Moonbox

and yet, even ignoring the polls we have access to that show it does, it's self-evident that they do. 🙄

For someone who's not trying to peddle conspiracy theories, you can't seem to help yourself. This one isn't even any good. Netanyahu's carefully crafted image of being the man for security cannot survive this, and it's crazy to think that he believed it could. The Oct 7th attacks and the former Netanyahu brand cannot exist in the same reality. "Oopsy we let the grass get too long, and Hamas went further than we'd hoped" is a ridiculous argument. You drew the comparison, by drawing parallels between the Gazan/Hamas and Israeli political decision making processes. It was a lousy comparison, and we didn't need a "contest" to sort it out. Circular reasoning that can be flipped to defeat itself. If Israel had a hand in the rise of Hamas and the miserable conditions in Gaza, then Gazan and Hamas were heavily responsible for the Israeli fear and nervousness that led to those conditions, and the hardline leadership they chose to deal with it. When "Death to Israel" is already the base case, and the Gazans already facilitate, support and cheer for attacks like Oct 7th, what do you figure is happening here? Are they going from "hating Israel" to "really REALLY hating Israel?" Dead Hamas members will find it harder to attack Israeli cities, as will ones pushed away from Israeli borders and denied support, weapons and infrastructure. Israeli intransigence is cynical but realistic. It's absurd to imagine a good-faith peace process with a group that calls for your extermination. The Oslo Peace process wasn't nearly as close as you make it out to be, and it went on years after Rabin was assassinated. It was probably the best chance we've seen, however, and anything we've seen since has been delusional (like Obama's, or the Arab Peace Initiative).

Only in your imagination. You cannot and have not ever provided a single reference saying that. 🤣 No you weren't. I quoted that originally, because I already had it from work. I also haven't been misquoting it, because I'm literally directly quoting it. All the furious effort you spend pounding out these useless rants is wasted when you say so many stupid things in the first two lines.

Which made your original claim that Trudeau was responsible for over half of inflation obviously clueless all by itself. 😆 I'm not pretending anything. I'm quoting the report: "Supply challenges that largely reflect developments at the global level account for another 35% of the rise in inflation." That doesn't say "caused by Trudeau", does it? It doesn't even say "internal issues". That you're even attempting these donkey-brained mental backflips is absurd when it specifically says "largely reflect developments at the global level". You're derailing a thread by digging up and trying to rehash an argument you already embarrassed yourself from months ago. That's how belligerently stupid you are. 🤣

No. I don't think the hardliners wanted 1200 dead Israelis on their watch and hundreds of abducted hostages. Netanyahu has always positioned himself as the best man for a safe and secure Israel, and Ben-Gvir is the Minister of Security. This makes them both look like fools. It matters when their democracy, flawed as it may be, provides the checks and balances (including their judiciary) that prevents the worst among them from controlling everything. I think you're misrepresenting. The idea that Gaza was afflicted with Hamas is farcical when it's a homegrown Palestinian movement run by Palestinians and broadly supported by the Palestinians. 75% of Palestinians in Gaza supported the October 7th attack and believe it was justified. Read that again. Fully 3/4 of Gazans think it was good and right that their people stormed across the Israeli border, raped girls and women in front of their families, burned children and murdered or abducted anyone they came across. The idea that Gazans can fire 2200 cheap dumbfire rockets into Israeli cities in one day and that Israel has to retaliate with hundred thousand dollar guided missiles is as ridiculous as the idea Israel was ever going to be able to avoid widespread civilian casualties. Hamas made sure that was impossible. Gosh, so you're saying this isn't a hearts and minds campaign for the Israelis, and that you don't think they're winning them over? That boat sailed on Oct 7th. Now it's about eliminating/mitigating their ability to threaten Israelis, rather than their inclinations.

I really don't know, but we could just chalk this up to Trudeau being as unintelligent as he looks and acts. Maybe he thought he could win the next election. Maybe he thought he could paint anyone who opposed excess immigration as racist. Maybe he only listens to people who tell him what he wants to hear. Maybe he already knows he's doomed in the next election, and just wants to sow the seeds for a future return, or at least a Liberal revival down the road. It doesn't really matter in the end. When the touted purpose of doubling immigration is for long-term economic health, but the actual economists say it's going to do the opposite, we can only shake our heads and surmise.

