phart010

9 minutes ago, avatar! said:

You ignore facts and realities and try to spin what is at best misrepresentation, but quite honestly I view them as nothing more than lies whether willful ignorance or on purpose, at the end it really doesn't matter that much.

I'm curious, do you believe the Holocaust happened? I ask because you are in complete denial that Hamas has murdered some 1200 innocent men, women, children, and babies in Israel despite everyone (including Hamas) agreeing this is exactly what happened.

I'm not surprised your misinformation also applies to what is happening in Ukraine.

Nearly 10,000 documented Ukrainian civilians have been killed by Russian forces. Some 20,000 civilians have been documented to be inured, many grievously. These are not military personal. These are civilians attacked by Russian forces without any provocation. Just like Israelis were attacked without any provocation.

OHCHR specified that the real numbers [of Ukrainian civilians killed and wounded] could be higher.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1293492/ukraine-war-casualties/

 

If those numbers from Statista are accurate, then I made an honest mistake. I was not intentionally misleading anyone, Google actually says that the number was 30,000 Ukrainian soldiers. One thing you need to know is that when wars happen, there will be dozens of independent organizations counting deaths and they will all come up with different numbers. For example in the Iraq war, some estimates of Iraqi death count were as low as 250k and some were as high as 2 million. Most people agree the number may have been around 1 million 

6 minutes ago, ThePhleo said:

 

 

I support the immediate elimination of any emancipated person who supported what happened on October 7 with haste, the same way I support the immediate elimination of anyone who supports the Nazi gas chambers, or Crusades, or Rape of Nanking, or any other mass act against humanity that happened in history.

I am a Romani (aka gypsy) and I am fortunate that in recent decades my people have managed to blend in, but the Jews are our comrades in misery and I support them, knowing that if they fall, I am next.

But yes, the reports do seem false, so ok I'll give you that.

 

And again, if Hamas wants to end the war, they can release the hostages and stop bombing, and if Israel truly wanted to end Palestine it would take less than a day.

Do you not see that what is happening to the Palestinian people right now is a mass act against humanity? People are being killed indiscriminately.

Just for reference, Ukraine has lost 30k combat fighters in like 20 months. These were people fighting the front lines expecting to die. Palestine has lost more than half of that in one month and half of them are children.

You see how dangerous misinformation can be. Because of this false reporting, you think it’s ok to wipe out 68% of Palestinians. 

27 minutes ago, ThePhleo said:

https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/middle-east/palestinian-territories/1700158968-survey-finds-majority-in-the-west-bank-justify-the-oct-7-massacre

68% of West Bank STRONGLY supports the October 7 massacre.

And additional 16% supports it to some extent.

...their goal is QUITE LITERALLY the extermination of all Jews, and destruction of Israel, and making a comparison to Nazi Germany is somehow disingenuous.

wat

Sorry buddy. Again your Israeli sources have deceived you. 

Here is the actual survey they were referencing.

https://www.awrad.org/files/server/polls/polls2023/Public Opinion Poll - Gaza War 2023.pdf

i24news has deliberately lied about what it says in the survey. The survey says 68% of respondents report their support for a 2 state solution has declined. The liars have instead reported that it says 68% STRONGLY supported the massacres and kidnappings.

Please check your sources before spreading misinformation 

44 minutes ago, ThePhleo said:

If Hitler was elected today with the explicit call to mass murder all Jews in his campaign, would we say that Germany was innocent?

How many children women and men died during WW2 because of the ones that voted in Hitler.

This isn’t quite the same thing. Because in Nazi Germany, pretty much all of German society was called into action by force or coercion to serve the interests of the Nazis.

In Palestine, Most Palestinian people are just going to work or school and living life like regular people do. Hamas is operating underground like a group of rogue militants. It’s guerilla warfare.

