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In all seriousness, though, a crown corp grocery makes a certain kind of sense if the private chains are driven by profit to the detriment of a large portion of the public.

But newspapers do that all the time.

Happy to shop and donate to my local SPCA/Sally Ann

I’m not sure I understand. Are you suggesting the globe shouldn’t be reporting on this?

I wish I could say I was surprised by your nihilistic attitude, at your presumed age, but it’s sadly all too common. As I’ve gotten older and watched the world I have become more convinced of the importance of international order, not less.

To be perfectly clear, and as I’ve repeatedly explained, attitudes like the one you’re demonstrating are the essential reason why things are going downhill. To you and everyone like you: Stop acting like an angry 17 year old who just read Ayn Rand. Grow up.

I do think that religion holds us back – but I’m trying to understand your use of the sarcasm tag. Is the god you worship the military industrial complex and nationalistic exceptionalism? Do you worship The Bomb? Your unquestioning faith in your ‘reality’ seems like a kind of religious fervor.

I am surprised that you’ve continued the conversation for so long without providing anything of substance. Your faith must be unshakeable.

You seem to have an honest belief in international law and humanity.

You say Islam is a death cult, but have you heard yourself?

I am also old enough to remember Rwanda. It reflected a failure of intervention, not the irrelevance of international law. Do you remember the ICTR? Do you remember Jean Kambanda, Colonel Theoneste Bagosora, Georges Rutaganda, Pauline Nyiramasuhuko and the ~60 others indicted for war crimes, many of whom are serving life sentences or have died in prison? You seem to misunderstand how international law – or any law – works. Laws don’t stop criminals from doing crimes, it punishes them for doing crimes.

How about the Special Court for Sierra Leone, which marked the first time a head of state was held accountable by an international court for war crimes? Where’s Charles Taylor now? Rotting in a cell in the UK, that’s where.

Slobodan Milosevic croaked in a cell before his trial was over, but that’s another example of international law holding a leader accountable.

Bibi and his cadre of warmongers will have their turn, but that’s cold comfort to those whose world has ended because their extremist government poked a psychopathic, rage-fueled bear. And before you tell me “they elected them,” no they didn’t. At least half of the people in gaza are too young to vote. Israel is literally dropping bombs on children.

claims about Israel being on colonized land is bullshit rhetoric that doesn’t deserve respect.

Oh, is THAT why you haven’t provided any rebuttals?

You have an opinion and you are welcome to it, but I have backed up my opinion with examples which you have not disputed in any meaningful way.

At the end of the day my positions are this. Israel has a right to exist. Palestine never existed. Arabs lost every war ever fought. Losers don’t get to dictate terms.

Your position is brutal and reductive. The ‘might makes right’ attitude is regressive because it perpetuates ongoing conflict and instability, it promotes the idea that conflicts are resolved through dominance rather than negotiation, it frequently leads to the suppression of human rights and freedoms, as the ruling power prioritizes maintaining control over respecting individual rights. In short, it neglects the principles of justice, equality, and sustainable peace, leading to long-term negative consequences both domestically and internationally.

You say religion is a cancer. How ironic that positions like yours are a big reason why it can be a cancer.

Your views on Arab participation in peace processes are similarly reductive. Israel has similarly rejected Palestinian proposals, for example the Camp David Summit, the Taba Talks and the Arab Peace Initiative.

Lastly, your characterization of Islam reeks of bigotry. Extremism does not define an entire religion, and Islam is practiced by about a quarter of the world’s population – if a significant portion wanted to “wipe out the non-believers,” the world would be a very different place than it is. Such generalizations hinder constructive dialogue and perpetuate hate.

Speaking from my own perspective as someone lucky enough to grow up in a large, multi-cultural city, your statements about Islam hold exactly no water. I’m an atheist. Is ‘killing the non-believers’ done by inviting them to Iftar dinner? By inviting a Rabbi to speak at Iftar dinner about the sacredness of peace and how fortunate we are to live in a peaceful society? It’s clear to me that you have no idea about Muslims. I, on the other hand, have a few Muslim friends and colleagues. I even drink beer and smoke shisha with one, even though it’s haram. Like every other religion, practitioners exist on a continuum. Like every other religion there are bad people who use it to justify bad actions. Religion is just one of many pretexts bad people use to justify atrocious behaviour. ‘National security’ is another big one.

What else have you got?

#gaza #gazagenocide #palestine #freepalestine🇵🇸

I’m only too happy to oblige you!

Most respected the warning and moved to safer areas hence the lower civilian death toll. Would you rather they stay and die? Displacement isn’t always a bad thing.

“Lower civilian death toll” whatever the hell that means…

The notion that displacement is somehow a lesser evil compared to immediate civilian casualties is a gross oversimplification. Displacement not only uproots families but results in chronic poverty, lack of access to education, and enduring psychological trauma. It is an aspect of genocide according to the UN Convention that Israel ratified.

