Politics & Stuff

[cosmicway 1,308]

The idea of ancient Greeks gays owes itself to a) German early nazis of the 19th century, b) Stalin and his friend Trofim Lysenko, c) the thieving British museum curators.

[Vesper 28,593]

1 hour ago, cosmicway said:

The idea of ancient Greeks gays owes itself to a) German early nazis of the 19th century, b) Stalin and his friend Trofim Lysenko, c) the thieving British museum curators.

100 per cent bullshit

you have turned into a complete troll

you do nothing much except spew utter bollocks

and pro tip

there were no Nazis in the 19th century, the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) was not founded until February 20, 1920, in Munich

[Fernando 6,436]

2 hours ago, Fulham Broadway said:

Yes Phd in political science - its economic land grab mainly and stealing of resources.

 

? who is grabbing what? Are those lands that they won after they went to war? And they even have giving some back because of International pressure when they shouldn't have done that since they won those wars. 

2 hours ago, Fulham Broadway said:

Brief history of Iran. Mossadeq was in charge, Irans 30th Prime Minister a beautiful democratic country. However he decided Irans oil should be for Iran. Fair enough ? The US organised a CIA Coup to overthrow the democratically elected government so they could have the oil. They installed the US friendly Shah. a right bastard with his torture police and death squads to crush any opposition. Then in 1979 there was the Religous Revolution because Iranians were fed up with the unelected Shahs regime. 

Later there was the Iran v Iraq war that lasted for 10 years. The US sold weapons to both sides, just the right amount so that the war was finely balanced, would go on for as long as possible, with maximum casualties.

Fast forward and Hezbollah and Hamas are a direct result of Israeli massacres and land grabs. They didnt exist until Israel invaded. 

Hamas have been useful to Netanyahu as they have split the Palestinians, he is on record as saying ''We must support Hamas'' 

Credit to Hezbollah though they only attack military targets.

Imagine if every hospital had been destroyed in Israel, every school blown up, 42 650 dead, 102 000 injured and 95% of all buildings destroyed, electricity cut off, water cut off and hardly any food allowed in.....

So based on this for you it's okay to have terrorist cells that want to wipe out Israel and constantly sending rocket to them? 

And again Israel invaded? That is the narrative you want to bring, but I keep saying they where attack always. When they first became a nation, and the following wars the follow. They won the war and rightfully won those lands. 

But the last part I will not debate, yes Israel has done a lot of bad and can't defend that. The good thing is like in many western democracy when this over they will be held accountable. This is opposed to the Iran regime that do countless atrocities and no accountability. 

But yes it's much easier to hate Israel and the Jews because that is the narrative then go after Iran that destabilize the middle east with all the terrorist cells. Hypocrisy is what I call that. 

Hypocrisy at is best. Where do we see you and the rest of the protester protest about other regions where crazy stuff is happening. Anyone care to protest about what has been happening in Sudan? 

No, because it is no concern. 

[Fulham Broadway 16,774]

3 minutes ago, Fernando said:

who is grabbing what?

Israel

4 minutes ago, Fernando said:

Are those lands that they won after they went to war?

So if Yemen decided to invade Israel and set up a Yemeni homeland using an annual 3.5bn dollars of hi tech weapons given by US Taxpayers . that would be ok ''because they won the war'' ?

 

6 minutes ago, Fernando said:

They won the war and rightfully won those lands. 

That is crazy. So ''might is right''. You can kill and invade because you have the most hi tech weapons ? If the devil fucks and eats Christ it is ok because the Devil won the War ?

9 minutes ago, Fernando said:

when this over they will be held accountable.

By who ? The UN ? They have broken more UN Resolutions than every other country in the World all together. By the US, their proxy backers ? by Blinken - his grandfather a Zionist who helped occupy Palestine ?

11 minutes ago, Fernando said:

Where do we see you and the rest of the protester protest about other regions where crazy stuff is happening. Anyone care to protest about what has been happening in Sudan? 

I mentioned Sudan in an early post - no one including you said anything

15 minutes ago, Fernando said:

but I keep saying they where attack always

You talk of ''terror''.  Israel bombed a Sovereign country Syria, the Iranian Embassy and killed children in total violation of International law.

Hezbollah and Houthis have all said ''stop the Genocide in gaza and no rockets will come.''

For that reason, Israel said on NBC they deliberately killed Nasrallah because he wanted peace. Look it up.

Israel bombed Tehran and killed Ishmael Hanir - another one who sought peace.

Now they are killing who;e families and children in Beirut

Last Saturday 42 Countries asked Israel to stop murdering UN Peacemakers

---

Its very odd how Evangelical Christians think Israel can do no wrong -especially when the Torah sees them as slaves/subhuman, spits on them in Jerusalem

 

[Fernando 6,436]

2 minutes ago, Fulham Broadway said:

So if Yemen decided to invade Israel and set up a Yemeni homeland using an annual 3.5bn dollars of hi tech weapons given by US Taxpayers . that would be ok ''because they won the war'' ?