Maybe many Palestinians people verbally sympathize with Hamas because they view this as a conflict between “us and them” but the reality is that they are not involved with Hamas, are not being coerced or forced to comply with any sort of terror operations, and are just trying to live their life the best they can.

The propaganda would have you think that Hamas is a sophisticated organization. For example, the Israelis recently justified taking over Shifa hospital saying that it was Hamas headquarters. They even had made videos showing a rendering of an underground base with meeting rooms, ammunition rooms, all kinds of crazy stuff.

Well they just released a video of the findings and what they had found was just a regular hospital with like two bags of ammunition, maybe 20 guns, a laptop and a stack of cd-roms. 

It is pretty clear that all of the hospitals in Gaza were either closed or destroyed not because of Hamas presence, but because they want to make life so unbearable for Palestinians that they will just leave their country.

The reason so many people died in Germany is because Nazism grew to become so intertwined with Germany society and they were actually becoming threat to the rest of the world. Hamas is hardly a threat to Israel’s existence. Netanyahu’s government is just using them as a tool to fulfill his interests. Unfortunately by the time all the info is vetted and we get all the facts and history laid out, the Palestinian people will probably already be dispersed into other countries as refugees.

2 hours ago, ThePhleo said:

@phart010 The purpose of war is mass murder. It is the last resort when diplomacy doesn't work.

The word has been diluted the same way the word "Nazi" has been diluted, by overuse and exaggeration. A "Trade War" is not a war, and the "War on Drugs" and the "War on Terror" is not a war.

War is the most evil necessity of civilization.

You sacrifice your innocence, and put the blood of innocent civilians on your hands, in the hopes that your future generations can be innocent. Every combat soldier, every commander, and every war time leader is a murderer or an accomplice to murder. No holds barred.

--

Furthermore,

Hamas was elected by its populace. Elections have consequences, and if you choose to have someone who says they exist solely to wipe out another nation, then you are unfortunately an accomplice as well.

Lastly, the only innocent civilians in this war are the Palestinians denouncing Hamas and still getting killed as collateral damage, and the People of Israel and tourists who were kidnapped, raped, murdered, eviscerated, and chopped up on Oct. 7.

I mostly agree with what you said. Except in this instance, I don’t think war was necessary.
 

I agree Hamas has its goal as the complete elimination of Israel. I think the way Israel was created was kind of messed up, but realistically that boat has sailed a long time ago. Israel is now a firmly established nation. There’s no way to remove it without massive destruction of innocent Israelis. Undoing Israel is not an option today.

Even so, we still have to recognize where the starting point of this conflict was. Palestinians lived all over the country. Today, they live in a small section of the country. Now it seems they are going to be either pushed out of the country completely or killed.

I honestly believe that the majority of Palestinians do not want to eliminate Israel or cause any harm to the Israeli people. There is an Israeli guy on YouTube named Corey Gil-Shuster that goes around Israel and Palestine and interviews random people on the street and asks their opinions on hot topics about the conflict. He’s been doing this for years. In the beginning he was slightly pro-Israeli, but I think he’s talked to enough Palestinians that he has grown empathetic and now realizes they just want to live life in peace.

I think that Israel is sophisticated enough that they could easily target the leaders of Hamas and capture them or do away with them. Some of the most sophisticated technologies in the world are developed by Israel. Additionally Israel is the largest recipient of foreign funding from the United States every year.

The people of Palestine are Muslims, so they probably would still feel uncomfortable having Israel govern them.. With Hamas out of the picture, they could ask a coalition of Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt, Malaysia etc to form an authority in Palestine. Since these countries don’t have the bitter past with Israel like Palestinian people, their policies could be more focused on progress instead of revenge.

But instead, I think Israel found it easier to just push all of the Palestinian people out. Of course they could not just do this without blowback from the rest of the world. So they have to make it look like a response to a terror attack.

It boggles my mind that they were unable to detect or prepare for this attack especially when multiple countries warned them that it was coming in advance. 

