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_etyf

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The influence of the Israel lobby on the 2003 Iraq invasion is not an anti-Semitic trope, it is recorded and acknowledged history. The final decision to invade lay with George W. Bush, and the Israel lobby was far from the only factor in his decision, but their influence was significant and cannot be denied. From the London Review of Books on John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's "The Israel Lobby":

Pressure from Israel and the Lobby was not the only factor behind the decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was critical. Some Americans believe that this was a war for oil, but there is hardly any direct evidence to support this claim. Instead, the war was motivated in good part by a desire to make Israel more secure.

According to Philip Zelikow, a former member of the president’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, and now a counsellor to Condoleezza Rice, the ‘real threat’ from Iraq was not a threat to the United States. The ‘unstated threat’ was the ‘threat against Israel’, Zelikow told an audience at the University of Virginia in September 2002. ‘The American government,’ he added, ‘doesn’t want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell.’

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v28/n06/john-mearsheimer/the...

Consumers can buy similar off-the-shelf "smart" rifle scopes, marketed primarily for hunting:

The Eliminator LaserScope is the most innovative and effective hunting riflescope in the world. With the push of a button, the Eliminator IV ranges and displays the distance to the target (factoring in angle). It instantly calculates and displays the exact aiming point and wind data all inside the scope for complete situational awareness.

The built-in laser rangefinder is now capable of ranging out to 2,000 yards. Trajectory compensation is accurate at any magnification, and the integrated inclinometer compensates for shots at any uphill or downhill angle.

https://www.burrisoptics.com/scopes/laser-range-finding-elim...

"...because Israel is not actively attempting to advance its nuclear technology capabilities."

Says who?

Retired in the 1990s, the Jericho-1, like its successors, was intended for nuclear delivery.

From the mid-1970s to the late 1980s, Israel developed a longer-range version by extending the Jericho’s length to 15m and increasing the diameter to 1.35m. Designated the Jericho-2, this system has an estimated range of 1,500–3,500km, with the same 1,000kg payload.

According to several analysts, Israel also has an intermediate-range missile, possibly called the Jericho-3. Reports of testing – in 2008, 2011, 2013, 2019 and (possibly) 2020 – related to a longer-range system support this assessment, but it has not been verified.

https://www.iiss.org/blogs/analysis/2021/08/israel-ballistic...

No, this sounds exactly like Twitter.

On Twitter, self-appointed mobs of the morally righteous call for violence against children [0], farm lulz from the killings of police officers [1], dox strangers to get them fired over off-color jokes [2], and endlessly harass and threaten certain conservative journalists and activists [3]. Actual Twitter employees harassed right-wing reporter Andy Ngo [4] after a real-world mob attack sent him to the ER with a brain hemmorhage, an event which "ACAB Twitter" continues to celebrate and remind him about.

The trolls on Twitter blend in by being a few medium-sized fish in the ocean. The trolls on Kiwi Farms are more visible as big fish in their own small pond. They're ideologically flipped compared to Twitter trolls, but fundamentally alike in their methods, moral posturing, and disregard for basic human decency. They're all an enormous net-negative for humanity.

[0] https://medium.com/@RevolutionaryId/twitter-democratizing-mo...

[1] https://twitter.com/halfsleeps/status/1320955923205033984

[2] https://news.yahoo.com/journalist-apologizes-for--hasjustine...

[3] https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/its-insane-were-having-a-...

[4] https://archive.is/VGuZy

I'm glad you've never heard "goyim" used in a derogatory manner, whereas I have. Tone is difficult to infer from plain text. To avoid confusion, I recommend you use other groups and races' preferred labels when speaking about them in public. This is advice I follow and have found to be a good rule.

Just so you know I'm not making this up; Merriam-Webster lists "goy" as "sometimes disparaging":

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/goy

Use of this word in 2017 got Huffington Post in trouble with the Anti-Defamation League, and others who felt it was over the line:

https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/huffpost-bannon-headlin...