You mean Hamas bases? As many as they need to.

Casually labeling hospitals as ‘Hamas bases’ without incontrovertible proof undermines the principles of accountability and due process. Hospitals are protected under international law, and their destruction has dire consequences for civilian access to healthcare, particularly in conflict zones. This is another aspect of genocide. Israel has a long history of flouting international law.

The goal is to eliminate Hamas. Proportinality isn’t a thing here. This will take months and Israel will sweep up and down the entire Gaza strip as needed.

International humanitarian law emphasizes that military actions must be proportional to the military advantage gained, to prevent excessive civilian harm. Disregarding proportionality has resulted in widespread civilian casualties and will escalate the conflict, leading to cycles of retaliation and further instability.

I wouldn’t be so sure. Israel doesn’t acknowledge their nukes and plays by it’s own rules. A first strike option is on the table.

But I thought the ‘beauty’ of Israel having nuclear weapons is that they won’t need to use them? Now you suggest a first strike option. So they’ll preemptively crap in their own bed?

And we already know Israel ‘plays by their own rules.’ That’s the fucking problem. That’s why they’re in this situation.

Oh come the fuck on. Colony my ass, the Jews have been there for thousands of years.

As have Palestinians. Israel refers to these colonies as “settlements” but they are illegal settlements, under international law. How illegal? Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states, “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” The international community generally considers the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip as occupied territories, and therefore, the Israeli settlements are seen as a violation of this clause.

The United Nations Security Council passed several resolutions affirming that Israel’s settlement activities in the occupied territories are illegal. For example, Resolution 242 calls for the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the Six-Day War of 1967, and Resolution 2334 states that Israel’s settlement activity constitutes a “flagrant violation” of international law and has “no legal validity.”

In 2004, the ICJ issued an advisory opinion stating that the construction of the West Bank barrier by Israel, and by extension the settlements, violated international law.

The ‘settlements’ are an obstacle to the peace process because they involve the appropriation of land and resources that could be part of a future Palestinian state. Their expansion is seen as prejudicing the outcome of negotiations on the final status of the territories. Hence, they are seen as part of a process to colonize the area. Hence ‘colonies.’

Now, I could be wrong but you strike me as the sort who doesn’t put much weight behind international law.

Holding onto regressive attitudes not only hinders conflict resolution but also fails to recognize the progress humanity has made in understanding and upholding human rights.

If the Objibwa tribe mounted an attack on my people now they’d be eradicated and no one would balk. The moment passed for atacks, we are here now and not going anywhere.

It’s time Palestine accept that as well because if they can’t they’ll be living in refugee camps permanently.

The genocidal actions against Native Americans centuries ago are widely recognized as a dark and shameful chapter in your country’s history. Not a good benchmark for contemporary conflict resolution. It’s regressive and implies a tolerance for such atrocities. Those moral and ethical standards belong in the 1700s. Do you also believe women should be denied the vote and that African Americans should still be enslaved?

#gaza #gazagenocide #palestine #freepalestine

Is the genocide in the room with you right now?

What does that even mean?

As you are surely aware, I didn’t come up with those hashtags, they’re prevalent online. I’m sure you’re also aware that people can search platforms by hashtag and find posts like mine. They’ll find my statistics and arguments and your non-responses.

#gaza #gazagenocide #palestine #freepalestine

Here’s a more concise response for you

they’ve conducted more than 22,000 strikes and only managed to kill 20k

How many have they displaced? How many hospitals have they destroyed? Their 22,000 strikes directly killed 20k but the indirect deaths that result from those strikes count as well. Also, the fact that they’ve done 22,000 strikes sure doesn’t sound like a proportionate response.

That’s the beauty, no one will be nuked. Israel just having them is enough to make sure no nation(s) move on them.

Having nukes that your enemies know you can’t use isn’t much of a deterrent.

the good thing is no matter what you do it won’t stop Israel from doing what it needs to do.

If Hamas’s goal is the destruction of Israel, this has been their most successful campaign by far. They’ve shown the world exactly how much Israel cares about Palestinians. The BDS movement will just get stronger and stronger the longer this goes on, to say nothing of the ‘less civil’ anti-Israel sentiment.

Being subject to the occasional terrorist/freedom fighter attack is simply the cost of having colonies. If they don’t want to accept that cost, the options are to get rid of the colonies or wipe out the indigenous inhabitants.

We’re up to 1.5% of the population, now. And I neglected to mention all the people who have been displaced and/or don’t have access to medical care. Last count I saw was 800,000 people. That’s genocide as well, according to the UN convention that Israel ratified.

#gazagenocide

Intent does matter but actions and impact matter a lot more. Reality matters more than speculative alternate realities. Real lives matter more than hypothetical lives.

