floppade [he/him]

If you’re not going to use the term in a colloquial context while you are in a colloquial setting, then you need to cite what source you are referencing for your definition. Given that you are talking about laws, then you need to recognize that every place defines things differently according to the law. So which law, where?

Being unnecessarily argumentative and snobby while at the same time not meeting your own standards is ridiculous.

You’re being pedantic in the cases you want while complaining to others when they are differently pedantic. I’m not stooping to pretending to misunderstand due to pedantry.

If you are using the term theft colloquially, which most of us are as this is not a court, legal journal, economic journal, etc. Given that colloquial means the way people generally speak, as we are now, theft has a meaning: taking something that’s not yours through force or trickery. That would mean fraud is a type of theft in this case and not a different thing altogether.

So be a pedant I guess but it’s boring and lazy-brained.

I don’t think you understand how laws work. Many times, they are required to define terms in order to enforce the law.

That is an assumption made that the artist still has the original thing that was not paid for. I understand what you’re being pedantic about. I just don’t think you’re right.

I don’t know if any freelancer who has not been paid for their work will agree with you

It’s not gymnastics. It’s a pretty easy step. Corporations fuck you over. You fucked them over. No mental gymnast skills required for that

Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s an option for me to leave at all. But I can set up a “station” for people passing through on their way out.

Thank you for contributing something helpful and useful to this conversation.

Please stop spreading misinformation. You can read the Hamas charter online and it doesn’t actually say that their goal is to kill all of us. Furthermore, the ICJ ruled in — I believe — 2004 for that Israel does not have the right to defend itself against Palestinians as an occupying power.

Many people will have their arguments to justify enabling and funding genocide. Just own that you want to help kill innocent people while ignoring the truth that you’re doing that.

I’m not sure it’s that different. In place of a real personality, you get the country’s persona. With US foreign policy for example it matters little who leads because they are adhering to the persona. While the majority of Americans don’t want war, the US persona does. That results in the same thing (a population ruled by one idea set) just a hologram of person rather than an actual one.

I literally am a Jew. I support people defending themselves — even if their assailants are Jewish. You seem to think that Jews are allowed to commit genocide because they’re Jews. At this point, Israel has bombed 5 UN schools that had children sheltering inside. Being a Zionist and being Jewish are not the same thing, and not being able to understand the difference between them, is antisemitism. Killing people en masse has nothing to do with Judaism, and if you think they must be related, that speaks more about you than it does about my people.

Eh this argues that we even have a democracy that is functional enough to undermine in the first place, and I reject that premise.

I only gave 2 points and you didn’t respond to either. I won’t give you the benefit of the doubt this time:

1. You’re spreading a lie, and I’m betting it’s intentional at this point. The baby killing thing was debunked and even the President had to apologize for spreading that low. The IDF even didn’t confirm it.

2. If you were cornered in the world’s largest concentration camp and things only get worse every day, what would you do?

The mental gymnastics being done to justify genocide. They have a MILLION CIVILIANS in a cage and are bombing the shit out of them. There are NO circumstances where that is an ethical or justifiable action. It’s not hard. You just don’t want to admit you’re Darth Vader and not Luke Skywalker in this.

I am going to respond as though you’re being sincere, but it’s hard to tell these days.

Some of the things you’re referencing were debunked. Be careful about what you accept as fact, especially when the people spreading that “fact” have a history of making up similar things to justify war. The US made up similar things about Cubans, Afghanis, Iraqis, and so on to make it easier to justify a population for war or to desensitize the population to illegal actions like water boarding.

I want to be clear that my intention and internal tone as I write this is not judgement at all. I’m just trying to zoom out a bit and ask, “Why, when they’ve done it before, would they not do it now?”

Remember that Israel and Palestine are not the only “powers” who care about this issue or its outcome. And as such, Israel and Palestine are not going to be the only ones taking action – just the ones people pay attention to while other state actors are obfuscated by the smokescreen. There is A LOT of propaganda on this issue in every direction. Every state is looking at the populations of its enemies and figuring out how it can exploit this event for its own security interests.

