Wait… are we framing her as a kidnapped child or a POW? Gotta make sure everyone is on the same page when making propaganda about this.

An operation involving naval and air forces by which a belligerent completely prevents movement by sea from or to a port or coast belonging to or occupied by an enemy belligerent. To be mandatory, that is, for third States to be obliged to respect it, the blockade must be effective. This means that it must be maintained by a force sufficient to prevent all access to the enemy coast.

So… according to the link you’ve provided Israel is actually required to board the ship or they can no longer prevent shipments of weapons coming from Iran?

Essentially aid entry is allowed so long as you agree to security arrangements that are both reasonable and lawful.

Has there been any indication these flotilla activists attempted to make such security arrangements with Israel?

Gaza is under a declared blockade, Maritime Law (the oldest of international law) allows detaining any ship bound for a blockaded port. It’s really cut and dry, they very publicly declared they were bound for a blockaded port. It’s not like Israel boarded a ship that just happened to be in the area, these freedom flotilla yahoos very publicly declared they were bound for Gaza, which under Maritime Law permits Israel to board it.

International law is an agreement between nations and doesn’t actually restrict nations from doing things that will hurt your feelings. You’re going down the sovcit path when you pretend international law is whatever you want it to be.

You sound like you’re doing Warhammer 40K roleplay. It also involves pretending to be loyal to a fucked up empire. It’s more believable than the fantasy world you’re describing.

The could also spend a lot of money on transitioning to green energy too. But it’s cheaper to spend on people manipulation. Everything is fine, it’s always been this way!

Russians keep gravitating towards authoritarians over and over again. Can’t think of any other country that reverted back to it multiple times in a century. Weak people want strong man leaders, just how it is.

I’d hoped Russians could grow a spine and get rid of Putin, but they’ll probably go on riding his dick for the rest of his life. Closest they got to ending that cunt was Prigozhin attempting a coup in a drunken rage, but he sobered up and chickened out before it was done. Just how shit goes in Russia, always on a spectrum between drunkenness and authoritarian dick riding.

The point of this was never to deliver aid. The point was to have the exact result that has played out. It’s doubtful they were even carrying food, they did this with the intent on being boarded to produce propaganda. The IDF handed out sandwiches to mitigate the propaganda. Both parties knew how it would play out, the Freedom Flotilla got some video to monetize, mission accomplished, I guess.

Also there is no way to distinguish between a drone carrying food from a Houthi drone carrying munitions. The drones would be shot down. Though you never know, the Freedom Flotilla crowd might try it if they feel that it would be good propaganda. Though it’s doubtful since whatever boat they launched these drones from would be quickly boarded and they would be detained for potentially a long time before it could be verified the drones they launched weren’t weapons.

Gaza is under a declared blockade. Israel has the legal right to board any ship bound for Gaza under international law. The whole Freedom Flotilla thing is just dumb entertainment for the ignorant. It changes exactly nothing.

I think that’s more up to the Russian people than anyone in the west. Russians like strong men, it’s a weakness in their society. Everyone outside Russia wanted it to continue to be a democracy, Russia even had a brief association with NATO while it was. But Yeltsin drank too much (alcoholism being another weakness in Russian society) and that allowed a guy like Putin to make himself a Czar.

Yeah, it seems authoritarianism is bad. Hopefully Russians will figure that out the next go around.

Yeah I’ve always said the the flaw in Turing’s Imitation Game concept is that if an AI was indistinguishable from a human it wouldn’t prove it’s intelligent. Because humans are dumb as shit. Dumb enough to force one of the smartest people in the world take a ton of drugs which eventually killed him simply because he was gay.

The “let them eat CO2” policy. Yeah, it’s insane, global warming is a solvable problem. We have the technology needed already, we’re just lacking in a willingness to change. The powers that be are going all in on stagnation while facing a crisis.

Yeah the attitude of “let China fix this” is really annoying. Don’t people want to be the world leaders in fixing a global problem?

Also “just let China fix this” means only China will have all of the skill experience with the technology that we’ll all be using in the future. Why would you want that? It’s just laziness plain and simple.

Yup. Also the whole reason China produces the majority of the rare earths isn’t because there’s some cave that only exists in China they come from. It’s because processing rare earths involves toxic waste and it’s cheaper to do it when you’re willing to just dump the toxic waste on the ground, which is what they do in China.

Environmentally motivated tariffs makes a lot of sense, if companies aren’t gaining a competitive edge by being environmentally irresponsible, they will start being more responsible. Trying to appeal to the morals of corporations isn’t going to get anywhere, there needs to be a financial incentive for them to do things right.

I don’t think dump trucks filled with raw ore dump out materials into Lockeed Martin’s parking lot and then they have some magical device that converts it into an F-35. I think it’s more likely they purchase very specialized bits of metal that is produced at or above a specific grade. Producing materials to very specific requirements isn’t cheap, and requires specialized tooling and training to do.

Yes you can refit mills and train people in the US to produce those bits of metal but that takes time and money to do. There’s likely even security clearances people have to complete to see the specs on some of the materials.

And the significant investment needed to retool and retrain isn’t happening because the investment crowd is in the TACO mindset.

You agree with calling immigrant “invaders”? How about the children on immigrants? You’re being 100% consistent with the people that espouse the “white genocide” rhetoric, just you’re targeting a different ethnicity.

over 80% of the population of Israel was born there. People have a right to live where they’re born FFS. This “colonizer” rhetoric is all about rationalizing ethnic cleansing. The genocide rhetoric is all about normalizing the idea of genocide against Jews. It’s obvious you just want to kill Jews, and now because of this kind of rhetoric people are actually killing Jews.

There were negotiations in the 90s that would lead to a Palestinian state. Arafat was a corrupt asshole so that didn’t work out. Then Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza. Palestinians voted for Hamas taking that as a sign of weakness. Hamas has held onto power ever since, refusing to have elections.

You should get your facts straight, there have been multiple opportunities for a Palestinian state, but Palestinians chose violence instead. They want all the lands “from the river to the sea” not just Gaza and the West Bank. What you’re calling a genocide is actually what a war looks like when one side is militarily superior to it’s enemy. And what other genocide in history has there been where the victims were holding hostages?

Palestinians don’t have the capability to defeat Israel through arms, and Hamas is only getting people killed needlessly. Their goal isn’t anything that benefits Palestinians, it’s to create a scenario that allows them to produce propaganda which they can profit from.

A non-violent resistance movement would be successful. Countries around the world would support that. What Hamas did by taking hostages makes world leaders ask themselves what they would do if a terrorist group massacred villages and took hostages? And the answer is that no country would do things significantly different from what Israel is doing in this scenario. Sure there’s a few things that Israel has done wrong, but the overall war against Hamas is something that no one other than some easily manipulated children thinks is wrong. Hamas is holding Israelis in Gaza, that brought war to Gaza.

It may surprise you to learn that many Palestinians are against Hamas and their senseless war. But they tend to get tortured to death by Hamas if they speak out against them. It’s easy for you to root for Hamas when you’re thousands of miles away and it’s not your house being bombed to shit in a war that was started by your government massacring people and taking hostages. You can eat popcorn like a psychopath while people are dying because you can get internet points for acting like a badass and encouraging the war to continue. But this isn’t a movie and people are really dying while Hamas cowardly hides in tunnels and continues to hold people hostages.

Armed resistance is what’s preventing there from being a Palestinian state. If it weren’t for Arafat and then Hamas wanting to continue armed resistance for their own profit there would’ve been a Palestinian state decades ago.

Uhhh… these assholes are terrorists.

Yeah Italy just rolled over in WWII while Germany fought to the bitter end. Do you think it was better that Germany continued fighting when it was obvious they’d lost because some authoritarian asshole convinced them they should own all of the land they wanted with no more Jews?

Look at the photos of German cities at the end of WWII and look at Gaza. This kind of senseless hatred doesn’t accomplish anything other than getting a lot of people killed.

Palestinians are dying because of the hatred of Hamas and it will accomplish exactly nothing.