The reaction is worse in what sense, exactly? Raw numbers? Then you're back to the
same argument as above, where October 7th (again, the third deadliest terrorist attack
since records began in 1970) somehow doesn't count.
Nobody serious disputes that Gazan civilians are suffering enormously. The argument
isn't about that. It's about whether Hamas represents them, and the answer is: less
and less, given that Hamas hasn't held an election since 2006, has siphoned aid money
into tunnels and rockets for two decades [1], and on October 7th sent men with garden
tools to decapitate Thai agricultural workers [2] and film themselves doing it.
You can condemn Israel's conduct (and there's plenty to condemn) without pretending
the people who started this particular escalation were freedom fighters having a bad
day.
I think wholesale genocide of an entire population by the Israeli state is worse. The plan is obviously drive the Palestinians onto the sea (metaphorically) and make the place uninhabitable.
Israel (and I want to be clear, I am referring to Israel the state) has blood on their hands. This went way beyond a "self defense" thing - flattening the entire country, indiscriminate killing of civilians and children, murdering paramedics and bombing ambulances, destroying schools hospitals apartment buildings etc. By a modern democratic state with the most accurate smart weapons available. It's simply unbelievable to me that they are getting away with it.
Most of what you say I don't disagree with. Israel's conduct since October 8th (the civilian
death toll, the aid blockade, the flattening of hospitals) is legitimate to call out. The ICJ found the genocide claim plausible enough to issue
binding provisional measures, which Israel then ignored [1]. That's not nothing.
But "wholesale genocide" and "the plan is obviously to drive them into the sea" are stronger claims than the evidence supports right now, and that matters a lot because the moment you overreach, everyone who wants to dismiss Palestinian suffering has a rhetorical exit. The ICJ's own careful language exists for a reason.
None of that touches the original argument anyway: that October 7th was not a "small blip." Israel's conduct after October 8th doesn't retroactively change what happened on October 7th. Both things are true simultaneously. That's the whole point I'm making.
No, I think I have to respectfully disagree: in the continuum of the Palestine-Israel conflict, this was a small blip. Israel has been killing civilians indiscriminately for years/decades, annexing territory, bulldozing homes etc.
What was different this time was that it was Israel who was the victim, not the Palestinians. And the only way that Israel knows how to respond to these kinds of things is to kill and to destroy.
"What was different this time was that it was Israel who was the victim."
You've just described the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust [1] as a blip
because, in your accounting, it was Israel's turn to absorb one.
The "continuum" framing doesn't hold up numerically either. In non-war years, OCHA
records roughly 100–200 Palestinian deaths annually at Israeli hands [2]. Hamas killed
1,139 people before lunchtime. That's not a blip in a continuum, it's five to ten
years of equivalent deaths in eight hours.
The youngest victim was 14 hours old [3]. The oldest was a 92-year-old Holocaust
survivor [3]. None of those facts change based on who you think had it coming.
Come off it, that's a technicality and everyone knows the meaning.
An uncharitable person would easily debunk this by making claims about the idea that 'because of israel they can't have a state to be civilian of' and then the topic gets super muddy because that's technically not true and we go around and around and around.
Apple is the same size as Europe's tech sector...just Apple.
Of the top 50 tech companies on Earth, 3 are European and 30 are American.[1]
Europe has a seriously lacking tech scene. The situation is borderline catastrophic.Even just this past week the OpenClaw guy ditched the EU for the US, calling out the EU's infertile business scene[2]. These are exactly the kind of people the EU should be clearing a path for and rolling out a rug. Wake up.
lol, it's always because of money. European tech startups often sell out to US investors because they offer more money.
I've worked for companies that plodded along nicely privately owned, 20-50 employees, but they got "offers they couldn't refuse" from US companies and sold. Usually just buying us to stamp out potential competition/buying a customer base
That explanation is not enough. What are you supposed to do with more money if your dream in life is to create cutting edge tech? There comes a point when money doesn't trump all.
You might think I am trying to put down Europe, but the reality is that I am trying to make a Europe that can stand on it's own.
The economic rifts that a hard pull away from US support would create almost certainly will fracture the EU, give rise to nationalist leaders, and weaken support for Eastern Europe.
What's happening right now is exactly what Russia wants. Big brother America going away, so Russia only has to deal with countries that have been been on a 30 year status quo cruise control.
Apple is a bit of a terrible example. They're not profitable unless they offshore hardware assembly, and their service revenue is considered an anticompetitive monopoly even domestically. The only way they got to this point was by fucking over American labor and the free market.
If you account for the market damages that Apple is responsible for, the situation is already catastrophic. The EU has every justification to decouple themselves from capricious and unaccountable businesses like Apple, Google and Microsoft.
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