International Politics

[Crazyfool01]

14 hours ago, kaosmark2 said:

I've logged out of and deactivated my twitter account finally. Losing the block function doing any real amount was the final straw. It's a bit weird and I realise how much I casually scroll onto it, but I'm feeling a lot better for it and there's really nothing noteworthy I'm missing out on.

looked elsewhere but they are dead in comparison , guess the people that followed me have gone in various directions if they left , so much social media out there now 

[charlierc]

9 hours ago, kaosmark2 said:

Half a dozen of my more online friends had already stopped using it.

 

The main reason I'd kept up with it was for cricket banter (and to a lesser extent football). I haven't found another place where I can easily read a bunch of jokes about cricket, without it being overwhelmed by either old blowhards hating the modern game or idiotic Indian fans bum-licking Kohli.

 

Enough of the interesting journalists/political commentators etc. have moved to bluesky that I'm comfortable getting any fix for that over there.

I've found quite a few Reddits take care of banter and even some news stuff, so I do tend to use that as more of my timewaster now than Twitter, plus I've found myself limiting what I write on there anyway.

 

Cricket has the same "It was better in my day!" crowd than football huh

[steviewevie]

Anyone watch Surviving Oct 7th:We Will Dance Again about the Hamas attack at that Novas festival?

I would say that was definitely genocide.

Edited September 26 by steviewevie

[kaosmark2]

3 hours ago, charlierc said:

I've found quite a few Reddits take care of banter and even some news stuff, so I do tend to use that as more of my timewaster now than Twitter, plus I've found myself limiting what I write on there anyway.

 

Cricket has the same "It was better in my day!" crowd than football huh

Cricket is way worse for it than football. You've got a whole generation of old tory blowhards bemoaning the existence of T20.

I'm a much bigger fan of test cricket than T20 but I really get fed up of the "traditionalists" arguing about it. I'd curated a really nice feed of journalists, statisticians and memers aged 20-40 who just love talking about the good things in the game not arguing about "how much better it was in my day when people knew how to play proper cricket".

[steviewevie]

Shockingly it turns out Netanyahu is stringing everyone along when it comes to ceasefire talks at UN. The bloke is a crook and a war criminal.

[steviewevie]

[Crazyfool01]

4 hours ago, steviewevie said:

Shockingly it turns out Netanyahu is stringing everyone along when it comes to ceasefire talks at UN. The bloke is a crook and a war criminal.

who knew ? !! 

[steviewevie]

Netanyahu is making his speech and he really is a disgrace. he has the gall to say 

[Crazyfool01]

do all that sh*t then just bomb them anyway ? cant figure out why they bother with all that if they aim to kill terorists ? surely they just leave with all the others anyway ? or is it to drive them out into the open ? 

[steviewevie]

1 hour ago, Crazyfool01 said:

do all that sh*t then just bomb them anyway ? cant figure out why they bother with all that if they aim to kill terorists ? surely they just leave with all the others anyway ? or is it to drive them out into the open ? 

he's full of sh*t. He needs removing.

[steviewevie]

like with Hamas they are just trying to kill the leader, as if that means they have won.

Israel can't win this.

[steviewevie]

to be fair to Netanyahu the horrible c**t as soon as he agrees to any ceasefire or cessation then his coalition falls apart and which will mean elections etc...all the killing is literally to keep him in power (and same can be said of Hamas tbh).

[kaosmark2]

5 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

to be fair to Netanyahu the horrible c**t as soon as he agrees to any ceasefire or cessation then his coalition falls apart and which will mean elections etc...all the killing is literally to keep him in power (and same can be said of Hamas tbh).

I mean, the stated goal of Hamas is to destroy Israel. They care as little for the Palestinian people as Netanyahu does. In the same way as Netanyahu views the Israeli hostages as an excuse to perpetuate more violence and genocide and stay in power, Hamas views the genocide as a way to get another generation of recruits.

[steviewevie]

Talking of Hamas, did anyone on here watch that BBC programme about the Nova festival?

It's a very hard watch, is obviously very problematic and controversial in many ways, but also kind of vital? It also shows how much we are all filming everything, you have the victims filming everything, and the perpetrators filming everything. It is like a horror film.

Surviving October 7th: We Will Dance Again - BBC iPlayer

 

Edited September 27 by steviewevie

[steviewevie]

The world waits to see what Iran does.

[steviewevie]

IDF claiming they killed that head of Hezbollah Nasrallah bloke yesterday. If true...what happens now? Israel wants to decouple a ceasefire with Hezbollah with one in Gaza, so they can then allow people to move back to their homes in the north of Israel. Can't see whoever leads Hezbollah ever agreeing to that, would look too much like a humiliating stand down, but we'll see...Hezbollah really getting hammered. Doesn't look like Iran wants to know.

[steviewevie]

 

[doogie]

15 hours ago, steviewevie said:

Talking of Hamas, did anyone on here watch that BBC programme about the Nova festival?

It's a very hard watch, is obviously very problematic and controversial in many ways, but also kind of vital? It also shows how much we are all filming everything, you have the victims filming everything, and the perpetrators filming everything. It is like a horror film.

Surviving October 7th: We Will Dance Again - BBC iPlayer

 

 

I watched this last night. It's an astonishing, harrowing, but truly essential watch.