 

This is different then Israel being attack. One went ahead because they wanted like Russia did with Crimea. And this one Israel was provoked first. So total contrary. 

 

3 minutes ago, Fulham Broadway said:

That is crazy. So ''might is right''. You can kill and invade because you have the most hi tech weapons ? If the devil fucks and eats Christ it is ok because the Devil won the War ?

30 minutes ago, Fernando said:

Those countries came and attack Israel first, they lost. 

7 minutes ago, Fulham Broadway said:

I mentioned Sudan in an early post - no one including you said anything

33 minutes ago, Fernando said:

I'm mentioning now and been following on the sides as people here don't care about it. It's irrelevant for them....

 

8 minutes ago, Fulham Broadway said:

You talk of ''terror''.  Israel bombed a Sovereign country Syria, the Iranian Embassy and killed children in total violation of International law.

Hezbollah and Houthis have all said ''stop the Genocide in gaza and no rockets will come.''

For that reason, Israel said on NBC they deliberately killed Nasrallah because he wanted peace. Look it up.

Israel bombed Tehran and killed Ishmael Hanir - another one who sought peace.

Now they are killing who;e families and children in Beirut

Last Saturday 42 Countries asked Israel to stop murdering UN Peacemakers

---

Its very odd how Evangelical Christians think Israel can do no wrong -especially when the Torah sees them as slaves/subhuman, spits on them in Jerusalem

First the casualties are always the bad part of a war. And no country that retaliate will do good, look at USA when we went to war. 

So that's clear, now the question is WHY? Why Israel did that? Whey they bombed Syria? Because they felt like or because they was provoked. 

I keep going back to this same, who provoked first what? Israel is leaving peacefully in their country and they get rockets send over from those places. So anyone in their right mind will attack. 

This is something that gets lost and no mention because again is much easier to blame Israel for everything. 

And not going to comment on the Torah, you guys taking things out of context. 

[Fulham Broadway 16,774]

6 minutes ago, Fernando said:

And this one Israel was provoked first.

International law says Israel is illegally occupying Palestinian land. The longest illegal occupation in history.

Under International law occupied people have the right to defend themselves

10 minutes ago, Fernando said:

Why Israel did that? Whey they bombed Syria? Because they felt like or because they was provoked. 

I hope that question is rhetorical

11 minutes ago, Fernando said:

who provoked first what? Israel is leaving peacefully in their country

Illegal settlements in the West Bank - settlers burning olive groves, bulldozing houses, shooting children in the head, while the IDF protect them. Yes, very peacefully

They always play 'the victim' -its the UN, its the Houthis, its Hamas, Its Save the Children, Its World Foodbank, Its the Palestinians, its Al Jazeera, its Doctors without Borders, Its Christian Aid, its Medecin sans Frontieres, its human shields, .......as they commit genocide with the largest weapons cache per capita in the World

[Vesper 28,593]

I always find it rich when zio-defenders rant on about Hamas basically giving the hyper RW zionists in Israel the right to do ANYTHING they want to any and all Palestinians (including the West Bank, where Hamas is not even in power), when Hamas would have disappeared from any real power long ago if not for the hyper RW power-mad zionist Netanyahu 100 per cent complicit in allowing Hamas to be funded with billions of dollars as part of his scheme to divide and conquer in order to steal ALL the land.

The hyper RW zionist jews FAFO'd, and now, with the typical ultimate arrogance they always have had since they first were shit out onto the world stage in the late 1800s demand they be placed above ALL other nations on the planet and be allowed to commit ethnic cleansing and/or genocide with impunity.

And FUCK THE USA for backstopping it all.

[Fernando 6,436]

1 hour ago, Fulham Broadway said:

International law says Israel is illegally occupying Palestinian land. The longest illegal occupation in history.

Under International law occupied people have the right to defend themselves

I hope that question is rhetorical

Illegal settlements in the West Bank - settlers burning olive groves, bulldozing houses, shooting children in the head, while the IDF protect them. Yes, very peacefully

They always play 'the victim' -its the UN, its the Houthis, its Hamas, Its Save the Children, Its World Foodbank, Its the Palestinians, its Al Jazeera, its Doctors without Borders, Its Christian Aid, its Medecin sans Frontieres, its human shields, .......as they commit genocide with the largest weapons cache per capita in the World

So in the end it's okay for terrorist organization to do what they do and Israel not be able to defend themselves?

And like I said Israel got that land after a war that they where provoked. So I don't share the same point view as you with Illegal, and all that stuff. 

Edited Tuesday at 23:44 by Fernando

[Vesper 28,593]

In N.C., Trump takes a chance pretending his FEMA lies are true

Trump could’ve simply expressed his support during a trip to North Carolina. He instead decided to take a chance by peddling easily discredited nonsense.

 

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/nc-trump-takes-chance-pretending-fema-lies-are-true-rcna176544

Communities across the Southeast, most notably in North Carolina, have spent the last several weeks trying to recover from Hurricane Helene and its aftermath. It was against this backdrop that Donald Trump visited the Tar Heel State two weeks ago and pursued a radical idea: Maybe, the former president said, he could advance his own interests by brazenly lying about the governmental response to the deadly storm.

State and local officials, including plenty of Republicans, asked him to stop deceiving the public, but he ignored the appeals — even as evidence emerged that Trump’s lies were having an adverse impact on the response to the crisis.

It was, by some measures, a genuine election-season scandal: The GOP nominee for the nation’s highest office saw devastated communities and human suffering, which inspired Trump to repeatedly lie about the heartbreaking circumstances, hoping it would advance his quest for power.

Two weeks later, he did it again. NBC News reported that the former president returned to North Carolina, where he “again made the false claim that FEMA had no money to help victims in the hurricane-stricken area because it was spending funds on migrants.”

As he’s done for weeks, Trump appeared to conflate two completely separate funds to paint a misleading picture. FEMA has dedicated disaster relief money that cannot be used for other purposes, and it was separately tasked by Congress in 2022 to disseminate money from Customs and Border Protection to help communities that received influxes of migrants.

“They spent a lot of money on bringing illegal migrants. ... They don’t have any money for the people who live here,” Trump said, despite reality. “They’ve spent it on illegal migrants.”

He was, of course, lying — or more to the point, he was echoing previous lies, which he knows have been discredited, but which he continued to repeat in the hopes that it’ll benefit him personally.

Reminded that these and related conspiratorial lives have led to threats against FEMA workers in the area, Trump expressed relative indifference. “I think you have to let people know how they’re doing,” he told reporters. “If they’re doing a poor job, are we not supposed to say it?”

I’m not in a position to say whether Trump actually believes his lies, or whether he knows he’s peddling nonsense. But either way, the consequences of his dangerous lies are the same.

To be sure, I’m mindful of the broader circumstances: North Carolina is a highly competitive battleground state, and the latest polling suggests he’s effectively tied with Vice President Kamala Harris in the state. It’s hardly surprising that the Republican has concluded that he’ll say whatever he has to say, regardless of accuracy or propriety, to get ahead.

But there is a risk of a backlash. If you’re an on-the-fence North Carolinian, unsure which candidate to support, and one candidate comes to your state to lie about the response to a deadly natural disaster, would you be more or less likely to vote for that candidate?

Trump could’ve simply made an appearance and expressed his support. He instead decided to take a chance by peddling easily discredited nonsense.

[cosmicway 1,308]

9 hours ago, Vesper said:

there were no Nazis in the 19th century, the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) was not founded until February 20, 1920, in Munich

Falmeraier theory.

[cosmicway 1,308]

The Christians dominated the western world and the middle east in the early centuries despite the persecution.
Why ?
There were reasons.

- freed the slaves
- introduced equality doctrine, alms
- Christians were for peaceful coexistence of nations
- ancient gods were dicredited, Elefsis mysteries - oracles were proved fakes

These ideas were perverted of course with the passage of time, wars did not end, there was no equality, only white slaves were freed.
But life was better than with the ancients, is the general consensus.

Christians had a strict moral code, absurdly strict - Cromwell for example, Spanish inquisition.
How they did that ?
The logical answer is it preexisted, would n't be a bright idea to try and change it, they adopted it.

So this then debunks the idea of freewheeling gay societies before christianity.
It's all a misinterpretation, politically inspired.

[IMissEden 18]

UK Labour now under microscope for assisting Democrat party in USA during these elections, confirmed, having been clearly deduced many times over. One side is honest, one isn’t. Simple. The dishonest side have their followers in a foam mouthed frenzy. The honest side as always just want to simply work with the information on the table and not butcher it via bias. 

[Fulham Broadway 16,774]

8 hours ago, Fernando said:

So in the end it's okay for terrorist organization to do what they do and Israel not be able to defend themselves?

And like I said Israel got that land after a war that they where provoked. So I don't share the same point view as you with Illegal, and all that stuff. 

People are polarised on this issue. People wont shift especially if they have some weird religious affliction.

Its sad for Israelis living under Netanyahu, and psychos Smotrich and Gvir - they will suffer revenge attacks for decades, people that have lost parents, children, whole families. Just slaughtered

Bottom line is people either support genocide and an occupying apartheid regime or they dont.

The danger of endorsing such mass slaughter is it legitimises other states to do the same in the future.

[cosmicway 1,308]

1 hour ago, Fulham Broadway said:

People are polarised on this issue. People wont shift especially if they have some weird religious affliction.

