SpankyMcFarland

In the world? Really? https://www.cheapestdestinationsblog.com/2024/03/07/airlines-to-avoid-worlds-worst/#:~:text=In the first half of,Allegiant in the complaint department. I do wonder whether we should let Ryanair and/or the Americans in to see if they can do any better. Ryanair might be easier to manage if things went south. OTOH Trump could blow his horn if we let him have this.

But why not kill him immediately? Why threaten him first? Can you see the problem there? The only thing important to the IDF was his journalism. They wanted to stop that. For reasons blindingly obvious to most people who consider the matter.

Here’s how it’s done. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/15/israeli-military-unit-reportedly-tasked-with-linking-journalists-in-gaza-to-hamas Here they are: https://www.972mag.com And here’s the author: https://www.972mag.com/writer/yuval-abraham/

Heavy rain today here, thank God. A stay of execution for our house and cabin.

Got to work on my manliness.

Thank God we are getting colder, wetter weather next week.

The killing of Anas Al-Sharif followed a timeworn pattern. Only after he became a successful reporter on Al Jazeera did the Israelis start sending him death threats, telling him to give up his career on TV. If they had the slightest worry about him as a genuine military target they could have killed him without warning but they didn’t do that. He was killed after he became a media star. The motive could not be more obvious.

So journalists from Europe and North America have a cunning plan to get themselves killed? That’s dedication.

They’ve lied about killing hundreds of journalists! And it’s not just the Israelis. Armies routinely lie in these situations. They have to.

Do you honestly believe the IDF are going to tell the truth about themselves? Are you that simple? No army does that. It would be against its interests to do so. Media information is part of the conflict.

Western journalists are willing to enter Gaza immediately. But killing them would pose big problems for Israel. The IDF could scream bias about a godless dead Brit but claiming he’s Hamas ain’t gonna fly anywhere.

The details matter here. Hamas ran a theocratic dictatorship. Everyone in Gaza had some sort of ties to them whether they wanted to or not. When you say ‘terror cell’ what independent evidence do you have beyond Israeli allegations that we can’t trust either? Do you at least acknowledge that the IDF would have a motive to call somebody a Hamas operative whether or not they were?

In Newfoundland we are in mortal fear of the next wildfire. I would support virtually any measures the government deems necessary to prevent them. The Avalon peninsula, usually a damp, cold and foggy place, has one that is 52 square kms.

Israel has every reason to claim at least one journalist in a group it has killed was a Hamas operative because that gives it justification for killing all of them. As long as it can kill or intimidate all non-embedded journalists in Gaza and keep foreign journalists out it can better control what we see from there. If the Israelis had any interest in letting the truth be known they would admit reputable foreign journalists into Gaza. That they won’t do that speaks volumes.

The Nazis despised classical liberal values and Christian ones too. They advocated reversion to a pagan, tribal culture dominated by the strong. There’s little to admire there.

Like Johnny Rocco, Putin simply wants more. He’ll always take what he can. As soon as any peace deal is signed he’ll be looking for another war, in Ukraine yet again or with another hapless neighbour of his predatory regime.

If Ukrainians hadn’t wanted to fight Putin would have swallowed the country lock, stock and barrel. I really can’t fathom the angry nihilism that would cheer that prospect.

What causes global warming is a scientific question that should be debated in a dispassionate way devoid of politics. What to do about it is a political matter for which no definitive answer can be found - it’s just opinion. Now you’re making me guilty of thread drift. There are lots of threads devoted to what actions we should take. This isn’t one of them.

But that is what we are debating here, not what to do about it. Look at the title of this thread.

That’s like saying everyone in the British Empire was ethnically British. A relatively small number of Arabs invaded the region and brought their religion and language with them. Research on their DNA shows that Palestinians, like Jews, are partially descended from the Canaanite population that preceded the Abrahamic religions in the region.

I understand that taking action on climate change in a country with a substantial fossil fuel industry, including in my own province, is a complex and contentious matter. However, we should be able to at least agree on the science of man-made global warming which is the topic under discussion in this thread.

Look at this comment right above yours.

Actually, a lot of people still dispute it.

Why are ‘we’ doing this? Ask them. We didn’t start this.

More revelations on Ortiz. US officials knew very early on they had a serious problem on their hands: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/01/us/politics/triple-murderer-release-trump-venezuela.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare