Breaking Satellite Images Show 30% of Gaza Destroyed

[Leandros?]

It's slowly coming to light that IOF monsters committed atrocity upon atrocity on the Al-Shifa hospital grounds. Hundreds killed, most corpses not intact, many flattened by bulldozers. Women, children, doctors, nobody was spared. The hospital itself has been utterly destroyed.

Remember when people were convinced Israel would never intentionally attack hospitals? And then they destroyed all the hospitals? How's that carrying water for Israel going, fellas?

 

[Ants!]

Sad react doesn’t look nearly sad enough.

 

[Raine]

Mmhm. Saw the headline this morning; there aren't any real surprises here. Just the same anger.

Article:

Israeli troops exit Gaza's Shifa Hospital, leaving rubble and bodies

Summary

• Israeli army leaves Gaza hospital after two-week raid
• Hamas says Israel killed 400 Palestinians in and around Al Shifa
• Israel says it killed and detained hundreds of gunmen
• Displaced Palestinians comb rubble for belongings

JERUSALEM/CAIRO, April 1 (Reuters) - Israeli forces left Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Monday after a two-week operation by special forces who detained hundreds of suspected Palestinian militants and left a wasteland of destroyed buildings.

With access to Gaza's biggest hospital severely restricted, the Israeli and Palestinian versions differed sharply.

Palestinian officials called the raid on a hospital treating severely wounded patients a war crime, while Israeli officials said special forces units conducted a targeted strike against a Hamas stronghold deliberately located among vulnerable civilians.

Thousands of Palestinians - 6,200 according to the Israeli military - had been sheltering in the complex, one of few locations in the north of Gaza with some access to electricity and water.

Ismail Al-Thawabta, director of the Hamas-run Gaza media office, said Israeli forces had killed 400 Palestinians in and around the hospital including a woman doctor and her son, also a doctor, and put the facility out of action.

"They bulldozed the courtyards, burying dozens of bodies of martyrs in the rubble, turning the place into a mass graveyard," he said. "This is a crime against humanity."

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-troops-leave-gazas-al-shifa-hospital-after-two-week-sweep-2024-04-01/

 

[Leandros?]

The US has basically OKed a Rafah invasion, and Israel bombed an Iranian embassy in Syria killing some Iranian higherups and struck cars carrying Irish, Australian, Polish and British nationals working on that celebrity chef guy's organisation in Gaza.

 

[Joseph Snapple]

World Central Kitchen halts Gaza work after airstrike on food aid convoy kills 7 - UPI.com

U.S. non-profit World Central Kitchen said Tuesday it was suspending food aid operations in Gaza after the killing of seven of its workers in an "unforgivable" Israel Defense Forces airstrike.

www.upi.com

World Central Kitchen halts operations in region
The charity World Central Kitchen (WCK) also says it is immediately "pausing" its operations in the region.

"We will be making decisions about the future of our work soon," the not-for-profit said in a statement on its website.

Its CEO, Erin Gore, said:

I am heartbroken and appalled that we – World Central Kitchen and the world – lost beautiful lives today because of a targeted attack by the IDF. The love they had for feeding people, the determination they embodied to show that humanity rises above all, and the impact they made in countless lives will forever be remembered and cherished.

Gore said the WCK team was "travelling in a deconflicted zone in two armored cars branded with the WCK logo and a soft skin vehicle".

Despite coordinating movements with the IDF, the convoy was hit as it was leaving the Deir al-Balah warehouse, where the team had unloaded more than 100 tons of humanitarian food aid brought to Gaza on the maritime route.

Gore added:

This is not only an attack against WCK, this is an attack on humanitarian organisations showing up in the most dire of situations where food is being used as a weapon of war. This is unforgivable.

 

[Mark]

World Central Kitchen halts Gaza work after airstrike on food aid convoy kills 7 - UPI.com

U.S. non-profit World Central Kitchen said Tuesday it was suspending food aid operations in Gaza after the killing of seven of its workers in an "unforgivable" Israel Defense Forces airstrike.

www.upi.com

This story got a 30-45 second spot on the morning news…

…but they had no problem talking about Biden visiting Baltimore a week and a half after the bridge collapse like he’s gonna get his hands dirty and help clean up.

