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Serious The Politics Thread
- Thread starter Oglemi
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no because she is acknowledging that she is using Bob's work and attributes it to Bob
because instead of making her own fucking art that is inspired she's taking his art and creating a way to bypass him entirely and make his art with him
there isn't any real way you can do this with any good intentions outside of maybe simple exhibition. for ai art to be ethical it needs the original creator's consent and it needs to be able to tell what it used in the process
unintentional plagiarism happens but that isn't something we can control, while genAI is plagiarism we can control
im a fucking programmer too. im literally a computer science major. doesn't mean i have to agree with the bullshit this industry is heading towards.
"i'll acknowledge my bias here lol"
being a programmer doesn't mean you're biased towards AI. if you are biased towards AI, it's not because you're a programmer it's because you're cringe. there are plenty of us out here that aren't fawning over every attempt to bypass people.
the argument here is actually more nuanced than this. ai art objectively could not exist without plagiarism and without bypassing people's consent.this is proven in several directions. for one, genAI as we know it would be impossible without the datasets of billions of images of which many are not credited. secondly we have literal fucking chatlogs of genAI developers almost gleefully talking about how they skirt around copyright law. third, if you asked people if they were ok with their data being sent to AI before they actually started doing this shit, almost everyone would have said no. even mainstream normal people hate the idea of their data being used, and it is being used in this way.
you cannot have chatGPT without taking people's work without their permission. this isn't just images btw, this is true for all forms of it. when people train AI on books without asking them, they are taking it as training data without consent and regurgitating it after a process into "new material".
it'd only be ethical if the artist consented to their work being part of the AI and if the AI also gave the sources for what it used
oh my fucking god i am sick of this. this is a way we invented to teach pop science to middle-schoolers in a fun way. comparing brain processing to a computer is a fun way to get kids to think about the systems of the body. unfortuantely that isn't how biology actually works
no lol because taking a dataset and having a computer generate things from it is not the same thing as a human being inspired
humans make decisions from inspiration and incorporate it into their own ideas of the world. I like this, I like this other thing, let's brainstorm what this could look like. when I am thinking of a new story to write, I'm not just processing the data I've been given (and have ENTIRE MEMORY OF BY THE WAY), and just generate something based on that. every other sentence is something new that I am adapting to and considering using more and more context than just what is on the page. I have human experiences that I am using and is being put into the page that an AI can not ever and will never know about.
an ai is just using algorithms and logic in order to go straight to the source and produce what is asked of it. I ask it to generate a story based on something, it processes it and shits it out. It uses the dataset (mostly stuff it stole without the creator's permission btw) using the rigorous training and try to contextually make it into a few paragraphs. you can maybe consider some of the randomness and logic "decision-making", i really wouldn't.
when you ask GPT to help you with a coding problem it's not figuring out the problem, it's looking into a database of help forums it's been fed and if your problem doesn't match anything like that it's probably not going to help you at all
real talk - i dont get types like you.
what do you even really want to achieve from this conversation, anyways. your fancy AI shit is going to steal the data regardless, so aren't you happy? is it not enough that all of my friends' work has been stolen in one way or another to feed your algorithm, we gotta be happy about it too? what is the goal with trying to convince artists that we should actually be totally fine with genAI
you've basically won, have you not? literally never asked for consent in the first place before it was done, so why does it matter to you now that people actually like it
since people love using hypotheticals for the ethics of genAI here is a hypothetical Mathy
if theoretically for years tech companies were taking the data of people who didn't know it was going to be fed into an AI that would almost immediately be positioned as a way to replace their jobs did it anyways, would it be ethical?
would it be ethical if they made it so that people could type in the names of individual artists who didn't consent at all to their work being taken taking away commission work, and making them feel violated?
would it be ethical if when internet archive tried to supply books to the masses, AI scrapers took archives of books of dead and alive authors alike without their permission and fed it into their ever-growing dataset?
would it be ethical if this AI was used to create revenge p*rn of people and smear them, or in general literally just even the fucking concept holy shit
would it be ethical if a social media was feeding an AI every user's data, including data they put on it over a decade ago, almost decades ago, regardless of what they think of it now
would it be cool (not ethical, mind you) if asking the average r/technology guy about the ethics of ai would get some shit about how artists just need to suck it up and understand they're obsolete, show complete disdain for those that they are fucking over, over and over?
okay, look. idk if you've read this stuff yet when im editing this but like. i dont want to be cooking you so hard, since you're generally chill. but i gotta be honest: reading what you said just hurts.
i dont think you're a malicious person for any of this, at least i dont get that vibe. but its hard to defend genAI against people who are kinda getting fucked by it and not have it come off as condescending, insulting, and to have to ignore what AI has already done.
