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.
Leftists: its deregulation and reagan and the destruction of labor unions and forever wars and wall street and the death of manufacturing and and and
Libertarians: “GOLD!”
Actual prevention of terrorism comes by building a just society. People who have basic needs, healthcare, education, and justice do not become terrorists.
And how do you expect a sharpshooter team to stop a suicide bomber, acid attack, or dirty bomb? Even stopping a crowd-driving-maniac would require significant luck. This isn’t an action movie.
I would start with MLK, collected essays, no one writes about protest more eloquently.
A Peoples History of the United States by Howard Zinn gives a great broad overview.
Death in the Haymarket by James Green is a great history of the first decades of the labor movement.
Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Leadership in Turbulent Times goes in depth on LBJ and the civil rights movement.
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau for the classic philosopher’s take.
We’ve Got People by Ryan Grim details the successes and failures of the movement in the last decade.
You should educate yourself on the history of protest. The media has always been a serious impediment. There was never an “entire population” uniting or a “simple goal that others could get behind”. It was always extremely difficult. It often looked hopeless. Many people were killed in the streets, and others were brave enough to replace them.
Overall I think feeling helpless in the face of monumental challenges is normal. But closing your eyes and telling yourself “nothing can ever change, so why bother” is self-soothing and pathetic.
Things can change, and you can be a part of that positive change if you put in real effort.
What are we gonna do, vote?
“If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal” - Emma Goldman
In the last 100 years, protest movements have given us women’s suffrage, workers rights including the weekend and overtime pay, gay rights, civil rights, etc. History shows us that we can have positive change, but it’s not as easy as just voting.
We can see right now how protest movements are moderating the Democrat’s support of Israeli war crimes.
But don’t you feel a responsibility to the rest of the world?
Say if, for example, your tax dollars were funding an ongoing genocide and starvation campaign, wouldnt you feel a bit responsible to change that?
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.
Imagine the returns if that wealth was invested in education and healthcare instead of yachts and empty luxury housing.
I’m just asking you to apply the same logic to both sides.
Members of the IDF also go inside schools, malls, and hospitals. In fact, since there is mandatory military service in Israel, it’s easy to say that the IDF are everywhere. In my opinion, this does not justify Hamas rockets targeting Israel, but the same logic is used to justify the massive Israeli bombardment on civilian infrastructure.
Suggesting that Hamas wants it’s own civilians to die is just sick IDF propaganda to justify war crimes. I think civilians stayed in north Gaza because they did not want to abandon their homes, not because “hamas talked them into staying” lol
The IDF has launched, by it’s own admission, over 8000 rockets into Gaza. Are we to believe all 8000 were launched at legitimate Hamas targets? To justify such an act we need serious evidence, “The IDF said it was all Hamas” is not good enough.
All of this is hauntingly similar to the US “war on terror”. At a certain point, we labeled all military-aged males as “enemy combatants”, therefore it was acceptable to kill them all. Israel is following the US lead: kill them all, then label them as Hamas to justify the mass slaughter.
Not sure where you would get such a silly idea.
I support the side that is being unjustly attacked and besieged by a much stronger military power. I stand with Ukraine and Palestine.
This “human shield” propaganda is so biased. By Israel’s extremely broad definition, every Palestinian is a human shield.
If you were to apply this sick “human shield” logic to both sides, most of the innocent civilians killed by Hamas on Oct 7th would be acceptable military targets.
The IDF has military infrastructure near schools, malls, and hospitals. Why are they hiding behind human shields?
That’s a lot of words to say you support genocide.
This is an article about dead children, it’s rather shocking to see such bloodthirst in the comments.
Everything you mentioned is an NRA talking point.
The NRA started out as a well respected advocacy group for hunters rights and environmental protection. Then they were captured by the arms manufacturing industry, so now their only goal is to sell more guns.
And after every major mass shooting there is a significant uptick in sales of guns and ammo, so the arms industry is financially motivated to contribute to the culture of gun rampage.
The plan was to close the horrific, abusive insane asylums and replace them with community mental health centers.
Then neoliberals got into power and said “nah, I dont think so” to that second part.
So now our most mentally unwell people live their lives in prison and on the streets.
Is price the only concern? Seems like too narrow of a focus.
Maybe try sorting by “lifespan”, as nuclear facilities last 3-4x longer.
You could try sorting by “crude oil usage”, as each turbine needs 60 gallons of high synthetic oil to function, each needs an oil change every 6 months.
Would be interesting to sort by “birds killed” or “acres of habitat destroyed”
I’m not saying nuclear is necessarily better, that is a difficult calculation. But we got ourselves into this climate change disaster by short-sightedly “sorting by price”. Perhaps spending more money for a long term investment would be more wise than always going with the cheapest option.
Can you name a successful decolonization project that was nonviolent?
The gateway drug to heroine is most often prescription opioids, not weed.
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”.