 

This touching piece was written by one of the Nova survivors whose flags you may have spotted at this year's Glastonbury:

 

"Hi all, last night I couldn't sleep after Glastonbury, and felt like I had to write down my experience. It's very raw and probably needs some editing, but here it is in case you're interested: 

 

While by no means my first, Glastonbury 2024 felt very different to me. It was the first Glasto since 7th October, and the first festival I went to since Nova, the music festival in Israel where thousands of festival-goers just like me had to run for their lives under gun and rocket fire, where hundreds were tortured, gang-raped and murdered, and dozens were kidnapped, most of whom are still held hostage.

 

It was a difficult and complex experience. Every little detail was extremely triggering: the stage designs, the outfits, the sunrise, the face jewels, the dust, the paragliders, the drone display, the fireworks, and the list goes on. It's hard for strangers to understand how us Jews spent every minute of Glastonbury thinking about our brothers and sisters that were slain that day, about their families, about the survivors and the hostages. 

 

My method of dealing with my vicarious trauma in Glastonbury was to carry with me two flags: the official Nova flag and one that read "we will dance again", a phrase that has become the symbol of the Nova community after the massacre. The flags were meant to express that while I was physically at Glastonbury, my heart and my thoughts were with the Nova community, and every last dance was dedicated to them. To me, it was unthinkable to attend a music festival without acknowledging Nova and paying my respects. 

 

Unfortunately, some of the people I went with to the festival, including some I had considered friends, were unsympathetic to my gesture of grief. When I put up the flags next to my own tent, they asked me to take them down, citing concerns about "irrational people" associating their tents with mine and vandalising them. When I refused, they "decorated" their own tents with some Palestinian merch, including a "boycott Israeli apartheid" sticker, presumably to "protect" them. The irony is not lost on me that by trying to force me to hide my Jewish-Israeli identity and silence my grief for their own protection, and by spreading the "apartheid" blood-libel, they created the antisemitic incident they were so worried about. 

 

They probably never considered just how inappropriate, hateful and disrespectful to our dead it is to respond to our mourning with the flags of those who murdered them. How close they came to gloating over it, to celebrating dead Jews, just like others did in London and all over the world on the 7th of October. From that point on, some people in the group completely shunned me and my wife Efi. A few others made a point of being extra-nice to us, for which I'm grateful. 

 

Thankfully and somewhat surprisingly, outside that small group of "friends", we got nothing but love for carrying those flags. We couldn't walk five minutes without someone stopping to give us a hug, thank us for carrying the flags, take pictures with us, dance with us, cry with us in their memory. We got to meet so many amazing people dealing with the trauma in their own ways, including gestures of their own: anything from a "we will dance again" t-shirt or a #bringthemhomenow bracelet, to "free the hostages" written all over their chest. So many people felt included, empowered and safer when seeing those flags, and we were so grateful for their love and for the opportunity to meet them and share this experience. 

 

Waking up to see the "boycott" sticker each morning, I couldn't help but smile, think of all the love I've received at the festival, and really feel the meaning of "our love is stronger than their hate." Even non-Jewish people who didn't know about the Nova festival but cared to ask had nothing but love and empathy to offer, regardless of their political views or thoughts about the war. Their warm and kind reactions showed me that there is a silent majority of British people, who see and acknowledge the Jewish and Israeli pain, and oppose the wave of hate towards us. They wanted us to be able to wear our identity with pride, and were very happy to see our presence. 

My main takeaway from this experience is that despite the biased media and despite antisemitism running wild, we have more allies than we might think.

 

Even though they tend to be silent, there are a lot of decent people in this country who want us included. The Jewish community needs to be more visible, to stop being intimidated, to wear its identity with pride. We are a new Jewish generation, and in the face of hate, we will not hide and we will not bow down. We will dance again, and again, for as long as it takes."

 

 

Edited September 28 by doogie

[steviewevie]

Obviously the killing of Nasrallah is a big win for Israel, but will also be celebrated by some in Lebanon, Syria and Iran.

What comes next though...who knows....?!

[doogie]

30 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

IDF claiming they killed that head of Hezbollah Nasrallah bloke yesterday. If true...what happens now? Israel wants to decouple a ceasefire with Hezbollah with one in Gaza, so they can then allow people to move back to their homes in the north of Israel. Can't see whoever leads Hezbollah ever agreeing to that, would look too much like a humiliating stand down, but we'll see...Hezbollah really getting hammered. Doesn't look like Iran wants to know.

 

If they've got Nasrallah it could be a game changer in a very positive way, but it really could go either way. They really need to get Sinwar too.

[steviewevie]

Just now, doogie said:

 

If they've got Nasrallah it could be a game changer in a very positive way, but it really could go either way. They really need to get Sinwar too.

Hezbollah still have a lot of big missiles...and now they're probably in a state of chaos so just takes one angry and panicked nutter...

[steviewevie]

Looks like far right has won the general election in Austria.

[steviewevie]

Looks like an Israeli ground invasion of lebanon is on the way...hopefully limited. Hezbollah getting battered, but Israel also taking a big risk, hasn't gone so well in the past.

[steviewevie]

he really feels like he's winning at the moment, and I guess he kind of is.

So many deaths.

[steviewevie]

Maybe Netanyahu will inspire a zionist revolution in Iran.

Edited September 30 by steviewevie