i dont think i can change your mind, but i hope you at least reconsider some of your positions on genAI. it's something that's already hurt and it's something that's going to hurt a lot more. legislation is nowhere in sight. it's being pushed further, more data is being taken, and while i hope its a bubble we cannot truly see the future.
its not just fun futuristic tech. its something that hurts a lot of people and is going to hurt more people. you cannot have genAI in its current existence without that. that isn't going away.
if theoretically for years tech companies were taking the data of people who didn't know it was going to be fed into an AI that would almost immediately be positioned as a way to replace their jobs did it anyways, would it be ethical?
would it be ethical if they made it so that people could type in the names of individual artists who didn't consent at all to their work being taken taking away commission work, and making them feel violated?
would it be ethical if when internet archive tried to supply books to the masses, AI scrapers took archives of books of dead and alive authors alike without their permission and fed it into their ever-growing dataset?
would it be ethical if this AI was used to create revenge p*rn of people and smear them, or in general literally just even the fucking concept holy shit
would it be ethical if a social media was feeding an AI every user's data, including data they put on it over a decade ago, almost decades ago, regardless of what they think of it now
would it be cool (not ethical, mind you) if asking the average r/technology guy about the ethics of ai would get some shit about how artists just need to suck it up and understand they're obsolete, show complete disdain for those that they are fucking over, over and over?
okay, look. idk if you've read this stuff yet when im editing this but like. i dont want to be cooking you so hard, since you're generally chill. but i gotta be honest: reading what you said just hurts.
i dont think you're a malicious person for any of this, at least i dont get that vibe. but its hard to defend genAI against people who are kinda getting fucked by it and not have it come off as condescending, insulting, and to have to ignore what AI has already done.
i dont think i can change your mind, but i hope you at least reconsider some of your positions on genAI. it's something that's already hurt and it's something that's going to hurt a lot more. legislation is nowhere in sight. it's being pushed further, more data is being taken, and while i hope its a bubble we cannot truly see the future.
its not just fun futuristic tech. its something that hurts a lot of people and is going to hurt more people. you cannot have genAI in its current existence without that. that isn't going away.
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So am I and neither do I? Sorry for assuming what you actually meant by "leftist techbro" lol I guess it just means "anyone who disagrees with me on this specific point"
I specifically argued within the framework of your post -- that AI would still be wrong/harmful even in an idealistic socialist society. How people are using it now is irrelevant as the incentive structure is completely different. To be clear, I don't believe all uses of genAI are ethical, but I don't believe they are all unethical, either. I'm less concerned with "is it inherently ethical" and more with "how can we make it ethical."
How does it work then? I'm a computer scientist, not a biologist; the burden is on you to establish the distinction here. The empirical proof you have given is based on the incentive structures of today, but that is clearly irrelevant to you because you would still make the distinction under socialism. Everything else is still just philosophical.
Where did this come from? You are reading way too much into a post that was mostly just clarifying questions
You began with stating that AI would still be unethical under socialism, which is itself a hypothetical. Most of the hypotheticals you gave are only meaningful under capitalism, so I won't be engaging with them.
No.
No, I do not think that AI makes artists obsolete, and this is not a mutually incompatible view with "not all AI is unethical"
I have barely said any of my opinions on how genAI is being used today, so if it makes you feel any better, yes replacing humans with AI for creative projects generally sucks and it also sucks that today's incentive structures are encouraging it. I was just trying to see if I could get some more nuance from what read as an absolutist stance.
Just as someone who doesn't really have a horse in this race, generally, going off like this and being pissy about all this is sorta not a good look on you. ad hominem or whatever
If you want to be reasonable and have an actual discussion, be my guest. But if you're going to just bitch off while making assumptions about people making clarification questions, I don't really see a point in you actually "arguing" with other people since it's just wasting your time and theirs
The only one of these that are only meaningful under capitalism is 1, and that's only really because I mentioned jobs. All of the rest still apply, unless I am being dumb at 1am right now.
Okay, then I will try.
This is a tough problem because the best way to make genAI more ethical would straight up be to start over, or at the very least send everyone who it scraped data from an opt-in/opt-out.
That is still problematic because say in the case of Internet Archive, that'd go to Internet Archive most likely, and Internet Archive cannot choose for every single person's thing that was on the website. It'd be easier with social media in the case of Meta feeding its user data.
But the most direct way to just make ethical AI is to start over from scratch with no dataset and train it on images that people have consented to.
Minor Improvements that could be made as steps from that in my view:
The Bare Minimum - Include sourcing on the dataset the AI uses in order to create an image. I'm aware this could get messy, but so is the mess that genAI has given to the people it stole from.
Some other things could be to allow artists to opt-out entirely from the AI but this gets tricky with scraping of social media. Which, for the record? Scraping in general needs to be straight-up banned IMO. The fact that it's the wild west is fucking insane. This would also help with sourcing as sources are more likely to be direct sourced.
