This is why they should’ve had a primary.

We could’ve watched Biden collapse months ago while figuring out who is actually fit to run a good campaign. Now we’re going to have to go through it the hard way, because they tried to hide from the obvious for about the last 8 months.

That’s true, but I don’t think they can do that with Biden at the top of the ticket. He’s spoiled goods.

I’m not a Democrat. I left and joined the Green Party. I’m that crazy lefty. But even I can readily concede that I’d like democrats to win, and I think they could with someone like Elizabeth Warren. Or Cory Booker.

I’m not demanding Bernie or AOC or that Ro Khana be the nominee. But don’t act like there aren’t a few Democrats who have credibly taken a stand once or twice in their career for the greater good. They aren’t the majority, but they’re not so rare as you couldn’t find one.

We don’t have much control over this, frankly. But if we have any, I say we use it.

My personal attitude is that although I will concede that it is possible for Biden to win, if we don’t want to have to hope for a prayer, the only way things get better is if we all pop the bubble that Biden and his supporters are in that they can just ignore reality and hope for the best.

It has to be so clear to the Democratic party that not only are they likely to lose this election (and obviously with it, democracy), but they’re going to lose their jobs. No one who works in the election industrial complex is going to keep getting invited to cocktail parties and get hired on for whatever Potempkin election follows this one if Trump wins. No LARPing that they’re “the resistance!” in their endless fundraising emails while they enjoy being in the minority FOREVER. Rattle the fucking cage. Make it clear we blame them for this nonsense, and will continue to assign them the blame for choosing to run a failing candidate in a time of crisis because no one wanted to be the one to speak up and suggest doing anything else.

People keep getting mad when I criticize Biden, as if doing so is helping Trump win. My take: NOT doing so is helping Trump win. Protest this guy like our lives depend on him dropping out of the race at the convention. (They might).

Well that’s dystopian and dark.

I shouldn’t bother responding to this, but I have to point out that this weird assumption that scholars of Christianity are all Christian partisans seems pretty similar to people who say that climatologists are all biased in favor of a global warming hoax.

You don’t think anyone goes into studying a field to challenge the orthodoxy? That’s the fastest way to get famous. Even if the rest of your field hates you, you can make an incredibly lucrative career out of being “the outsider”. I literally linked to a collection of experts who agree with you.

If you don’t believe the experts, I guess it’s fine. But it’s weird when people use expertise on a subject as proof of bias to discredit expertise. It’s just such a silly thing to do.

I didn’t say which side I come down on. I just said that there is lots of information with plenty of high quality citations.

I’m really happy that everyone is a winner.

It’s weird how many people in this thread are vaguely debating the validity of the historical research into this question when one person has posted a link to a well cited article on this very very heavily studied subject.

There’s even a link to a well cited article examining the skepticism of the historicity of Jesus: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_myth_theory

I don’t feel compelled to argue an interpretation. The facts are well documented and their interpretations by experts available. What anyone chooses to do with these are of no real concern to me.

Agree 100%

I agree with that. Looking through, I find understanding the basic rules to be kind of a burden. It took me a while to realize that “Operations” is the rules section.

I think it makes sense to show players the character sheet early, because that’s the nexus through which they really experience the game. I like the demo scene towards the beginning, but I think a quickstart guide to explain basic rules to the players very, VERY clearly is usually a good idea.

Still, I’m continuously impressed at how well this adapts Star Trek to an RPG. I was initially skeptical that an RPG could take all the nonsense we see in decades of different shows and create a cohesive basis for all of it, but this is really impressive. I’d have to play to see if the rules feel balanced and natural, but at a glance, they make far more sense than plenty of other RPGs I’ve seen. I think this looks like a really fun game.

I really try not to get into litigating each and every instance, but I feel compelled sometimes to point out a few things:

The claim that Abdallah Aljamal was holding hostages is not credible. This claim was made by the IDF without evidence, and they have a very long history of fabricating post-hoc justifications for killing people they weren’t targeting or supposed to target. Examples include the assassination of American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in 2022 and the killing of medic Rouzan al-Najjar in 2018. In both cases, the IDF was caught lying to justify their murders, and I don’t think the claims about Abdallah Aljamal hold up at all. From what I read, he lived in the building one of the hostages was recovered from, but he wasn’t known as a target before he was killed. He was characterized as one after he was dead.

Overall, the concept of “valid targets” is bullshit. It is used to assuage our innate understanding that killing people – particularly the young, the innocent, the defenseless, the elderly – is WRONG. Israel has, in this particular war, extended the concept in a way that is clearly genocidal. Their target selection, as covered by 972, was wildly more vicious than their own historical limits on collateral damage. An anonymous Israeli intelligence officer called it “a mass assassination factory”.

I’m glad we agree that all the responsible parties for atrocities deserve to be held accountable. I don’t intend the above as a provocation to fight, but I want to make sure anyone reading this comment section is aware of this context.

I spent a while reading through this, and I gotta say that this is a really good RPG book. It’s very thorough, it’s well written for suggesting ways to play, it’s attractively formatted. This is a cool book.

It’s nuts that this is barely even news. Like… another day another atrocity.

I’m trying not to be numb to it, but it’s hard to remain shocked. I’m still disgusted, though.

I’ll say this, too: I think we too often judge wars by the conduct of the participants as though there are good wars and bad ones. And my hunch is that it’s more like there are bad ones and terrible ones, and as awful as this sounds, this one is more notable because it’s being well documented and it involves a uniquely fucked up context (decades of occupation with the support of the US). I think the way the Israeli right wing discusses it is uniquely brazen, and the degree to which the IDF targets journalists and medics seems high, but I think that this kind of stuff happens so often and is undercovered. I wish Yemen got the kind of coverage this is getting.

