DdCno1

One of the most convincing tricks he pulled off was transporting two people from the stage to what looked like a believable beach. Totally fooled me (but I was a kid when I watched it).

Edit: I started to figure out that something was amiss soon after, because every single one of the supposedly “random” people he invited on stage to do his tricks with (usually by throwing plastic balls into the audience) wore incredibly “inoffensive” and poorly fitted clothes. At some point, I was able to spot which people he would end up picking from a mile away even before he had done so.

Because it would meant hat the CCP would have to retreat out of this particular part of life and give up a method of control and oppression, which a totalitarian party could never do.

Personally, I can’t wait for the next mad dash for Moscow. Pudding got so close.

They’ve been going through a different period since the year of our Lord 862.

I have a suggestion for next year’s parade:

https://i.imgur.com/Cs2ym6D.jpg

Correct, and it wasn’t even made in the Soviet Union:

https://www.janes.com/defence-news/news-detail/russia-receives-30-vintage-t-3485-tanks-from-laos

That’s what tends to happen when you send a parade army into a war it was never meant to fight.

The “well-regulated militia” part afterwards isn’t vague, but gets ignored by self-proclaimed “originalists”.

They go after this platform, because it’s a favorite of mass shooters. You know this.

It’s not interesting, it’s simple: Don’t vote for fascists, no matter what. This means AfD and, if by that point, Conservatives are willing to form a coalition with them (I hope not, but Merz scares me), those are impossible to vote for by any decent human being as well.

The AR-15 is designed for hunting humans, not game.

At least in China’s case, the harassment extends to ethnically Chinese people who have lived their entire lives abroad and never set foot in China.

This appears to be the new norm among autocratic regimes (although it isn’t all that new - think of Trotsky, for example, or the infamous umbrella murder).

Vietnam is doing this as well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tr%E1%BB%8Bnh_Xu%C3%A2n_Thanh

https://rsf.org/en/dissident-exile-stops-blogging-because-family-vietnam-being-hounded

Eritrea, a regime that is similarly repressive as North Korea, but far less known, is also notorious for this:

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2019/06/eritrea-government-officials-and-supporters-target-critics-abroad-as-repression-stretches-beyond-borders/

Saudi Arabia is among the worst in this regard:

https://freedomhouse.org/report/transnational-repression/saudi-arabia

I’m getting the impression that liberal democracies housing refugees and dissidents from autocratic regimes are unprepared to counter these threats. It is our responsibility to protect people seeking refuge and this includes proactive action against governments that seek to extend their violent rule outside of their borders.

You can’t be seriously asking this in good faith.

Hamas went all in hoping that once all of the other Muslim nations saw their merry slaughter of Jews, they would happily and immediately join in and attack Israel from all sides to complete the attempted genocide. They forgot about or chose to ignore a few things:

Israel has nukes and would use them if they felt fundamentally threatened, Israel has conventionally defeated every army that has ever attacked them (if sometimes by the skin of their teeth), has made reluctant, but reliable allies out of some of their former enemies and crippled others. Hamas didn’t consider that Biden would protect Israel and fully commit to it, they kept the preparations for their attack so secret that only Tehran and Moscow knew about them, but crucially not Hezbollah (which ended up being muzzled by the American carrier groups anyway) and they gave nobody the necessary heads up for the months of buildup required for a full on war, because that would have given the whole thing away. While Hamas skillfully (with Russian and Iranian help) overcame the border defenses, they wasted the element of surprise on random carnage instead of overrunning the same airfields that have since been launching thousands of sorties that are, day by day, obliterating their organization.

And so on and so forth. The entire idea was foolish from the start and had no chance of success. Not that Moscow and Tehran expected any. They just used Hamas as pawns, hoping to weaken the US with this conflict. It’s the standard zero sum game that autocrats love to play so much.

Would you mind providing the source of this visualization so that I can read further into this? Thanks!

I’ve watched that beheading and worse things. I wish I hadn’t. Imagine having the audacity of calling Hamas saints by comparison. What a despicable and inane thing to do.

I’m not American. You criticized me for making an assumption about people by making an assumption about me.

Also, is it really that unreasonable to ask of people to look up what they are shouting? To have even a passing knowledge of what they decided to protest for or against?

Hamas was also not in power back then, in no position to accept or reject any solution.

Here’s a fun game: Ask people who shout “From the river to the sea” which river and which see are meant and what this statement implies. The results are unsurprising.