Its sad for Israelis living under Netanyahu, and psychos Smotrich and Gvir - they will suffer revenge attacks for decades, people that have lost parents, children, whole families. Just slaughtered

Bottom line is people either support genocide and an occupying apartheid regime or they dont.

The danger of endorsing such mass slaughter is it legitimises other states to do the same in the future.

There is no "apartheid" regime in Israel.
The term "apartheid" in relation to a hostile subpopulation is meaningless as it is also misleading.
All the Arabs hate Israel, to varying degrees.
A Moroccan or a Tunesian is less likely to go there and become a kamikazi bomber, one from Gaza is trained from childhood to do that.
But they are all anti-Israel, the same as German nazis were anti-jewish.
Outside the Arab world, the latter day anti-semitism is a product of antiamericanism.
At one point comintern decided to side with Nasser and the "rejection front", so the entire fan base followed.
 

[Vesper 28,593]

35 minutes ago, cosmicway said:

There is no "apartheid" regime in Israel.

This is another false positing.

 

Israeli apartheid

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_apartheid

Israeli apartheid is a system of institutionalized segregation and discrimination in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories and to a lesser extent in Israel. This system is characterized by near-total physical separation between the Palestinian and the Israeli settler population of the West Bank, as well as the judicial separation that governs both communities, which discriminates against the Palestinians in a wide range of ways. Israel also discriminates against Palestinian refugees in the diaspora and against its own Palestinian citizens.

Since the 1948 Palestine war, Israel has been denying Palestinian refugees who were expelled or fled from what became its territory the right of return and right to their lost properties. And since the 1967 Six Day War, Israel has been occupying the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which is now the longest military occupation in modern history, and in contravention of international law has been constructing large settlements there that separate Palestinian communities from one another and prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. The settlements are mostly encircled by the Israeli West Bank barrier, which intentionally separates the Israeli and Palestinian populations, a policy called Hafrada. While the Jewish settlers are subject to Israeli civil law, the Palestinian population is subject to military law. Settlers also enjoy access to separate roads and exploit the region's natural resources at its Palestinian inhabitants' expense.

Comparisons between Israel–Palestine and South African apartheid were prevalent in the mid-1990s and early 2000s.^[2][3] Since the definition of apartheid as a crime in the 2002 Rome Statute, attention has shifted to the question of international law.^[4] In December 2019, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination^[5] announced it was reviewing the Palestinian complaint that Israel's policies in the West Bank amount to apartheid.^[6] Since then, several Israeli, Palestinian, and international human rights organizations have characterized the situation as apartheid, including Yesh Din, B'Tselem,^[7][8][9] Human Rights Watch,^[9][10] and Amnesty International. This view has been supported by United Nations investigators,^[11] the African National Congress (ANC),^[12] several human rights groups,^[13][14] and many prominent Israeli political and cultural figures.^[15][16][17] The International Court of Justice in its 2024 advisory opinion found that Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories constitutes systemic discrimination and is in breach of Article 3 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which prohibits racial segregation and apartheid. The opinion is silent as to whether the discrimination amounts to apartheid; individual judges were split on the question.^{[18][19][20][21][22][23]}

Elements of Israeli apartheid include the Law of Return, the 2003 Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law, the 2018 Nation-State Law, and many laws regarding security, freedom of movement, land and planning, citizenship, political representation in the Knesset (legislature), education, and culture. Israel says its policies are driven by security considerations^{[24][25][26][27]} and that the accusation is factually and morally inaccurate and intended to delegitimize Israel.^{[28][26][29][30]} It also often calls the charge antisemitic, which critics have called weaponization of antisemitism.^{[31][32][33][34][35]}

 

^snip

ISRAEL’S APARTHEID AGAINST PALESTINIANS

A LOOK INTO DECADES OF OPPRESSION AND DOMINATION

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid/

 

In May 2021, Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah, a neighbourhood in occupied East Jerusalem, began protesting against Israel’s plan to forcibly evict them from their homes to make way for Jewish settlers. Many of the families are refugees, who settled in Sheikh Jarrah after being forcibly displaced around the time of Israel’s establishment as a state in 1948.  Since Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank in 1967, Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah have been continuously targeted by Israeli authorities, who use discriminatory laws to systematically dispossess Palestinians of their land and homes for the benefit of Jewish Israelis.  

In response to the demonstrations in Sheikh Jarrah, thousands of Palestinians across Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) held their own protests in support of the families, and against their shared experience of fragmentation, dispossession, and segregation. These were met with excessive and deadly force by Israeli authorities with thousands injured, arrested and detained.  

The events of May 2021 were emblematic of the oppression which Palestinians have faced every day, for decades. The discrimination, the dispossession, the repression of dissent, the killings and injuries – all are part of a system which is designed to privilege Jewish Israelis at the expense of Palestinians.  

