Hyperreality

I use a VPN. Good luck whoever decides to DDoS the CIA, FBI and/or NSA.

FBI/NSA/CIA man: don't pay attention to me, as you can see all I do is torrent shit movies and watch porn.

Related:

The Zaka volunteer group began collecting bodies in the devastated communities of southern Israel immediately after the Hamas attack, while the IDF sidelined soldiers trained to retrieve remains. An investigation reveals cases of negligence, misinformation and a fundraising campaign that used the dead as props ... According to the non-Zaka observer, the body was part of a staged setting – an exhibit designed to attract donors, just when the race against time to gather and remove the bodies of victims of the massacre was most urgent. ... As part of the effort to get media exposure, Zaka spread accounts of atrocities that never happened, released sensitive and graphic photos, and acted unprofessionally on the ground. ... It appears that all the rules have been broken since October 7. Videos and graphic photos from the horrific sites filled Zaka Jerusalem's social media accounts: rows of bodies in bags, bloodstains, and much more. These posts had a common denominator: pleas for fundraising. The timing was critical. Before October 7, the organization faced insolvency. In the time since, says a source at Zaka, they have raised over 50 million shekels ($13.7 million). ... This horrific incident, which the Zaka volunteer alleged occurred in Be'eri, simply didn't happen, and was one of several stories that have been circulated without any basis. There is no evidence for this incident, and no one in the kibbutz has heard of this woman. A Zaka senior official admitted in a conversation with Haaretz that the organization knows the incident didn't occur. ...

Hareetz - Archive.is link

Instances and videos which were reported on uncritically in at least some western media.

No problem.

On most Israelis being of Middle-Eastern or North African descent:

Mizrahi Jews constitute one of the largest Jewish ethnic divisions among Israeli Jews. Mizrahi Jews are descended from Jews in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia and parts of the Caucasus, who had lived for many generations under Muslim rule during the Middle Ages. The vast majority of them left the Muslim-majority countries during the Arab–Israeli conflict, in what is known as the Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries. ... As of 2005, 61% of Israeli Jews were of full or partial Mizrahi ancestry

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

Bit of a tangent, but this is partly why Israel's security services are/were so feared in the middle-east. They simply employed 'Arab'/Mizrahi Jews, who were indistinguishable from other Arabs and often knew the culture.

On Mizrahi Jews being more likely to support (far-) right parties:

Why the right-wing Mizrahi vote is misunderstood in Israel ... Israeli Jews from the Middle East and North Africa vote en masse for Likud and its right-wing allies, despite being told it's against their interests.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-why-right-wing-mizrahi-vote-misunderstood

‘In Some Respects, Mizrahi Identity in Israel Is Dominant ... Most of the cabinet ministers are Mizrahim, most of the mayors are Mizrahim, ...

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-05-19/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/in-some-respects-mizrahi-identity-in-israel-is-dominant-and-ashkenazim-face-inequality/00000188-2f95-d914-af8c-afb5a0fb0000

If you want you can look up (recent) Israeli cabinet ministers on wikipedia, you'll often find they have Middle-Eastern or North African ancestry. Often these are some of the most right-wing politicians. For example:

May Golan ... is an Israeli politician and activist ... In 2023, a group of former Israeli ambassadors said they were “shocked” by the appointment of Golan as Israel's new women's advancement minister, saying that “Golan’s appointment is outrageous as she is a racist and divisive figure .... She is the child of a single Orthodox Jewish mother ... from Iraq ... Golan was known for a number of inflammatory statements she made about African asylum seekers in Israel, referring to them as rapists and infiltrators who would spread HIV among the Israeli population. Golan says “If I am racist for wanting to defend my country and for wanting to protect my basic rights and security, then I’m a proud racist”

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

Itamar Ben-Gvir ... is an Israeli lawyer and far-right extremist... who has served as the Minister of National Security since 2022 ... His father was born in Jerusalem to Iraqi Jewish immigrants. He worked at a gasoline company and dabbled in writing. His mother was a Kurdish Jewish immigrant ... has faced charges of hate speech against Arabs and was known to have a portrait in his living room of Israeli-American mass murderer and Jewish extremist Baruch Goldstein, who massacred 29 Palestinian Muslim worshipers and wounded 125 others in Hebron ... Ben-Gvir took part in the clashes between Israeli Jewish settlers and the local Palestinian residents, brandishing a gun, telling the police to shoot at Palestinians throwing stones at the scene, and yelling at them that "We're the landlords here, remember that, I am your landlord." This was a message that was later repeated by him in a tweet on the morning after the 2022 election in his victory tweet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itamar_Ben-Gvir

30,000/2.4 million (population of Gaza) = 1.25%

6 million Jews / 9.5 million pre-war European Jewish population = 63%

In Gaza at least 30000 people have been killed, and that at least is doing a lot of heavy lifting, in less than five months.

Operation Rheinhard:

Using an unusual dataset originating from railway transportation records, this study identifies an extreme phase of hyperintense killing when >1.47 million Jews—more than 25% of the Jews killed in all 6 years of World War II—were murdered by the Nazis in an intense,100-day (~3-month) surge.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aau7292

1.25/9.5 = 13.6% of the Jewish population in Europe in 100 days.

I get people are angry and why people make the comparison, but it's quite easy to debunk that it was on a similar scale to what the Nazis did. The numbers don't lie.

Nazi/Holocaust comparisons undermine any criticism you make of Israel, because what they did is so clearly on a different scale. If you want to win the argument, it's better to avoid these hyperbolic comparisons.

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

Most Israelis are now 'brown' people of Arab or North African descent. They're also the group that is most likely to support (far-) right parties.

17 million is a larger number than 30,000.

That doesn't make what the Israelis are doing excusable or any less of a crime. It does mean what they're doing isn't on the same scale as the Nazis.

No honour among thieves.

Even if the 'won' the war tomorrow, they still couldn't shift back to a peacetime footing. They'll have an insurgency to deal with. That should have been the hard bit, not the invasion.

Strategic ambiguity. It's very unlikely that NATO will send combat troops to Ukraine. But suggesting that it's a possibility, means that Russia has to prepare for that possibility, which has a cost for the Russians. They can't focus too much on only defeating the Ukrainians, they have to hold something back just in case NATO decides to get involved.

This whole thing is incredibly stupid.

Even if by some miracle Russia 'won' in Ukraine, it'd still be a pyrrhic victory. As the Americans learnt in Iraq and Afghanistan, the occupation is what's difficult, the actual war should have been a breeze. Even the first bit wasn't a breeze for the Russians, Russia won't be able to afford holding on to Ukraine. It will cost them too much money and too many troops. The inevitable insurgency will grind them down.

And thanks to the war, NATO has expanded and is drastically increasing spending. Russia has drastically increased military spending to win the war in Ukraine, but they can't keep up with NATO. It'll be like the Soviet Union all over again, they'll end up spending far more than their economic base allows.

If Trump loses the election, I'm still hedging my bets, it's going to be glorious seeing all the rats flee or turn on each other. Clearly we're already seeing some realise the ship may be sinking.

Yep. Very common.

A lot of people use their pc like a console or media server. Ie. use it to watch/play stuff from their bed or couch.