Stringent posted:

if that guy in the dnd thread doesn't catch a perma for that...

Stringent posted:

if that guy in the dnd thread doesn't catch a perma for that...

Stringent posted:

if that guy in the dnd thread doesn't catch a perma for that...

Stringent posted:

if that guy in the dnd thread doesn't catch a perma for that...

Szarrukin posted:

guess what, 6h probation

Stringent posted:

if that guy in the dnd thread doesn't catch a perma for that...

Raskolnikov38 posted:

lol the only reason AA got perma’d was because he was so retarded he posted his “oct 7 justifies anything Israel does you antisemites!” post outside of d&d

Nameless_Steve posted:

There are fair questions about shooting non-lethally at retreating civilian combatants. It's a huge gray area of international law.
At best, this is Yosemite Sam-level "dance, varmint" dickery.
At worst, it's stormtroopers firing in the general direction of C3PO and R2D2.

quote:

After seven months of intense warfare in Gaza and along the northern border with Lebanon, Civil Press asserts that Hamas has demonstrated its superiority, particularly in the eyes of the international community.

The return of Israeli captives in coffins underscores the heavy toll exacted on Israeli forces, with numerous soldiers losing their lives in the war, as per the outlet.

Furthermore, reports indicate that Israeli forces have withdrawn from previously occupied territories within the Gaza Strip, signaling a retreat and loss of control.

Israeli media also highlighted the resumption of operations at the maritime pier in Gaza, a development seen as a significant victory for the Resistance following "Israel's" previous control over humanitarian aid entry points.

Former commanders of the Gaza Division have echoed sentiments of the military's struggle, with one stating, "The army is floundering in Gaza, and it is clear that we will not achieve our stated objectives."

quote:

Major General in the Israeli Reserve Army Yitzhak Brik on Thursday said that the current war unfolding in Gaza is a "war of attrition" and warned that its prolongation "will lead to the collapse of the army and economy in Israel."

Speaking to Israeli broadcaster Channel 13, Brik said that "the Israeli army needs immediate rehabilitation" and there is an urgent need to increase the number of ground forces.

At the same time, Brik acknowledged the army's failure in defeating the Resistance, noting that the Strip "represents one [front] out of six," and the war against it "does not involve launching thousands of rockets daily (as is the case of other war scenarios with other fronts, such as Lebanon and Iran)."

Addressing the reasons that would lead to the collapse of "the army" and the Israeli economy in the event of the war's prolongation, Brik warned of "the absence of soldiers (to replace those currently on the ground), the absence of workers amid international isolation facing Israel."

Earlier on Thursday, Knesset member Amit Levy said that "all 24 Hamas brigades are present [in Gaza] and not a single one of them has been destroyed."

In addition to the Resistance's resilience, the Islamic Jihad movement remains present, "they lied to us that it had been eliminated," Levy told Channel 14.

These statements come amid increasing doubts about the objectives of the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza, as Israeli troops return to old battlefields in the Strip, according to Reuters.

In the eighth month of the war, the Israeli army returned to fighting in areas in the northern Gaza Strip, where Israeli soldiers were among the dead and injured after the regime claimed that they had been "cleared."

According to Reuters, this points out growing questions about the regime's goal of eliminating Hamas and concerns over the absence of a clear post-war plan for Gaza.

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

https://twitter.com/MayadeenEnglish/status/1792122121545490842



Waving the corpses of the hostages around being counter-productive is pretty funny. Israel has been losing thousands killed and wounded, ruined their economy, made themselves an international pariah, and all they have to show for it is the hostages released in the ceasefire last year and a bunch of dead hostages that the IDF killed themselves.

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

https://twitter.com/MayadeenEnglish/status/1792122121545490842

quote:

If you are still under the illusion that mainstream media outlets aren't propaganda apparatus, you should absolutely read this: https://breachmedia.ca/cbc-whitewashed-israels-crimes-gaza-firsthand/

It's undoubtedly one of the best witness reports I've ever read on how Western media go about manufacturing consent, in this instance in favor of Israel.