**With all that said, imagine being Palestinian: **

• You’ve watched representatives advocate in front of the UN for decades. Your people still don’t have the right to vote in it, but Israel does. So the state killing your people has to right to vote to ignore your pleas on the international level. The bully state has teamed up with all many other bully states. When I say bully, I mean they use diplomacy to back smaller countries into corners and act against their own interests. Voting against them may mean your people starve for the next 5 years due to IMF loans, aide programs, etc.

• You conclude on the international level there is no salvation coming. No one with power is helping you and actively refuses to acknowledge your people are dying, let alone who’s killing them.

• Your grandfather died in the Nakbah (sp?), when the west forcibly eradicated 750,000 Palestinians from their homes to make room for Europeans – Jewish or otherwise. Israel made it illegal to talk about what happened to your family. It’s illegal to deny the Holocaust in many places, but it’s illegal to recognize the Nakbah in Israel. Despite it being undeniable reality.

• Then, the state that has been systematically killing your people – the state whose own internal documents suggest they want it to be drawn out death to make it more socially acceptable and less obviously murderous – is now run by someone who enthusiastically wants to swiftly kill your people off and is trying to reach levels of power that make that possible.

• You see the Israeli people incapable of stopping him. The ones who care about the idea of your right to life that is. The other Israelis you can see sitting on hillsides watching illegal air strikes and cheering it on like Americans and fireworks. This was something people regularly engaged in before the Hamas attack.

• This leader ramps up operations where the IDF forcibly evicts your neighbors and family members from their homes. The checkpoints increase, walking around your own town is logistically more similar to prisoner in a US prison at this point. When the IDF says your commute to work stops, it stops. It stops multiple times a day every day. You watch people be beaten during the stops. If they fight back, they’re murdered in front of you.

• The IDF soldiers are taking more people than they used to suddenly with their new leader. They’re taking more children and civilians. They’re intentionally bombing hospitals. You watch as leaders cry out to the international community, but for 50 years the international community has said your people are liars and deserve to die. Maybe not with its words, they haven’t said that per se, but with the actions and lack of action.

• You live in the most dangerous part of the occupied territories (afaik), Gaza. There is no way to escape. Israel has bombed all routes out before Hamas attacked. Israel’s violence continues to escalate as the IDF protects settlers who engage in vigilante, racist violence, stealing your friends’ homes.

Every second of every day is a question of when will the Israelis hurt me next?

Again, there is NO way out. Israel is taking more space and engaging in more and more violence as they do so.

So why would they? Because Israel intentionally, as part of their ethnic cleansing strategy, gave them no way out and continued to harass them.

There is no mammal on Earth that won’t get violent at that point (except maybe manatees, lol).

Israel has a lot of Palestinians prisoners who were civilians and many are children. In order to get prisoners, you need prisoners to exchange. Britney Griner wasn’t brought back from Russia using money or resources but another prisoner. Palestinians have no int’l negotiating power.

So we live in a world that has made rules that criminalize Palestinians right to defend themselves. Some take desperate action, after 50+ years of violence and apartheid, and you’re judging the reaction and not the the thing being reacted to?

I don’t understand logic like this. It leads to awful communities where violent people are propped up at the expense of their victims. No one responds well to apartheid and illegal annexation.

We know these programs work, but the American public won’t admit it has a sadist streak. We delight in the suffering of those we have decided deserve suffering. It’s part of the culture to engage in shaming and punishing one another to the point where it’s ritual. We repeat verbatim paradigmatic lines of justification. We actively reject opportunities that function better than (in)formal punishment in a wide variety of areas: parenting, teaching, criminal justice, jobs, etc. At some point, if we don’t own and improve upon that programming, I don’t see what else would change our trajectory, save for tragedy.

This looks super cool; thanks for sharing.