True. As far as EU BigPowers are concerned, they know Ukraine has lost the war but don't really care if Ukraine is being destroyed and Ukranians are dying, as long as they kill as many Russians too.
It astounds me that even in 2026 people are still regurgitating this standard-issue Russian propaganda canard about "Ukraine already lost the war", consciously or subconsciously. While the war is going on, you can make equally vacuous claims that "Russia already lost the war" with about as much cause.
Ukraine is fighting for its survival against a fascist and colonialist invader that aims to end its nationhood. The final outcome is unclear.
I don't think Ukraine lost. They surely did a lot better than anyone expected. Right now, I'd say it can go both ways, with Ukranian deaths vs Russian economic crash and hurt for their rich class seeming the main determinaters. If Putin drops dead, if the rich feel enough bombs exploding in Moscow, .... Then Ukraine wins
Bureaucracy. I met an army officer once in a Corporation (government) office. Both of us were there to get the same paperwork done, but the army officer also needed his address revised (the corporation had issued a new number for his house). When we received our new documents, his document still showed the old address. He went to the bureaucrat who had processed it and asked why the address wasn't updated even though he had specifically requested that it be done. After some "consultation" with her co-workers, and a senior on her phone, she honestly blurted out - Sir, we don't know how to do that. It's some other department. I will have to consult my senior officer in that department and find out. Can you come back later?. As he shared his frustration he told me that civil bureaucrats needed to be trained like army officers. Army officers, he explained, were trained in multiple-disciplines because during a war they can't stop to search for the "right" person to do some task. Everyone in the field needed to sometimes improvise and be ready to take over someone else's task. Civil bureaucrats on the other hand are trained in a single discipline, tended to defend their specialisation, and thus get totally stumped when facing something outside their training.
It was an interesting insight: While department hierarchy must be respected, it shouldn't be organisationally rigid to prevent inter-departmental, inter-disciplinary learning. Lower ranking sub-units should also be given more freedom to make independent decisions.
If we could have unfiltered access to what everyone was thinking, I don't think any relationship would ever survive. Everyone in a relationship knows that the same person can induce feelings of love, anger, passion, hate, disgust, contempt, joy, doubt, affection etc over a period of time. Commitment to a relationship means learning to look beyond a particular moment of any particular feelings.
The Hannibal Directive - the IDF's infamous "murder-suicide" pact, where in Israel's polity can take a decision to sacrifice their own civilians and soldiers to prevent them from being taken hostage by their enemies. In fact, it is now slowly being revealed that many of the so-called Hamas "savagery" that were hyped up by Israel and the western media about the killed civilians and soldiers were actually the result of Netanyahu government ordering the IDF to shoot, bomb and kill their own people and due to orders to disregard Israeli lives when attacking the Hamas militia:
- Israel expanded the use of its murderous “Hannibal Directive” – designed to prevent soldiers from being taken alive as prisoners of war – by killing many of its own civilians.
- The use of such “Hannibal” strikes are confirmed in a UN report published in June.
- Fire from Israeli helicopters, drones, tanks and even ground troops was deliberately undertaken in order to prevent Palestinian fighters from taking live Israeli captives who could be exchanged for Palestinian prisoners.
- At the initiative of the local Gaza Division, “Hannibal” was carried out right away: less than an hour after the Palestinian offensive began. “Not a single vehicle can return to Gaza,” the division was ordered at 11:22 am.
- By midday, an unambiguous order was given from the high command of the Israeli military (the so-called “Pit” headquarters, deep under Israel’s Hakirya building in downtown Tel Aviv) to invoke the Hannibal Directive throughout the entire region, “even if this means the endangerment or harming of the lives of civilians in the region, including the captives themselves.”
- Israel has been engaged in an aggressive cover-up of its crimes against its own people.
