News/Current Affairs thread

[Carbomb]

17 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

I didn't say it wasn't involved, I said it "wasn't because of religion", I said it was a pretext, so no.

14 minutes ago, Tommy! said:

You said that, right there. That clearly implies you don't think Religion was a factor so don't act the bollocks and back track now.

One: it's not backtracking, because I said it in my last fucking post to you.

Two: I literally said in my response to your original post that the phrase "it was about religion" implies that it was the cause, and I don't agree with that.

How about you stop acting the bollocks? You're the one who got all glib and snippy with your "I stopped reading there", and then dismissed the rest of what I was saying. 

EDIT: I am tired of this, so here's the breakdown so we have no more squabbling over semantics.

I said it was "never about religion", as clarified by this statement:

37 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

The statement "it's about religion" implies that this was the original cause. It wasn't.

I said it was a pretext, several times over. That doesn't mean it wasn't a factor, it means it wasn't a cause. 

I believe it is important to point this out, because as long as people keep misidentifying the true cause/origin/reason why this happened, it will never be addressed.

Jews and Muslims, contrary to what the current narrative is now in the West, do not historically hate each other. This is a development caused by the West, after the creation of Israel, in its guilt foisting its own shit on to two communities that were not really in conflict for the majority of their existence.

The largest Ladino-speaking community in Europe is in Istanbul. The Ottoman Empire made a point of valuing its Jewry, to the point where the Grand Vizier of Istanbul was almost always referred to as "the Great Jew" because the role was almost exclusively given to a Jewish notable.

The mythos of Islam recognises that, when Muhammad was fleeing the pagan Quraysh in Arabia, he and his followers were given shelter by a Jewish king known as the Negus.

And, as I say, the Mizrahi Jews lived in the Middle East for centuries. 

Edited October 18, 2023 by Carbomb

[Tommy!]

 

23 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

squabbling over semantics.

Or anti-semantics.

Edited October 18, 2023 by Tommy!

[Carbomb]

5*

[Loki]

1 hour ago, Keith Houchen said:

at least a close aide to Bibi did

Which certainly tells you something about Bibi and his pals.  I think without knowing what had happened, that aide immediately decided to claim it whereas Hamas immediately decided to blame it on Israel.  

Still very foggy but it looks like a smaller explosive dropped into the carpark outside the hospital and killed dozens of people camping here, but not a hit ON the hospital itself.

Which fits with this footage of a rocket fired from the south exploding in mid-air and the debris or payload striking the hospital - 
 

The timing of this has been appalling in any case as it's completely derailed the beginnings of some ceasefire talks and most of the Middle East will now believe the IDF have committed a war crime regardless of what actually happened.  So whoever did it, it's worked to Hamas' benefit in a sad way.



 

[tiger_rick]

TIL not to be flippant.

[Browser Brady]

I dont get how ;

Hamas could claim a hospital has been bombed and at least 500 people are dead.

Israeli journalists theb say it was bombed by the IDF

Israel’s presiden then publicly claimed that it was bombed but it wasn’t them

And then the OSINT guys say there was a blast and there was minimal damage and casualties.

 

 

What am i missing here ?

[Tamura]

13 minutes ago, Browser Brady said:

What am i missing here ?

A relevant history lesson.

[Loki]

20 minutes ago, Browser Brady said:

What am i missing here ?

That the propaganda war tends to work faster than the dissemination of actual information outwith the fog of war.  Nobody knew in those first hours what had actually happened, but that doesn't stop both sides from getting a narrative  out.

A hospital in which there are 1000+ people gets hit, someone on the scene say "It looks bad, there must be hundreds of casualties" and that's the message that goes out.  Conversely, the initial reports of Israeli deaths after the Hamas attack was severely low because nobody knew the extent of the operation, not even Hamas who never expected to get that far unchallenged.  It was similar IIRC with 9/11 - nobody knew how many people were in those buildings, not for months afterwards.

Edit:  the BBC's Verify unit is usually good for this, they try and gather all available evidence as it comes in

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67144061

Edited October 18, 2023 by Loki

[BomberPat]

9 minutes ago, Loki said:

 It was similar IIRC with 9/11 - nobody knew how many people were in those buildings, not for months afterwards.

