Serious The Politics Thread

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The American Politics Understanders who don't pay attention to federal politics are just learning POTUS has a stutter

yeah that's definitely all it is. I'm sure all the undecided voters will understand this 81 year old man just has a stutter and definitely doesn't sound near death

seriously, the cope is insane. we have five months to stop pretending this guy is viable. the DNC deserves what's coming in November, and it's a shame we'll have to deal with it
 
Is it akin to that? How can you know that if you're basing your evaluation entirely on information provided by enemies of Hamas?

You state that dozens of countries label Hamas as a terrorist group. There are like 200 countries in the world, so which ones label Hamas as a terrorist group and which ones do not? Are the ones that label Hamas as a terrorist group the 'unbiased countries,' whom we can trust, and the ones that don't are biased liars to be dismissed?

Are there any countries which claim that Hamas is a terrorist group while also supporting the ongoing genocide against Palestinians? That might be an important piece of information to keep in mind when deciding which sources to 'trust.'
Here's what I found:

Both The Times of Israel and Haaretz have reported that "the Organization of American States, a coalition of 35 states in North and South America, has designated Hamas as a terrorist organization..." Of course, I am taking these sources with many, many grains of salt since they are both Israel-biased sources, and I will not be mentioning these sources any further in my argument.

Fox News has reported that apart from the US and Israel, Australia, Japan, the UK, and "other countries" (unspecified, apologies for not being able to find them) have classified Hamas as a terrorist organization. Australia and Japan are both pushing for Palestinian recognition, as Australia voted Yes on Palestine's attempt to gain full membership to the UN and Japan "recognizes the rights of Palestine to establish an independent state".

Overall, I believe that the evidence detailing Hamas as a terrorist group outweighs the Arab world's claims that Hamas is simply a liberation front.
 
yeah that's definitely all it is. I'm sure all the undecided voters will understand this 81 year old man just has a stutter and definitely doesn't sound near death

seriously, the cope is insane. we have five months to stop pretending this guy is viable. the DNC deserves what's coming in November, and it's a shame we'll have to deal with it
Too late to have a primary now, only Kamala could possibly take over the nomination. If the polls really move against Biden in response to this debate I could see it happening, but I don't think it is going to come to that.
 
Overall, I believe that the evidence detailing Hamas as a terrorist group outweighs the Arab world's claims that Hamas is simply a liberation front.
I don't think it is reasonable to believe that '35 countries, including the US, Israel, and close allies of the US and Israel, claim Hamas is a terrorist organization' is some kind of ironclad evidence. Again, why trust them, and why trust them to such an extent that you will just accept their opinions and reject even investigating evidence to the contrary?

This debate is really something btw
 
I don't think it is reasonable to believe that '35 countries, including the US, Israel, and close allies of the US and Israel, claim Hamas is a terrorist organization' is some kind of ironclad evidence. Again, why trust them, and why trust them to such an extent that you will just accept their opinions and reject even investigating evidence to the contrary?

This debate is really something btw
Can you present this "evidence to the contrary"? Also I provided you with examples that these countries are supporting Palestine, which runs antithetical to the position of Israel and by extension the US
 
Anyone watching this debate still think it'd be a mistake to swap Biden for someone else before November?

It would be a mistake. Only way it’s palatable is if Biden takes it upon himself to do it and names the successor. The primary voters have already spoken. A contested convention creates more problems. The party would be forcing a candidate on the base, and few things piss off voters more than that. Kamala Harris is the next of succession, and she is no more popular than Biden. Don't think for a second the party can just leap frog her.
 
yeah that's definitely all it is. I'm sure all the undecided voters will understand this 81 year old man just has a stutter and definitely doesn't sound near death

seriously, the cope is insane. we have five months to stop pretending this guy is viable. the DNC deserves what's coming in November, and it's a shame we'll have to deal with it

Bro's actually talking about cope and then saying the president is going to stand down during the election cycle. Jesus christ you people need to listen to yourselves. The debates are entirelu meaningless. No one in the past 12 years has ever had their minds changed by these things, nor was today's performance much better than some of Biden's past debates. MSNBC and CNN have been breaking their wrists fantasizing about Trump-era ratings again, they've constantly given air into this bullshit line even as Trump can't strung a coherent sentence together without a stutter.
 