…and they certainly had no issue rehashing the same shit we hear every day about Trump like anyone is going to do anything differently regarding him.

If that doesn’t accurately depict what the media here is worried about, I dunno what will.

 

[Leandros?]

It's the perfect way to stop aid: instead of admitting they won't allow food and aid into Gaza, just have the organisations themselves step out after being "accidentally" bombed. The media will happily parrot the supposed presence of a Hamas member and perform no critical analysis whatsoever.

I just read a hilarious point: if Trump had been president he would've given Israel the same carte blanche (though obviously without the long term strategy of US foreign policy in mind) and liberals would have been all over calling Israel bad. I love American politics.

 

[shortkut]

It's the perfect way to stop aid: instead of admitting they won't allow food and aid into Gaza, just have the organisations themselves step out after being "accidentally" bombed. The media will happily parrot the supposed presence of a Hamas member and perform no critical analysis whatsoever.

I just read a hilarious point: if Trump had been president he would've given Israel the same carte blanche (though obviously without the long term strategy of US foreign policy in mind) and liberals would have been all over calling Israel bad. I love American politics.

Liberals are the ones I see calling out Israel more than conservatives

 

[Advocate for Ants! Mouth]

Liberals are the ones I see calling out Israel more than conservatives

This is true. What's making it confusing is that what gets reported on is liberals who shill for Israel so it makes it seem like there are none who are against what's happening.

 

[Fire Queen]

AIPAC has just about everybody in their pocket is the thing

 

[Mark]

Liberals are the ones I see calling out Israel more than conservatives

That’s what I’m seeing, too. The conservatives I know seem to be either indifferent, or of the mindset that we have no business meddling in another’s affairs when we can’t even get our own shit straight here.

This is true. What's making it confusing is that what gets reported on is liberals who shill for Israel so it makes it seem like there are none who are against what's happening.

It’s the same on the flip side on other topics, too. The loudest, most visible, or most popular tend to be portrayed as the majority.

 

[shortkut]

That’s what I’m seeing, too. The conservatives I know seem to be either indifferent, or of the mindset that we have no business meddling in another’s affairs when we can’t even get our own shit straight here.



It’s the same on the flip side on other topics, too. The loudest, most visible, or most popular tend to be portrayed as the majority.

Don’t forget the evangelicals who support Israel but hate jews

 

[Mark]

Don’t forget the evangelicals who support Israel but hate jews

Don’t even get me started on those clowns…

I saw one doing some serious mental gymnastics to work out his hatred for Jews, Muslims, and himself on Facebook the other week. It went from generating hundreds of comments over a few hours to him arguing with his own points and then ultimately deleting the entire status.

One of the Jewish dudes I know has told me it divided his family, says that he most likens it to the division we saw in other American families during the first Trump term, the pandemic, etc. Makes me wonder how common that is in Jewish households.

 

[Ants!]

 

[Leandros?]

Liberals are the ones I see calling out Israel more than conservatives

Yeah I didn't say anything about conservatives did I?

 

[Ants!]

Yeah I didn't say anything about conservatives did I?

Then why are you singling out liberals when they are the ones most opposed to helping Israel?

 

[shortkut]

Then why are you singling out liberals when they are the ones most opposed to helping Israel?

Ignore it. He can’t be wrong so let’s move on

 

[Leandros?]

Then why are you singling out liberals when they are the ones most opposed to helping Israel?

Because for all the claims of moral superiority that liberals love to espouse, their go to, like republicans, is to first uncritically protect whatever the president does if their guy is in power. I have no expectations that a republican will be anything but accidentally correct. There are a plethora of smug liberal talking heads that have demonised the attack as unprovoked, unspeakably evil and called for anything between starvation and nukes to be visited upon Gaza because their memory is short and their bloodlust large. See olbermann, maddow, maher.

Your country is so fucked that you think anything left of conservative is liberal when there's half a spectrum missing from the conversation. Stop feeling attacked and realise you are not a liberal.