Disclaimer: If 40 babies, or even 1 baby was killed or even harmed, then I totally condemn it. Actually if any innocent civilians were harmed, I totally condemn it.

But right now, bombing the hell out of Gazan civilians is being justified on the basis that Hamas killed babies. We live in a time where standards have been put in place to document crime scenes, including photographic evidence. It is the duty of any critical thinking person to corroborate the facts and not just listen to the reporting.

https://www.businessinsider.com/biden-pictures-terrorists-beheading-children-white-house-2023-10?amp

When you look into the 40 babies story, you find that:
1. A woman reporting on the ground claims 40 babies were killed and many were beheaded.
2. Hamas, while considered a terrorist group, is still in communication with reporters. They have stated they didn’t killed babies. If they are truly on a rampage trying to terrorize like the media is saying they are, why would they not own this?
3. President Biden says he saw the pictures of the babies being beheaded with his own eyes.
4. The Whitehouse puts out a statement declaring that the President actually did not see the images, he only saw Israel’s reporting on the incident 
5. Investigative reporters are looking for the evidence of the dead babies. They have asked the Israeli Defense Force. Israeli Defense Force says they have no evidence, they are not looking for evidence, and they will do no investigation out of respect for the dead.

I agree we should respect the dead. However, if you are going to use this incident as justification for bombing an entire city filled with civilians, then I’m sorry, we need to see the evidence. By the way, on the Palestinian side 11,240 civilians are dead due to bombings and the official death count of Gazan children 4,630.

There are plenty of images of dead Gazan children available online. I’m not going to post their pictures here. I have not seen an image of a beheaded Israeli child, and according to the official statement from the IDF, they have not either.

The supposed “watchlist”

3 hours ago, avatar! said:

 

I suggest you try reading any news channel that is not Hamas. You ignore facts that Hamas murdered innocent men, women, children, then you try to somehow make Israel responsible for the Gulf War -- that is quite honestly an antisemitic lie. Yes, antisemitic, you're just blaming the Jews. It's well known that the Gulf War which brought Saddam Hussein down was a direct result of the terror attacks on 9/11

I think you have confused the Gulf War with the War on Terror. The gulf War was in the early 90s so could not haven post 9/11. The War on terror was a war based on false premises that destroyed Iraq and Afghanistan in cold blood. Supposedly this war was in response to Al-Qaedas destroying the twin towers. Yet there was no Al-Qaeda present in Iraq. Al-Qaeda was in Saudi Arabia and an autonomous region between Pakistan and Afghanistan 

There were two main reasons for the War on Terror. 
1. Saddam Hussein threatens to sell Iraqi oil for Euros. This would have threatened to topple the status quo of the US dollar being the exclusive currency for trading oil. Because of this, US made an example out of Iraq to any other countries that would dare to trade oil for anything besides US dollars.

2. Dick Cheney the warmonger. Dick Cheney was simultaneously Bush’s Vice President and the CEO of Halliburton. This was a complete conflict of interest and he used his position to award Halliburton all of the military, construction and security contracts to Halliburton on a “no-bid” basis. This means Halliburton did not have to compete with other military contractors, they were simply awarded all of the contracts regardless of their cost. This made Dick Cheney and all the military industrial complex investors extremely wealthy. This man was an absolute war criminal 

On 11/14/2023 at 10:37 AM, avatar! said:

That one line right there above just spokes volumes about your viewpoint -- Can you not accept facts? If Hamas harmed innocent people -- not even Hamas denies that they kill women and children! Every single news network across the world knows that on Oct 7th Hamas attacked Israel and killed over 1400 innocent people, including babies, children, and women. As well as kidnapping over 200 civilians of all nationalities. But, you still say "If" implying you refuse to accept facts. The Hamas terrorists themselves even had bodycams because for them, this is sport -- the killing of Jews and anyone not aligned with their ideology --

https://www.icct.nl/publication/interview-devorah-margolin-hamas

Any illusions surrounding Hamas’s legitimacy or possible moderation have been shattered. This is also true for Hamas itself. There is no putting the “genie back in the bottle”, there is no going back. Hamas has made it extremely clear that the goals outlined in its charter, specifically the complete destruction of Israel, remain its ideology. 

