Limerance

The Volla Tablet looks pretty cool. 12 GB RAM and dual boot of a degoogled Android and Ubuntu Touch. 700 for the tablet plus 150 for a folding keyboard, plus 50 for the pen.

Sadly the pen doesn’t work with Ubuntu Touch. Otherwise this might be a nice machine for painting with Krita.

The display cleaner is cute and lovely. I might just get that and use it with my other machines

This is an investment in an essential machine that can be used to earn money.

a non free alternative I can recommend is Tricount. It’s best feature is that is also works offline.

The difference is the amount of attention they get. The left routinely ignores or even defends China.

Sanctions can always be circumvented. It costs additional time and money. That’s the goal.

You are forgetting 1948, 67, 73 when lots of Arab countries waged large scale war against Israel. There was even a huge oil embargo in the 1970s by Arabs against the West, causing huge economic turmoil.

Of course having a good relationship to the US is important to many countries. It’s very beneficial to them. However those governments opposed to the US aren’t particularly great for their population either.

There’s certainly no lack of bad regimes in the Middle East. Bribes and arms deals are just how business is done there.

Regarding Prince Bandar and Saudi policies in the region. Saddam’s Iraq became an enemy with his invasion of Kuwait. Iraq had been a regional rival to the Saudis even back to the time it had a Hashemite king. The Hashemite and Saudi clans are old rivals for power in the region. Saudis have their own interests in the region. Iran is a regional rival for example and their Islamist ideology a direct threat to the kingdom. Yes, Saudis have played some stupid games with spreading Wahhabism and supporting Islamists militias against other governments in the region. Of course the Saudis prioritize their own interests above the Palestinian cause. They have been a big supporter historically both financially and politically.

I really recommend you watch the interview to hear another perspective and his personal interactions with Arafat during the peace process.

Also Palestinians have agency and have influenced the history of the region significantly since 1948. It’s patronizing to see them only as victims.

The question was why there’s not more support by Arabs and I gave an answer based in historical fact. I even provided a link to an interview with a very respected Arab leader making similar remarks.

Palestinians deserve a dignified life in prosperity and a future. Their political leadership and allies have failed the Palestinian people repeatedly.

Palestinians are mostly used as political pawns and symbols by their supporters abroad. Improving the actual lives of Palestinians is an afterthought. Fighting Israel takes precedent over fighting for Palestinians.

Palestinians are oppressed by Israel, the Palestinian authority police state, Hamas’ brutal Islamist regime, kept as eternal refugees by Arab host countries their grandparents were born in. UNRWA‘s mission and definition of refugee is markedly different from the UNHCR, keeping Palestinians stateless and without rights. Millions of people fled in the 1940s around the world. They found new homes, settled elsewhere, built lives, and their grandchildren live a good life. Palestinians are the only refugees this future was denied.

Western pro Palestine activists repeat the falsehoods and incitement of Hamas. Even there the voices of moderate Palestinians are shouted down and marginalized. Palestinians don’t have free speech under the PA nor Hamas. Their supporters in the west call for more violence (intifada) and war (destroy Israel). That path of failure has caused immense suffering for Palestinians.

Palestinians are in a terrible situation and have the worst supporters. It’s heartbreaking, really. They deserve better.

Threes on mobile

As the Zionist Rudy Rochman repeats all the time, Palestinians and Jews are cousins.

Even back in the day, the situation and views were more diverse than you think.

But judging from Jonathan Marc Gribetz’s new book, “Defining Neighbors: Religion, Race, and the Early Zionist-Arab Encounter,” religion has long been central to the conflict, and apocalyptic narratives about a new holy war may be over-hasty. To be sure, the neighbors in question lived roughly a century ago, and the way Zionist and Arab intellectuals understood each other in late-Ottoman Palestine can only indirectly color how we understand current events. Further, Gribetz, a professor of Near Eastern studies at Princeton, places careful chronological limits on his argument that early Zionists and Arabs saw each other “not as perfect strangers, competing for territory,” but as religious and racial cousins with “intertwined histories, cultures, beliefs, even blood.”

About 20% of Israeli citizens are Palestinians with equal rights. Sure there’s discrimination and also racism, but Palestinians living in the Galilee for example are doing pretty well over all. Of course the West Bank is worse and Gaza terrible.

Reducing it to black and white racism creates a very distorted picture of the reality in the country.

The Arab states have tried many times (1948, 1967, 1973) for decades to fight Israel directly and indirectly without success.