 

[Mark]

Because for all the claims of moral superiority that liberals love to espouse, their go to, like republicans, is to first uncritically protect whatever the president does if their guy is in power. I have no expectations that a republican will be anything but accidentally correct. There are a plethora of smug liberal talking heads that have demonised the attack as unprovoked, unspeakably evil and called for anything between starvation and nukes to be visited upon Gaza because their memory is short and their bloodlust large. See olbermann, maddow, maher.

Your country is so fucked that you think anything left of conservative is liberal when there's half a spectrum missing from the conversation. Stop feeling attacked and realise you are not a liberal.

That’s not totally inaccurate, but it’s still a broad stroke. It’s true that the labels “conservative” and “liberal” have their negative connotations, specifically regarding their outlook towards the other side. It’s also true that a lot of Americans fall victim to the “well, I don’t believe what this guy says, so I must be this…” because, for most of our lives, it has been a “this or that” scenario every election cycle.

However, at least in my adult life, I’ve seen more and more people deviating from the sides they’re “supposed” to be on. Whether it’s a black dude from a poor city somewhere voting for Trump because they’ve seen what democratic leadership has done for their city, or a conservative dude that doesn’t agree with how Trump treated women in the past voting for Biden, there are a lot of people realizing that party lines aren’t working anymore. Is it the shift we need to see for an actual, tangible change? Nope. The novelty hasn’t worn off yet, there’s still loads of “new” stuff to try. We’ve had a black president, a female vice president, and eventually there will be a gay president or an Asian vice president, all in lieu of actually doing anything substantial for anyone other than themselves in the federal government. As long as people have this mentality that we *have* to have a president that IS this or that, that’ll be the focus over having a president that DOES this or that. Pandering at the lowest level, essentially. Make the population think we’re progressive, all the while nothing gets done.

I’m deviating, but the point is, people’s minds are changing. Slowly, but, nonetheless. They’re realizing that they’re being played, whether it’s from an angle of faith like the conservatives like to do, or an angle of morality like the liberals like to do. That group in the middle is getting larger by the day, and I’ve seen everyone from church-going god-fearing gun-toting Christians in it to gay folks, Hispanics, blacks, and every other possible group. To say that our country is fucked is fair, but to believe all Americans subscribe to one of two sets of beliefs is really no different than saying we should just wipe Israel out because of what they’re doing to the Gaza Strip or that we should wipe out all of the Palestinians because of what Hamas is up to, all the while ignoring the civilians on both sides and in the middle. It’s a dangerous line of thought that sets people up to have prejudices that they don’t necessarily know are prejudices, because they’re rationalized as a logical decision based on the lesser of two evils. A lot of people in countries outside of the US believe that we’re one of two groups, and that couldn’t be the furthest from the truth. It’s just the top of the government that’s like that, not all of the population. We simply have 3 herds… one running towards one cliff, another towards another cliff, and the other watching the lemmings on either side take a swan dive committing to their respective extremes.

 

[Ants!]

Because for all the claims of moral superiority that liberals love to espouse, their go to, like republicans, is to first uncritically protect whatever the president does if their guy is in power. I have no expectations that a republican will be anything but accidentally correct. There are a plethora of smug liberal talking heads that have demonised the attack as unprovoked, unspeakably evil and called for anything between starvation and nukes to be visited upon Gaza because their memory is short and their bloodlust large. See olbermann, maddow, maher.

Your country is so fucked that you think anything left of conservative is liberal when there's half a spectrum missing from the conversation. Stop feeling attacked and realise you are not a liberal.

You could not be more wrong. You are quoting Talking Heads that get media coverage, not the people themselves. There are plenty of us who can’t stand what Biden is doing, but will hold our nose and vote for him, because the only alternative given to us is Trump. And I am quite well aware that the most extreme leftist politicians we have are only centrist in other countries. This is not news to me. I’m not feeling attacked, you are quite literally talking out of your ass.

 

[Ants!]

You’ve quite literally seen me post charts of this in our group chat.

 

[Leandros?]

Of course I'm quoting talking heads, they're the ones with media power and capacity to sway the swathes of politically unengaged, and the liberals I'm talking about. The protests are being reported on in spite of them being entirely out of alignment with liberal media, not because they agree.