Suffice to say, there's almost nothing you said I agree with. In fact, I would say nearly everything you said is either demonstrably false, or at most, could easily be argued against. Just one example --

Second point is that you mentioned Jewish people criticized the Muslim religion they would be punished. Maybe so, but religious folk tend to have respect for eachother, unlike childish people today.

First,  "childish people today" -- it's not even clear what you're trying to say. You ignored the fact that over centuries Muslims butchered men, women, and children. They would destroy whole communities whether the community was Jewish, Christian, or some other religions.  You can not just wave your hand and magically say "maybe so" as if that makes it right! I can bounce that right back at you and say "you think Israel is being too harsh with collective punishment? well maybe so, but you know childish people today" -- see, that means nothing.

And the Muslim people also pay taxes. They just give their taxes a religious spin and the other people are paying it for secular reasons since they don’t believe in the same religion.

What? Yes, Muslims pay tax in a Muslim country. HOWEVER you completely ignore my point which is that Jews had to pay an extra tax... EXTRA tax not imposed on Muslims. It is certainly preferable to pay an extra tax rather than being killed, unfortunately the latter was all too common --

One of the big problems today is that after 9/11, there was a very strong propaganda campaign to demonize Muslims. As a result, the average person has no empathy for Muslim people, they are now viewed subhuman.

Perhaps the one thing I agree with you is that too many people demonize Muslims. However, you are incorrect in saying that there is "no empathy" --

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2017/07/26/how-the-u-s-general-public-views-muslims-and-islam/

Still, the uptick in positive feelings toward Muslims is notable, especially because other questions in different Pew Research Center surveys also suggest that the public’s view of Muslims has improved in recent years.

For example, in December 2016, 49% of Americans said Islam is not more likely than other religions to encourage violence among its followers, while 41% said it is more likely to encourage violence. The share who associate Islam with violence has declined 9 percentage points – from 50% – since September 2014

The big uptick is in antisemitism. Jews are 2% of the population of the USA but experience 60% of religious hate crimes. 

In closing, I don’t really know what happened in Israel. I know they reported that Hamas did something horrific, but they also claimed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and used that as justification to kill at least a million people according to some estimates. And it turns out WMDs was a lie.

I suggest you try reading any news channel that is not Hamas. You ignore facts that Hamas murdered innocent men, women, children, then you try to somehow make Israel responsible for the Gulf War -- that is quite honestly an antisemitic lie. Yes, antisemitic, you're just blaming the Jews. It's well known that the Gulf War which brought Saddam Hussein down was a direct result of the terror attacks on 9/11

The first two videos you posted are exactly the reason that I have said “if”. First video showed Hamas militants going around a residential area shooting at nothing. I didn’t see a single human target in the video. But the commentary says they were killing people.  Second video claims babies were killed, and to be honest if babies were killed then I don’t want to see the video. But many people that are willing to stomach viewing this type of horrific content have said they are still waiting to see evidence of the dead babies. So all we really have are testimonies and affadavits.. kind like the people that claimed election fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

All I can say is that I have not seen anything with my own two eyes besides a ton of dead Palestinians.

Regarding Muslims killing Christians and Jewish communities in the Middle East… we can go back and forth on this non stop but the facts are that Muslim people governed the Middle East for centuries. Their religion explicitly says they can’t compel people to their religion and they can’t harm a people unless they are aggressors. And in these lands they governed, there are communities of Christians and Jews that have lived until today.
There are millions of Coptic Christians in Egypt today whose community dates back to the Roman Empire. Why do they still exist?