Can you present this "evidence to the contrary"? Also I provided you with examples that these countries are supporting Palestine, which runs antithetical to the position of Israel and by extension the US
I'm not trying to mess with you here, but the Hamas pdf is genuinely a very good starting point. They explain their rationale, they go into some of the history of the conflict, and at times they even reference Israeli media sources to debunk atrocity propaganda claims spread by the west regarding Al-Aqsa Flood. They also explicitly call for a transparent international investigation into all crimes committed in occupied Palestine.

Here are some small excerpts (an earlier post of mine includes a few more):

Hamas said:
It has also been firmly refuted the lie of the “40 beheaded babies” by the Palestinian fighters, and even Israeli sources denied this lie. Many of the western media agencies unfortunately adopted this allegation and promoted it.

Hamas said:
According to two reports by the Israeli Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper on Oct. 10 and the Haaretz newspaper on Nov. 18, many Israeli civilians were killed by an Israeli military helicopter especially those who were in the Nova music festival near Gaza where 364 Israeli civilians were killed. The two reports said the Hamas fighters reached the area of the festival without any prior knowledge of the festival, where the Israeli helicopter opened fire on both the Hamas fighters and the participants in the festival.
Here is one article that seems to be about this: https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/b111niukzt

Hamas said:
Furthermore, the occupation authorities revised the number of their killed soldiers and civilians from 1,400 to 1,200, after finding that 200-burnt corpses had belonged to the Palestinian fighters who were killed and mixed with Israeli corpses. This means that the one who killed the fighters is the one who killed the Israelis, knowing that only the Israeli army possesses military planes that killed, burned and destroyed Israeli areas on Oct. 7.
I used to have a video clip of an Israeli spokesperson literally admitting this in an interview, but I don't know where it is right now.

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Two brief thoughts of my own that imo should make us question the 'Hamas is a terrorist group' narrative:
  1. Why lie? If Hamas really were diabolical terrorists, why do government officials and mainstream media spread lies and exaggerations about them constantly? For example, the 40-beheaded-babies lie that Joe Biden continued to spread well after it had been proven wrong. It seems to me that this would only make sense if one was ideologically committed to painting Hamas as terrorists in order to delegitimize their resistance.
  2. Why do Hamas's prisoners look reasonably well-treated after release, while Israel's prisoners look like they've been horrifically beaten and abused, with serious physical injuries? Remember, Hamas are supposed to be evil terrorists. They are characterized as cruel, violent brutes--"savages," earlier in this thread--who simply cannot resist the genocidal urge to murder innocent Jews just for being Jewish. Yet somehow they have the discipline to treat their prisoners so well that they'll do secret handshakes for propaganda videos? That sounds more like the kind of care and discipline I would expect from a legitimate resistance group.
 
Citing secret handshakes in propaganda videos featuring hostsges as some kind of proof of hostages being taken care of is insane at best and intentionally propagandising for a fascist paramilitary at worst. Awesome, love that the person I got threatened with Congban for suggesting is evil is now posting literal Hamas apologia on a forum for a kid's video game.
 
  1. Why do Hamas's prisoners look reasonably well-treated after release, while Israel's prisoners look like they've been horrifically beaten and abused, with serious physical injuries?
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I'm not saying he's going to step down. I'm saying he should, as are a lot of the people who would normally be tying themselves in knots trying to defend him. He's obviously not going to, and he's obviously going to hand the election to Trump because of it. I'm just curious why Van Jones is able to admit it and you guys still aren't. But hey, I'm just a delusional nihilistic leftist. What do I know?

This thread is gonna be a lot of fun to revisit in November.
 