Only in your little imagination. This was one of the dumbest and easiest-to-disprove of your clueless hot-takes, so if you're compelled to keep bringing it up and derailing threads, I can keep requoting the same thing while you huff and puff and look the fool. While you cluelessly ranted about Trudeau being responsible for over half of Canada's inflation in 2022, here's what the economists actually said: a. Around 50% of the increase in inflation observed since the end of 2019 can be ascribed to global or foreign factors. These include US inflation, commodity prices and movements in the exchange rate. b. Supply challenges that largely reflect developments at the global level account for another 35% of the rise in inflation. https://www.scotiabank.com/ca/en/about/economics/economics-publications/post.other-publications.inflation-reports.causes-of-inflation--december-5--2022.html

Nope. 🙄 Groot posted an article explaining that top economists point to Trudeau's immigration policy as making things less affordable. Those same economists also explained last year that most of 2022's high inflation was based on global factors, despite your brain-dead claims about more than half of it being Trudeau's fault. They have not revised their opinions on this, nor have I. Your clueless hot-takes are just as clueless now as they were many months ago.

Well it's widely known that they're both into some pretty weird stuff, so I think it's important that we have this conversation. If we don't find any evidence for it in the next couple of days, someone can take my posts down about it. Personally, I don't really know. I'm just asking questions. 🫠

The only thing I can think of is that this is some cynical ploy to stack the elections for the Liberals, with their assuming that immigrants are less likely to vote Conservative. There was never a good economic argument for upping the limit and plenty of evidence why it could be bad (especially with housing shortages and inflation spiking), and still with opinions souring more and more, Trudeau just plows ahead. This is an election-losing issue all by itself, and I think it's only going to get worse for the Liberals here. The policy has no future, Canadians obviously don't want it, so why else keep it?

Not just spurious and salacious, but also retarded. There is enough real stuff to criticize Trudeau for that low-effort and unimaginative sexual deviancy rumours peddled amongst dumdums in their basements is just embarrassing to listen to. I heard that Pierre Poilievre and Max Bernier get together and jerk each other off to bestiality vids. We should probably talk about that too, if only to acknowledge it's probably false? 🤔

The Cold War, which concluded with the collapse of the world's most powerful authoritarian regime and the liberalization and democratization of most of Eastern Europe...that's what led to more authoritarianism? What a weird take.

No it doesn't, because the whole point is that it's 7 seats out of 120, isn't a mandate and it doesn't put you at the steering wheel setting policy. Whatever concessions they may be able to get, they also have to make concessions from their views/beliefs. As it stands, this government will likely collapse soon anyways, with Netanyahu at <15% approval and the more moderate parts of his coalition not keen on his judicial reform, nevermind the disaster of Oct 7th. Whatever failings and inequity they have in their system, they're still a democracy and still answer to their people. By any objective standard of freedom or equality, Israel stands head and shoulders above its neighbours. That's some magical logic there though, isn't it? Despite being Palestinian and the governing authority in Gaza, made up by and recruited from Palestinians, supported by Palestinians and then lauded and cheered for their attacks (and hidden and abetted by them afterwards), the Palestinians are collectively blameless because they checked "no" on the democracy box? Oof. It's bizarre to me that you think anyone here is suggesting he is. One thing the IDF is entitled to do, however, is seek out and destroy Hamas. The fact that they're continuing their attacks and threats while hiding behind their own people doesn't magically render them impervious from response. Reverse that logic now, and tell us how living through numerous invasion attempts, constant terrorism and a jihadist government next door threatening your annihilation and swarming across your border to murder thousands of your civilians affects the Israelis. Applying your same reasoning, we can rest assured that this will embolden and encourage Israeli hardliners for generations to justify exactly what you're criticizing them for doing.

So it was the number that allowed him to form a government. Whether it was 7 seats or 20 didn't really matter to him, I imagine. Pushing him over 50% was what did. I won't argue that, but Israel is still a democracy. Even the Likud is "moderate" compared to Hamas, and then there are the actual moderates, centrists and actual Arab parties/groups in the Israeli parliament. Dissenting opinions, protests and a system of checks and balances all exist in Israel, but not so for the Palestinians. The idea that there may have been a secret plot is ridiculous to me. Oct 7th and its fallout will likely be the end of Netanyahu and probably (hopefully) Ben Gvir politically, since the one thing they say they're all about is exactly what they failed miserably at, which is security. As bad as Netanyahu is, he's still governing for Israel and the Israeli people, and he answers to them. Hamas answers to Iran and its other sponsors, and doesn't give a shit about the people in Gaza or the West Bank. The massacre on Oct 7 was the work of animals, but that wasn't even the worst part. The worst part is that the whole point of Hamas' attack was to get Palestinian civilians killed in the ensuing Israeli response. Don't draw false equivalences when you have that big fat reality staring right at you.