There are Assyrian Christian communities that still speak Aramaic, the native language of Jesus living in Syria and Iraq today… why do they still exist? 

All the Jewish communities that left the Middle Eastern countries to migrate to Israel in 1948… why were they still alive?? 

These are just a few examples. If the Muslim people are these violent barbarians that you want them to be, they would have wiped these communities out centuries ago.

The Jewish Chronicle states that Muslims saved the Jews:
https://www.thejc.com/comment/comment/so-what-did-the-muslims-do-for-the-jews-1.33597

You should check your knowledge on this whole “dhimmi” concept. It sounds like your information is from post 9/11 hate websites. A dhimmi is just a tax paying member of society living in a Muslim country. Just like green card holders are tax paying members of society in America that are not Americans. Muslim people have to pay an annual wealth tax called zakat. Zakat funds social services, primarily helping poor people. This is a religious obligation on them. They also have mandatory military service as a religious obligation.

Since “dhimmis” are not Muslim, they can’t be asked to pay a zakat tax as a religious obligation. So they give the tax a different name. Also, paying the dhimmi tax guaranteed a waiver from military service. 

Dhimmi people found the tax to be a good value, otherwise they would have left.

From Wikipedia:

Similarly, Thomas Arnold states that jizya was "too moderate" to constitute a burden, "seeing that it released them from the compulsory military service that was incumbent on their Muslim fellow subjects." He further adds that converts escaping taxation would have to pay the legal alms, zakat, that is annually levied on most kinds of movable and immovable property.

1 hour ago, avatar! said:

As far as orthodox Jews are concerned, they don’t have any business rebuilding Israel from a religious standpoint.

Says who? You? Israel is a democracy and any citizen whether they are an orthodox Jew, Muslim, Christian, whatever, has the right to build the country as they see fit -- within the constitution of course.  By the way, the same goes for the USA and other democracies. Also, your statement can be turned around and someone can say "As far as religious Muslims are concerned, they don’t have any business rebuilding Palestine from a religious standpoint." -- let me guess, that doesn't sit well with you?

As for Arabs, they lived in relative peace with Jewish people in the Middle East for centuries.

Depends on your definition of "relative". Let's explore --

In 622 the Jews of Medina (now part of Saudi Arabia) refused to convert and therefore were expelled or murdered by none other than Muhammad himself-- by the way, think Saudi Arabia would restore their ancestral land since Jews had lived their for hundreds of years? NO! Of course not. Easy to be hypocritical -- although I will give Saudi Arabia credit for refusing to sever ties with Israel, which is what Hamas was hoping for.

In 627, again Muhammad himself and his followers destroyed the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza killing around 900 men (some say it was much higher), and divided the surviving Jewish women and children amongst themselves as slaves. Peaceful yet?

"Peaceful" coexistence between Jews and Muslims involved the subordination and degradation of Jews. For example, Jews had to pay an extra tax, and on pain of death they were forbidden to criticize the Koran and Islam in any way shape or form -- this included if what most people would argue today as "fair criticism". Also, if a Muslim converted to Judiasm, the person who converted and anyone associated with them would be murdered.  Oh, and if a Jew touched a Muslim woman, that Jew could likewise be murdered -- although a Muslim man could (with force if needed) take a non­-Muslim as a wife.

Jews did the best they can, often just being the typical scapegoats. For instance, on December 30, 1066, Joseph HaNagid, the Jewish vizier of Granada in Spain, was crucified by an Arab mob that proceeded to raze the Jewish quarter of the city and slaughter its 5,000 inhabitants. What today is known as the 1066 Granada Massacre was incited by Muslim preachers who had angrily objected to what they saw as Jews obtaining political power.

There are so many other instances that I'm almost at a loss as to where to continue. Thousands were murdered in the city of Fez alone during in 1465, thousands murdered in Algiers in the 1800s, Jews were murdered or forced to convert in Yemen for hundreds of years -- many kept their faith secretly and if discovered the entire family (men, women, children) butchered.

