Not so sure about Iran. I have looked for unambiguous quotes from them but can only find kooky religious stuff about Mahdism which is kind of like extremist Christians with their second coming madness.

Well educated Iranians seem to be Atheist whereas even intellectuals in Israel can be right wing religious nuts.

Certainly Iranian proxy groups like Hamas have unambiguously calked for a global caliphate

“Hamas, which is widely recognized as an Iranian proxy, has leaders and official rhetoric that go beyond the goal of liberating Palestine and at times explicitly reference the ambition of establishing a global Islamic caliphate.“

“On December 1, 2023, senior Hamas official Fathi Hammad declared on Al-Aqsa TV that the Palestinians are preparing to establish an Islamic caliphate with Jerusalem as its capital. He and other Hamas leaders have repeatedly stated that the liberation of Palestine is just a prelude to bringing all Islamic countries—and eventually the entire world—under Islamic rule, referencing the conquest of Rome and America as future goals”

https://www.memri.org/reports/hamas-leaders-our-goal-establishment-global-islamic-caliphate-not-just-liberation-palestine

For the record, my housemate of two years in Australia is Iranian. I also make music with an Iranian in Mashhad via the Internet (we jam electronic music). He is an extreme loner but tells me what society is like there.

Thanks.

And I didn’t know Signal had spam filters. It makes sense to not make that open source.

In my circle of 20 there has only been one instance of spam over several years. 3 of us got the same message.

Wiki citation:

86. The United Nations verified the recruitment and use of 4 Palestinian children (3 boys, 1 girl) by Israeli forces as human shields (3) and by the Nasser Salah al-Din Brigades (1) as combatants in the occupied West Bank (3) and the Gaza Strip (1).

So that’s 4 examples of the IDF and 8 of the Palestinian militants. The numbers are not a scorecard though. These are just children and just the ones they had evidence of. Must happen a lot more, especially if you count adult shields.

I expect better from IDF since they represent a democratic government and so we should be hearing of the rogue soldiers being disciplined (jailed even). We rarely hear that.

Got a citation for that claim?

There are also claims of IDF sending civilians ahead of a raid in potentially booby trapped buildings.

But why waste our time on hearsay? It is hard enough examining all the documented evidence from each side.

In feel like there just aren’t enough of us trying to get at the truth. It is more like a game of football from the comfort of our Western homes where we encourage our team to keep going regardless of losses (on the ProPal side the encouragement for Hamas to not surrender is especially buzaare).

Going by this very targeted attack video, I find those numbers difficult to believe.

There just isn’t much explosive you can secretly pack into a pager. The strategy relied on body proximity.

Neither side seems interested in murdering everyone on the other side.

Iran’s intention is to eradicate a Jewish state in the Levant. Hamas have stated that they would repeat Oct 7 over and over (seems a stupid thing to say out loud even if one is on their side) and in fact their insane leadership called for world Islamist domination.

“We Will Repeat The October 7 Attack, Time And Again, Until Israel Is Annihilated; We Are Victims – Everything We Do Is Justified”

Whether we agree with the establishment of Israel in the first place or not, it aint going anywhere so to continue trying to eradicate it 77 years later exacerbates suffering.

Aboriginal Australians got a raw deal but are still doing better than Gazans because they didn’t continue warring. They are still fighting politically and rightly so.

Unfortunately the source code is not open

Wrong.

https://threema.com/en/why-threema/open-source

They are monthly not daily popups. They are daily at the start kust to make sure you memorize your PIN, then they peter off.

However if you ignore a monthly one then it doesn’t disturb you until the next monthly reminder. What is the point of a PIN if it can be ignored?

The pager attack was pretty targeted. Very low percentage of civilians killed (unlike the percentages of Hezbollah attacks on Israel).

Am not sure that any label can really work perfectly anyhow. I posed to an Australian Greens Senator in the pub the following:

If Greens ever become one of the two major parties then the ruthless power seekers will gravitate towards your party instead of the current major parties. How will the party be able to spot the wolves in sheep’s clothing?

His answer was “I don’t know. We discuss that often.”

Which struck me as the response of an honest and genuine person.

My parents escaped Communist Yugoslavia to Australia. Even I started off right wing until about age 30. Therein I voted Greens (not like the dodgy US Greens BTW) and after a while convinced my parents too.

I am still aware of how the extreme left can become authoritarian as happened in Yugoslavia. Tankies are oblivious. Need to be vigilant whichever party you side with.

Your comment contradicts the Wikipedia entry…

The War Powers Resolution (also known as the War Powers Resolution of 1973 or the War Powers Act) (50 U.S.C. ch. 33) is a federal law intended to check the U.S. president’s power to commit the United States to an armed conflict without the consent of the U.S. Congress. The resolution was adopted in the form of a United States congressional joint resolution. It provides that the president can send the U.S. Armed Forces into action abroad only by declaration of war by Congress, “statutory authorization”, or in case of “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces”.

Isn’t that the core ideology of Conservatism? The current lot are radicals though.

Maximized efficiency at the expense of security. Can happen to anyone.

Gaza and Ukraine are completely different conflicts.

Am just passing on what Ireland is doing.

Ireland will not be asserting if genocide is being committed, but asserting its interpretation of the Genocide Convention.

This is the same approach taken by Ireland in the Ukraine v Russia case.

The current definition of Genocide is set out in Article II of the Genocide Convention:

Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
© Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated
to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

To constitute genocide, it also needs to be established that the victims are deliberately targeted — not randomly — because of their real or perceived membership of one of the four groups protected under the Convention. This means that the target of destruction must be the group, as such, or even a part of it, but not its members as individuals.

https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/Genocide Convention-FactSheet-ENG.pdf

Whether or not Israel has a right to exist, it is a childish fantasy to imagine it will vanish.

Black South African leadership did not express a desire to kill all whites. Hamas have expressed a desire to kill all Jews in the Levant so the analogy does not hold.

Most surviving German Jews went to the Levant (bear in mind that ⅔ were killed by Nazis).

White South Africans didn’t experience genocide.

No, not according to the current definition. That is why Ireland is trying to change it. Words change all the time so it is possible.

That would equate Gaza and Ukraine with the Holocaust, Rwanda, Cambodia, the nature and magnitude of which were very different. Perhaps they could create a new word for those?