Biologists don't know, is the real answer. That is part of why we know it's not like a computer.
You can't just reverse-engineer brains because they're far too complicated. We know there are signals, stimuli, connections with chemicals, and natural responses to some sort of things; some evolution elements, sleep, understanding of needs, etc. But that doesn't make it a computer, and we don't fully understand the brain, and it'll be a long ass time until we did.
All computers at their core are based on core logic and math that we can prove. Brains do not work like this, but also brains do not adapt to new stimuli in a way a computer does. A brain reacting to the stimuli of a traumatic event does not just register it and keep it as a memory, that memory and how the person reacts to it is dependent on the person and can change their view of the world entirely. This is true for positive things, negative things, funny things, the full range of emotions and feelings and memories.
People are too complex to boil down to logic gates, and everyone will have at the very least a slightly different reaction to anyone else on anything that happens.
Generative AI does not have the capability to have an opinion or emotion on things it is given. It is given data and it does not have a thought about it, it is taught through training what this means. When I say that AI images aren't the same as a human l taking inspiration, it comes down to the fact that biology doesn't work the same way.
When I see art that inspires me I don't just bring it into my brain and put it in the pile of data to use when I write next, I get emotions from it, maybe excited, maybe just happy; I relate it to other art I've seen and I think about what that art could be expanded to, what it could be. Generative AI can expand on a piece, but only insofar as it has a dataset to match a similar thing that fits together.
Everything I've written in the last few paragraphs is driven through emotitive processes and my mind trying to bring feeling into words. Is emotitive even a word? No it is not, I just made that up! When you read generated AI text it is noticably different not just because it's a newer technology, but because humans don't type so calculated, their own imperfections and personality comes out
First of all, it's not really about what you and I think, it's what the industry thinks. And what the consumer thinks. I'm not sure I trust either party there, though I trust the second more than the first.
For the second half, saying "not all (I'm going to assume you mean generative, because if we broaden the scope past generative it's not really the conversation) AI is unethical" is just extremely hard for me to agree with specifically due to how it was created.
You can argue for the potential for a genAI to exist that is ethical but it's almost impossible in our actual world and it definitely isn't the genAI we have right now. The barriers for genAI to exist without unethical behavior are things that were bypassed for a reason.
The reason I hate genAI is because of what it does and not what it could theoretically be. In a socialist society, the genAI we have today would be just as unethical because the genAI was made off of robbery and theft, not even just of artists, but of even basically everyone who's been on Facebook's data.
genAI made with credit, consent and that does not fuck over jobs, nor ruins the artistic field is okay with me, but that's a lot of caveats for something that currently breaks all four. I also do not believe it is feasible even in a socialist society. I do not think most people, regardless of capital interests, want their data to be taken into a genAI.
If people see it as a bad look then it is what it is. I've always accepted that as a very passionate person that is also autistic I am probably going to make social mistakes like this + look like shit to a lot of people, it's happened on the forum before, will happen again, and that is something I'll continue to accept; it is what it is. If it makes you dislike me, that is fair.
I find the ethics of this whole scenario quite interesting, but I had just had a quick question - don't flame me for this
Given that you think genAI is plagiarizing in a way such that it's different from unintentional plagiarism in humans - what's your opinion on unintentional plagiarism (clarification: I'm not sure which unintentional plagiarism you're referring to but typically I think of when you write something original or draw something original but it turns out somebody has already done that before)? How would you differentiate that from actual plagiarism? Would you discredit an artist who put in hours of effort to make a painting only to discover that the sky or the lake just happens to look incredibly similar to somebody else's (notably without citing since said artist believed their own piece to be 100% original)?
Edit: I do think similar things have happened in music that I haven't done extensive research into, but I'm curious about your specific thoughts on the topic
Given that you think genAI is plagiarizing in a way such that it's different from unintentional plagiarism in humans - what's your opinion on unintentional plagiarism (clarification: I'm not sure which unintentional plagiarism you're referring to but typically I think of when you write something original or draw something original but it turns out somebody has already done that before)? How would you differentiate that from actual plagiarism? Would you discredit an artist who put in hours of effort to make a painting only to discover that the sky or the lake just happens to look incredibly similar to somebody else's (notably without citing since said artist believed their own piece to be 100% original)?
Edit: I do think similar things have happened in music that I haven't done extensive research into, but I'm curious about your specific thoughts on the topic
You can in Sulo’s dms
There are
For those of you who've watched Squid Game, you may be familiar with this:
As a result of the fact that its been associated with death, the first 4 notes (G, F#, G, E) has been used frequently to bring forward feelings of death, or suspense relating to death
It was featured in many other pieces of media, if you keep an eye out. I recall hearing it in the Lion King, as well as the aforementioned Squid Game
~~
I’m sure there are more examples too but this comes to mind
There’s also that Ava Max girl who does it a lot she’s gas
Unintentional plagiarism, to me, is defined as basically being plagiarism but without thinking of it as being it.