Of course they were propaganda videos, that's why I called them that in my post. It doesn't change the fact that the healthy appearance and playful behavior of the captives in the videos is completely incongruous with the narrative that these are barbaric, genocidal terrorists. Do you think Israel could have pulled off such videos with their captives? Obviously not, since their captives have been shown to be visibly tortured and injured, much like we might actually expect to see from a violent group of terrorists.

Here is an Israeli newscaster who was fired for commenting on the healthy appearance of a rescued Hamas captive.

Here are reports from Israeli prisoners that they were most afraid of being killed by Israel, not Hamas.

This is not even to say that I think Hamas treated their prisoners like honored guests. They were prisoners, and that's never going to be pleasant. And a lot of this information is not exactly easy to digest. For example, I remember reports of one released prisoner actually writing a thank you note to Hamas for treating her daughter well and not traumatizing her. I don't remember that one ever being debunked, but somehow I hesitate to believe it because it would almost be cartoonish if it were true. Maybe it is, I don't know, but the main point here is not to try to say definitively how well Hamas treated their prisoners.

Rather, the point is that if the narrative is that Hamas are evil irrational terrorists who are comparable to the IDF in how awful they are, the evidence seems shockingly weak in favor of that narrative, and there are weirdly many things that contradict that narrative.

In other words, again, maybe jumping to conclusions is not the wisest choice there.

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@ adjectivenoun not sure what point you're making with that.
 
I'm not saying he's going to step down. I'm saying he should, as are a lot of the people who would normally be tying themselves in knots trying to defend him. He's obviously not going to, and he's obviously going to hand the election to Trump because of it. I'm just curious why Van Jones is able to admit it and you guys still aren't. But hey, I'm just a delusional nihilistic leftist. What do I know?

This thread is gonna be a lot of fun to revisit in November.

You know nothing. Post bookmarked.

Why are you so giddy and hellbent on the felon winning? There is no evidence nor is there precedence to suggest such. It sounds like rooting for it at this point. Biden is the incumbent and he beat the felon already. And the criminal is probably getting sentenced to jail in two weeks.

If you are a liberal, leftist, progressive, Democrat, or anti-fascist, quit wetting the bed and get to work. Have some conviction and stand up for the President. The felon wants to destroy us all.
 
I know what is being referenced, but I don't know what the exact point being made actually is and I don't want to speculate either.
 
I know what is being referenced, but I don't know what the exact point being made actually is and I don't want to speculate either.
Presumably that the reason the hostages being shown are in decent condition is because they're the ones that survived.

While that is certainly a factor, there's also just blatant propaganda at play here too. HAMAS knows they benefit from being perceived as freedom fighters or underdogs and not as radical murderous terrorists. Are they showing us only certain hostages they've treated well while others away from the camera are being mistreated? Would they treat any of their hostages with such mercy if a thousand cameras weren't pointed at them?

None of this is to excuse Israel's actions, by the way. My position is, has always been, and will likely always remain that while HAMAS is awful, it doesn't come close to excusing an outright genocide against Gazan civilians, and that Palestine should be free both from the yoke of Israeli occupation as well as from HAMAS and any other such groups that do not have the rights and best interests of all Palestinians (including secular ones) at heart. A democratic Palestine (truly democratic, without external interference and manipulation especially from Western powers) is the only desirable outcome. I understand why HAMAS exists and the sentiments from which they draw influence, but at the end of the day they're a militant religious extremist group and there's no place for that in an equitable, progressive society. The enemy of my enemy is not always my friend; sometimes they're assholes too.
 
Presumably that the reason the hostages being shown are in decent condition is because they're the ones that survived.

While that is certainly a factor, there's also just blatant propaganda at play here too. HAMAS knows they benefit from being perceived as freedom fighters or underdogs and not as radical murderous terrorists. Are they showing us only certain hostages they've treated well while others away from the camera are being mistreated? Would they treat any of their hostages with such mercy if a thousand cameras weren't pointed at them?
These are all pretty reasonable thoughts, though I have my issues with them. But the thing I really want to ask is, are you putting these ideas forth merely as plausible explanations, or are you saying that they are guaranteed true?
 
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