In terms of the atrocities, I think most wars are basically just a bunch of atrocities in a trenchcoat. It doesn’t make these any better: I just want this to end, and then all the other wars. Fuck this shit.

AND I want the people who do this shit dragged in front of the Hague. I’m very glad that Netanyahu and Gallant have had arrest warrants requested, but you know what I call that? A good start.

Oh wow, thanks for the heads up!

I’m excited to check this out.

I think this article omitted important further context by not describing the target selection approach the IDF was using: they had an AI tool make guesses as to who was part of Hamas, then suggest bombing runs of their homes when they were believed to be inside around meal times or sleeping. They reserved precision weapons for commanders, and used dumb bombs to kill low-ranking suspected combatants.

This approach is inherently designed to create a pretense to carpet bomb neighborhood full of families based on a process with little to know human oversight it discretion.

For details, look up “lavender” and “where’s Daddy”.

This is so, so fucked up.

It’s hard to grieve effectively in the face of so many tragedies. Here is another one.

That is very true. Joey Ayoub of The Fire These Times coined a phrase months ago for describing the mainstreaming of genocidal ideation among the public, which I keep returning to: “The Smotrich-ization of the Israeli public”. It’s real, and it’s terrifying.

Still, my impression is that Israelis are in a weird, weird, weird place:

• They are largely supportive of the war, but most want a ceasefire deal that would bring home the hostages.
• They are largely furious at Netanyahu, though his support has recently started to go back up.
• There has been enormous pro-democracy anti-government protests before the war, then there were demonstrations demanding negotiations for a hostage release that were supposed to be explicitly distinct from anti-government demonstrators, and there are also pro-ceasefire, pro-hostage demonstrations that are explicitly NOT distinct from the pro-democracy anti-government demonstrations.
• Most Israelis don’t believe the war has “gone too far”, but also many Israelis feel that the war has been mishandled (largely due to the cost on Israeli troops, the economy, and international standing).
• There is support for the IDF, but also fury and blame at the IDF for failing so catastrophically during Oct. 7.
• There is also widespread anger at the far right for insisting on exempting the ultraorthodox from conscription, while troop shortages force middle-age reservists back into service, but there’s no clear indication that anyone has any leverage to impose on the far and ULTRA FAR right, who have been essentially governing Israel with smug impunity for months now.
• And, overall, Israelis seem to like Biden a lot.

I apologize that i don’t have sources for each of these, these are just a collection of insights I recall reading in the last few months.

Ultimately, I think they’re largely out of answers AND being herded aggressively by a well-tuned state propaganda machine, which means that I think their attitudes are in flux. I think they could be led in many directions, and many futures are possible. Right now though, the most successful shepherds are Smotrich and Ben-Givir.

Lastly, there are a few very small Palestinian-Jewish unity groups. These may look irrelevant considering their numbers are so few, but when people ask where we could find leaders capable of negotiating peace (considering most of the Palestinian ones have been killed to prevent any peace process), I think this would be where we’d find them. Despite their numbers, they terrify the far right. They face extreme threats of violence, and I think that reaction belies the threat they pose to Jewish Supremacy.

Yeah, and more importantly, Biden needs to learn the public component of diplomacy.

I read his interview in Time, and it’s weird, because it at least gave me some aspect into what he’s thinking.

He’s old as fuck. He has learned decades of procedures and standard practice in diplomacy, and he does NOT understand that a lot of it happens in the open now. Biden thinks he’s playing chess with all the diplomatic messages he sends along backchannels, and he has no idea that this is just an arm wrestling match now. People judge you by what you say and do transparently.

Biden legit thinks he and Bibi are like cousins who grew up together who are having a tough fight, and Bibi is all fucking politics. He’d slit any throat he has to get what he wants, and he will bury Biden in a heartbeat.

Biden should go to Israel, and in a public address announce that the country is turning a corner: it will be safer than ever, and America is going to assist with a long term peace process, which they won’t lead but will provide security guarantees for. And don’t tell Bibi any of this in advance. And when Bibi reacts, say that Bibi has lost his trust and that of the elected public, and they need to hold new elections before getting any new weapons. Get some 'nads, man!

I wouldn’t mind a complete cut-off in weapons, but I also wouldn’t mind if they continue to supply rocket defenses or something if its part of a pressure campaign to send Netanyahu packing. I want Israeli prosecutors and the Hague to argue over who gets to lock his ass up first.

Oh, I see. Thank you for the clarification.

I think you could argue this before the passage of the Nation State Law of 2018. But now it’s enshrined in law that the state exists to privilege Jews specifically and selectively. That’s really putting it all in black and white.

Also I get asked about why I didn’t criticize China or Russia or Iran etc, and the reasons are simple:

1. I do
2. my tax dollars didn’t support their misdeeds and
3. I’m Jewish, so I have a huge investment in Israel’s actions. They insist that I be judged by their actions, so now I have to get involved. Also, I actually like Israel. I’d like it to be a liberal, multi ethnic democracy and not just another Middle Eastern martial theocracy with a Jewish twist.

Hold on a sec: self determination is always within the context of recognizing the right of self determination of other groups and the basic human rights of everyone involved.

Also, Israel already has millions of Palestinian citizens. And all of these people deserve a say in what the resulting arrangement looks like.

A two state solution is one possibility, but there is no strict requirement that it is the only or best way to serve the needs of those involved.