Written by a half-Jewish producer at CBC (Canada's public broadcaster), she describes in minute details how the Israeli narrative is promoted unquestionably and how Palestinian viewpoints are systematically erased.

The interesting aspect to me is how insidious it is. There is no blunt censorship with clear rules and red lines. It's all about seemingly innocuous decisions like "we don't have time to fact check this IDF spokesperson making obviously wrong statements" or "before we let this Palestinian guest on air, we need to do an impossible investigation into their claims", the combination of which leading in the end to a clear narrative.

What you realize is that there is nothing even remotely resembling a quest for truth there. It is instead a process to project unto the public the personal biases of the leadership of these media outlets, who undoubtedly have been hired for the very reason that they had these biases.

You could even forgive many journalists for not noticing they work for a propaganda apparatus because many of them undoubtedly share these biases, so from their standpoint they are reporting "the truth". But if ever someone comes to see things differently, such as the author of this article, they very quickly come to realize that truth is not the objective here.

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

we’ve been trying to do the China pivot since early Obama,

quote:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41311-023-00486-0

During his 2000 presidential campaign Bush described China as a ‘strategic competitor’ rather than a ‘strategic partner’ (Baum 2001). To challenge Clinton’s China policy, two pro-Republican conservative think tanks, the Heritage Foundation and the Project for the New American Century, issued a joint statement on the defence of Taiwan in August 1999. It criticised the Clinton administration for “pressur[ing] Taipei to cede its sovereignty and to adopt Beijing’s understanding of ‘One China’” and argued for an end to a US policy of ‘strategic ambiguity’ and for the USA ‘declar[ing] unambiguously that it would come to Taiwan’s defence in the event of an attack or a blockade against Taiwan’.

Among the 23 signatories to the statement were Richard Armitage and Paul Wolfowitz, who would, respectively, serve as Deputy Secretary of State and Deputy Secretary of Defense in the Bush administration in 2001–2005 (Mann 2004, 243). Following his election in 2000, Bush initially envisioned an international order that would confront and exclude an illiberal China.

In April 2001 after the EP-3 mid-air collision, his Administration ordered all American officials to avoid ‘all but the most essential contacts’ with their Chinese counterparts in the US capital and elsewhere (Sutter 2003, 485). In the same month he enraged China further by pledging that if Taiwan came under attack, he would order ‘whatever it took’ to help the island to defend itself (Sanger 2001; Mann 2004, 285). Since 1979, when the USA terminated formal relations with Taiwan (officially speaking, the Republic of China), no American president had ever delivered such a blunt and firm statement in support of Taiwan’s defence against China.

This happened in the context of the election of Chen Shui-bian, Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party’s candidate, as the president in March 2000, a clear demonstration of the consolidation of a multiparty democracy in Taiwan. Many Republicans thus expected that the Bush administration would modify US policy towards Taiwan (Hickey 2004, 463). In May 2001 Chen was allowed to visit New York on a stopover to his trip to Central America and to meet New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. This was the result of the Bush administration’s relaxation of the scope of ‘acceptable’ contacts with Taiwan’s senior officials (Hickey 2004, 471).

The Pentagon was, in particular, eager to strengthen military ties with Taiwan. A US–Taiwan Defense Summit, organised by the US–Taiwan Business Council, was held in St. Petersburg, Florida in March 2002. Tang Yiau-ming, Taiwan’s Minister for National Defence, was invited to that ‘private’ meeting where he met Wolfowitz to discuss matters of military cooperation (Hickey 2004, 467–468).

crepeface posted:

death to canada

Weka posted:

Since early Bush 2, but then 9/11 happened

crepeface posted:

so apparently uyghur separatism has been fostered for such a long rear end time and it was discussed in a LaRouche magazine in goddamn 1997!?!