Jordan and Lebanon received huge problems with Palestinian militants inside their borders (Black September, Lebanese Civil War). Palestinians in Kuwait supported the invasion by Saddam Hussein. So after spilling a lot of their own blood and receiving turmoil at home, they chose it’s not a worthwhile or winnable fight.

Prince Bandar gives his perspective on his frustrations with Arafat in this interview https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=idJx1bB30EM The Saudis spent a lot of money and political capital to get to peace talks, only for Arafat to refuse the deals offered.

Many Arab rulers like Egypt are internally threatened by Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood, which Hamas is an offshoot from. Hamas, Hezbollah, and their allies are seen as threats to their own power.

Supporting the Palestinian cause has become a losing proposition. Even more evident now that Al Assad in Syria lost power and the Iranian regime got a bloody nose.

Lose wars against Israel and threaten your own power domestically is just a bad proposition.

Palestine isn’t even the worst place to be in the Middle East. Syria over the last decade plus and Yemen, Sudan are drowning in war, death, famine, genocide happening. Palestinians have an above average living standard, education, and life expectancy for the region.

Squashing an uppity group brutally with force is just another Tuesday for the Middle East.

The biggest crime in this war, that nobody talks about, has been Egypt keeping the border closed to refugees. No other warzone doesn’t let refugees leave. This has contributed immensely to suffering and death inside Gaza. Egypt does this because it doesn’t want Hamas inside its borders. There are already terrorist groups active in the Sinai. The Muslim Brotherhood is the enemy of the current government. Hamas is both of these.

The question is also how much did the Palestinians fuck up to make their Arab neighbor Egypt their enemy.

That said the oil rich Arab countries do a lot for Palestinians, including humanitarian spending. The UAE does a lot of that for example. Otoh Qatar supports the militant resistance by hosting Hamas leadership and have Al Jazeera run propaganda supporting them.

In the current Gaza war Hamas had military support from the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran, Iraqi militias, Assad’s Syria. Israel called this the seven front war. https://msi2.substack.com/p/the-seven-front-war-how-israel-rewrote

Israel won against all of these enemies decisively. Picking the Palestinians has been picking the losing side for decades.

Only white Jewish people? The majority of Israeli Jews are from the MENA region. Palestinians are also quite diverse skin color wise. Palestinians and Jews are very close genetically as well. They look practically the same.

The ceasefire has conditions. Crossing the yellow line and other activities are a ceasefire violation and can be responded to with force.

Egypt prevents refugees from leaving Gaza. This doesn’t happen in any other war zone.

Cultural genocide

The US can grab Greenland, Mexico, and Canada. Militarily, it’s straightforward. The US is so extremely superior, nobody will be able to stop them.

The US is self sufficient in oil. It doesn’t even need Venezuelan oil.

This situation isn’t comparable to Nazi Germany at all. Germany is in Central Europe and has major land powers in France and Russia plus the UK to contend with. The USA sit safe and sound, protected by vast oceans on both sides.

Hamas is fundamentally the opposite of progressive.

What sanctions do you mean, specifically? The US had barely any sanctions against Venezuela. Most sanctions were against members of the regime, not the country. The US remained the biggest customer for Venezuelan oil long after Chavez gained power.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_during_the_Venezuelan_crisis

Early sanctions came in response to repression during the 2014 and the 2017 Venezuelan protests, and activities both during the 2017 Constituent Assembly election and the 2018 presidential election. Sanctions were placed on current and former government officials, including members of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice(TSJ) and the 2017 Constituent National Assembly (ANC), members of the military and security forces, and private individuals accused of being involved in human rights abuses, degradation in the rule of law, repression of democracy, and corruption. Canada and the E.U. began applying sanctions in 2017.

Chavez took power in 1999. More than a decade before these sanctions started.

The utter mismanagement by the Chavistas in power are the main reason Venezuela has been doing badly for years leading to a fucked economy, rising crime, lacking healthcare and food.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Chávez

The high oil profits coinciding with the start of Chavez’s presidency^[15]resulted in temporary improvements in areas such as poverty, literacy, income equality and quality of life between primarily 2003 and 2007,^[16][15][17] though extensive changes in structural inequalities did not occur.^[18] On 2 June 2010, Chávez declared an “economic war” on Venezuela’s upper classes due to shortages, arguably beginning the crisis in Venezuela.^[19] By Chávez’s death in 2013, economic actions performed by his government during the preceding decade, such as deficit spending^[20][21][22] and price controls,^[23][24] proved to be unsustainable, with Venezuela’s economy faltering. At the same time, poverty,^[15][25] inflation^[26] and shortages increased.