This is apartheid. 

Amnesty International’s new investigation shows that Israel imposes a system of oppression and domination against Palestinians across all areas under its control: in Israel and the OPT, and against Palestinian refugees, in order to benefit Jewish Israelis. This amounts to apartheid as prohibited in international law.

Laws, policies and practices which are intended to maintain a cruel system of control over Palestinians, have left them fragmented geographically and politically, frequently impoverished, and in a constant state of fear and insecurity.

Download the full report

 

WHAT IS APARTHEID?

Apartheid is a violation of public international law, a grave violation of internationally protected human rights, and a crime against humanity under international criminal law.

The term “apartheid” was originally used to refer to a political system in South Africa which explicitly enforced racial segregation, and the domination and oppression of one racial group by another. It has since been adopted by the international community to condemn and criminalize such systems and practices wherever they occur in the world.

The crime against humanity of apartheid under the Apartheid Convention, the Rome Statute and customary international law is committed when any inhuman or inhumane act (essentially a serious human rights violation) is perpetrated in the context of an institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over another, with the intention to maintain that system.

Apartheid can best be understood as a system of prolonged and cruel discriminatory treatment by one racial group of members of another with the intention to control the second racial group.

take our course

 

Amnesty International has created a free 90-minute course called “Deconstructing Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians”. To learn more about the crime of apartheid in international law, what apartheid looks like in Israel/OPT, and how it affects Palestinians’ lives, sign up to our course on Amnesty International’s human rights education academy.

 

snip

 

Palestinians wait to cross the Qalandia checkpoint between Ramallah and East Jerusalem, both in the occupied West Bank, as they head to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in East Jerusalem for the first Friday prayers of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan on 2 June 2017 © Abbas Momani / AFP via Getty Images

 

 

[Vesper 28,593]

10 hours ago, Fernando said:

So in the end it's okay for terrorist organization to do what they do and Israel not be able to defend themselves?

And like I said Israel got that land after a war that they where provoked. So I don't share the same point view as you with Illegal, and all that stuff. 

multiple points

1. The ultra RW zionists in Likud (an Israel poltical party whose very roots come from terrorist jewish groups, its founder was Menachem Begin, who was the leader of the jewish terror group Irgun) helped to keep hamas in power and enabled them to be funded with billions of dollars, all in a divide et impera gambit for decades.

2. 'Defending itself' is hardly the overarching posture of the jewish Israelis governments, especially the Likud-lead ones. It is all about land grabs in service of taking all the land of what thet expansionistically call Eretz Yisrael Hashlema (The Torahderived Land of Israel, aka Greater Israel).

3. The 1967 War (6 Day War) in which Israel grabbed so much land was initiated (in terms of kinetic use of force) BY ISRAEL, with illegal pre-emptive war attacks on Egypt, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Day_War

The Six-Day War,^[a] also known as the June War, 1967 Arab–Israeli War or Third Arab–Israeli War, was fought between Israel and a coalition of Arab states, primarily Egypt, Syria, and Jordan from 5 to 10 June 1967.

Military hostilities broke out amid poor relations between Israel and its Arab neighbours, who had been observing the 1949 Armistice Agreements signed at the end of the First Arab–Israeli War. In 1956, regional tensions over the Straits of Tiran (giving access to Eilat, a port on the southeast tip of Israel) escalated in what became known as the Suez Crisis, when Israel invaded Egypt over the Egyptian closure of maritime passageways to Israeli shipping, ultimately resulting in the re-opening of the Straits of Tiran to Israel as well as the deployment of the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) along the Egypt–Israel border.^[35] In the months prior to the outbreak of the Six-Day War in June 1967, tensions again became dangerously heightened: Israel reiterated its post-1956 position that another Egyptian closure of the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping would be a definite casus belli. In May 1967, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser announced that the Straits of Tiran would again be closed to Israeli vessels. He subsequently mobilized the Egyptian military into defensive lines along the border with Israel^[36] and ordered the immediate withdrawal of all UNEF personnel.^[37][29]

On 5 June 1967, as the UNEF was in the process of leaving the zone, Israel launched a series of preemptive airstrikes against Egyptian airfields and other facilities.^[29] Egyptian forces were caught by surprise, and nearly all of Egypt's military aerial assets were destroyed, giving Israel air supremacy. Simultaneously, the Israeli military launched a ground offensive into Egypt's Sinai Peninsula as well as the Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip. After some initial resistance, Nasser ordered an evacuation of the Sinai Peninsula; by the sixth day of the conflict, Israel had occupied the entire Sinai Peninsula.^[38] Jordan, which had entered into a defense pact with Egypt just a week before the war began, did not take on an all-out offensive role against Israel. However, the Jordanians did launch attacks against Israeli forces to slow Israel's advance.^[39] On the fifth day, Syria joined the war by shelling Israeli positions in the north.^[40]

Egypt and Jordan agreed to a ceasefire on 8 June, and Syria on 9 June, and it was signed with Israel on 11 June. The Six-Day War resulted in more than 15,000 Arab fatalities, while Israel suffered fewer than 1,000. Alongside the combatant casualties were the deaths of 20 Israeli civilians killed in Arab forces air strikes on Jerusalem, 15 UN peacekeepers killed by Israeli strikes in the Sinai at the outset of the war, and 34 US personnel killed in the USS Liberty incident in which Israeli air forces struck a United States Navy technical research ship.