20,000 is 1% of 2 million. Israel has knocked off an entire percentage point of the population in a couple of months, mostly civilian. Sure, they could wipe out everybody in Gaza, but then even the US and Germany wouldn’t be able to support them. Israel needs to maintain at least some pretext of legitimacy, as weak as it is, so their ‘partners’ can say ‘Israel has the right to defend itself’ and try their hardest to ignore questions of proportionality and international law.

If the IDF is trying not to kill civilians they are doing a criminally poor job. Reports indicate that IDF soldiers are actively targeting non-combatants. To dismiss these reports is to be complicit in these atrocities. Skepticism is healthy, but ignorance is not.

As for them not needing to use the nukes, I wouldn’t be so sure. Their enemies have already demonstrated they are perfectly willing to ‘martyr’ themselves and civilians. If it’s a bluff, it’ll get called. If it’s not a bluff, Israel craps in their own bed, irradiating their (and many other’s) holy land – which is why the bluff would likely be called.

Other significant context, when thinking about the legitimacy of the operation:

1. IDF knew of the planned attack a year beforehand and didn’t take it seriously, despite additional warnings https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-attack-intelligence.html

2. Netenyahu supported Hamas for years https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/

#gazagenocide #gaza

We would stop short of ending capitalism because it is extremely entrenched and it is easier to fix it than replace it. Also because making a massive change like ‘ending capitalism’ (however that looks) opens society up to exploitation by external parties applying a kind of “shock doctrine” to ensure that whatever replaces it is to their benefit.

The primary merit of capitalism is that it theoretically does not require central planning but self-organizes into a functional system.

However, fundamentalists like Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan believe (or at least espoused the idea) that, without central planning, these systems self-organize into some kind of optimal state. That’s the Ayn Randian wet dream, but we can clearly see that it is far from the truth, at least from the standpoint of societal and environmental well-being. (E. Ron Muskard and Jeff Bozo might disagree.)

One of the things communism and laissez-faire capitalism have in common is that neither properly account for human greed.

Adam Smith believed that people know what they need better than any central planner, and I agree with that. The role of the central planner is to ensure that excessive greed, short sighted and anticompetitive behaviour does not hinder the self-organizing aspects of capitalism. However the various central planners (read: governments) in any globalist, neoliberal country, pay lip service to this role, at best. Because of that reform will be difficult to achieve since government considers corporations to be constituents and are thus beholden to them.

I don’t know if it’s possible to ‘end inequality’ but we do need to set limits on how unequal things can get. Nobody should be so poor that they are miserable and nobody should be so wealthy that they can leverage their wealth to generate more wealth without providing a sustainable, long-term net benefit to society. A key point is that the market would no longer decide what is a benefit to society, since it clearly isn’t equipped to do that. Another key point is that unnecessary power hierarchies do more harm than good and governments shouldn’t be shy about dismantling them, including within their own structures.

I think an anarcho-syndicalist society with minimal power structures to maintain rule of order would be just fine, but I don’t see a clear path to get there without a major change of public perception. Sadly time is not on our side.

Anyway, those are my somewhat disjointed thoughts on the subject. You may not agree on all points but I think we can agree that the economic theories that have shaped our society will be our downfall if left unchallenged.

True. Things have gotten worse, though. I remember being fairly shocked by the first Harper campaign, the depths they went to amplify anger towards the Liberal party. To be fair, the Liberals had it coming and needed to be replaced, but they needed to be replaced by the Tories, not the Reform party (which is what the Conservative party was and is)

I’m sorry I can only give you the one upvote. I find myself in the same situation.

Nobody is ‘poised’ to do anything. The next election doesn’t need to happen until the back end of 2025. Thats more than enough time for the Liberals to do what they do best and convince everyone that, bad as they are, they’re the only safe choice.

Most Ontarians didn’t bother voting in the last provincial election. Evidently most of them don’t actually care who runs their province or what the province’s role is.

They could’ve elected Lesley Knope from Parks and Rec, or they could’ve elected an obscure Jim Henson Muppet, but instead they elected Peter Griffin. None were great choices but only one was an actual moron and that’s who they picked.

Maybe some day the Liberals or NDP will field someone with enough personality to get Ontario to care enough to vote.

Anyway, your post sent me off on a tangent, but if you couldn’t guess, I’m in complete agreement.

We are expected to believe the accountability comes at the next (first past the post) election lol

“If looks could kill it would’ve been us instead of [them]”

You can say the people in Gaza would be the ones doing genocide if they were able. But they aren’t. In this reality, Israel is the one actually doing the genocide. So that is what the world has to deal with.

And who is Israel going to nuke? It’s their neighbours that hate them most, so that won’t work out great for Israel. And their neighbours hate them now more than ever thanks to bibi the warlord.

$10/day daycare will be a game changer, once there are enough spots. There are waitlists for the waitlists, where I live.

Not saying that’s the Fed’s fault. Just that in some places, lots of people aren’t seeing the benefit yet. And the angry representative of the fields south of Ottawa will happily tell us it’s due to a lack of federal planning.

Electoral reform was an election promise and nothing more.