More recently, some thousands of Jews were killed in anti-Jewish rioting in the 1940s in Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Syria, and Yemen.

You could make the argument that Jews were treated far better in Muslim countries hundreds of years ago then there were treated in Europe. You could also make the argument that there was "relative peace", but the facts show that many many thousands were massacred over the years all by Muslims.

My sources? Wikipedia, as well as scholarly books such as this --

https://www.amazon.com/Jews-Islam-Princeton-Paperbacks/dp/0691008078

So you can’t say Arabs or Muslims have a religious duty to eliminate Jews, cause they had plenty of time to do that and they never did.

They absolutely did see it as a "religious duty" and in many instances they absolutely eliminated the Jews entirely! I certainly never said that all Muslims see it as a religious duty to kill/murder/convert Jews, Christians, etc. But for Hamas, it is undeniably a religious duty -- Hamas itself would agree since it's part of their charter --

https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp

Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it" (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory).

The Movement's program is Islam. From it, it draws its ideas, ways of thinking and understanding of the universe, life and man.

Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.

That's right out of their charter, so to try to pretend Hamas is political and not religious is laughable.

Hamas and the people in Gaza are like a beast locked in a cage. You can’t complain when you stick your hand into the cage and it bites you. Treat them like humans and maybe they will behave better.

Nice hyperbole. Let me ask you when was the last time you were in in the Middle East? Granted, it's been years since I was there last, but I remember talking to people, both young and old, at the West Bank and there sure was hope for peace. I can't say they loved Israel, nor did Israelis love them, but it was a hopeful time on both sides. Also, are you trying to defend Hamas? They are universally acknowledged as terrorists that have murdered men, women, children. 

The problem with this conflict is that Israel owns like 90% of the reporting on it. It’s pretty obvious that an ethnic cleansing is taking place. Is it a religious war? Only in the sense that the evangelical Christians that control US Middle East policy want Israel to dominate the region because they think it will speed up the second coming of Jesus.

The largest Middle East reporting is by Al Jazeera, which is funded by Qatar, they have offices in Israel. Unlike most countries in the Middle East, Israel has freedom of the press. So any newspaper can report from there, whether pro-Israel or anti-Israel. To say "Israel owns like 90% of the reporting on it" is completely unfounded. I will grant you that there is no doubt that Evangelical Christians are a big influence in Middle East policy. However, to again say something unfounded such as that they "control policy" is asinine. Do you consider Joe Biden an evangelical Christian? Last I checked he is still the Commander in Chief of the armed forces and his policy (which I think has overall been solid) certainly does not align with what right-winging people want.

As far as orthodox Jews are concerned, they don’t have any business rebuilding Israel from a religious standpoint.
 

Your counter argument did not address the supposed “religious entitlement” that Israel has. What you argued for is a secular and political reason for existence. If you spend some time learning what it says in the Torah, you’ll see that religious Jews dutifully accept their exile from Israel by God’s command. If you don’t want to hear this from me, hear it from religious Jews themselves in these two videos.

As for Arabs, they lived in relative peace with Jewish people in the Middle East for centuries.

I agree that Jewish people were marginalized and even killed throughout history, especially in Europe. Yes they were also sometimes killed in the Middle East. But this was not the norm. If it was, there would be have been no Jewish communities in the Middle East remaining to return to Israel.

Historically, they went to Middle Eastern countries because they enjoyed rights and safety. There are literally books written about this topic.

This guy she is interviewing is Muslim, but the authors he is referencing are non-Muslim historians and they attest to the peace:

Here are the book he referenced:
-Muhammed: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empire, by Juan Coles
-A History of Bombing, by Sven Lindqvist
-Are Muslims Distinctive? A Look at the Evidence, by Steven Fish
-Avicenna, by Dr. Lenn E Goodman. Goodman is a Jewish scholar that celebrates the works of Avicenna (AKA Ibn Sina), so there has to be some common ground between Muslims and Jews.