That’s not totally inaccurate, but it’s still a broad stroke. It’s true that the labels “conservative” and “liberal” have their negative connotations, specifically regarding their outlook towards the other side. It’s also true that a lot of Americans fall victim to the “well, I don’t believe what this guy says, so I must be this…” because, for most of our lives, it has been a “this or that” scenario every election cycle.

However, at least in my adult life, I’ve seen more and more people deviating from the sides they’re “supposed” to be on. Whether it’s a black dude from a poor city somewhere voting for Trump because they’ve seen what democratic leadership has done for their city, or a conservative dude that doesn’t agree with how Trump treated women in the past voting for Biden, there are a lot of people realizing that party lines aren’t working anymore. Is it the shift we need to see for an actual, tangible change? Nope. The novelty hasn’t worn off yet, there’s still loads of “new” stuff to try. We’ve had a black president, a female vice president, and eventually there will be a gay president or an Asian vice president, all in lieu of actually doing anything substantial for anyone other than themselves in the federal government. As long as people have this mentality that we *have* to have a president that IS this or that, that’ll be the focus over having a president that DOES this or that. Pandering at the lowest level, essentially. Make the population think we’re progressive, all the while nothing gets done.

I’m deviating, but the point is, people’s minds are changing. Slowly, but, nonetheless. They’re realizing that they’re being played, whether it’s from an angle of faith like the conservatives like to do, or an angle of morality like the liberals like to do. That group in the middle is getting larger by the day, and I’ve seen everyone from church-going god-fearing gun-toting Christians in it to gay folks, Hispanics, blacks, and every other possible group. To say that our country is fucked is fair, but to believe all Americans subscribe to one of two sets of beliefs is really no different than saying we should just wipe Israel out because of what they’re doing to the Gaza Strip or that we should wipe out all of the Palestinians because of what Hamas is up to, all the while ignoring the civilians on both sides and in the middle. It’s a dangerous line of thought that sets people up to have prejudices that they don’t necessarily know are prejudices, because they’re rationalized as a logical decision based on the lesser of two evils. A lot of people in countries outside of the US believe that we’re one of two groups, and that couldn’t be the furthest from the truth. It’s just the top of the government that’s like that, not all of the population. We simply have 3 herds… one running towards one cliff, another towards another cliff, and the other watching the lemmings on either side take a swan dive committing to their respective extremes.

Eh, if any change is happening peacefully it'll need to be done bottom-up. All the politicians in national office are there because they don't rock the boat, cis-straight white dude or otherwise. Only Tlaib spoke her mind on this matter and she got fucking censured.

 

[Fire Queen]

let’s also not forget that like 40% of all local tv/radio stations are owned by either sinclair or iHeart (formerly clear channel) which are both conservative conglomerates that routinely air content meant to shift the public rightward. and it works because most americans do not think critically about what they consume, nor do they want to. throughout the last century the american public at large has proven that they do not care what they are told to think as long as someone loud and confident is telling it to them

also way more white americans than we want to admit are deeply, deeply racist/xenophobic and that’s not something you fix with politics

 

[Ants!]

I don’t watch pundits, but Maher is an example that was used and that I’ve seen speak on tv a few times, and on multiple occasions I’ve heard him say things not unlike what I hear hard conservatives say.

 

[Ants!]

In short: not an example of a liberal (despite whatever he or the network might label him as).

 

[Ants!]

let’s also not forget that like 40% of all local tv/radio stations are owned by either sinclair or iHeart (formerly clear channel) which are both conservative conglomerates that routinely air content meant to shift the public rightward. and it works because most americans do not think critically about what they consume, nor do they want to. throughout the last century the american public at large has proven that they do not care what they are told to think as long as someone loud and confident is telling it to them

also way more white americans than we want to admit are deeply, deeply racist/xenophobic and that’s not something you fix with politics

Strange how it’s almost like they don’t want an actual liberal voice consistently on the air…

 

[Advocate for Ants! Mouth]

I don’t watch pundits, but Maher is an example that was used and that I’ve seen speak on tv a few times, and on multiple occasions I’ve heard him say things not unlike what I hear hard conservatives say.

Maher is definitely not a liberal. People think he is for some reason though.

 

[Leandros?]

I don’t watch pundits, but Maher is an example that was used and that I’ve seen speak on tv a few times, and on multiple occasions I’ve heard him say things not unlike what I hear hard conservatives say.

He was big in the 90s when political correctness was more railed against by liberals than conservatives, and that has extrapolated to culture wars shit, but he is still definitely a liberal.

 

[Ants!]

Yeah yeah, and Progressives vote for Trump.

 

[Smacktard]

This is the comment that got me permanently banned from /r/worldnews

 

[Leandros?]

I'm not saying it's a mass event, I'm just saying there are accelerationists.
Bill Maher is a classic liberal. He votes democrat. He wants to keep the national debate going with differently thinking people, is for some government spending compared to the libertarian hellscape of republicans. He is an old man that thinks political correctness is stupid, that doesn't make him a conservative. He didn't change, the party did.

 

[Mark]

View attachment 12805
This is the comment that got me permanently banned from /r/worldnews

This is exactly what won’t happen here.

I'm not saying it's a mass event, I'm just saying there are accelerationists.
Bill Maher is a classic liberal. He votes democrat. He wants to keep the national debate going with differently thinking people, is for some government spending compared to the libertarian hellscape of republicans. He is an old man that thinks political correctness is stupid, that doesn't make him a conservative. He didn't change, the party did.

I get what you’re trying to say, but an old dude like him isn’t going to sway anyone the way a certain blonde pop star would. The democrats know this, which is why they try so hard to connect with the youth when the conservatives latch on to guys like… Ted Nugent.

 

[Leandros?]

And if Taylor Swift ever utters a political opinion she'll lose a bunch of fans. She may pull in votes but she's not really informing people of anything. So preserving the status quo.

 

[Advocate for Ants! Mouth]

And if Taylor Swift ever utters a political opinion she'll lose a bunch of fans. She may pull in votes but she's not really informing people of anything. So preserving the status quo.

She has uttered political opinions. It's not frequent, but she was loud about it. Which is part of the reasons why conservatives have started to hate her and the whole her plus Kelce thing got so many people mad.

Also, at best, Maher is a neo-liberal. Voting Democrat doesn't make you a liberal, and what it means to be liberal changes as time goes on because once a liberal idea has been around long enough it becomes part of the status quo and a moderate opinion. People who once described themselves (or even still describe themselves) as conservatives are voting Democrat now as well because they don't view what's happening in the Republican party these days as Conservative anymore.

 

[Joseph Snapple]

People who once described themselves (or even still describe themselves) as conservatives are voting Democrat now as well because they don't view what's happening in the Republican party these days as Conservative anymore.

And that's a whole other problem in itself tbh lol

But yeah Maher is a dipshit and if the republicans were pro-pot he'd be with them immediately.

 

[Raine]

I'm not saying it's a mass event, I'm just saying there are accelerationists.

If it's a blip, ignore it. If it's a major concern, post links to corroborate or shut the fuck up.



Returning, once again, to the actual subject matter.

Article:

‘The machine did it coldly’: Israel used AI to identify 37,000 Hamas targets
Israeli intelligence sources reveal use of ‘Lavender’ system in Gaza war and claim permission given to kill civilians in pursuit of low-ranking militants

The Israeli military’s bombing campaign in Gaza used a previously undisclosed AI-powered database that at one stage identified 37,000 potential targets based on their apparent links to Hamas, according to intelligence sources involved in the war.

In addition to talking about their use of the AI system, called Lavender, the intelligence sources claim that Israeli military officials permitted large numbers of Palestinian civilians to be killed, particularly during the early weeks and months of the conflict.

Their unusually candid testimony provides a rare glimpse into the first-hand experiences of Israeli intelligence officials who have been using machine-learning systems to help identify targets during the six-month war.

Israel’s use of powerful AI systems in its war on Hamas has entered uncharted territory for advanced warfare, raising a host of legal and moral questions, and transforming the relationship between military personnel and machines.