https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1997/eirv24n14-19970328/eirv24n14-19970328_059-uighur_card_used_to_break_up_chi.pdf

i was always curious why the netherlands (DUHRF) and australia (ASPI) seemed to be involved in uyghur poo poo, seems like it goes way back. the goal seemed to be to disrupt the proto-BRI that was already starting then.

quote:

‘Uighur card’ used to break up China by Joseph Brewda

Since February, the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of north west China has been the target of a series of disturbances and bombings, carried out-by their own claims-by “Uighur” separatist groups attempting to split the region from China. What is at stake in Xinjiang is a project of strategic importance: the Second Euro-Asian Continental Bridge, the “new Silk Road” China-to-West Asia-and-Europe rail line which opened in 1992. This project, at the core of all current projects to develop the Eurasian landmass, was only finally completed, a century after the first Europe-to-Asia line was built in Russia, when the connection between the Chinese rail system and that of Kazakhstan in Central Asia was finished.

Xinjiang is being targeted by foreign-steered and foreign-headquartered separatist movements claiming to represent the Turkic-Ianguage-speaking Uighur “people” of Xinjiang. Although in 1949, Xinjiang’s population was approximately 95% Uighur, today, about half of the 16 million population are of Chinese origin. Xinjiang also has China’s largest deposits of oil and natural gas, uranium, gold, and other raw materials. Since 1992, Xinjiang has acquired global strategic significance, as the route of the Continental Bridge. The Chinese government is now building two more branches of the “Land-Bridge”: a second connection to Kazakhstan, and the first rail line to the city of Kashi, the Chinese terminus of the Pakistan-China Karakoram Highway.

The separatists make no bones about the fact, that these strategic rail lines are their target. The leader of the U.S. branch of the Uighur Liberation Front, Gulamettin Pahta, told EIR on March 11, that the “Continental Bridge” is a Chinese “imperialist” plot that must be blocked. “They are building railroads, but the people are opposing the railroad, and will destroy the railroad. This is just like the American movies on the history of California, What the Indians did, in fighting the railroads, is what we will do. The same thing is happening. Every train coming into eastern Turkestan is bringing in Chinese. This must be stopped,” Pahta said.

Just how “successful” the separatists are in fighting the railroads, is questionable. Western press outlets, in an effort to inflame the situation, have repeatedly given all kinds of figures for casualties in disturbances in Xinjiang, and a bomb explosion in Beijing, numbers which Chinese accounts have not confirmed. However, spokesmen for the Uighur Liberation Party and the Eastern Turkestan Liberation Organization have claimed credit for the violence.

Moreover, efforts by the British to inflame relations between China and the Central Asian Republics, by staging some of their “East Turkistan” separatist actions out of states bordering on China, have also been dealt a setback.

President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, fresh from discussions in Beijing about rail and energy cooperation with China, held a Feb. 22 press conference, in which he denounced the idea of secessionism. “So-called minorities live in Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Tibet, the south, and in other regions of China. Their aspiration for self-determination is understandable. However, we can in no way welcome the idea of separatism.There are 6,000 peoples and ethnic groups in the world.If all of them were to decide to declare sovereignty one day, then numerous helpless, dwarfish countries would emerge on the planet, along with the existing powerful countries that are striving for development and prosperity, and this would mean chaos, permanent wars, and endless conflicts.”

Gulamettin Pahta is a member of an international network of Uighur liberationist groups deployed by the British and Dutch monarchies’ Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO), the British Royal Society of Asian Affairs, and Lord Avebury’s House of Lords human rights mercenaries.The UNPO has trained the Uighur liberationists in “diplomatic skills” at the Australian National University, according to its literature, through grants provided by the Dutch Foreign Ministry.

After World War II, the Uighur separatists were led by Isa Yusuf Alptekin, who led a revolt in Xinjiang in 1945. Today, the leadership of the network has passed to his son, Erkin Alptekin, who is also chairman of the UNPO.