I think to illustrate this concept, a practical example is in order:
Say you were, in good faith, writing about a historical event. Maybe it's for an assignment, maybe it's for an article, any reason really. In most cases, a writer will of course read about said historical event, often times using any sources possible, including other written versions of the story. You read another essay about a similar topic.
When you go to write your own take on the events, you find that your writing is extremely, extremely similar to the work you'd read just an hour ago.
This is something that I've actually had happen to me once or twice when doing essays. Sometimes when you're covering a topic and you read another work, you get invested in it and thus when you try to write it out it turns out in basically the same way; in these cases I have to scrap it and try again, sometimes even picking a different topic.
To be clear, this is not just writing your own version of the factual events of what happened, because that is not plagiarism. Every person has their own mannerisms and there are so many ways you can write about the same event, it'll be obvious when you've put someone else's subtleties into your own work if you are being careful about this sort of thing.
While this can have some weird shaky parts, plagiarism can only really be plagiarism when the person is doing it with direct knowledge of the source material.
Plagiarism as a word almost always implies that you already know of the ideas, otherwise it's just... reinventing stuff. That isn't plagiarism because while that already exists, you didn't know about it. Reinventing stuff isn't plagiarism, but it might make people think you did-a-plagiarism, unfortunately. This is something that creates some subjectivity between people on if certain things can in good faith be accidentally just making the same idea, or in bad faith just plagiarism.
Unlike accidental plagiarism, plagiarism-plagiarism is people taking people's work and saying it is their own.
If I presented a photo of Pikachu and claimed I made this picture, it'd be plagiarism. It'd be uh... A pretty stupid attempt at it, but it'd be an attempt at plagiarism nonetheless. A more practical example:
Sorry for shitty quality, this is indeed a low-quality screencap of a Youtube video. This was an infamous case where Sony hired a plagiarist who traced entire animations over with the things they were supposed to draw instead. This is clearly plagiarism, and it can't be chalked up to being an accident because that'd be an insane, insane, insane coincidence considering the animation and how it directly links up.
No.
I don't know enough about music so I'd probably defer to what musicians think. Generally if I don't know if something is likely plagiarism or not (and I have reason to think so at all) due to lack of knowledge, I will always ask or see what people who are experts of their field are saying, and if there is disagreement among them I'd just wait for more information.
They'll know the workflow, what's common, what are signs of plagiarism, etc. much more than I will.
Well Mark Robinson remains in the NC governor race, which means NC is officially in play for Harris as he just tanks the GOP ticket. Wont go into details of his most recent scandal, but its hard to pick a worst candidate to put on a ticket during a presidential election in a potential swing state.
OK I will try to answer the rest in the same framework
being taken away commission work only means anything if there is a profit motive. if there is no profit motive then nothing is stopping the artist from doing art just for the heck of it. if someone chooses to use AI in a community project over something manmade then i would consider that a bit rude and not something i would do
definitely yes if there is attribution, not sure otherwise. While it is nice to ask, most derivative works as it stands now don't ask for any sort of "consent" and I wouldn't hold this sort of thing to a different standard.
this is probably alluding to something real and tbh too lazy to figure out what "data" means in this context so to be safe i'll just say no
Not going to comment more on the human brain vs machine debate other than that it's an interesting read and i just dont have as strong feelings either way
Ok, first of all, regarding the sexual assaults, I'm just going to link you to the UN report on that subject.
https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/03/1147217
The report found that there were "reasonable grounds to believe" that multiple instances of sexual violence occurred during the October 7 attacks. While this is not the same thing as "beyond a reasonable doubt", there was nothing wrong with my original statement that Hamas allegedly sexually assaulted dozens of women.
As for the rest of your post, I fully disagree with your assertion that we cannot cast judgement on Hamas because we are a group of Euroamericans living thousands of miles away from the conflict. The fact is, regardless of the circumstances, massacring civilians is wrong. Taking human hostages is wrong. (Allegedly) sexually assaulting dozens of women is wrong. Yes, the Palestinian people have been under oppression by Israel for decades. No, this does not mean that what Hamas did is right or justified. War crimes don't cease to be war crimes because the people who committed them were oppressed. Evil being committed does not justify more evil being committed; two wrongs don't make a right.
Why not? Why can't we make a judgement on what is right or wrong on the Palestinian side just because we're not there on the ground with them? Why can't we weigh up the facts we do have and make a determination based on those? You're clearly not trying to make the argument that there is no concept of right or wrong in this conflict, else you wouldn't be able to criticise Israel's actions in Gaza as wrong. Fundamentally, Hamas' actions on October 7th must fall into the sphere of either being right or being wrong (depending on the extent to which the circumstances justify the means), and while we may not have access to *all* the information on the ground, why can't we make a judgement based on the fact we *do* have access to in this conflict?