“This is unparalleled, in my memory,” said one intelligence officer who used Lavender, adding that they had more faith in a “statistical mechanism” than a grieving soldier. “Everyone there, including me, lost people on October 7. The machine did it coldly. And that made it easier.”

Another Lavender user questioned whether humans’ role in the selection process was meaningful. “I would invest 20 seconds for each target at this stage, and do dozens of them every day. I had zero added-value as a human, apart from being a stamp of approval. It saved a lot of time.”

The testimony from the six intelligence officers, all who have been involved in using AI systems to identify Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) targets in the war, was given to the journalist Yuval Abraham for a report published by the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call.

Their accounts were shared exclusively with the Guardian in advance of publication. All six said that Lavender had played a central role in the war, processing masses of data to rapidly identify potential “junior” operatives to target. Four of the sources said that, at one stage early in the war, Lavender listed as many as 37,000 Palestinian men who had been linked by the AI system to Hamas or PIJ.

Lavender was developed by the Israel Defense Forces’ elite intelligence division, Unit 8200, which is comparable to the US’s National Security Agency or GCHQ in the UK.

Several of the sources described how, for certain categories of targets, the IDF applied pre-authorised allowances for the estimated number of civilians who could be killed before a strike was authorised.

Two sources said that during the early weeks of the war they were permitted to kill 15 or 20 civilians during airstrikes on low-ranking militants. Attacks on such targets were typically carried out using unguided munitions known as “dumb bombs”, the sources said, destroying entire homes and killing all their occupants.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai-database-hamas-airstrikes

There's way more, of course.

 

[Ants!]

I'm not saying it's a mass event, I'm just saying there are accelerationists.
Bill Maher is a classic liberal. He votes democrat. He wants to keep the national debate going with differently thinking people, is for some government spending compared to the libertarian hellscape of republicans. He is an old man that thinks political correctness is stupid, that doesn't make him a conservative. He didn't change, the party did.

So your argument is he is today what used to pass for Liberal? This is basically acknowledging that he isn’t one now, and your definition is dated.

 

[Ants!]

Returning, once again, to the actual subject matter.

Oops. You’re right, I’ll drop it.

 

[Joseph Snapple]

If it's a blip, ignore it. If it's a major concern, post links to corroborate or shut the fuck up.



Returning, once again, to the actual subject matter.

Article:

‘The machine did it coldly’: Israel used AI to identify 37,000 Hamas targets
Israeli intelligence sources reveal use of ‘Lavender’ system in Gaza war and claim permission given to kill civilians in pursuit of low-ranking militants

The Israeli military’s bombing campaign in Gaza used a previously undisclosed AI-powered database that at one stage identified 37,000 potential targets based on their apparent links to Hamas, according to intelligence sources involved in the war.

In addition to talking about their use of the AI system, called Lavender, the intelligence sources claim that Israeli military officials permitted large numbers of Palestinian civilians to be killed, particularly during the early weeks and months of the conflict.

Their unusually candid testimony provides a rare glimpse into the first-hand experiences of Israeli intelligence officials who have been using machine-learning systems to help identify targets during the six-month war.

Israel’s use of powerful AI systems in its war on Hamas has entered uncharted territory for advanced warfare, raising a host of legal and moral questions, and transforming the relationship between military personnel and machines.

“This is unparalleled, in my memory,” said one intelligence officer who used Lavender, adding that they had more faith in a “statistical mechanism” than a grieving soldier. “Everyone there, including me, lost people on October 7. The machine did it coldly. And that made it easier.”

Another Lavender user questioned whether humans’ role in the selection process was meaningful. “I would invest 20 seconds for each target at this stage, and do dozens of them every day. I had zero added-value as a human, apart from being a stamp of approval. It saved a lot of time.”

The testimony from the six intelligence officers, all who have been involved in using AI systems to identify Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) targets in the war, was given to the journalist Yuval Abraham for a report published by the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call.

Their accounts were shared exclusively with the Guardian in advance of publication. All six said that Lavender had played a central role in the war, processing masses of data to rapidly identify potential “junior” operatives to target. Four of the sources said that, at one stage early in the war, Lavender listed as many as 37,000 Palestinian men who had been linked by the AI system to Hamas or PIJ.

