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Cake day: July 10th, 2024

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  • because some bureaucratic board has been bullied into being quiet about it

    That’s a bold thing to claim.

    They are not quiet about this.

    And yes, until there is sufficient proof for the genocide allegations and/or the ICJ rules it as such, I can’t confidently say for myself that it’s genocide.

    There is a tremendous amount of work invested in this case by people much more qualified than you or me.

    Still, from my side this is in no way a justification for the cruel deaths of so many innocents. Civilian casualties are in no way tolerable for me.



  • Humans are not made to kill other humans. And those who fight the wars of the mighty, are those who are among the ones who suffer the most.

    War is really stupid. And it’s astonishing how we continue to be such a stupid species. Given how far we’ve come, one would think that we’ve finally realized how much humanity could achieve if we were working together instead of killing each other.

    By the way:

    It’s obvious that what Israel is doing is very much a genocide

    The international court of justice has not ruled on this yet, but continues to observe and investigate whether such genocide allegations could apply.

    However, I am not a fan of anyone who practises or participates in wars and so easily tolerates the deaths of innocents.



  • This is not entirely true though. Beliefs and opinions are heavily influenced by a lot of factors. Even educated people are not free from such errors. Like the backfire effect (Nyhan and Reifler (2010)): situations where people become more entrenched in their views when confronted with contradictory evidence.

    Other studies have found that when presented with data, individuals with more education can sometimes be more divided in their beliefs, particularly when the topic is politically charged. For instance, some educated individuals may use their knowledge to selectively interpret data in ways that support their pre-existing views, a phenomenon known as “motivated reasoning.” Confirmation bias relates to that. This has been observed in areas like climate change, where political and ideological factors heavily influence opinions. (See for example: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1704882114 )

    In other words, no matter how educated or smart you are, you can still fall into ignorance and stubbornness. The key is to train your ability to think critically—especially when it comes to your own beliefs and opinions. Doing so can help you become more aware of biases and avoid common pitfalls in cognitive decision-making.


  • Are you sure?

    Yes.

    This seems pretty nazi to me.

    Tolerating civilian casualties within war-efforts is an extremely different thing than specifically favouring to hunt and eradicate them while possibly propagating some narrative like they are lesser humans or some fucked up racist shit like that. If that’s your standpoint on labeling Nazis however, then every nation which ever participated in a hot war with civilian casualties is probably pretty nazi to you.

    Also germans online are one of the loud supporters of yet another genocide.

    Not in my experience. But sure, it’s good emotional bait to blindly generalise over all germans and call them Nazis who favour genocide. How about you look for some verifiable numbers before reasoning from your individual experience with “online germans”?

    Here:

    Die militärische Reaktion Israels auf die Terror-Anschläge der Hamas vom 7. Oktober 2023 geht inzwischen für mehr als die Hälfte (57 Prozent) zu weit (+7 im Vgl. zu März), jeder Fünfte (21 Prozent) hält sie für angemessen (-7), für 4 Prozent geht sie nicht weit genug (-1).

    Source: press report about a representative survey on the opinions of german’s regarding Israel’s war efforts.
    https://presse.wdr.de/plounge/tv/das_erste/2024/08/20240808_ard_deutschlandtrend_israel.html
    (From last August.)

    Translation:
    “The military response of Israel to the Hamas terror attacks on October 7, 2023, now goes too far for more than half (57 percent) of people (+7 compared to March), one in five (21 percent) considers it appropriate (-7), and for 4 percent it does not go far enough (-1).”

    On a side note, the article you’ve linked from middle east monitor cited the foreign minister of Germany a bit wrong. Here is the official full translation of her speech: https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/en/newsroom/news/-/2679832

    With the following section in the middle east monitor article:

    ‘Self-defence means not only attacking terrorists but destroying them. When Hamas terrorists hide behind people, behind schools… civilian places lose their protected status because terrorists abuse it.’

    And here the full official translation of that part:

    That’s why we have made it clear time and again that self-defence means, of course, not only attacking terrorists, but also destroying them. This’s why I have made it so clear that when Hamas terrorists hide behind people, behind schools, then we end up in very difficult waters. But we’re not shying away from this. This is why I made it clear at the United Nations that civilian sites could lose their protected status if terrorists abuse this status.

    The article did not appropriately mark the sections which were omitted in the quote. It also changed words, omitted words or sections without marking it and thereby changed the tone of the quote and misrepresented it in a way significant enough for me to be so nitpicky about it.

    Most importantly, the minister highlights, that terrorists abusing protected civilian sites poses a very difficult situation which could potentially lead to a loss of the protection status.

    Furthermore, she goes on about the importance of humanitarian aid in Gaza. And also remarks how Germany supports the two-state solution to ensure security in the region, peace for Palestine and peace for Israel.

    Does that sound like Nazis to you?