For what it's worth, I fully agree with the International Court of Justice's ruling a couple of months ago, I also agree with the UN's demand for Israel to end its occupation of Gaza and the West Bank a couple of days ago, and I one day do hope for liberation and peace to come to Palestine. In that sense, I am pro-Palestinian. However, I still do not believe that Hamas' actions on October 7th were right, and I will still condemn them as a result of that. Fundamentally, I don't think there's a contradiction between being pro-Palestinian and anti-Hamas. Just wanted to put that out there because I realise that I haven't explicitly voiced support for Palestine in any of my posts so far (just condemned what I see as wrong on either side).
Update: it would appear they're broadly standing WITH Robinson and calling this a left wing smear campaign, at least at the state scale. Lol, lmao even
We have parliament elections next sunday in Austria
Far right party FPÖ and conservative (currently governing) party ÖVP are pretty close in surveys
I voted social democrat last couple of years but idk man, they are unable to govern and unable to organize themselves. Greens are very opportunistic but they are reliable in ecological and infrastructural issues, so I think I'll vote for them. KPÖ (commies) have some very legitimate points but I cannot support a party that's paid by Russia
Migration is a big point and having served my civic service duty in a refugee home, I'd say it's a legal problem mostly. The current laws about migration feel like they're specifically designed to frustate people and to make society as unsafe as possible. Right of residence can be taken away by authorities without justification and it categorically affects exclusively immigrants that are trying to fit in, as ones in legal troubles are protected from deportations. There needs to be a reform that enables active students, workers, people with good scoring on language tests... a stable right to remain and for people without longterm statuses that are caught in violent crimes to be deported
Right wing parties don't want to touch this as they're reliant on crimes by immigrants to ensure their existence. SPÖ are waaaaay to incompetent to find solutions. I can imagine the Greens to maybe tackle this as the current secretary of law is the smartest person in our gov and they aren't reliant on immigration
Beyond that, infrastructure is pretty important to me and I can see the Greens taking care of that. We need to upkeep that, I don't want my country to end up like Germany. Education is very important too but no one has anything in that direction so idk man
I am honestly not that afraid of the far right in this scenario. It's a party of alcoholics without impulse control. They never managed to stay in gov for longer than 2-3 years and always failed to get their ideas executed (mostly because they lack understanding of the process and don't know how to work within the confines of our constitution but oh well). Our president is also pretty reasonable and is willing to break apart the gov if something too radical comes up. So yeah let's see
Far right party FPÖ and conservative (currently governing) party ÖVP are pretty close in surveys
I voted social democrat last couple of years but idk man, they are unable to govern and unable to organize themselves. Greens are very opportunistic but they are reliable in ecological and infrastructural issues, so I think I'll vote for them. KPÖ (commies) have some very legitimate points but I cannot support a party that's paid by Russia
Migration is a big point and having served my civic service duty in a refugee home, I'd say it's a legal problem mostly. The current laws about migration feel like they're specifically designed to frustate people and to make society as unsafe as possible. Right of residence can be taken away by authorities without justification and it categorically affects exclusively immigrants that are trying to fit in, as ones in legal troubles are protected from deportations. There needs to be a reform that enables active students, workers, people with good scoring on language tests... a stable right to remain and for people without longterm statuses that are caught in violent crimes to be deported
Right wing parties don't want to touch this as they're reliant on crimes by immigrants to ensure their existence. SPÖ are waaaaay to incompetent to find solutions. I can imagine the Greens to maybe tackle this as the current secretary of law is the smartest person in our gov and they aren't reliant on immigration
Beyond that, infrastructure is pretty important to me and I can see the Greens taking care of that. We need to upkeep that, I don't want my country to end up like Germany. Education is very important too but no one has anything in that direction so idk man
I am honestly not that afraid of the far right in this scenario. It's a party of alcoholics without impulse control. They never managed to stay in gov for longer than 2-3 years and always failed to get their ideas executed (mostly because they lack understanding of the process and don't know how to work within the confines of our constitution but oh well). Our president is also pretty reasonable and is willing to break apart the gov if something too radical comes up. So yeah let's see
~ the un statement u linked here is a request for cooperation from the zionist entity to conduct a full investigation into potential acts of sexual violence on october 7, based on a preliminary report. if you actually look at the report (which is linked on the webpage u posted), you will see for example item 48, "there was a lack of access to first-hand testimonies of survivors/victims of sexual violence. while the number of survivors/victims remains unknown... the mission team was not able to interview any of these survivors/victims."