Lavender was developed by the Israel Defense Forces’ elite intelligence division, Unit 8200, which is comparable to the US’s National Security Agency or GCHQ in the UK.

Several of the sources described how, for certain categories of targets, the IDF applied pre-authorised allowances for the estimated number of civilians who could be killed before a strike was authorised.

Two sources said that during the early weeks of the war they were permitted to kill 15 or 20 civilians during airstrikes on low-ranking militants. Attacks on such targets were typically carried out using unguided munitions known as “dumb bombs”, the sources said, destroying entire homes and killing all their occupants.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai-database-hamas-airstrikes

There's way more, of course.

Ah good just what the world needed, a machine that kills with an extreme lack of prejudice.

Technology remains horrifying. I've always been concerned about the ability of drone operators hundreds to thousands of miles away being able to hit a button to wipe someone off the face of the earth while completely and utterly detached from the act of killing itself and this has somehow taken that even further.

 

[Ants!]

Literally machines with AI killing people…

 

[shortkut]

It wasn’t our fault, the computer said they were terrorists

 

[Leandros?]

Luckily they fir- err, moved, the supposed responsible IDF employees.


Western media are catching on to the government narrative that all of this is due to Netanyahu and not decades of ethnonationalism. So instead of creating solid change, just scapegoat one guy and it's all done! Bing bong!

So your argument is he is today what used to pass for Liberal? This is basically acknowledging that he isn't one now, and your definition is dated.

No dude, my argument is that the definition of a political ideology does not change over time. The political party espousing liberal values has changed some of its messaging to attract disillusioned young voters by incorporating identity politics as a means of distracting from the fact that the DNC are a bunch of crooked corporate lackeys. This is all besides the point which I was trying to make, too, as there are plenty of other examples of liberals not giving a shit about Palestinians, e.g. CNN and NYT basically passing all their news through Israeli censors.

 

[Smacktard]

Western media are catching on to the government narrative that all of this is due to Netanyahu and not decades of ethnonationalism. So instead of creating solid change, just scapegoat one guy and it's all done! Bing bong!

It's clear he's been a bit of a scapegoat since the beginning of the conflict. The entire situation (for lack of a better term, idk) has been pinned on him since the start.

 

[Raine]

Ah good just what the world needed, a machine that kills with an extreme lack of prejudice.

Technology remains horrifying. I've always been concerned about the ability of drone operators hundreds to thousands of miles away being able to hit a button to wipe someone off the face of the earth while completely and utterly detached from the act of killing itself and this has somehow taken that even further.

To be fair I don't think the largest corporations have the tech to do that at (this) scale just yet, much less Israel. It's being made to sound super extravagant and shit even in the article - which, I suspect, western Capital influences will not take kindly to - but honestly? What I'm envisioning is Facebook OG MySpace's People You May Know "algorithm." Start with a single suspected Hamas soldier/sympathizer, the system flags literally everyone it thinks he knows by crawling social media, it flags everyone they know, etc. Some arbitrary number as a stopping point - think Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, but not fun and you die if your name comes up[2] - disregard women and children for the sake of optics (you're going to kill them with your "precision" airstrikes anyway), and presto you've got genocide a hitlist.

If that doesn't make you depressed, I don't know what will.

...But then let's go further because that's what Israel did.

So not only do they have this enormous(ly wrong) list, they assign arbitrary ranks to each individual. The higher the rank, the larger the allowed collateral damage. This isn't part of the supposed AI; this is people making decisions. And people decided that it's justifiable to kill up to 20 innocents per "Low-Ranking Suspected Enemy."[1] That's not a machine; machines are incapable of being that wrong and evil by design because otherwise you're not designing anything?! Humans, however, have no such limits.

I feel like I haven't said it enough, so once more: Fuck Israel.



[1] Citation not fucking found.

It's literally just the flimsiest veneer imaginable just so they can point the blame at someone else. In actuality it's just "oh this is a person, launch the bomb!" Social media has been flooded for weeks with endless videos of - and more importantly, by - IDF "soldiers" doing incredibly fucked up, inhumane bullshit. I won't let myself say what my instinct wants to say because I know it's incredibly fucking racist to do so. But that's, uhh, that's where we're at here. "The US is giving/selling extremely advanced instruments of mass death to imbeciles" is the sanitized version and just doesn't do justice to what's actually happening.