But most of the world is goyim

I doubt you meant to use it this way, but that word is seen by many as an offensive slur against non-Jews. It's frequently used in a way that has racist and derogatory undertones. Googling "goyim" returns some colorful results.

Google's Knowledge Graph info boxes are automatically-generated and littered with errors. I've been burned twice on operating hours, once for my local bank and once for a convenience store, driving over each time only to find the place closed. In both cases, the correct hours were posted on the business's website. I've also seen bad KG results for medical conditions, listing the wrong symptoms or describing easily-treatable maladies as "Incurable". Now I actively ignore the info box and intentionally click through to an authoritative non-Google website.

To a non-technical user, I'm sure the box looks like a human-curated result which they're more likely to trust. Maybe that's the goal of Google's UI choices. Couldn't be further from the truth.

The battle has very much leaked off-campus, and not just in sports. One intense area of disagreement involves the rights of trans children to medically transition without their parents' knowledge or consent. Research consistently shows that most children who identity as trans revert to their original gender identity post-puberty [0]. However, more states are now enabling children to seek and obtain irreversible gender transition care on their own, without parental consent, to include surgery and hormone therapy [1]:

[Seattle] minors age 13 and up are entitled to admit themselves for inpatient and outpatient mental health treatment without parental consent. Health insurers are forbidden from disclosing to the insured parents’ sensitive medical information of minor children—such as that regarding “gender dysphoria [and] gender affirming care.” Minors aged 13 to 18 can withhold mental health records from parents for “sensitive” conditions, which include both “gender dysphoria” and “gender-affirming care.” Insurers in Washington must cover a wide array of “gender-affirming treatments” from tracheal shaves to double mastectomies.

Oregon passed a law permitting minors 15 and older to obtain puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries at taxpayers’ expense—all without parental consent. In 2018, California passed a similar bill for all children in foster care, age 12 and up.

Similarly, in a Canadian family court case involving a 14 year old trans child [2]:

Attempting to persuade AB to abandon treatment for gender dysphoria; addressing AB by his birth name; referring to AB as a girl or with female pronouns whether to him directly or to third parties; shall be considered to be family violence under s. 38 of the Family Law Act.

In the event where the trans child de-transitions post-puberty, these procedures may leave them with severe body dismorphia or render them unable to produce or bear children.

I don't have kids (yet), but I had body dismorphia as a young adult. It almost killed me, but I grew out of it in time. Fortunately, it wasn't the kind that compelled me to seek life-altering medical procedures. I fear that my future child may suffer from a similar case of temporary body dismorphia, seek and obtain permanent life-altering procedures which I am legally unable to prevent, and later come to deeply regret the damage done to their body by these procedures. Again, the best data we have on trans kids shows that most choose to revert to their original gender identity post-puberty [0].

[0] https://www.thestranger.com/features/2017/06/28/25252342/the...

[1] https://www.city-journal.org/transgender-identifying-adolesc...

[2] https://www.bccourts.ca/jdb-txt/sc/19/06/2019BCSC0604.htm

The situation for college students, at least a certain segment, is that people with the transgender identity are far more common than they once were. That's the base reality, not the product of any ideology. And whatever it's point of origin, this reality for these isn't going to change.

A significant number of people who identity as trans later return to their original gender identity. This is known as "detransitioning:"

https://www.thestranger.com/features/2017/06/28/25252342/the...

It's a controversial topic, as many trans people see the existence of detrans people as a threat to the validity of their own identity. For their part, many detrans people resent the medical practitioners who they feel didn't adequately provide council or obtain informed consent before facilitating their transition, sometimes involving expensive, painful, and irreversible medical procedures. Some research also indicates most (!) children who identify as trans abandon this identity post-puberty:

https://www.kqed.org/futureofyou/441784/the-controversial-re...

The Blocked and Reported podcast, which I generally find to be fair-minded and evenhanded, recently interviewed a detrans person who had worked at a SF gender transition clinic. I found their experience illuminating:

https://barpodcast.fireside.fm/50

The BBC and 60 Minutes have also produced reporting on this issue.