[since the zionist entity p much never cooperates with any un request to anything, it is unlikely that the un's request to investigate further would ever be granted.]
the claims about "dozens" of survivors/victims of sexual assault on oct 7 are clearly taken from the bogus "reporting" by the nytimes and other amerikan media. when the nytimes hires a white nationalist who has zero journalism experience to do a story on supposed widespread sexual violence on october 7, and when this "reporting" is then circulated and repeated all over the amerikan media, this needs to be called out for the bullshit propoganda that it is.
as i said, we all live in a world that normalizes gender violence, and no organization is immune to being influenced by that. eg, anyone who has been around certain sections of "the left" has probably encountered someone talking about an SL policy to execute members of its army found to have committed an act of sexual assault. i do not have historical knowledge abt that but the normalization of gender violence is a reality that every org faces everywhere, and a situation where hostages are taken presents greater opportunity for sexual violence.
at the same time, every indication suggests that to whatever extent some ppl did sexually assault israeli settlers on oct 7, it does not come anywhere close to the systematic abuse torture and rape of palestinian political prisoners by israeli pigs, see eg https://www.btselem.org/publications/202408_welcome_to_hell
this is not to say that any instances of sexual violence on oct 7 dont matter, but it is important to contextualize the forces involved. patriarchy is everywhere and the normalization of gender violence is something we all have to deal with, but hamas is not the source of that normalization. there is zero indication that sexual violence was a 'primary characteristic' of the october 7 prison break, but it unambiguously is a primary characteristic of israeli pigs' treatment of palestinian political prisoners.
~ we do not have sufficient access to the facts to be able to evaluate the strategies or tactics of the october 7 prisonbreak. i mean one could take a pure pacifist position and j say all violence is "wrong" in any situation and palestinians "should" just lay down and allow themselves and each other to be wiped off the earth, but this sort of moralization is obv inherently removed from the actual material situation, and it also comes from a specific class position ie that it is not you, your family and your people who are facing genocide. no one is treating deaths or hostage taking as something to drink champagne over but it is not possible to resist a genocide with no casualties. in the words of fanon, "National liberation, national renaissance, the restoration of nationhood to the people, commonwealth: whatever may be the headings used or the new formulas introduced, decolonization is always a violent phenomenon".
hostages werent taken on october 7 for no reason just to take pleasure in violence, it was (presumably) a tactical choice eg aiming to make a prisoner swap for at least some portion of the thousands of palestinian political prisoners who are tortured and raped on a daily basis. also perhaps hoping that it would place some limitations on the military retaliation by the zionist entity since even if the settler society does not as a whole give two shits about palestinian genocide, there is concern from the families of the hostages and so on. to be clear im j listing these as examples of tactical considerations in relation to your 'objection' to taking hostages. whether a prisoner swap could in fact have been on the table, whether the presence of hostages would actually limit the genocidal retaliation in any way, any future prediction is always somewhat speculative and its even more absurdly speculative for us to talk about from thousands of miles away. but for us to be taking positions on what tactical and strategic options we think were and werent available and dictating what this or that portion of a prisonbreak should or shouldnt have done, in a context where journalists are effectively banned from gaza like, we are j in no place to make any of these sorts of evaluations.
also even if we were in a position to evaluate any such thing it literally means nothing because we have no influence on the strategies/tactics of the palestinian resistance, its just posturing and presenting ourselves as the "moral high ground" or whatever. what we do have (some) influence over is 1 our own governments providing the weapons for the palestinian genocide etc 2 the ideological side, 'the discourse' etc and 3 how palestinians, arabs and muslims are treated within our own societies (including on smogon).
and tbc i can 'agree' (but my opinion means nothing) that there is some 'validity' to "ethics of war" type issues, and for example criticism of the orientation of "total war" employed by european nations in wwi and wwii & was then carried further in the genocides in korea vietnam cambodia committed by the us imperialist army. but, the particular boundaries of "war ethics" type issues cant rly be determined externally, only the palestinian resistance is in a position to meaningfully evaluate if there are certain tactics that 'cross a line' or etc. maybe u think thats problematic bc then no one can "hold them accountable" or w e but in reality thats true regardless, euroamerikans moral posturing and giving platitudes about war ethics does nothing other than propogate a fantasy world in which white humanist moral philosophy and UN reports and declarations are determinative factors in the palestinian genocide and/or in the resistance to that genocide.
Meanwhile Robert Wood representing the USA is actively blaming Iran and Hezbollah.
For Israel’s provocations.
How long is this running defence for Israel in the UNGA going to be allowed?
Even Britain is baulking at these escalations.
For Israel’s provocations.
How long is this running defence for Israel in the UNGA going to be allowed?
Even Britain is baulking at these escalations.
I've got a question for you (or anyone is this thread). A genuine question because I'm curious what people here think.
Where do you realistically see the state of the West Bank and Gaza in the next year, or next 5 years? Maybe 10?
Israel is looking like it could be gearing up for a full-scale invasion of some of its neighbors in the near future (see: the detonating pagers throughout Lebanon), an endeavor which the United States will probably support absent much stronger pressure from the international community. Something has got to give, and I assume that it's not going to be American support for the Zionist project.