- “Every day in captivity was very hard,” one former detainee said at the angry meeting. “I was in a house when there were bombardments all around. We were sitting in tunnels and we were very afraid that, not Hamas, but Israel would kill us, and then they’ll say: ‘Hamas killed you.’” Another released detainee said: “The fact is that I was in a hideaway that was bombed, and we had to be smuggled away, and we were injured. Not to mention that we were shot at by a helicopter when we were on our way to Gaza … You are bombing the tunnel routes exactly in the area where they [the other captives] are.”
Think about the irony in that - Hamas wanted to keep, and did more, to keep the Israeli hostages alive than their own government or the IDF! (This is what happens when wacko religious fundamentalists run a country).
The HRC report does not say this: "227. The Commission verified information indicating that, in at least two other cases,
Israeli Security Forces counter-offensive actions resulted in harm to and the killing of Israeli civilians and, in one of the cases, the actions were undertaken with clear knowledge of this risk. According to the Commission’s investigation, in these two
cases at least 14 Israeli civilians were likely killed as a result of Israeli Security Forces fire: one woman was killed by helicopter fire while being taken from kibbutz Nir Oz to Gaza by militants78 and the other 13 were likely killed by tank shelling and crossfire in kibbutz Be’eri."
The Hannibal Directive is supposed to prevent kidnappings, in a similar vein as "the US does not negotiate with terrorists". Say what you want about it, but it's not borne from Israel's callousness towards its own people, it's borne from facing truly monstrous enemies.
Finally, and I know the odds of this succeeding are real low, I implore you to do what you can to get out of what seems like a Marxist/Leninist Israel/Palestine absolutist hole you're in. I don't know you or your background, and I don't know if my read here is correct. But sourcing "electronicintifada" and "wsws" (straight up propaganda outlet and ML rag) or claiming elsewhere that Biden/Democrats would have supported Israel's attack on Iran (not even Israel thinks this, and the evidence is they didn't do it under Biden) gives me some pretty clear signals. I want to be clear: these people are nuts. MLs are nuts. Pro-Pali antisemites are nuts. (Again if I'm right) you're in the equivalent of thinking ivermectin will get you laid right now, completely off the deep end. Timothy Leary said it best: think for yourself, question authority. Don't be a useful idiot for these evil people.
> The use of such “Hannibal” strikes are confirmed in a UN report published in June. - Fire from Israeli helicopters, drones, tanks and even ground troops was deliberately undertaken in order to prevent Palestinian fighters from taking live Israeli captives who could be exchanged for Palestinian prisoners.
> The HRC report does not say this: "227. The Commission verified information indicating that, in at least two other cases, Israeli Security Forces counter-offensive actions resulted in harm to and the killing of Israeli civilians and, in one of the cases, the actions were undertaken with clear knowledge of this risk. According to the Commission’s investigation, in these two cases at least 14 Israeli civilians were likely killed as a result of Israeli Security Forces fire: one woman was killed by helicopter fire while being taken from kibbutz Nir Oz to Gaza by militants78 and the other 13 were likely killed by tank shelling and crossfire in kibbutz Be’eri."
Really? What's the factual difference between the two statements? What EI wrote is a terse summary from the report confirming the fact that the IDF killed its own civilians. Other evidence, including from Israel's own Defence Minister confirms that the IDF were told to execute the Hannibal Directive (which is an order to kill their own people). There's no stretch in relating the two.
"The US does not negotiate with terrorists" doesn't mean that they also prioritise killing their own soldiers or citizens, as the first line of defensive or offensive tactics.
And your attempts to paint me as some left-based extremist / conspiracist, due to the sources cited, is both ludicrous and laughable. I am an Indian, and Gandhi politically united us Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs etc by teaching us to recognise the extremists / religious fundamentalists amongst us, who only political thrive in fostering hatred, enmity and violence between communities. That is why we remain a secular nation. And aren't a communist nation too (as we understand that extremist left- leaders seeks to divide people by class - a different identity politics at play).
Left- or right- doesn't matter, and each have a constructive role to play - the trick is to keep extremism at bay.