  • Please, before shitting all over Germany again with Nazi accusations and whatnot, keep in mind that this was demanded by populistic, right-wing politicians, who are – luckily – currently not running the government, but are in the opposition.

    From the article:

    Politicians in Germany think that climate activist Greta Thunberg should be banned from entering the country over her participation in pro-Palestinian protests, according to the domestic policy spokesman for Germany’s biggest opposition party, the Christian Democratic Union.

    Surely you can call them out for it, but neither do they represent Germany, nor are they even running the national government.







  • If it was up to me our industries would’ve never left the country in the first place, and most of the privatizations wouldn’t have gone through.

    Alright, I see it the same way. Still, Germany managed to manoeuvre itself into dependencies of Russia and China, which has shot and still shoots them into the feet.
    I’m totally in favour of trying to find diplomatic ways. But if the call to the talking table is not followed and rather met with aggression on multiple levels, it’s usually the wrong way to give into the demands of the ones who are not afraid to use violence. Therefore, what you see as “funding aggression” is to me a display of resistance. It shows that we will not be bullied into submission, nor will we allow those who use violence to dictate the terms of peace or cooperation.

    nazi like rhetoric going around nowadays. Green politicians talking about “the poison of Islam” [1], which reminds me a lot of the antisemitic rhetoric from WW2 (see “Der Giftpilz” [2]

    I’ve read the article and watched the speech of Katharina Dröge afterwards to get a grasp of the context. As I’ve suspected, the article of the far-right magazine “Junge Freiheit” over-emphasized the “Gift des Islams” part of her speech. It’s just typical click- & ragebait again and a very misleading headline. At least the article itself somehow manages to not completeley misrepresent her actual speech.
    If you’re interested, you can currently watch it here: https://www.ardmediathek.de/video/phoenix-parlament/katharina-droege-in-der-generaldebatte/phoenix/Y3JpZDovL3Bob2VuaXguZGUvNDU4NjA2Mg
    You’ll probably notice as well that this was a rather minor phrasing. More importantly, it was embedded in and directed towards islamism, i.e., people radicalized to the point of becoming murderous, which has to be prevented of course. In the same speech she is emphasizing the importance of asylum for all of those who have suffered the worst and don’t become radicalized criminals.
    Given this context and the fact that the German Greens are usually considered a rather left-leaning political party, I find the comparison to ‘Der Giftpilz’ not only vastly misplaced but also ridiculous.

    Besides that, Germany didn’t denazify properly after WW2 anyway (“Persilscheine”

    Thanks for pointing out the “Persilscheine”. Despite the tremendous amount of “Nazis evil”-content in school, especially in history classes, this wasn’t a topic. An educational gap I’m eager to fill soon.
    Regarding the statement of unproper denazification I can’t add anything to that besides personal impressions which have no value for general statements.

    The chancellor talking about “deportations in big style”. The CDU trying to ban refugees from going to any public events. And these are not even the nazis in the AfD. It might be 2024, but mentalities haven’t changed much, we’re just picking other out groups to stomp on, mostly because we’re not tackling the real issues at heart.

    Yes, yes. This is indeed really bad. From my point of view the big old parties SPD, CDU/CSU are fearing for their public support. And instead of trying to address the real issues, they’re mimicking talking points of the AfD. The latter, unfortunately, becoming increasingly popular in many areas of Germany.
    I wonder why that is.
    No, I don’t.
    (Okay, people being too incompetent to critically think about media adds to that.)

    However, I wouldn’t go as far as to say, that the mentalities haven’t changed much in all that time since WW2. Three generations were raised since then with the fourth one reaching maturity. And there is still a tremendous amount of people who are not sharing the same xenophobic idiotism propagated by AfD, CDU & Co. It’s not too late to prevent the mistakes of the past.

    But again, to get back on China, Germany is very well conducting major business with a ton of authoritarian countries, stomping on workers’ rights all across the world just to enrich German companies, and thus I won’t take their virtue signalling for anything more than just virtue signalling.

    I’m also not really happy about that. It’s one devil replaced by the other. However, there are different shades to that. At least the one devils have not launched a full-scale war. And now Germans have started to question their dependencies on foreign countries a bit more. But of course it can’t be a long-term solution to keep things as they are now.

    I’ll take virtue signalling. “It’s something”. Besides, the current government is the most productive since the Merkel-era and has initiated and achieved many good things. Although I agree that regarding foreign affairs it could be better. Most progress was achieved in domestic affairs.

    I’m here just pointing out the hypocrisy. If they care so much about Taiwan, they should at least make it clear that it is due to geostrategic interests, not because they suddenly found their love for democracy and what not other nonsense.

    And people love hypocrits. If someone says the one thing, but does the opposite, does it make them wrong in what they said?
    How about we criticise the bad and praise the good?