I'm definitely cynical about the situation in Palestine. I'd love to see either an equitable two-state solution or a democratic one-state solution come about, reparations paid to Palestinians affected by the conflict and the decades of subjugation that came before it, and a dismantling of the Israeli settler-colonial project. I'm not naive enough to believe it will actually happen.
Best case scenario, pressure from leftists and student protests forces liberal western governments to stop or at least reassess continuing to arm Israel. Israel is forced to withdraw from Gaza and the West Bank, but total withholding of all arms is extremely unlikely and the Israeli government has displayed no desire for lasting peace outside of the total elimination of the Palestinian identity, so the Israeli settler-colonial project doesn't really go anywhere. No reparations are made beyond at best some humanitarian assistence to Palestine to help them 'rebuild', and likely not even that from the U.S. Things simply simmer down to the usual status quo of subjugation and oppression for a while until something else happens that causes them to boil over a gain and we wash, rinse, repeat. Thousands of Palestinians are already dead and economic damage to Gaza is incalculable, so it might already be too late. The powder keg might already be lit.
Somewhere in the middle, western governments, especially the U.S. continue their current charade of perhaps waving a disapproving finger at the Israeli state when they do something particularly horrific while continuing to supply them with weapons of all kinds. Israel continues its ethnic cleansing, almost certainly killing or displacing the remaining population of Gaza, and then establishes Israeli settlements on the ruins. At best, as essentially a PR stunt, some Palestinians may be allowed to live under the iron fist of full Israeli occupation as second-class citizens, much as many do in Israeli territory already. Whether that cleansing extends in full force to the West Bank remains to be seen, but if they don't face any serious consequences for their actions in Gaza, why wouldn't they move into the West Bank as well? There might be some continued escalation between Israel and Iran/Hezbollah but no full-scale conflict arises out of it; they understand the threat of Big Swingin' Dick America getting involved and the disastrous consequences all around.
Nightmare scenario, Israel continues to receive military aid, succeeds in its ethnic cleansing of Palestine, and the consequences thereof lead to escalating conflicts with Iran and Hezbollah until a full-scale war breaks out. Israel doesn't have the capacity to launch a full-scale invasion of Iran; they don't really even have the capacity to invade Lebanon. If such a conflict seems imminent, the U.S. has essentially three choices. Let Iran and Hezbollah wipe Israel off the map, or at the very least let Israel suffer through a bloody and costly war that at best ends in a Pyrrhic victory right after showering the American public with affirmations that Israel has the right to defend itself and America will always stand by them; negotiate a peace deal between a state it sees as a staunch ally and groups it sees as either rogue states or terrorist organizations (not something America has historically been very good at); or military intervention on behalf of Israel. I don't think I need to tell you which one of those is most likely.
I don't know much about the geography and military capacity of Lebanon. I do know that more than half of Iran is covered by high mountain ranges littered with bunkers and tunnel networks. An invasion of Iran would be exponentially more costly than the invasion of Iraq or the occupation of Afghanistan, both in terms of monetary losses and human life. I'm not under any illusion that Iran would ultimately win against the full might of the American empire, but they can certainly jack up the price of victory, and that's to say nothing of possible Chinese involvement by proxy. Even as we seek to weaken Chinese global influence, they no doubt would love an opportunity to weaken ours. I don't think an invasion of Iran would lead to open conflict with China, but I also don't think they would pass up the opportunity to arm Iran, or to take advantage of such a conflict to further erode America's already (justifiably) deteriorating global image.
I don't see a realistic "good outcome", but I also don't see why that means I should advocate for a bad one. I'm going to keep advocating with what little voice I have for sanctions on Israel, equal rights to be granted to Palestine, and reparations for the damage caused by the apartheid system Israel perpetrated against Palestinians, because at the end of the day, maybe I'm wrong, and maybe there is hope.
Best case scenario, pressure from leftists and student protests forces liberal western governments to stop or at least reassess continuing to arm Israel. Israel is forced to withdraw from Gaza and the West Bank, but total withholding of all arms is extremely unlikely and the Israeli government has displayed no desire for lasting peace outside of the total elimination of the Palestinian identity, so the Israeli settler-colonial project doesn't really go anywhere. No reparations are made beyond at best some humanitarian assistence to Palestine to help them 'rebuild', and likely not even that from the U.S. Things simply simmer down to the usual status quo of subjugation and oppression for a while until something else happens that causes them to boil over a gain and we wash, rinse, repeat. Thousands of Palestinians are already dead and economic damage to Gaza is incalculable, so it might already be too late. The powder keg might already be lit.