At the time of the cessation of hostilities, Israel had occupied the Golan Heights from Syria, the West Bank including East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip from Egypt. The displacement of civilian populations as a result of the Six-Day War would have long-term consequences, as around 280,000 to 325,000 Palestinians and 100,000 Syrians fled or were expelled from the West Bank^[41] and the Golan Heights, respectively.^[42] Nasser resigned in shame following Israel's victory, but was later reinstated following a series of protests across Egypt. In the aftermath of the conflict, Egypt closed the Suez Canal until 1975.^[43]

 

^snip

 

Bezalel Smotrich, Israel's ultra-nationalist minister, delivers anti-Palestinian diatribe in Paris

Netanyahu's finance minister participated in a gala event in Paris at the invitation of a French Jewish association close to the far right.

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2023/03/20/bezalel-smotrich-israeli-ultra-nationalist-minister-delivers-anti-palestinian-diatribe-in-paris_6020081_4.html

 

The Israeli ultranationalist Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister in Netanyahu's government and open Jewish supremacist, participated on Sunday, March 19, in a gala evening in Paris, organized by "Israel is Forever," a French Jewish association close to the far right.

Although it had been announced 10 days beforehand, Smotrich's arrival on the banks of the Seine was a surprise. In the middle of the previous week, following protests from pro-Palestinian movements and human rights organizations, Israeli media reported that the 43-year-old leader of the Religious Zionist Party had given up on the trip.

Smotrich, who arrived from the United States, where he had no official meeting, only stayed a few hours in Paris and did not meet with government officials. The French Foreign Office had made it known last week that it had no intention of receiving the controversial Israeli minister.

During the ceremony, Smotrich spoke from behind a lectern decorated with a map that included not only the Jewish state and the occupied Palestinian territories but also the territory of present-day Jordan: the Greater Israel area for the proponents of an expansionist ideology.

He gave a speech in which he urged French Jews to settle in Israel, a common call from Israeli leaders visiting France. But Smotrich (who recently called for the Palestinian village of Huwara in the West Bank to be "wiped out" in retaliation for the murder of two Jewish settlers) also made remarks full of contempt for the Palestinians.

 

snip

 

 

Edited Wednesday at 10:11 by Vesper

[cosmicway 1,308]

42 minutes ago, Vesper said:

This is another false positing.

 

Israeli apartheid

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_apartheid

Israeli apartheid is a system of institutionalized segregation and discrimination in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories and to a lesser extent in Israel. This system is characterized by near-total physical separation between the Palestinian and the Israeli settler population of the West Bank, as well as the judicial separation that governs both communities, which discriminates against the Palestinians in a wide range of ways. Israel also discriminates against Palestinian refugees in the diaspora and against its own Palestinian citizens.

Since the 1948 Palestine war, Israel has been denying Palestinian refugees who were expelled or fled from what became its territory the right of return and right to their lost properties. And since the 1967 Six Day War, Israel has been occupying the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which is now the longest military occupation in modern history, and in contravention of international law has been constructing large settlements there that separate Palestinian communities from one another and prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. The settlements are mostly encircled by the Israeli West Bank barrier, which intentionally separates the Israeli and Palestinian populations, a policy called Hafrada. While the Jewish settlers are subject to Israeli civil law, the Palestinian population is subject to military law. Settlers also enjoy access to separate roads and exploit the region's natural resources at its Palestinian inhabitants' expense.

Comparisons between Israel–Palestine and South African apartheid were prevalent in the mid-1990s and early 2000s.^[2][3] Since the definition of apartheid as a crime in the 2002 Rome Statute, attention has shifted to the question of international law.^[4] In December 2019, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination^[5] announced it was reviewing the Palestinian complaint that Israel's policies in the West Bank amount to apartheid.^[6] Since then, several Israeli, Palestinian, and international human rights organizations have characterized the situation as apartheid, including Yesh Din, B'Tselem,^[7][8][9] Human Rights Watch,^[9][10] and Amnesty International. This view has been supported by United Nations investigators,^[11] the African National Congress (ANC),^[12] several human rights groups,^[13][14] and many prominent Israeli political and cultural figures.^[15][16][17] The International Court of Justice in its 2024 advisory opinion found that Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories constitutes systemic discrimination and is in breach of Article 3 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which prohibits racial segregation and apartheid. The opinion is silent as to whether the discrimination amounts to apartheid; individual judges were split on the question.^{[18][19][20][21][22][23]}

