It’s funny that Walz is preaching nuance and critical thinking, and yet the people who purport to agree with him in this thread apparently can’t synthesize your point. The Holocaust is a stark reminder that genocide will not only continue, but will be improved and augmented by new technologies and ideologies. Like you said, though, that doesn’t make it worse than others. I think the issue you’re running into is that the point here is Walz is being subjected to ad hominem to distract from a broader discussion on the nature of genocide because such discussions are bad for Israel and their conservative benefactors in the US. Folks ITT probably have it in their heads that you agree that Tim Walz is an antisemite, but as it turns out, two things can be true. The Holocaust is unique in a particular sense, but that is not what Walz is talking about; in the context he is speaking, the Holocaust is not unique. Essentially, the Holocaust, as a vivid and well-documented case study, can and should be a window into the broader history of genocide and human rights abuse.

I agree with Walz here, the Holocaust was not unique in the sense that genocide is an ongoing feature of human history and events. I also agree with the dude elsewhere in this thread that the Holocaust was unique among genocides, because it was the first industrial genocide. That doesn’t make it worse; we don’t need to play victim olympics. In the grand scheme of things, Walz certainly should not be called antisemitic for saying that we shouldn’t hyperfocus on the Holocaust at the expense of understanding the prevalence of genocide in general, and we should realize the reason he’s being called antisemitic is because, right now, it benefits Israel to derail any broader discussion on the nature of genocide.

If you read the full article, it seems as if the Saudi religious establishment was infiltrated by Egyptian extremists fleeing a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood following the assassination of Sadat. Their ideology meshed with Wahhabism and Bin Laden’s religious vendetta against the United States. The Saudi state apparatus did not have effective oversight over the religious establishment and so this all happened under the House of Saud’s nose. The countries in red are (at the time) places with either US puppet regimes or some form of Arab Revolt descended, nominally secular/socialist regimes. The religious extremists pushing Islamic rule operated in these countries under various militias and terrorist groups, notably Al Qaeda, backed by the newly radicalized Saudi Wahhabi establishment, and of course, Iran.

From that perspective, the US was waging war against militias and terrorist groups with roots and support in Saudi Arabia, but the House of Saud was not considered to be complicit. The article goes on to say…

Astonishingly, the attacks of 9/11 had little effect on the Saudi approach to religious extremism, as diplomats and intelligence officials have attested. What finally changed royal minds was the experience of suffering an attack on Saudi soil. In May 2003, gunmen and suicide bombers struck three residential compounds in Riyadh, killing 39 people. The authorities attributed the attacks to al-Qaeda, and cooperation with the U.S. improved quickly and dramatically.

Interesting stuff, to be sure.

In the US, there are positive and negative stereotypes, too. German efficiency and Japanese perfectionism and perseverance are among them. Jewish intelligence and commitment to education, too. These things have a basis in reality, of course, but they shouldn’t be mistaken for reality itself. It seems to me these things appearing in your textbooks were probably attempts by your own government to get its people to emulate what it sees as positive traits in other cultures, rather than an attempt by foreign adversaries to paint Chinese people as inferior. Of course, when the message was a little too unclear or negative as in the “toxic textbooks” incident, your government deflected blame.

To be fair, both bikes and fences are made of pipes. What else is made of pipes?

Pipe bombs.

Unemployment at a 60-year low, real wages at a 50-year high. That’s not to say there aren’t problems (largely the cost of housing, education and healthcare eating up all the gains over the last half century), but the economy is good, Jack.

Millennials/Gen Z:

• Uses computer to finish day’s tasks in 4 hours, browses internet for remaining 4.
• “Wow, I feel like a useless piece of shit.”

Boomers/Gen X:

• Spends 2 hours reading every single email in full as if they are addressed specifically to them, getting angry that people are telling them useless information. Spends an hour printing & collating papers for the day’s tasks. Spends 5 hours doing the tasks because paper is less efficient. Stays 1 hour extra for scanning/data entry when the whole thing could have been done on the computer in the first place.
• “Gee golly, I sure am swamped.”

Your quote from the Jordanian commander dates to after the Nakba. There was significant intercommunal conflict in Mandatory Palestine because of the mismanagement of Jewish migration by Britain, and escalating tensions from the “legal” land purchases you mentioned that had been occurring since the late 1800s. Yes, Jews attempted to purchase and settle uninhabited land, but the fact is big chunks of the land purchased were misappropriated under the Ottoman Land Code, and European Jews frequently expelled (by force if the implication wasn’t clear) the Arab Muslims they found living on it, who may have had no idea it was sold out from under them.