Somewhere in the middle, western governments, especially the U.S. continue their current charade of perhaps waving a disapproving finger at the Israeli state when they do something particularly horrific while continuing to supply them with weapons of all kinds. Israel continues its ethnic cleansing, almost certainly killing or displacing the remaining population of Gaza, and then establishes Israeli settlements on the ruins. At best, as essentially a PR stunt, some Palestinians may be allowed to live under the iron fist of full Israeli occupation as second-class citizens, much as many do in Israeli territory already. Whether that cleansing extends in full force to the West Bank remains to be seen, but if they don't face any serious consequences for their actions in Gaza, why wouldn't they move into the West Bank as well? There might be some continued escalation between Israel and Iran/Hezbollah but no full-scale conflict arises out of it; they understand the threat of Big Swingin' Dick America getting involved and the disastrous consequences all around.
Nightmare scenario, Israel continues to receive military aid, succeeds in its ethnic cleansing of Palestine, and the consequences thereof lead to escalating conflicts with Iran and Hezbollah until a full-scale war breaks out. Israel doesn't have the capacity to launch a full-scale invasion of Iran; they don't really even have the capacity to invade Lebanon. If such a conflict seems imminent, the U.S. has essentially three choices. Let Iran and Hezbollah wipe Israel off the map, or at the very least let Israel suffer through a bloody and costly war that at best ends in a Pyrrhic victory right after showering the American public with affirmations that Israel has the right to defend itself and America will always stand by them; negotiate a peace deal between a state it sees as a staunch ally and groups it sees as either rogue states or terrorist organizations (not something America has historically been very good at); or military intervention on behalf of Israel. I don't think I need to tell you which one of those is most likely.
I don't know much about the geography and military capacity of Lebanon. I do know that more than half of Iran is covered by high mountain ranges littered with bunkers and tunnel networks. An invasion of Iran would be exponentially more costly than the invasion of Iraq or the occupation of Afghanistan, both in terms of monetary losses and human life. I'm not under any illusion that Iran would ultimately win against the full might of the American empire, but they can certainly jack up the price of victory, and that's to say nothing of possible Chinese involvement by proxy. Even as we seek to weaken Chinese global influence, they no doubt would love an opportunity to weaken ours. I don't think an invasion of Iran would lead to open conflict with China, but I also don't think they would pass up the opportunity to arm Iran, or to take advantage of such a conflict to further erode America's already (justifiably) deteriorating global image.
I don't see a realistic "good outcome", but I also don't see why that means I should advocate for a bad one. I'm going to keep advocating with what little voice I have for sanctions on Israel, equal rights to be granted to Palestine, and reparations for the damage caused by the apartheid system Israel perpetrated against Palestinians, because at the end of the day, maybe I'm wrong, and maybe there is hope.
I think your post is good but to clarify, neither Iran nor Israel have the capacity to hit each other in any meaningful way (besides Israel nuking Iran's major cities I guess). Recently-ish Iran fired hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel and virtually zero of them reached Israel. Many were shot down by US allies like Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Even counting Hezbollah Iran utterly lacks the ability to "wipe Israel off the map".
Additionally, Iran and Hezbollah both seem unwilling to engage in total war with Israel. Neither side has infinite resources and pushing that to the limit could risk either regime's existence. There are very few realistic scenarios where US boots would be on the ground in Israel but even the mild threat of the US getting involved seems to be useful in keeping Iran and Hezbollah from going all in. A US invasion of Iran is never going to happen lol, no political party wants it.
Tbh I can't see a scenario where Israel's enemies do much more than shake their fists and launch symbolic but ineffective attacks. Israel can defend itself, has allies in the area, and is backed by the world's most powerful superpower. It would never reach a point where Israel would face annihilation even in the most pessimistic scenario.
This is of course a loaded question.
I hope we get to that two state solution and we get the state of Palestine, safe and secure, within its 1967 borders alongside a safe and secure Israel.
We absolutely will not get there with the current state of affairs, where Israel is literally on the ground enacting a one state solution by way of genocide.
The United States repeatedly says it supports the two state solution, whilst militarily supporting the one state solution.
So to answer your question: I don’t know what the future holds, but for humanity’s sake, and perhaps the soul of Israel, I hope what happens is a damn sight closer to what I envisage (two legitimate states living alongside each other) than what Benjamin Netanahyu is currently carrying out.
It is generally accepted by people with far more intelligence and knowledge than myself (including one Scott Ritter) that Iran’s attack on Israel, which was carefully planned to minimise civilian casualties deliberately and used minimal amounts of their latest weapons technology, was in fact an Iran “win” by way of identifying Israel’s weaknesses, one such weakness being that they are supremely reliant on the USA, Britain, Jordan and Saudi Arabia all playing ball with their own militaries.
I personally don’t put much stock in the pro Israel line where the warfare is concerned - it is quite obvious Iran’s attack was to strength test Israel’s defences and get appropriate intelligence.
- Status