Israeli settlers are despicable, but even in current government those who support them are minority freaks(who Hamas has empowered very much after October 7th).
Also it is a two way street, there is also a problem of Palestinian settlers, which while I do want to highlight is separate and in no way justifies the Israeli ones, is still a real problem and harnesses a lot of bad publicity when Israel destroys said illegal settlements.
Sure, they only have several ministers in the government, Likud politicians show up at settler events, they keep changing the laws to be more in favor of settlers, etc etc...
As for Palestinian settlers, where would those even be?
What? Settlers are totally tolerated and supported by the state. Look at Ariel, it is a fully established town settled almost 50 years ago with a university that operates in every practical way as part of Israel. If you think the government doesn't support them, what would support look like?
I don’t think we can truly compare the missile attacks of Hamas vs the bombing campaigns of Israel
Look at any photo of any neighborhood in Israel, is there anywhere that remotely looks similar to the pile of rocks that Gaza looks like now?
Universities, hospitals, so much infrastructure, all gone. So much of Gaza is now people living in tents. Israel destroyed so much civilian infrastructure that existed.
Look, I don't disagree, but American cities looked pretty fine after WWII, and Germany was rubble. Which side gets pounded more doesn't inherently prove which side was right.
(In this case, I'm of the opinion that both sides committed clear, deliberate war crimes.)
Germany invaded most of Europe and left much of it in rubble. You're picking a very weird, specific comparison (German vs. US cities) and leaving out the obvious comparison (German vs. Soviet or Polish cities).
Also, comparing Nazi Germany, a massively powerful industrial state, with a tiny, poor territory under foreign occupation by a vastly superior power is insane.
Gaza began the war with a more powerful army than many European countries: more soldiers, more rockets, more war-fighting infrastructure. Gaza wasn't a particularly poor place before the war, certainly not by the standards of the middle east. It had mansions and average salaries that, for some professions, were higher than average salaries in Israel. It was a net food exporter.
I claimed Hamas had a larger and more powerful military than many European countries. This is a fact.
> What? You mean countries like Monaco and Liechtenstein?
No, my claim is much stronger. I mean Hamas's army was comparable to countries like Denmark (20k active soldiers), Finland, the Czech republic (27k active) and maybe even the Netherlands (40k active). Estimates of the size of Hamas's army pre October 7 range from 20k to 40k active combatants, with US intelligence estimates converging on 30k. This is looking just at fighters and excludes Hamas's political wing.
> Simply counting the # of soldiers or rockets is disingenuous when this is obviously an asymmetric war.
Counting things like soldiers and military arsenals is the standard way to evaluate military strength. And of course there is a force asymmetry, Israel is a global power and its air force is probably the second most effective in the world. That doesn't mean we shouldn't evaluate Gaza's military the way we would any other.
> Please explain what you mean by "war-fighting infrastructure ".
Well, for example, Hamas built the largest underground military tunnel system in the known world, a vast standing army numbering in the tens of thousands, gathered plenty of intelligence on Israel, militarized their population, and has a history of combat, for starters. But it goes way beyond this, and extends to the broad financial and military support they enjoyed from the IRGC.
> "Depends on what you mean by "standards of the Middle East", but just compare Israel($52k) and Gaza ($3455) for 2023:"
I'm not comparing it to Israel, which is a standout in the middle east, and among the most technologically developed countries in the world. I'm comparing it to other middle eastern countries. It wasn't exactly destitute, despite its murderous, anti-woman, anti-gay, and antiy-jew jihadi philosophy. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DE-xjBRKkPL/
> It's clear that the method of combatant recognition employed by the IDF is flawed, given they're killing aid workers and people from the UN.
Have you considered that the some aid workers were also Hamas militants? Or that the UN, through UNRWA, employed Hamas militants? Many of the so-called aid-workers israel killed turned out to actually have been part of Hamas. There is unfortunately extensive evidence that UN employees participated in the 10/7 attacks and the subsequent fighting. And Hamas uses world central kitchen and other aid organization vehicles and infrastructure, so distinguishing is not easy in the first place.
> How did you develop your understanding of this situation? And what are you trying to communicate here?
I have developed my understanding of this situation from decades of study on this topic, and at least a thousand of hours of research over the past 2.5 years. In the span of 15 years, I've gone from leading so-called pro Palestine rallies to my current positions. What I am trying to communicate is that reality is more nuanced than many (including a younger version of me) like to think. Reality is nuanced, and at odds with the picture you paint.
I don't see how that's relevant to the earlier claim, but even this claim of yours is a gross overstatement.
There was a partial blockade, not a full blockade, and this partial blockade came after Palestinians launched the second intifada. Prior to the october 7 massacre, perpetrated by Hamas and gazan civilians, tens of thousands of gazans were able to travel out of gaza through egypt and israel, where many of them worked. nearly 75,000 truckloads of food and cargo went into gaza from israel in 2022. Gaza exported lots too.