There’s a vast political center in the post-industrial east, northeast and midwest willing to be pursuaded. The Democrats have certainly attempted to do the right thing for the climate… sort of… but have utterly failed to consider the effects on industrial communities as the industry leaves. Then they add insult to injury by saying things like “learn to code”… but then not doing anything about the spiraling cost of education. This has been going on for decades, and the result is generations of impoverished people losing trust in the political process and falling victim to narratives of fear and hate.

Understanding this is step zero in beginning to steer this ship left again.

200k people is nothing.

1. What a horrible, neoliberal thing to say.

2. It’s not just 200k people, it’s hundreds of thousands more that lost their livelihoods when the main economic driver in their area shut down.

I’m not arguing for coal (it’s 2024, why are we still using it at all?), I’m arguing against abandoning an entire population of people who made their livings off of it and its cascading economic effects.

You seem to be arguing with me, but I agree with almost everything you say. In particular stuff like:

Why don’t we try that with a leftist position? “Institute single payer Healthcare so every citizen has access to healthcare scot free or else we’re going to overthrow the government?”

Corporate merger? How about we start with nationalize both companies, guillotine the executives, and hand it all over to unions?

We shouldn’t compromise on getting rid of coal, but we should make sure the people and communities affected are taken care of in the aftermath. Or should have, anyway, that ship has basically sailed. It’s the same neoliberal psychopathy that turned the post-industrial northeast and midwest into a war zone in the 60s-80s.

new

Their website is stanley1913.com, lmao.

But yes, my first thought was “how the fuck did she get one of those?” and then “only $2500?” and then “OHHHH”.

Women aren’t dying of drug overdoses in Appalachia and the Rust Belt?

I’m sympathetic to economic concerns, that sympathy lessens alot when you reject any offered solutions to scream “coal or bust” (or relevant absent industry here.)

The problem with this statement is that liberal/left/environmentalist forces have been waging a war on coal for decades now, and winning. This is the root of the rural working class turn against the Democrats. We had nearly 200k coal workers in the 80s, and now it’s down to under 50k. That’s people directly employed in coal, not to mention those employed in the thriving rural economies they supported. Millions of people have been impacted by the decline of coal, and right or wrong, they perceive Democrats as responsible for both the decline, and the failure to support the people who were impacted.

At this point you have generational poverty as a result of the closure of coal mines and plants, and you have kids growing up who don’t know what it used to be like, they only know the abandoned buildings and drug addiction they grow up surrounded by. I’m not saying we have to tolerate the negative attitudes that fester in these situations, but we do have to understand where they come from, and we certainly shouldn’t let it stop us from trying to make things better. If people have positive, productive things to do, they won’t spend all their time on the internet finding reasons to hate their neighbors, and that facet of the problem will solve itself over time.

Yeah, I’d love to reinstate the CCC & Youth Corps as permanent jobs programs, including all the arts funding, but that ain’t happening. Guess we’ll just have to get shot by Proud Boys instead.

The issue, addressed in the article, is that these rural areas used to have industry that gave people a sense of purpose. Now the choices are basically move to a city, die of a heroin overdose, or join a right wing militia. We need to give these people something to do that’s beneficial and where they feel they’re contributing to their communities, otherwise, they’re going to be wooed by groups with ulterior motives that dress their goals up in rhetoric of service and cohesion.

Incompetent? No.

From Wikipedia:

In July 1995, Netanyahu led a mock funeral procession featuring a coffin and hangman’s noose at an anti-Rabin rally where protesters chanted, “Death to Rabin”. The chief of internal security, Carmi Gillon, then alerted Netanyahu of a plot on Rabin’s life and asked him to moderate the protests’ rhetoric, which Netanyahu declined to do. Netanyahu denied any intention to incite violence.

Rabin was leading the Oslo peace process. Four months later in November of 1995, he was assassinated. Netanyahu’s corruption, power grabs, and violence are intentional and planned.

The real mistake may have been attempting to pivot to Iran in an attempt to reinstate the JCPOA. As admirable a goal as that is, I also think it’s clear Trump squandered any trust Iran had in the US when he cancelled it. Iran has taken the Biden admin’s overtures as an opportunity to test its regional influence, instead of being a good faith negotiating partner - and why would the Biden admin have expected anything else when the US hadn’t been a good faith partner? Trump was awful on foreign policy, and set middle-east peace back decades, but Biden has completely failed to understand and adapt to the new status quo.

Agreed. Having lived through the ad campaigns and voted for this tax myself, I can confirm that I, at least, never heard anyone call it a wealth tax. A millionaire’s tax, sure, but that’s just a catchy shorthand. If you do the google search Mr. Flying Squid suggested, you’ll find a lot of sources calling it a millionaire’s tax, and maybe a couple calling it a wealth tax. The ones calling it a wealth tax are just plain wrong.

Massachusetts passed a wealth tax recently.

Not to be pedantic, but it’s an income tax.