Thus, I don't see Israeli Jews committing genocide against Palestinians or the Lebanese. What I see is the depravity of Israeli right-wing Jewish religious fundamentalists relishing in the blood-lust of slaughtering Palestinian and Lebanese women, children and the old simply because they are Arab Muslims and Christians, who refuse to leave the land where they were born. We ordinary human beings are not capable of such depravity, only the extremists are. Hitler did the same too - while the west has white-washed it, the Nazis where driven as much by Christian fundamentalism (as they were by the Eugenics) in creating the "us vs them" political narration of hate and violence. Netanyahu's politics is not so different from Hitler's or the Nazis today.
And just as Hitler's perverted Christian Nazism has nothing to do with Christianity as practiced by the ordinary Christians, Netanyahu's own perverted fundamentalist version of Jewish Fascism has nothing to do with Judaism of the ordinary Jews. Netanyahu's Jewish religious fundamentalism that drives the Israeli-right and the Islamic fundamentalism that drives the Palestinian-right are two faces of the same coin. Get rid of both, and the politics of hatred and violence in the region have a real chance to end.
> Really? What's the factual difference between the two statements? What EI wrote is a terse summary from the report confirming the fact that the IDF killed its own civilians.
No, what EI wrote is: "Hundreds of Israelis were likely killed by Israel itself in “Hannibal” targeting incidents as well as unintentional crossfire."
This is wrong, and also propaganda. Why would they do this? Think for yourself, question authority.
> We ordinary human beings are not capable of such depravity, only the extremists are.
There aren't enough extremists to do the truly abhorrent things. They need help from others, so they use tools like propaganda and coercion. Think for yourself, question authority.
I'm not here to defend the Likud party. I think what Israel prosecuted in the wake of the October 7th attacks was a genocide. But I do the next thing, which is learn the history and analyze a variety of sources with different incentives to get as clear a picture as possible, in hopes of not becoming a useful idiot for evil. Not everyone can do this, I understand. But I agree with 90% of what you wrote--you're clearly pretty smart and motivated, so I think you can.
Also apply think for yourself, question authority to me! Why would I do this? Am I a Zionist psyop? Am I virtue signaling on what I think is an influential message board? Am I ignoring my wife in a vain attempt at making the world a better place, which is something like the shadow of narcissism or the fear of irrelevancy?
If you only have Rs. 100 in your pocket, you will think hard before spending Rs. 10. If you have Rs. 1000 in your pocket, you will not mind spending Rs. 10. That said, even if you are financially sound, why in the world would you want to pay $14k extra for a similar service that is available cheaper? That money could be better utilised elsewhere.
You mean a Prime Minister, right? The President only came to the aid of the idiot ally who keeps opening multiple-fronts to a war just so that he can hold on to power and not go to jail, even as he keeps committing domicide and genocide of innocents.
> “Before the war, Bibi really sold it to the president as being easy, as regime change being a lot likelier than it was. And the VP was clear-eyed about some of those statements,” a US source told Axios. The vice president specifically challenged Netanyahu’s pre-war assertion that the Iranian regime would “fall swiftly” once military operations began and that a “popular uprising leading to regime change in Tehran” would follow the initial strikes. Twenty-eight days into the conflict, no such uprising has materialized.
The west believes "Data is the new oil". The west can't compete with China or India in the amount of data their citizens can generate because they are the world's most populous country. China already has a huge head start because it has already been collecting and data-mining its citizen's data. Attempts to make stronger privacy laws and sovereign data laws in many western countries will also impede data collections. But state sharing of data - through 5 Eyes, 9 Eyes and 14 Eyes - along with BigTech data could give the west an edge. (The west already has partial access to indian data because it leaks through lax data privacy laws, ill-thought indian government policies and BigTech. But Chinese data is truly firewalled.)
So yes, you are right that we will see our democracies embrace more and more control over us citizens, limiting our rights, while our governments emulate China. This is unfortunately because the west believes that being a leader in technology is essential to retain its powers.
You don't have the ability to revoke my keys on this machine, that's the point. Not even MS could do that, because these are _my_ keys. The alternative proposed here is no keys at all.
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