My point is that Israel had full control about exactly what Gaza was allowed to import and export (and frequently used those controls for collective punishment as well)
I don't quite see how under those circumstances, they were able to build "a more powerful army than many European countries", unless you talk about Luxembourg or the Vatican.
Yes, Israel and Egypt together controlled what Gaza was allowed to import and export - not as a form of collective punishment, but to ensure its own security. There's a huge difference between that and a "full blockade" (which is what Russia did to Mariupol early in the war), so precision matters.
In terms of Hamas's army being more powerful than that of many European countries, I'll respond to that below.
And the Wikipedia article you cite has been manipulated by a band of ideological editors and is not reliable, and has no value (inverse value?) as a citation.
> Look at any photo of any neighborhood in Israel, is there anywhere that remotely looks similar to the pile of rocks that Gaza looks like now?
I'm not pro Israel, especially not after this report, but your point is silly. The US has sold billions in defense weapons/tools to prevent rockets from hitting Israel. Gaza did not have access to the same defenses. That is why the outcomes look different.
There is a normal process in place for importers/brokers to request refunds if a specific tariff was overpaid or a tariff was ruled to be illegal.
But if you imported through DHL and you were not the broker, that is more complicated, you might need to ask DHL for it, and they might not want to do it for you (as they don't have a standard process in place).
Drawback claims (assuming this is the correct thing to use) are quite difficult to do. Requires a customs broker. You used to be able to file them manually as a normal person but they ended that when the first 25% tariffs on China went into play. You need to be a customs broker to get access to the software you need to file the claim...
I spent a bit of time attempting to find a broker [1] to handle this for our project (since we had a large amount of eligible refunds due to importing then sending out of country after QA) but in the long run gave up...which is what they hope for.
Keeping an eye on all this to see how it plays out.
[1] Not only did I look for a broker but I debated becoming one myself due to this.
I would love for a self-service broker to materialize.
i.e. Where you upload your paperwork, fill in and certify the forms online, make a payment, and the broker just feeds all that through. You do the work, they're just your gateway to the system.
I've used courier's internal brokers (like DHL/UPS offer, at their ripoff rate), professional private brokers, etc. and seen all of them make stupid mistakes costing me money/time (eg. including the shipping cost in value for duties, transposing the wrong currency at face value, etc). I could do a better job myself, and frankly with a decent portal it would take me less time. Heck I bet I could build a fairly automated system that is more efficient (higher-margin) and accurate.
Here in Canada there's new legislation that even if you use a third party broker, you still need to post a security or bond with CBSA (see CARM) maintained on an annual basis. It boggles my mind they made the infrastructure to deal with money from all the individual buyers, but not a self-service portal to deal with the forms. Self-clearing here still entails a physical visit to a CBSA office.
You assume that the executive branch would willingly follow the court decision. I think it's naive (doubly so for the current administration) and it's more likely that the tariffs will be re-introduced under a different sauce and that refund requests will not be processed using some flimsy excuses.
Still falls flat when it comes to metadata privacy. Just having multiple nodes distributed geographically that listen for packets would give you the ability to narrow down the location of a specific identity dramatically, even if you're not in range of their device.
That's not my recollection of the events. I think "showed us who he really was" is just the FUD spread by the Liberals. I have left leaning friends and their opinions of PP are totally disconnected from the reality of what he says and does, they are just repeating the talking points they get from their circle.
Nobody wants to debate actual policy and basically we ended up with a different conservative, Carney, whose actual policies are in my opinion iffy ans his performance the same. Scare tactics are easier than policy debate.
I mean… we elect leaders to represent us and protect our country. If the other guy looked like he was willing to give the country away, well, that means he wasn’t the best person for the job. Trump rhetoric just showed us how ready Pierre Pollievre was to lead us: aka, he wasn’t.
Also Canadian here (I've been using this account for years despite the name though).
The above poster is correct that Canada also has a lot of problems. I lived in the U.S. for 20 years and probably would have stayed if I could have. For many people, moving to the U.S. was seen as highly desirable for a long time, especially for tech workers.
I've noticed the reverse is true since around the start of Trump's presidency (not for tech workers though, at least not yet).
I also agree with the suggestion that Canada is at risk of falling into fascism as well.. we were a razor's edge away from electing our own version of Trump in our most recent election almost a year ago... funnily enough, Trump's talk of annexing Canada shortly before the election swung the polls enough that the Liberals were able to retain power (and fortunately, with a minority government that gives our 2 social democratic parties some political sway even with only a handful of MPs).
Now there may be more Canadians coming back (and American refugees coming) that the tide has noticeably shifted.
The message sent, perhaps more accurately, was that the USofA electorate fully bought into the Trump / Project 2025 framing of the "problems" facing the USofA.
eg:
> People don’t want an open border. Not in America, not anywhere else.
And yet recently prior administrations famously did enforce contempory border protections and prioritised chasing down people with actual criminal records.
Past administrations, eg. the Republican Eisenhower, have been in favour of open borders for the cheap labour and boost to the agricultural industry.
His often cited border enforcement operation was undertaken at the request of the Mexican government who were losing labor to US agribusiness.