[2] You also probably die if your name doesn't come up. Surprise!

 

[Leandros?]

It's clear he's been a bit of a scapegoat since the beginning of the conflict. The entire situation (for lack of a better term, idk) has been pinned on him since the start.

Yes, by politicians. Liberal media have been slow to condemn anything Israel did, however.

 

[Smacktard]

Yes, by politicians. Liberal media have been slow to condemn anything Israel did, however.

Disagree. They've been setting Netanyahu up for a fall for a while. I only ever see negative press about him -- especially so after Hamas' attacks.

 

[Mark]

Disagree. They've been setting Netanyahu up for a fall for a while. I only ever see negative press about him -- especially so after Hamas' attacks.

Correct. The tone has shifted on him over here, specifically on CBS/Paramount networks. Granted, it’s not a substantial effort. I literally watched the national morning news air an interview, followed by local news parroting the very same interview as if the local anchors were conducting it. I mention this because I always wondered about how those national talking heads end up hitting every local network when they make their rounds, and I can’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner. Record the interview question responses. Have all the local anchors repeat the same questions, allowing the same pause for response, and just like that you have what appears to be a live conducted interview. I guess that’s why some networks choose to have the interviewee address the interviewer by first name when it’s actually live. The worst part is, unless you rotate from a national source to a local source, you would never even notice something like that. Regardless of that kinda unrelated point, though, there has been a major shift on that particular network since October. Meanwhile, conservative media seems to be reveling the the fact that certain things are happening, because despite the loss of life… there’s still the “we’re right, you’re wrong” bullshit.

 

[Raine]

I literally watched the national morning news air an interview, followed by local news parroting the very same interview as if the local anchors were conducting it. I mention this because I always wondered about how those national talking heads end up hitting every local network when they make their rounds, and I can’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner.

Yes. That's this:

let’s also not forget that like 40% of all local tv/radio stations are owned by either sinclair or iHeart (formerly clear channel) which are both conservative conglomerates that routinely air content meant to shift the public rightward.

As demonstrated in absolutely horrifying fashion here:




John Oliver's entire rundown of it from ~7 years ago:




And an extensive video on the near-universally Right-Wing Think Tanks, and the "Experts" therein, that guide the money that powers this:




Once you see things like this, you can never unsee them.

And with regards to Israel in particular:

Less so now, perhaps, but that's definitely been a big component for why we're at where we're at now. The fact that nobody bats an eye at AIPAC:

AIPAC - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

...Or gets smeared as an antisemite for pointing out how fucking wrong and bizarre and decidedly un-American (from a traditionally conservative viewpoint, granted) having something like that is? That's just money well spent.

Israel wouldn't be where it is now without the US. The IDF literally sniping innocents for years wouldn't have been a thing. Journalists and reporters, medics, hospital staff - Israel has maimed and killed them all with the US's express blessing and backing at this point.

AIPAC has just about everybody in their pocket is the thing

 

[Mark]

Yes. That's this:



As demonstrated in absolutely horrifying fashion here:




John Oliver's entire rundown of it from ~7 years ago:




And an extensive video on the near-universally Right-Wing Think Tanks, and the "Experts" therein, that guide the money that powers this:




Once you see things like this, you can never unsee them.

And with regards to Israel in particular:

Oh, it ain’t just the right wing, though. The whole reason that whole thing stood out to me to begin with and the whole reason I mentioned Taylor Swift was because of the compilation video that went around back in February of every news station repeating the same schtick about her not being the face of a psy-op. Sounded just like something you’d expect to hear from a psy-op, so I thought the irony was funny.

 

[Smacktard]

Record the interview question responses. Have all the local anchors repeat the same questions, allowing the same pause for response, and just like that you have what appears to be a live conducted interview.

Th... This is a thing? What the fuck? This is incredibly dystopian and dishonest. How is this even legal? That completely misrepresents the nature of the interview if I'm understanding you right.