He also referenced Emir Abdelkader El Djazairi as a historical figure venerated by the French Legion  (Westerners) and the Red Cross (Western organization) for humane treatment of captives.
Glenn Goodman


You mentioned Jews living under Muslim rule as being some sort of subjugation. It’s easy to view it this way when you are doing so with the intention of finding wrong. First point is that everyone has to pay taxes for participating in civilization. So if you live in a Muslim country, yes you still have to pay taxes. And the Muslim people also pay taxes. They just give their taxes a religious spin and the other people are paying it for secular reasons since they don’t believe in the same religion.

Second point is that you mentioned Jewish people criticized the Muslim religion they would be punished. Maybe so, but religious folk tend to have respect for eachother, unlike childish people today. Jewish and Muslim people have more in common than they differ when it comes to religion, so I find it difficult to imagine these people hurling insults at each other. Also, free speech is a relatively new thing in history regardless of religion or country… and all the places that supposedly promote free speech over the past century are more recently deciding that they want to go back to restricting speech.

I personally live in an area where there are many Palestinian people and they are very polite and welcoming people. I have talked with them on a friendly level and none of them have any issues with Jewish people. What they all complain about it how their families were forced out of their homelands of many generations by Zionists. Here’s a good example:

You said Hamas has a duty to eliminate Israel. That is true. That does not equate to harming people. What they mean is the elimination of the the oppressive government. Personally I do not see how that would happen without a fight, but all I can say is that if innocent people are harmed that is always a bad thing.




Some more history on the conflict:

Regarding the news in Israel - it is true that every mainstream network is reporting on the conflict. But the only source of the info they are reporting is the Israeli authorities. The Israeli authorities are not allowing independent investigations to take place. Some reporters have actually been killed, and based on some of the videos I have seen of how IDF soldiers are treating reporters, I would not be surprised if some of these deaths could have been avoided. So we are only hearing info that has been approved for reporting by the Israeli authorities. That’s a problem they have skin in the game, so you can expect the reporting to be biased.

One of the big problems today is that after 9/11, there was a very strong propaganda campaign to demonize Muslims. As a result, the average person has no empathy for Muslim people, they are now viewed subhuman. The media has now taken a turn since the Middle East “War on Terror” has ended and they are trying to re-humanize Muslims. Unfortunately, they did such a good job with the demonization, that people are pretty much convinced for life that these are evil people.

In closing, I don’t really know what happened in Israel. I know they reported that Hamas did something horrific, but they also claimed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and used that as justification to kill at least a million people according to some estimates. And it turns out WMDs was a lie.

If Hamas harmed innocent people then I condemn that. But that’s no excuse to level an entire city.

As far as orthodox Jews are concerned, they don’t have any business rebuilding Israel from a religious standpoint. Zionism is a pure political movement with religious bits sprinkled on top. 

As for Arabs, they lived in relative peace with Jewish people in the Middle East for centuries. Jews actually fled from persecution in Europe during medieval times into the Middle East as a refuge and lived there all the way up until they ultimately migrated to Israel. So you can’t say Arabs or Muslims have a religious duty to eliminate Jews, cause they had plenty of time to do that and they never did.  

Hamas and the people in Gaza are like a beast locked in a cage. You can’t complain when you stick your hand into the cage and it bites you. Treat them like humans and maybe they will behave better.

The problem with this conflict is that Israel owns like 90% of the reporting on it. It’s pretty obvious that an ethnic cleansing is taking place. Is it a religious war? Only in the sense that the evangelical Christians that control US Middle East policy want Israel to dominate the region because they think it will speed up the second coming of Jesus.
 

Using the b word is distasteful. But in my opinion it is still acceptable usage to apply to individuals that deserve it.

It should not be used to categorically label the whole female gender or even any large group of people.