The British command structure

In addition to the Anglo-Dutch UNPO, which has targeted much of Siberia, as well as large sections of Central Asia and western China for break-up into ethnically divided mini states, EIR has identified a complex of largely London-head quartered intelligence fronts, all pushing the destabilization of China.

One of the most important British case officers for the Uighur independence movement is Sir William Peters, a former British deputy high commissioner in Bombay and career intelligence specialist, who is today chairman of the Tibet Society and board member of the Royal Society of Asian Affairs, the primary British intelligence outfit targeting China. In 1991, he wrote an optimistic forecast of Uighur and Tibetan rebellion, after a tour of Xinjiang, in the society’s journal, Asian Affairs:

“To the south and east [of XinjiangJlies Tibet.Stories of the Tibetan resistance filter through to Kashgar [Kashi] and its neighbors. To the northeast, Uighurs see the moves toward multipolarity in Outer Mongolia and hear about unrest among Mongols in Inner Mongolia. On the western side …there is no telling what direction semi-independent republics in Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzia, and Uzbekistan might move vis-a-vis China, If there is any truth in the story of military help from Kyrgyz across the border for their fellow tribesmen in Xinjiang. this thought will be all the stronger. A few Uighurs have heard of the Joint Committee for the Manchu, Mongol, East Turkmen, and Tibetan Peoples and are particularly anxious to obtain by whatever means possible the Committee’s publication One Voice. They have some links with Isa Alptekin. leader of the Turkestan Liberation Movement. It is noteworthy that Alptekin’s son Erkin Alptekin took an active part in the International Convention on Tibet in London from 6 to 8 July [1990].

“The conjunction of revived minority discontent on both national and religious grounds, of improved access across the frontier to fellow tribesmen, of major political change in neighboring countries, and of the sustained world reaction against genocide, colonialism, and apartheid, creates a situation in Central Asia in which radical change is just possible. The present campaign to arouse world opinion on the subject of genocide, colonialism, and apartheid in China could be the lever which pries out from a Politburo due for change radical concessions in areas such as Xinjiang and Tibet.”

The House of Lords and Foreign Office speak

Lord Avebury, chairman of the British Parliamentary Human Rights Group, is another controller of the separatists. In 1994, Lord Avebury sent an open letter to the British Foreign Office demanding that it “save the peoples of Eastern Turkestan,” who were “faced with national extinction.” In 1995, Lord A vebury told EIR that he was pessimistic that Britain could be successful in defending the Uighurs and Tibetans from Chinese efforts to exterminate them, simply through
human rights campaigns, implying that he favored more aggressive London involvement in the destabilization of Xinjiang.

Lord Ennals, a former British Foreign Secretary, was, until his recent death, another top patron of the Uighur and Tibetan independence movements. He was also a leader of the UNPO, Martin Ennals, Lord Ennal’ s brother, controls Amnesty International, the British Foreign Office front which oversees international propaganda campaigns against China, over alleged suppression of the Uighurs and Tibetans.

American ‘cousins’ weigh in

Among the so-called “Americans” who have joined the Anglo-Dutch drumbeat to destabilize the New Silk Road” through secessionist violence in Xinjiang, is one of Henry Kissinger’s leading State Department proteges, Dr. Helmut Sonnenfeldt. In an interview with Voice of America on Feb. 14, the retired career State Department official, ow with Kissinger at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, predicted that Xinjiang could become a “Chinese Chechnya.

Sonnenfeldt gloated, “I think the Chinese have tried to observe very closely what happened in Chechnya, in part because they may be conscious of the possibility that something of that sort might arise in their own domain.” Sonnenfeldt cautioned that, should such an uprising gain steam, “it needs to be dealt with harshly and rapidly,” or else China will be
forced to grant the region autonomy-precisely the British strategic plan.