Elements of Israeli apartheid include the Law of Return, the 2003 Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law, the 2018 Nation-State Law, and many laws regarding security, freedom of movement, land and planning, citizenship, political representation in the Knesset (legislature), education, and culture. Israel says its policies are driven by security considerations^{[24][25][26][27]} and that the accusation is factually and morally inaccurate and intended to delegitimize Israel.^{[28][26][29][30]} It also often calls the charge antisemitic, which critics have called weaponization of antisemitism.^{[31][32][33][34][35]}

 

^snip

ISRAEL’S APARTHEID AGAINST PALESTINIANS

A LOOK INTO DECADES OF OPPRESSION AND DOMINATION

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid/

 

In May 2021, Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah, a neighbourhood in occupied East Jerusalem, began protesting against Israel’s plan to forcibly evict them from their homes to make way for Jewish settlers. Many of the families are refugees, who settled in Sheikh Jarrah after being forcibly displaced around the time of Israel’s establishment as a state in 1948.  Since Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank in 1967, Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah have been continuously targeted by Israeli authorities, who use discriminatory laws to systematically dispossess Palestinians of their land and homes for the benefit of Jewish Israelis.  

In response to the demonstrations in Sheikh Jarrah, thousands of Palestinians across Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) held their own protests in support of the families, and against their shared experience of fragmentation, dispossession, and segregation. These were met with excessive and deadly force by Israeli authorities with thousands injured, arrested and detained.  

The events of May 2021 were emblematic of the oppression which Palestinians have faced every day, for decades. The discrimination, the dispossession, the repression of dissent, the killings and injuries – all are part of a system which is designed to privilege Jewish Israelis at the expense of Palestinians.  

This is apartheid. 

Amnesty International’s new investigation shows that Israel imposes a system of oppression and domination against Palestinians across all areas under its control: in Israel and the OPT, and against Palestinian refugees, in order to benefit Jewish Israelis. This amounts to apartheid as prohibited in international law.

Laws, policies and practices which are intended to maintain a cruel system of control over Palestinians, have left them fragmented geographically and politically, frequently impoverished, and in a constant state of fear and insecurity.

Download the full report

 

WHAT IS APARTHEID?

Apartheid is a violation of public international law, a grave violation of internationally protected human rights, and a crime against humanity under international criminal law.

The term “apartheid” was originally used to refer to a political system in South Africa which explicitly enforced racial segregation, and the domination and oppression of one racial group by another. It has since been adopted by the international community to condemn and criminalize such systems and practices wherever they occur in the world.

The crime against humanity of apartheid under the Apartheid Convention, the Rome Statute and customary international law is committed when any inhuman or inhumane act (essentially a serious human rights violation) is perpetrated in the context of an institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over another, with the intention to maintain that system.

Apartheid can best be understood as a system of prolonged and cruel discriminatory treatment by one racial group of members of another with the intention to control the second racial group.

take our course

 

Amnesty International has created a free 90-minute course called “Deconstructing Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians”. To learn more about the crime of apartheid in international law, what apartheid looks like in Israel/OPT, and how it affects Palestinians’ lives, sign up to our course on Amnesty International’s human rights education academy.

 

snip

 

Palestinians wait to cross the Qalandia checkpoint between Ramallah and East Jerusalem, both in the occupied West Bank, as they head to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in East Jerusalem for the first Friday prayers of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan on 2 June 2017 © Abbas Momani / AFP via Getty Images

 

 

This is a wikipediia article writen by pro-Palestinians.
The term apartheid is reserved for people who are subjected to race discrimination.
It does not apply to hostile subpopulations.
It does not apply to hostile subpopulations even if the dominant population is the wrongdoer, because this is not what the word means.

I 'm willing to take Trump to court for the cats and dogs because what he said is imo common libel.
But the definition of apartheid is what it is, not what you like.

Edited Wednesday at 10:26 by cosmicway

[Vesper 28,593]

How to fight inflation without subsidizing bankers at taxpayer’s expense

Paul De Grauwe and Yuemei Ji 23rd October 2024

Central banks are paying billions in interest to commercial banks through remunerated reserves, raising questions about fairness and the effectiveness of inflation-fighting policies.

https://www.socialeurope.eu/how-to-fight-inflation-without-subsidizing-bankers-at-taxpayers-expense

The major central banks pay interest on commercial banks’ reserve holdings. To combat inflation, these central banks began to raise interest rates in late 2021. Consider the example of the Eurosystem: bank reserves held by credit institutions at the national central banks and the ECB exceeded €3.6 trillion in September 2023. Since April 2024, this figure has declined significantly, but in August 2024, it remained at a substantial level of €3.15 trillion (see below). In September 2023, the remuneration rate on these reserves held by commercial banks was raised to 4% and subsequently reduced to 3.75% in June 2024. This means that the Eurosystem has paid out at least €126 billion in interest to credit institutions from September 2023 to August 2024. Other central banks, particularly the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England, follow the same practice of increasing the interest rate by raising the remuneration rate on bank reserves.

