformed into "How many Palestinian lives etc etc". I also don't think the number of people dying corresponds to the full value of useful information in a discussion around why this is happening, it's just intended to be emotive. The problem I have with it is that if he successfully paints the left as antisemitic and therefore acting out of irrational hatred for Jewish people, then who is left to speak for the Palestinian people? If he had, at the same time, acknowledged Israel's contribution to why we are here, then I might have a different lens on this. But he won't do that because he is playing to the domestic audience as much as anyone else. I googled him, he's the leader of a political party - useful to understand where people are coming from when looking at things like this.
  16. Resistance to LGBTQ is certainly not limited to Islamic terror groups though. If we were talking about a bombing campaign through the bible belt of America, I'd like to think I'd still resist that despite the fact that their views on LGBTQ issues don't align with my own. Again, I don't think the point is relevant. I can see what he's trying to do but I'm not buying it.
  17. I can only speak for myself in this because I am in some discordance with the left on some issues generally anyway. If I had been in the room with Hamas leadership before the gave the order to do what they did, I would have been shouting and screaming at them not do it, to think of the innocent lives that would be harmed, that the people they would target would not deserve this, how this was not the way. I would have fucking begged them. I am sure most people would have - but no one had that chance and their hatred went unchallenged, leading us to absolute devastation. Israel still has the option to not kill more people. This cannot be the way to make this better, it just can't. It's not even like Hamas leadership will even be there, they'll be in Iran. But from the current state of things as of right now, I hope that Israel find Hamas in the first tunnel they open so that this ends as quickly as possible and saves as many lives as possible. It won't happen but I hope it does. That's where I am on this. As for the latter point about LGBTQ stuff and so on, I don't really find that relevant personally. Maybe some on the left might but we're talking about a different culture here and we should not be so arrogant as to assume that our ways of looking at the world take precedence over theirs.
  18. So what would you say to the notional left winger who pointed out to you that in this list of Israeli actions which are 'not ok', you've not included the executions and murders by the IDF or Israeli settlers (many in the West Bank), which would appear to be acts of terrorism themselves? They would likely state that the fact that they're not being talked about is precisely why the left needs to make itself heard - because they worry that if they do not, Israel will act unchecked as it largely has done for years. Hamas has given Israel a "justification" to achieve all sorts of nationalist strategic objectives here, and the priority has to be on trying to save the lives we still can, assuming all lives are equal. So to repeat Dazzler's point, either you treat them all equally, in which case Israel has a lot of blood on its hands too, or you're either an antisemite or an islamophobe. I actually think that is a very fair line in the sand.
  19. I don't disagree about Hamas. I think the fact that we are being asked to accept tens of thousands of Palestinian deaths here and that we did nothing about the tens of thousands before this, show that some lives do matter more to the mainstream consciousness. I agree with your final statement in full.
  20. To my eyes the left wing position (attempting to summarise charitably) is: Israel is a terrorist state that routinely executes and oppresses Palestinians, having made them second class citizens in a legal sense, in their own country. Israel essentially strives to become an ethnostate and imposes apartheid to be able to deliver this. The Israeli government rations electricity, water, food, medical supplies to Gaza as a mechanism of control. It prevents people freely entering and leaving Gaza, essentially transforming the region into a prison for 2 million people. Israeli settlers frequently commit acts of terrorism against Palestinians, with many more of the latter having been killed through terrorism than the former. The IDF has a long history of murdering children both in Gaza and in the West Bank. Palestinian people are routinely and violently evicted from their homes as Israel seeks to effectively take over the land upon which the people of Gaza now live. Israel's ultimate objective is total ethnic cleansing of the region. Hamas are terrorists who committed some unspeakable atrocities on October 7th, but that this didn't happen in a vacuum, and claims that this is motivated somehow by a dynamic entirely apart from everything laid out above are fanciful. That the above crimes by Israel could absolutely result in this sort of a response by militants in any other part of the world, and that the path to ending suffering for everyone concerned is for Israel to stop brutalising people. Israel discontinuing the oppression of Gaza would be a path towards safety and security for Israelis as well as Palestinians. I don't think you have to hate Jewish people to believe the above.
  21. So I'm going to for a moment try to set out what I think the current position is here being taken by people who think what Israel is doing is ok - I will be as charitable as possible: Prior to October 7th Israel was a subjecting Palestinians to sporadic displacement and occasional acts of violence were committed unlawfully as part of disputes and so on. Palestinians in Gaza were governed by Hamas who were responsible for ensuring basic utilities and functioning of the state. People in Gaza otherwise lived fairly normally. On October 7th, Hamas killed 1400 people in a terrorist act that was motivated only by irrational hatred of Jewish people and the desire to impose an Islamic caliphate, and Israel consequently had to 'invade' (unsure of the right word since Gaza technically belongs to Israel) Gaza in order to eliminate Hamas altogether. Over 5000 civilians have been killed in this process so far, including 2,300 children, but this is an unfortunate consequence of the pressing need for Israel to defend itself. Ultimately in Israel's position, the lives of Palestinians are worth less than the lives of their own people - this is simply how it is, and any other country would behave the same way. Is this a fair characterisation of the non-left wing position?
  22. I would have to talk to them to know that. I think there's a worrying incursion of a set of right wing narratives into this to discredit the left and I'm not endorsing that until it becomes clear that we have left wingers hating Jews rather than hating Israel. EDIT - actually I suspect given the videos that the left has little to do with this element and it's more an Arab world response. I think the question remains the same though, although the right wing narrative is arguably more insidious for this one.
  23. The most charitable interpretation I can come up with on this is that these people are offended or upset that these hostages are being given more visibility than the thousands of Palestinians killed both before and after the Hamas atrocity. Or they think it's propaganda designed to justify more death? I find it very sad that this is what it's come to, we're all human and none of these labels actually do matter in the end (IMO). I share your outrage at this.
  24. I agree with that but it's worth considering that this is more or less the position that the UN has just taken up with respect of Hamas, and Israel has just banned all UN delegates from entering the country as a result.
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