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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • They’re terrorists because they indiscriminately bomb civilians. If they were an official army they’d be war criminals the same way the IDF are war criminals for also indiscriminately bombing civilians. Anyone who bombs civilians (on purpose) is either a terrorist or a war criminal. People seem to be struggling with this concept that everyone in a conflict can be wrong, even if they have some legitimate grievances with each other.

    Israel is absolutely stealing Palestinian land and has been for decades. They need to be evicted and that land returned to the Palestinian people. Palestine needs to be an independent country, Israel has demonstrated that they’re incapable of leaving Palestine alone and a hard border between them is the only approach likely to fix that.

    Hamas on the other hand has spent decades killing Israeli civilians and even if there was a two state solution would continue to stage attacks on Israel as a significant portion of their members are Islamic extremists (further complicated by support from neighboring Islamic countries that hate the idea of a Jewish state for religious reasons). The problem Palestine faces is that Hamas is the only force they have access to that can do anything against Israel even if that thing is to launch terrorist attacks.

    There are strong parallels between Hamas and the IRA, another terrorist organization, but also stark differences. Both organizations have or had legitimate grievances they were responding to, but both also engaged in indiscriminate violence that did little to advance their stated goals. If by some miracle this current war is resolved without the genocide of the Palestinian people (a genocide the current Israeli leadership seems dedicated to) hopefully Hamas disbands the same way the IRA did, but I’m very doubtful of such an outcome, there is far too much religious and ethnic animosity in that region.

    In a perfect world Palestine would be its own country, have its own army, and Israel and Palestine would work together to stamp out Hamas. If Israel tried to push into Palestinian territory the Palestinian army would push them back and if it came down to it the Palestinian military and IDF would fight each other. What the Palestinian army wouldn’t be doing is murdering random Israeli civilians the way Hamas is (and if they did Palestine would face sanctions for those war crimes the same way Israel should be currently).

    All of this is of course made significantly more complicated by the US primarily but also other countries supporting Israel because they have a terrible relationship with the Islamic countries in the region (for both good and bad reasons) and want a friendly country to use as a military outpost. The US has been far too involved with Israel for decades now and they’ve become far too invested in propping up the current administration (also the US has its own significant issues with its current administration).

    Other countries need to stop supporting Israel and sanction them for both their war crimes and their decades of stealing Palestinian land. Hamas needs to be wiped out the same way ISIS does, but not by the IDF who have shown they’re incapable of doing so without engaging in even worse atrocities than Hamas commits.


  • Blowing up random civilians isn’t an act of vengeance, that’s exactly the sort of atrocity that Israel is committing now. If Hamas restricted themselves to blowing up IDF bases and attacking IDF soldiers there would be no question that they’re in the right, but they’re mostly killing Israeli civilians which is just as wrong as when the IDF does it to Palestinian civilians. Just because one side is significantly more powerful than the other doesn’t negate that. If the roles were reversed and it was Hamas who was committing genocide against Israel would you still be making this argument?

    What’s needed is an independent 3rd party. Israel needs to be forcibly removed from Palestinian land and the IDF disarmed until they can show they can do their job without murdering civilians. Hamas needs to be rooted out and Palestine needs an actual military that will be able to stand up to the IDF. None of that is going to happen under either Hamas or the current Israeli government, both of them would rather just keep murdering civilians.


  • Hamas is a violent terrorist organization, it just happens to also be the only one even remotely attempting to fight back against Israel’s attacks. There are no “good guys” in this war (barring the victims just trying to live their lives), just bad and worse. Israel has been attacking Palestine both physically and via illegally seizing their land for decades, while Hamas has been staging terrorist attacks against Israel for just as long. It’s hard not to fault the Palestinian people for supporting Hamas when they’re the only ones that are doing literally anything to fight back against Israel, but that also doesn’t make Hamas good. At best they’re a necessary evil.

    Hamas doesn’t want peace, they want victory, but Israel doesn’t want peace either, they want to finish the genocide they started decades ago. The only ones that actually want peace are the civilians that are stuck between Hamas and the IDF. Unlike Hamas though the international community supports the IDF even though the IDF is just as guilty of staging terror attacks as Hamas is.






  • This title and article confuses me. After reading the article it seems like there were a few lanes of traffic that were originally normal road lanes, but had been converted to bicycle only lanes at some point, and they are now talking about converting them back into normal traffic lanes. Where is the law in this? This sounds like a civil engineering exercise not a legal one. Did someone sue the government over this? The article title made it seem like the government was trying to ban bicycle lanes, but the article paints a very different picture.

    Edit: I’m talking about the title of this post that says “Canadian judge rules law to remove bike lanes is unconstitutional, cyclists have a right to safety”

    Edit 2: did the article title change after this was posted? If not this post seems to be violating the rule that the post title must match the article headline.




  • In a normal military this would be a pretty big deal, but Russia has long used the strategy of “keep throwing bodies at them until you win”. That’s also likely the reason their navy and air force are a joke as that strategy doesn’t work so well when you have a finite number of craft to send those bodies on. There’s a reason that Ukraine’s tiny well trained military has been able to use guerrilla tactics to wipe the floor with Russia’s military.

    So unfortunately this is likely to make little if any difference, Putin will just find a new piece of meat to stuff into that uniform and then kick him towards the front line. What does make a huge difference though is every time they manage to destroy a piece of Russian hardware (be that a boat, plane, tank, or artillery) as Russia has a very hard time replacing those unlike their practically unlimited supply of cannon fodder.



  • The platform is a tool, and like most tools it can be used for both good and evil. I agree it’s making the problem significantly worse, but hyper focusing on just the platforms while ignoring the people using them doesn’t seem like the right approach either. I don’t know how to preserve the positive aspects of platforms like Facebook, TikTok, and Youtube while also preventing them from being abused to spread hate and lies. I feel like there must be something that can be done to at least improve the situation a little. The various “community notes” features I don’t think were a terrible first step, although they’re also far from a solution. It’s a complicated problem with a lot of potential pitfalls, but one I think is going to be critical to solve and soon because the problem isn’t going away, as long as we have an internet it’s here to stay.


  • TL;DR: of that whole thing boils down to “the problem is too hard to solve and all the solutions are worse than the problem so don’t even try”. I don’t agree with the premise because if we accept it, then democracy is doomed.

    We can not have a functioning society when we can’t even get a majority of the citizens to agree on basic aspects of reality and half the people are convinced the other half are lizard people that are putting mind control drugs in the water supply. A functioning democracy requires an informed and educated populace, and unchecked propaganda, disinformation, and conspiracy theories lead to the opposite of that, particularly when you have a wealthy group that profits from spreading it.




  • That does raise an interesting question though. What would happen to those treaties if Canada decided to officially become fully independent of the crown? I don’t think anything is really stopping that from happening other than there not really being a significant upside for Canada.

    Also side question, is the king (and I guess the entire royal family) considered a citizen of Canada and all the other countries that apparently never really got their independence from England? That’s got to be incredibly weird for someone marrying into the royal family. “Congratulations you married a royal, here’s your new citizenship to a dozen different countries most of which you’ve probably never set foot in before”.



  • As an outsider looking in this seems very weird. I guess the king of England is also technically the king of Canada, but I’m failing to see why that matters even if it’s incredibly strange. I know in England the monarchy is almost entirely symbolic with nearly all the actual governing done by the PM and Parliament. I would assume Canada is the same. Does the monarchy have any actual power in Canada? I believe in England they have a (incredibly rarely used) veto power over parliament but that’s it. Is Canada not the same?