To give you an idea of the size of these transfers in the Eurozone, consider the following: with a transfer of €126 billion by the Eurosystem to Eurozone banks between September 2023 and August 2024, we are approaching the yearly total spending of the EU, which amounts to €168 billion. This situation is even more remarkable when considering that the transfers by a European institution to banks are decided without any political discussion and are granted without attaching any conditions. This contrasts with EU spending, which results from an elaborate political decision-making process and is usually accompanied by stringent conditions.

 

Today, many economists and central bankers take it for granted that bank reserves are remunerated. Yet, this remuneration is a recent phenomenon. Before the start of the Eurozone in 1999, most European central banks did not remunerate banks’ reserve balances. During the 1970s and 1980s, for example, the Bundesbank used very high unremunerated minimum reserve requirements to siphon off large inflows of money into the country.

The ECB started the practice of remunerating bank reserves in 1999. The Federal Reserve only introduced the remuneration of banks’ reserve balances in 2008. Thus, before 2000, the general practice was not to remunerate banks’ reserve balances. This made good sense: commercial banks do not remunerate demand deposits held by their customers. These demand deposits have the same function as bank reserves at the central bank: they provide liquidity for the non-bank sector. These are not remunerated. It is difficult to justify why bankers should be paid when they hold liquidity while everybody else must accept not being remunerated. Furthermore, the substantial remuneration of bank reserves creates several problems.

First, when the central bank makes interest payments to commercial banks, it transfers part of its profits to the banking sector. Central banks make a profit (seigniorage) because they have obtained a monopoly from the state to create money. The practice of paying interest to commercial banks amounts to transferring this monopoly profit to private institutions. This monopoly profit should be returned to the government that granted the monopoly rights. It should not be appropriated by the private sector, which has done nothing to earn this profit. In fact, it is worse. The transfers are now so high that not only are all the profits of central banks transferred to banks, but central banks also incur significant losses that will have to be borne by taxpayers. The current situation of paying interest on banks’ reserve balances amounts to a subsidy to banks, paid out by the central banks at the expense of taxpayers.

Second, the problematic nature of remunerating bank reserves also emerges from the following. Banks are “borrowing short and lending long.” In other words, banks hold long assets (with fixed interest rates) and short liabilities. As a result, an increase in interest rates typically leads to losses and reduces banks’ profits because the interest cost of their liabilities rises quickly while the interest revenues take longer to increase. Banks are expected to hedge this interest rate risk. However, this is costly, so they are often reluctant to purchase such insurance. By remunerating bank reserves, the central banks provided free interest hedging. Banks received immediate compensation from the central banks when interest rates rose.

Paradoxically, when central banks were combating inflation by raising interest rates, banks avoided the burdensome loss profile as they earned substantial profits during the period of interest rate increases in 2022-23. This was possible because central banks took over this burden from the commercial banks. It is difficult to understand the economic rationale of a system where public authorities provide free insurance for the banks’ interest rate risks at taxpayers’ expense. It is also worth noting that when central banks raised interest rates in the 1970s and 1980s to tackle inflation, they did not incur losses. Instead, they increased their profits. One of the main reasons for this was that they did not remunerate bank reserves.

One might argue that while the large transfers to banks were unfair, these transfers were inevitable in effectively combating inflation. In fact, the opposite is true. The current system of remunerated bank reserves enhances banks’ profits and, in doing so, strengthens their equity position when the central bank raises interest rates to fight inflation. As a result, this system incentivises banks to increase the supply of bank loans. Thus, the current system has reduced the effectiveness of the transmission of monetary policies, which, during 2021-24, focused on reducing inflation.

The remuneration of bank reserves is not inevitable. There is an alternative. We propose implementing a tiered system. This consists of defining a tier1 of non-remunerated reserves and a tier2 that is remunerated. As an example, suppose a bank holds 100 units of bank reserves. The central bank could define tier1 to consist of 50 units and tier2 to consist of 50 units. The tier2 part can also be termed excess reserves and is remunerated at the same deposit rate that the ECB has applied.

Such a tiered system allows for a significant reduction in the transfer of central banks’ profits to private agents, enabling central banks to maintain their current operating procedures. Thus, when the central bank wants to raise the interest rate to combat inflation, it increases the deposit rate applied to tier2 reserves. This rise in the deposit rate has the same effect on the market interest rate as the current system, but results in fewer transfers to banks making the system fairer whilst enhancing the effectiveness of monetary policies.