My daughters love this game. It’s surprising because it looks the same as the New SMB game on Switch, but the difficulty on that game is too high for them to play. This game is much more approachable for little kids. It’s also still fun for adults.

I wish Nintendo would go back to New SMB U on Switch and release an update patch to toggle off friendly collisions in multiplayer, also maybe tweak the difficulty to make it easier for kids

4 hours ago, Tulpa said:

Plus, Americans use the metric system in tons of things. Soda bottles, firearms, nutrition info. We could change over without too much fuss, we just ... don't.

Tool makers love it. They get to sell double the amount of wrenches, drill bits, etc because we need to buy a metric set and an imperial set

On 11/7/2023 at 10:15 PM, DefaultGen said:

Mario made a BILLION dollars. We've got at minimum of 8 movies ahead of us for 8 temples, plus a finale movie split into two parts.

When you count dvd/Blu-ray/post box office sales, it was closer to $1.5B

Not only that, but they were also able to keep costs down. Often times lead actors can get a percentage of movie revenue up to 10% for signing. Since Mario movie was only voice actors, Chris Pratt took the job for $5M which is ~1/3rd of one percent of the movie revenue

Let’s say you bought a ticket for a movie. You are sitting in the theater and the movie seems to suck.

Two questions:

1. How long does it take before you realize that the movie is bad?
2. Will you walk out of the theater before the movie ends when you confirm that the movie is bad?

8 hours ago, Sumez said:

Mine neither. My point was that as long as your controller isn't bad, it should barely count for an external factor at all.

Wait. So you are saying that playing Street Fighter on an Arcade stick is barely different than playing it with a PS1 or Saturn controller?

This topic will have many nuances and insights can be gained by looking at it from many different angles 

The way I was looking at it, (and I don’t mean for this to limit the scope of the discussion) is from the perspective of game publishers. They are re-releasing collections of retro games.

I question whether the games in the collections are having the impact with gamers the publishers were hoping for. A lot of these retro games are acclaimed for the full “gaming experience” that they brought to gamers at the initial release. The rerelease in these new retro collection is usually just the software, it doesn’t capture the full experience.

1 hour ago, GPX said:

I think there are 2 separate issues here. One being the amount of joy you get from playing a game, with external factors being an extra element of that enjoyment. The other issue is the nostalgia we get after many years have passed, and we remember the games possibly more on the situation surrounding them rather than purely on the gaming elements.

 

 

The nostalgia only exists because of the original joy. And the original joy was only possible because of the external factors. 
 

Without proposing how, I think this is one of the things publishers need to consider when re-releasing old games. The software isolated by itself is only special for the people with nostalgia 

14 hours ago, docile tapeworm said:

Dude. Look we all get it allright….you love Super Nintendo. 
but check yourself with the acronym. It’s “Super Mario Bros. Wonder”.

thats “Bros.” Just like the nes games.

I think you hit on something.

PSA: SMW= Super Mario World

SMBW= Super Mario Bros Wonder

Posted this to eBay. Not sure if there’s a market for this yet. Last one was priced high though and sold by private offer

https://www.ebay.com/itm/115947798690?hash=item1aff0700a2:g:oh0AAOSwrPNlMeaf

https://www.mercari.com/u/187403049?sv=0

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?sid=phart010&_pgn=1&isRefine=true&_trksid=p4429486.m3561.l49496

For the first time ever I’m starting to put stuff up for sale.

Taking a standard 15% off for VGS members when sold privately (basically avoiding Mercari fees).

Also open to offers.

1 hour ago, Sumez said:

In those two scenarios, the the software might only be 50% of the experience or less. Depends on what you appreciate I guess, but you already kinda defined that

I would agree with you that for Arcade games at least, 50% of the experience is playing the game in the Arcade setting. The game software itself only provides you with half of the enjoyment.
 

The other half of the enjoyment is missing if you are not playing it in the Arcade environment 

The end of high prices