With 7 seats in a 120-seat, democratically elected legislature. I imagine Ben Gvir did, as a condition of his support. Nobody forced Netanyahu to be a turd and self-absorbed enough to accept it, but I didn't take you as a conspiracy theorist, but that's what this sounds like. I have nothing but bad things to say about Netanyahu and agree he's counter-productive to the peace process, but I don't think he staged or facilitated an attack on his own people.

7 Seats in Parliament and a Cabinet appointment doesn't put you at the steering wheel. This is a Faustian bargain that Netanyahu made and it smells really bad all over, but that speaks to how fragile that government is, and how much opposition there is to it.

You could, and it happened all of the time. The reason we're in our necks in Court is because the British didn't do what was standard at the time, which was some combination of extermination, subjugation, expulsion or enslavement. In other places where this did happen, the people living there now don't concern themselves too much with the folk who lived there decades or centuries ago, nor their descendants. The obsession for generations-old grievances to be "set right" is what prevents anyone from moving forward. Sometimes setting things "right" from one perspective can only be accomplished by doing wrong by someone else, and causing a new cycle of grievances. Nobody's going to reverse the creation of Israel. There are seven million Jews living there now. Similarly, there's something like 5 million Palestinians. Neither group is going away, so until both groups embrace that reality, this keeps happening. Evidently not, because Israel's armed forces could quickly make that a reality, but they haven't. There are fringe nuts everywhere, and that's hard to avoid, but when you hand them the keys to your kingdom, that's on you.

Looks and smells like a paid troll to me. A lot of the time you can tell just by the formatting of the OP's text: A different font (for no reason) that's highlighted in grey means this was copy-pasted from somewhere else, and my guess is Google Translate 😆.

🥱

I understand that you're yap yap yapping in so many threads at once that you can't remember all of the dumb things you say: With the countless hours and days you spend here vainly trying to convince people that you've won, you've kicked their butt, you've made them look stupid etc, you look pretty foolish. After all, in your own words:

Should have known better? 🤨 The powers-that-be didn't share today's morality or sensibilities, and relatively speaking they were "benevolent". British and French colonialism came after Ottoman rule, and ask the Armenians and others how great that was. How much credibility would you say the UN has, given that China and Russia hold vetoes and it's comprised of more dictatorships than I can count? Perhaps, but Israel hasn't put those people in charge and allowed them to act on their behalf, whereas the Palestinians have. The response was always going to be disproportionate. That's the whole point of a deterrent. Whether they're being sloppy and/or unnecessarily cruel/indiscriminate in their response is open for questions and you and I don't know, but they shouldn't be expected to send thousands of their soldiers into streets and tunnels to die fighting because the Palestinians let Hamas hide amongst them.

This gem keeps delivering the laughs. 🤣

Is that what I was implying, or is that what you'd reduce my argument to? Of course I don't, but you know who does? Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran etc.. and obviously a large portion of the Palestinian people. That they're combatants isn't subjective. That's the reality. What nobody would/should do is describe them as soldiers, because they're not protecting anyone. As for what's convenient, I'd say the idea that Israel can't fire on people who fire into their cities just because they're hiding behind their own people is pretty convenient...for Hamas.

Here's Fox again, arguing against points that he made up in his little head, and debating with himself. 🤣

I didn't say you did. I said if you wouldn't, and if you spun your wheels justifying their actions, then maybe people might accuse you of it though? 🤔 I can acknowledge it, whilst also not being so naive to think any of the above came out of a vacuum. Who says I can't? It seems more like you're the one having problems with that, considering how many times Israel's been invaded and how often they're attacked, and by neighbors near and far who vow their utter destruction. It's not a war crime to hit military targets hiding behind human shields. It is one to use human shields, and the whole point of this conflict for Hamas was to get as many civilians killed as possible.