All that aside, the USofA Democrat party has a messaging and PR problem of epic proportions and the USofA has spiralled into a two party Hotelling's Law cesspit despite the founders largely disliking party politics - a fundemental flaw in the forward iteration of an "adequate for now" electoral system centuries old.
Sure, recent past administrations enforced border protections and prioritized deporting immigrants with criminal records. And that’s irrelevant.
The Biden administration did neither. They took active measures to strip the Customs and Border Protection Agency of its scope and authority through executive order from their first day in office. Their policies directly led to over 2.4 million border encounters in 2023 alone, the most ever recorded in the history of the country.
This wasn’t policy they campaigned on or announced. It wasn’t something the American people wanted, and it polled terribly even among Democrats. But they did it anyway.
Conversely, Trump had the voter’s mandate to secure the border when he entered office, but he’s managed it so poorly, created terrible optics, and has Democrats marching in the streets in every major U.S. city in support of illegal immigration. The Republicans make the Democrats look like PR masters by comparison.
This appears to be a partisan statement subject to data source and bias. eg:
The Biden administration took office amid heightened debate in some circles over the merits and tactics of deportations, yet it is on track to carry out as many removals and returns as the Trump administration did.
The 1.1 million deportations since the beginning of fiscal year (FY) 2021 through February 2024 (the most recent data available) are on pace to match the 1.5 million deportations carried out during the four years President Donald Trump was in office. These deportations are in addition to the 3 million expulsions of migrants crossing the border irregularly that occurred under the pandemic-era Title 42 order between March 2020 and May 2023—the vast majority of which occurred under the Biden administration.
Combining deportations with expulsions and other actions to block migrants without permission to enter the United States, the Biden administration’s nearly 4.4 million repatriations are already more than any single presidential term since the George W. Bush administration (5 million in its second term).
> Their policies directly led to over 2.4 million border encounters in 2023 alone, the most ever recorded in the history of the country.
Their policies or global events? Either way the sheer number of recorded border ecounters speaks to them being out and about and actively encountering people on the border ... when thought about, that's hardly a bad thing - it sounds more as if they were getting the job done.
To be clear, I have zero interest in debating this aside from noting it's hardly clearcut.
> The Republicans make the Democrats look like PR masters by comparison.
They are indeed superlative propagandadists, on this we can agree ...
they are, however, in a view from afar, falling well short of actually making middle North America great again, gutting essential infrastructure maintainance, etc. etc.
But few will ever know given they've also gutted many of the means of tracking the state of the country, the state of the environment, the activities of their administration.
Counting deportations is half the equation. If Biden was deporting roughly as many people as Trump, but there are 4X as many people crossing the border, it wasn’t good enforcement. Look at net illegal immigration to get the impact, and it’s estimated the number of illegal immigrants increased by 3.5 million people during Biden’s term.
You say "illegal immigrants" to describe people that had border contact, made application, and were allowed into the USofA as "as yet documented" applicants.
People that, for the most part, committed no crime, made no attempt to hide, paid taxes, ran businesses, and employed others.
Yes, Obama increased deportations, and deported people at a faster rate than Trump. But that’s completely irrelevant when we’re talking about the Biden administration, who did not continue this policy, who reversed it, who allowed an unprecedented number of illegal immigrants through his executive orders and policy set by Mayorkas, with many millions more granted asylum status with reduced vetting. This was not reported by the news media until it inevitably reached crisis level.
The very fact that Obama deported more immigrants, and Trump is deporting fewer but with riots in the streets should clue you in to the effect that media has over you.
> The very fact that Obama deported more immigrants, and Trump is deporting fewer but with riots in the streets should clue you in to the effect that media has over you.
Whoa. To refresh my memory, how many American citizens were shot by ICE under Obama? How many cities were threatened with Insurrection Act occupations? Maybe deporting people doesn't require such actions, and "the effect that the media has" is highlighting how ridiculous these behaviors are.
edit: more data https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/biden-deportation-re... . I sincerely hope you will re-adjust your priors based on actual data (some of it from the current administration!) as opposed to what you hear on the radio or television.
During Obama’s presidency ICE wasn’t dealing with protestors actively interfering with day-to-day operations in cities throughout the country. Remove the protestors, and the probability of a civilian getting shot goes to ~0. Of course dozens of non-citizens died during those years.
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make with your data. The first doesn’t even cover Biden’s term, which again, is what I’m talking about. The second is extremely disingenuous because doesn’t take net illegal immigration into account. Even if Biden deported a similar number of people as Trump, he let far more people in: the net number of illegal immigrants in the country during Biden’s term is estimated to have risen by 3.5 million people.
> When is the last time you questioned your priors?
Every day, friend.
> During Obama’s presidency ICE wasn’t dealing with protestors actively interfering with day-to-day operations
What do you think the difference is? What do you think your most reasonable opponent might say? In a dispassionate analysis, who do you think is correct?
I highly recommend to watch the Oscar winning movie “no other land”, for anyone that thinks that Israel would just let them leave in peace
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