One story around death counts from 9/11, which I've repeated as fact though have to admit I have no idea if it's actually true or just something half-remembered from a Journalism lecture, is that at massive tragedies like that, when there's a need for immediate reporting but without all the facts available, the way news agencies used to work out the number of casualties was that they would report on the number of body bags that had been ordered to the site. Things like that can account for why a reported death count can be revised down as new information becomes available.

Some of you will know that one of my areas of academic interest has for a long time been Holocaust denial/revisionism, and a lot of the lazier arguments in that mess are about how everyone settled on the number of 6 million dead, and that this number is unquestioned and you're not allowed to criticise it or ask how they reached that conclusion, and that it's obviously a sign of mass collusion and cover-ups that everybody just repeats this one number. But the reality is that there are decades of conflicting reports on the exact death toll, some much higher and some somewhat lower, and mountains of research that went into comparing the various estimates, with six million arrived at through a lot of work as the most likely figure but with several caveats. It's anything but an arbitrary number repeated unquestioningly. But it's easy for bad actors to make the opposite argument when they know full well that most people wouldn't know how to go about reading any of that work - and particularly in the case of the Holocaust, much of the evidence was on the other side of the Iron Curtain - and that most people only see the headlines.

What we're seeing here is those sorts of estimates rattled through in real time, on 24 hour news and Twitter feeds, before there's been time to verify all the information, even before you take into account propaganda, fake reports, or just honest mistakes made in reportage. War is a fucking mess, and you shouldn't trust any report that comes out of it completely at face value in and of itself, whether it reinforces or casts doubt on your existing views.

[Tim Healys Chutney Spoon]

7 hours ago, Devon Malcolm said:

What exactly is "this sort of thing", Pete?

Maybe, like Rick, a little flippant, but I was meaning more 'if they do something or know something then they say it'. Seems recently their intelligence and information gathering hasn't been up to scratch and hence why Hamas were able to purpotrate the attacks they did. 

 

Either way, it doesn't look like a rocket attack on the hospital from the IDF side. Not enough visible evidence showing the impact and destruction that a missile would cause. 

[Keith Houchen]

4 minutes ago, Big'Olympic_Hero'Pete said:

'if they do something or know something then they say it'. 

Such as?  I mean they killed the journalist Shireen Abou Akleh with sniper fire and lied about it. They lie all the time. 
 

 

7 minutes ago, Big'Olympic_Hero'Pete said:

 

Either way, it doesn't look like a rocket attack on the hospital from the IDF side. Not enough visible evidence showing the impact and destruction that a missile would cause. 

They have missiles that can be detonated above targets so shrapnel does the damage. 

 

[SuperBacon]

19 minutes ago, Big'Olympic_Hero'Pete said:

Seems recently their intelligence and information gathering hasn't been up to scratch and hence why Hamas were able to purpotrate the attacks they did. 

It's mad isn't it that they were completely unprepared for the attack by Hamas and seemingly didn't know their whereabouts, but then immediately afterwards knew EXACTLY what residential buildings/schools/hospitals Hamas were hiding in.

Mad. 

[Loki]

6 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

It's mad isn't it that they were completely unprepared for the attack by Hamas and seemingly didn't know their whereabouts, but then immediately afterwards knew EXACTLY what residential buildings/schools/hospitals Hamas were hiding in.

Mad. 

Are you suggesting that the Israelis LET the attacks happen?  Or that they don't know which buildings Hamas are launching rockets from?  Either I find unconvincing if I'm honest.

 

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

War is a fucking mess, and you shouldn't trust any report that comes out of it completely at face value in and of itself, whether it reinforces or casts doubt on your existing views.

Spot on.

[SuperBacon]

8 minutes ago, Loki said:

17 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

 

Are you suggesting that the Israelis LET the attacks happen?  Or that they don't know which buildings Hamas are launching rockets from?  Either I find unconvincing if I'm honest.

I'm suggesting neither of those things.

Edited October 18, 2023 by SuperBacon

[Loki]

Maybe you could explain your comment then @SuperBacon because otherwise I'm not sure I understand your point.

Edited October 18, 2023 by Loki