I’m all for the establishment of a free Palestinian state, but Hamas has to go.

Preferably through police action rather than the genocide that is a military intervention by Israel.

Anyway, the Israeli government is in the wrong on all the counts you raised, but Hamas still needs to go. They’ve been fully co-opted by all sorts of outside groups, and their rule in Gaza before October 7th was one of fear and oppression. They are no one’s saviors, they’re just the meanest bastards in the prison, lashing out at the guards while abusing the other prisoners.

The actual path to peace is a multinational police and peacekeeping force to come in and take over from the IDF, keeping the IDF out of it completely, and then opening up Gaza and the West Bank to the rest of the world. Possibly even ejecting the settlers from the West Bank and giving the land back.

But a large part of this would be arresting Hamas leadership.

And don’t think I’d let the IDF and Israeli government off scot-free for their part in all this. I’m sure there’s plenty of room in the local prisons for all the bastards in this mess.

The end goal might be a single, secular state, where all people are guaranteed full rights and protections by the government.

Closer to Gitmo, in that a percentage of the prisoners are actually a threat to “peace” and have committed various crimes. Also like Gitmo a percentage are only in there because their neighbor wanted to steal their land.

It’s a two pronged attack.

It has always been a two pronged attack.

The rich assholes who want to fuck everyone over can’t just come out and say it, they need a Face to rile up the crowds, but that Face is a problem. The Face can turn on the rich fucks. Well, to an extent. They’re a useful charismatic fool, and possibly a danger to the rich, but mostly a danger to everyone else.

Anyway, the solution is to stand next to the fool king, and pass him “advice”. Like a list of judges to appoint. “Don’t think about it, we vetted these guys, and they love you”.

Then there’s the congressmen. “Don’t have time to write a bill? Well, we saved you the trouble. It even does some of the shit you’ve been ranting about, but mostly it makes us richer”.

And that’s how it goes. People like Leonard Leo, Peter Thiel, Joel Kaplan. They’re the brains.

They also funnel a shit-load of money into pushing their twisted ideologies.

All good points except the Ranked Choice.

It’s somewhat of a poison pill.

On the surface, Ranked Choice looks like it would be a good idea, but when you break it down, it has some fundamental problems that are just as bad for democracy as First Past the Post.

This video is a great watch on the subject, it goes through all the problems in great detail, but the TLRW is thus, Ranked Choice is a flawed system, fatally so.

If you want to steal an election but make it look legit, Ranked Choice is your number one voting system. If you want viable third parties, Ranked Choice is not the voting system for you. It actually punishes viable third parties harder than FPtP.

A far better system in every way is STAR.

Done for, but also done to.

It’s that “Done to” that requires the largest showing of human decency now. After all, one of the first ways to make up for the wrongs of the past is to stop committing more wrongs.

Sadly, we have two old men to choose from. One of which feels really bad about the wrongs he’s committed, but still hasn’t stopped. The other feels no remorse at all, ever, and will gleefully commit worse wrongs, all while quoting Hitler speeches.

Basic human decency is relevant to the electorate. Well, to just over half of the electorate. The rest of the electorate seems to think basic human decency is a weakness that should be scorned.

TPP was a horrible treaty. The entire process was basically Hollywood and a few other corporate entities writing out their dream laws that were too horrible to actually pass any legislative body. But once it was in a treaty, they could hound Congress to pass said laws to “meet international obligations”.

They are indeed. But Palestinians are brown, so they don’t count.

We know that brown people don’t count because of how Israel has treated Ethiopian Jews.

That’s the most common, but there are weird pasta types out there made with beans or cauliflower or such…

The majority of those are vegan by design, but I’ve seen a few that were just gluten-free, and still used egg as a binder.

Usually sold as egg noodles, yes.

Most Italian died pasta is going to be made with just flour and water, but again, there are exceptions.

There are vegan sauces that are quite nice, sure, they’re just not Worcestershire sauce.

Hell, I’ll go further and say that if it’s not made by Lea and Perrins, it’s not Worcestershire sauce.

Dry pasta is. Any other noodle will not be. Eggs are used in a lot of places.

All Worcestershire sauce. It’s fermented anchovy sauce with some spices.

Anything that doesn’t have the anchovy, isn’t Worcestershire sauce.

They literally go through the class schedule in each book. General studies are not in it.

There was Arithmancy, the Harry Potter wiki says that it was using numbers to predict the future. It was an elective and Harry didn’t take it.

The only other class that would have had math would be Astronomy, which was a required class for all students. The students are required to make star charts and such… Seems like rote memorization was the only thing taught. The wink says that the end of year 5 tests was filling in a blank star chart from memory.

They might get some English pointers in the dozens of essays they wrote, but since essays are graded on the length of the scroll… it becomes questionable.

The Russian skating federation does take doping seriously, they put a lot of effort into doing it and trying to hide it.

They’ve even made participation in doping schemes mandatory for all Russian athletes.

To be fair, they’ve also earned that hatred. Several times over.

There were Zionists in Israel who were actually supportive of the Nazis, both because they hated the British that much, and because they thought that if the Nazis forced the Jews out of Europe, those Jews would move to Mandatory Palestine to take up arms and exterminate the Arabs.

The Stern Gang, otherwise known as the Lehi terrorist organization (and later integrated directly into the IDF as it formed) actually used Nazi race “science” to claim that Jews were a superior race and should exterminate the Arabs who lived in the area. The Stern Gang actually tried to field troops in support of the Nazis in Europe. They tried repeatedly until 1942. The Nazis said no.

Fun fact; Netanyahu’s political party formed in the 1980s, as a fusion of two other right-wing parties. The first part leader and Netanyahu’s mentor was a former member of Lehi, and as prime minister gave all surviving terrorists medals “for their service in creating the State of Israel”.

The other two paramilitary organizations that folded into the IDF were also full of terrorists.

Did you ever wonder why the population of Gaza is majority children?

Do note that the people of Gaza have been under a complete border lockdown for the last 17 years. Nothing enters or exists without the IDF okay. Including money for Hamas.

Even before the current genocide, 40% of Gazan households experienced extreme food insecurity.

Look at the original comment in this particular thread, It calls 20k deaths rookie numbers compared to the British atrocities.

Note how it’s talking about Britton, and by extension Canada’s past, and making the observation that Canada’s current reluctance to face the reality of a (friendly) country’s ongoing genocide is because Canada would have to face up to their own history of genocide, both when they were part of the Empire, and for decades afterward.