Sounds like he had an interesting relationship with the CIA, to say the least:

"At the time, I was conspiring against the Latin American dictatorships and wanted help from the United States", he recalled. "I was a good friend of Allen Dulles."

"Anyway", Mr. Figueres went on, "the C.I.A.'s Cultural Department helped me finance a magazine and some youth conferences here. But I never participated in espionage. I did beg them not to carry out the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, which was madness, but they ignored me."

Figueres backed the leftist Sandinista revolution in neighboring Nicaragua that overthrew dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979. He railed against U.S. policy when the United States supported Nicaragua's Contra guerrillas.

It also reads as though his 1958 testimony before Congress [0] shamed the CIA into facilitating the assassination of Rafael Trujillo, a bloody right-wing dictator who Figueres all but named:

"If you’re going to speak of human dignity in Russia, why is it so hard to speak of human dignity in the Dominican Republic? Where is intervention and where is non-intervention? Is it that a simple threat, a potential one, to your liberties, is, essentially, more serious than the kidnapping of our liberties?"

With Figueres as sponsor, Bosch and Ornes agreed to form a coalition government in anticipation of the overthrow of dictator Rafael Trujillo.

Such a fascinating figure. Amazed I never knew his name before now.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Figueres_Ferrer#1958...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_Trujillo

It's worth noting that the Pepe meme has continued to evolve, and is no longer associated solely or primarily with 4chan. The streamer community in particular has adopted, rehabiliated, and popularized Pepe as a mascot and chat emote. For example, here's Pepe and the "poggers" meme in a recent stream from Pokimane, a streamer with over 7 million followers who made Forbes' 2021 30 under 30 list:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETBUJkVMnpc&t=70s

Based Cooking 5 years ago

I scanned his video titles and nothing racist jumped out- could you link to a particular example?

Yep, Ruby Ridge and Waco were fiascos which led directly to the bombing of the Murrah Building. McVeigh explicitly called out those events as his motivation for the bombing.

The lessons learned were apparent in the government’s approach to the 2016 wildlife refuge standoff. Rather than dash in guns-blazing, the government simply established a perimeter and waited for the occupiers to run out of Clif Bars. Took the ringleaders into custody with a minimum of force when they attempted to leave. Of the 30-40 occupiers, only one was shot as he reached for his gun. No law enforcement officers were harmed. World of difference compared to Waco, where 4 ATF officers and 82 Branch Davidians were killed.

Far-right terrorism in the US has never really been taken seriously. No one took them seriously.

That's not really true.

Far-right terror was taken very seriously in 1995 after the Oklahoma City bombing. The FBI hired 500 agents specifically to focus on domestic terrorism [0], particularly the then-new militia movement. Virtually every state and federal law enforcement agency established a domestic terror unit. Through continuous effort they'd pretty much quashed the militia movement by 2004, despite the shift of federal resources to the Global War on Terror post-9/11. However, far-right militias surged again in the Obama years [2].

(Much further back, U.S. Grant used the Army to crack down on the Klan [3]. Unfortunately, his successor Rutherford B. Hayes effectively ended Reconstruction and rolled back much of this progress.)

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20120210125747/http://news.bbc.c... [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20110623153230/http://www.rickro... [2] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/03/08/148217754... [3] https://www.historynet.com/grant-takes-klan.htm

By the 1970s, tens of thousands of children had been born to South Korean women and American soldiers.[89] In South Korea, these children are often the target of racist vitriol and abuse, being called mostly "western princess bastards" (Yanggongju-ssaekki) children of white soldiers, and a minority born to black soldiers were "darkies", or "[n-word]" (Kkamdungi).

Racial purity is still a big deal in Korea, unfortunately.

Mixed-race football player Hines Ward brought attention to this issue when his team won the Super Bowl, which made him famous in Korea and prompted some self-reflection:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2006/03/05/s...