If the Israeli war crimes would stop, then there would be no need for Lebanon to attack.

By “surprise” I assume you mean a capital-friendly, poorly implemented solution that does not solve the underlying problem. All of your examples illustrate this.

The first black president was a war criminal who enacted a right wing agenda.

Gay marriage is likely to be overturned by our billionaire-owned, unaccountable Supreme Court.

Legal marijuana is a patchwork- the best states have inefficient and nonsensical cannabis regulations, and the worst states still have inhumane, draconian punishment.

Despite the small amount of forgiveness, the total amount of student loans owed is rising. Currently we are at a record high of $1.75 trillion in debt.

And as for universal healthcare, the number of uninsured and underinsured keeps rising. The number of deaths due to lack of access keeps rising. And there are many people, like myself, who have had their lives destroyed by medical bankruptcy. The entire system is designed to maximize profit, patient health is a secondary concern.

But that explanation is lost to time.

One translation I read suggested a probable explanation.

Rasputin’s phone advice was the same as many modern quacks: keep the patient away from modern medicine and doctors.

So the hemophiliac prince was no longer given his normal cocktail of drugs, which probably included a new medicine for the time: aspirin.

Stop giving a blood thinner to a hemophiliac and his condition (temporarily) improved. The best explanation for the people at the time was “magic”.

Alright most of this slang is overused and a bit outdated but wtf is “jitz”?

What does jitz mean in slang? Noun. jit (plural jits) (US, originally prison slang, derogatory) An inexperienced, foolhardy young man.

bruh.

It must be such a relief for Blinken whenever he can go to Ukraine and be on the right side of history.

Facilitating a genocide in Gaza must really do a number on a man, you can tell by the hideous bags under his eyes.

For any other country, state dept reports like this have to clear before we start shipping weapons.

But for Israel, the Biden administration carves out exceptions and delays the reporting so the illegal weapons shipments can continue.

This is the banality of evil, Palestinian children are starving and exploding and we are arguing over reports.

This is why Biden has earned the moniker “Genocide Joe”.

Civil war? Not even close.

Outright corruption? Business interests have always ruled the country, this is not new.

The bigger picture is that America is the most violent country since Nazi Germany. No other country comes close to our death toll. We spend $1trillion each year on violence and weapons- and those bombs must be dropped, because we need a reason to spend >$1trillion next year.

One of the major issues in this case is that Obama set a precedent when he assassinated 16 year old American citizen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki without a trial.

The reality is that the Democrats go low, and Republicans use that as a new standard to go even lower.

…Look in the mirror: The horror, the horror! The butt of your M-16 on my cheekbone The yellow patch it left The bullet-shaped scar expanding Like a swastika, Snaking across my face, The heartache flowing Out of my eyes dripping Out of my nostrils piercing My ears flooding The place. Like it did to you 70 years ago Or so.

I am just you. I am your past haunting Your present and your future. I strive like you did. I fight like you did. I resist like you resisted And for a moment, I’d take your tenacity As a model, Were you not holding The barrel of the gun Between my bleeding Eyes.

…The very same gun The very same bullet That had killed your Mom And killed your Dad Is being used, Against me, By you.

Mark this bullet and mark in your gun. If you sniff it, it has your and my blood. It has my present and your past. It has my present. It has your future. That’s why we are twins, Same life track Same weapon Same suffering Same facial expressions drawn On the face of the killer, Same everything Except that in your case The victim has evolved, backward, Into a victimizer. I tell you. I am you. Except that I am not the you of now.

I do not hate you. I want to help you stop hating And killing me. I tell you: The noise of your machine gun Renders you deaf The smell of the powder Beats that of my blood. The sparks disfigure My facial expressions. Would you stop shooting? For a moment? Would you?

All you have to do Is close your eyes (Seeing these days Blinds our hearts.) Close your eyes, tightly So that you can see In your mind’s eye. Then look into the mirror. One. Two. I am you. I am your past. And killing me, You kill you.

• Dr. Refaat Alareer

Sorry to be pessimistic. Voting local is a good thing, but I just dont see how local elections could ever add up to large systemic change that we agree is necessary. There is no way to vote out the military industrial complex.

What else is there to do? I think broad-based protest movements, like the moment for Palestinian liberation that we are watching today, have a shot at changing things. It’s a long shot though - the same forces that crushed George Floyd, Occupy Wallstreet, anti-WTO, etc. will be back again with their winning tactics.

Overall I think our best hope is with organized labor. Join a union or create one.

But the roots of the compromised DNC are its corporate donors, not your choice of county commissioner. How do you suggest we actually tear it out by the roots?

It’s not naive to learn from history, like when Reagan told Israel to stop their assault on Lebanon and Israel stopped in less than 24 hours.

Or when HW Bush called up Israel and ended that conflict overnight.

But maybe you’re right, maybe Netanyahu is too entrenched to stop this time. Biden can still stop sending the bombs. He can stop sending the money. He can stop vetoing UN peace resolutions. He could tell his press office to stop running cover for Israel. He could stop bringing up the “40 beheaded babies” lie.

He could do so much to stop this genocide, yet he refuses.

What makes you think a vote for Biden is voting for genocide that “can be curbed”?

Every statement and action from the Biden admin, even the meme we are commenting on, shows that Biden is unwilling to curb the genocide.

Hamas would be in a far superior negotiating position if the released hostages were saying that they were treated kindly and cared for

You should read the accounts of released hostages then, many of them have publically stated they were treated kindly.

This horrific recounting of captivity and rape is an outlier.

I dont understand why Israel, deeply reliant on US military assistance for its defense, also routinely humiliates the US in public.

They are busy drawing up plans for their new beachfront condo in Gaza.

Prohibition creates a black market, which in turn creates cartels, violence, unregulated and sometimes tainted product, it eliminates tax revenue, bolsters an oppressive police force, etc etc.

I believe the best model to deal with these hard drugs is legalization with heavy regulation.

There have been a handful of good studies on the harms of drugs over the years, and they all published the same conclusion: The recreational drugs that are most harmful (both to society and to the user) are heroin, meth, and alcohol.

Just like heroin, alcohol is not gentle, nice, or not a big deal.

Why do you think one is socially encouraged and the other two are demonized?

The prohibition model was a failure for alchohol, and it’s a failure for heroin and meth too.

I’m not trying to say Jesus was a pacifist, but all of those quotes are Old Testament, written centuries before Jesus supposedly existed…

It’s hard to imagine what it feels like to watch your newborn baby starve to death.

It’s hard to imagine the desperation, the sorrow, the helplessness.

It’s hard to imagine the rage, the impotence, the desire for justice and revenge.

Its hard to imagine that Hamas will ever run out of new recruits.