Elsie Walker is another leading propagandist devoted to “rousing world opinion” on Xinjiang. A cousin of former U.S. President Sir George Herbert Walker Bush, she heads the U.S.-based Asians for Democracy, which also mobilizes on behalf of the Tibetan cause. In October 1994, Uighur liberationist leader Erkin Alptekin addressed a conference in New York City of the “Allied Committee of the Peoples of Eastern Turkestan, Inner Mongolia, Tibet,” organized by Walker’s outfit.

In its official announcement of the conference, the Dalai Lama’s so-called Tibetan government-in-exile declared: “This conference is being organized to let the international public know that in the uncertainty, instability, and even turmoil in China, that may result from the death of strongman Deng Xiaoping, the struggle to regain the freedom of these three peoples [Tibetans, Uighurs, and Mongols] from communist China domination will be pursued relentlessly.” According to both Chinese and foreign news accounts, on the day of Deng Xiaoping’s funeral. three bombings took place in Xinjiang.

The proposed map of a China broken into pieces, which the separatists distributed at the conference, leaves no doubt what their London masters are attempting.

i might have too much epstein brain, but i wonder if the dutch and british were involved because of the Shell oil company. it is a dutch-british merger and there's oil in xinjiang, so it would kinda be an US-Iraq situation. i can imagine the bloodlines of colonial officials, trading magnates, MI6 and bluebloods etc all wanting a piece.

crepeface posted:

human rights mercenaries

ContinuityNewTimes posted:

It's ok. He got a sixer, issue resolved

mags posted:

Bad Faith gets a day

Jel Shaker posted:

yeah it is kinda fascinating how he will go anywhere that will give him a platform, but that the liberal media just avoid him like the plague

crepeface posted:

there are reports that they were already messing around in Xinjiang in 1997 lol

crepeface posted:

some great media literacy lessons here:

https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1792022048350626179

death to canada

Sanlav posted:

Democratic states accomplish censorship by having a bigger megaphone versus criminalization of bad-think. Much like tax credits and interest rates, the people who have power exert it abstractly by spending and funding it through the fund raising apparatus of 'democracy'. Each branch has a bucket. Each bucket has a media auxillary. Each bucket has management from capital to guide policy (the lobby).

Weka posted:

Interesting, thanks. One note on your quote, the claim that Xinjiang was 95% Uighur I think is a mistake, that would be all ethnic minorities, atleast by the time of the first census in 1953 it was 93% all minorities, 75% Uighurs.

My read on this is it's the sort of thing that is always going on and not necessarily indicative of a focus or pivot.

Justin Tyme posted:

America's the old guy at the gym. Thick. Grey hair and bald. Puts up big numbers despite pushing 60, he's the big guy. Obviously juices. Kinda weird in the old man powerlifter way, wear jeans at the gym. China joined and was pathetic. Uses the smith machine. Just a scrawny nerd guy, the old man and his clique all made fun of him. China goes home and trains. He trains for years, following all the latest sports science and buys protein powder by the pound. He goes back to the gym and he is shredded. Thousand pound club guy. Just this absolute unit and on top of it all, he is hot as hell. Full head of hair that looks great even when sweaty. Mid 20's and loving life. He's a cool dude and friendly, just a nice guy to everyone. This pisses old man America off. America hosed up his shoulder, his overhead press is pathetic as a result. He is stinky, and his age is really showing. Now everyone wants to hang out with China, but not before America has one last deadlift challenge....

Nameless_Steve posted:

And the acceptable number of dead in the war is the minimum required to accomplish its objective of destroying Hamas. Based on Hamas' original roster of 40,000 militants, back in October, I promised myself I would reconsider my pro-Israel position if and when the total exceeded 100,000.

ded redd posted:

Zodium posted:

this is generally the case and a big part of how the highly sophisticated perception management apparatus works, but part of what makes the current situation interesting is that for reasons that aren't quite clear to me, they are criminalizing bad-think. "what caused the propaganda machinery to fall into that mode?" is an important question right now.