Comments by "" (@titteryenot4524) on "Channel 4 News"
channel.
-
34
-
34
-
34
-
I am frequently asked if I have visited Israel, whereas yet, it is simply assumed that I have. Well, I don’t travel. I really don’t, and if I did, I probably wouldn’t visit Israel. I remember how it was in 1948 when Israel was being established and all my Jewish friends were ecstatic. I was not. I said: what are we doing? We are establishing ourselves in a ghetto, in a small corner of a vast Muslim sea. The Muslims will never forget nor forgive, and Israel, as long as it exists, will be embattled. I was laughed at, but I was right. I can’t help but feel that the Jews didn’t really have the right to appropriate a territory only because 2000 years ago, people they consider their ancestors, were living there. History moves on and you can’t really turn it back. (Isaac Asimov)
Of course, history has proved Asimov right. However, now that we’re here, if Israel has a right to exist as a state (and it probably does IMO), then so does Palestine. Until this is acknowledged by the relevant parties and properly implemented (with justice and freedom and dignity for both sides), this nightmare will be doomed to be repeated on a loop ad infinitum into eternity.
33
-
33
-
33
-
Looks like we might have an imminent ‘hostage currency’ situation. In 2011, Israel released more than 1,000 Palestinians in exchange for 1 Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit. A few days ago Hamas were demanding the release of 6,000 Palestinians detained in Israel’s jails for the release of the 150 or so Israeli captives. At the 2011 hostage currency rate 150 Israelis would be equal to 900,000 Palestinians! Judging by the past exchanges, if I were Israel, at this point, I might be liable to take the 6,000 for 150 offer, as comparatively it seems like a good deal.
33
-
Fully with Rowling on this matter. Surely the key thing in this whole debate is the preference and rights of biological females as it's they who are potentially having their private spaces occupied by biological men. My guess (but it’s a guess based on extensive experience) would be that the vast majority of women (i.e. with cervix) wouldn’t want biological men in their private spaces, regardless of whether these men self-identify as ‘women’, and even if they have fully transitioned through physical/chemical castration. Put it this way: if I were a young mum taking her pre-teen child to the public swimming pool, would I want biological men (regardless of their trans status) sharing the changing rooms with me? Answer: no. This does not mean I’m ‘anti-trans’; it means I am pro-protecting safe spaces for biological women. I don’t care how you self-identify, just as long as your chosen identity doesn’t adversely affect my life. The analogy would be with organised religion: I’m agnostic; believe in and worship what you want, but when this unfavourably impinges on my life, that’s when my hackles are raised. Religion should be a private matter and not pervade the public sphere and potentially adversely affect the lives of others. With trans women, they can do what they want within the law, express themselves how they want, call themselves what they want (and I will honour this), but if the majority of biological females don’t want them actually physically invading their private spaces, this wish should be honoured in practice.
32
-
32
-
32
-
32
-
32
-
32
-
32
-
31
-
31
-
31
-
31
-
31
-
31
-
31
-
31
-
30
-
30
-
30
-
As this nightmare continues well into a 2nd month (and who knows how many more months after that), Israel should be surprised by none of what happened on October 7th, in much the same way Palestinians should be surprised by none of Israel’s response. Of course, what Hamas did was the definition of evil but it was hardly unpredictable. I genuinely don’t particularly support any side here (lapsed Catholic agnostic), but what can be observed (by any impartial neutral) is a 75-year-long ongoing fight whereby one side has been throwing its weight around considerably more than the other side (if the year-on-year casualty figures are anything to go by), yet when the other side finds the capability to genuinely strike back, the opponent is somehow surprised, as if that were just not cricket, old boy! Last time I checked, in a fist-fight both sides are allowed to throw punches. In these kinds of seemingly intractable situations, I always flip it: how would the Israelis feel if the boot were on the other foot and it was they who were living in the conditions the average Palestinian is (and has been for decades) living in? They’d be fighting back. Fighting for dignity and freedom. A 2-state solution is the only way here. Of course, with this, the nitty-gritty will be who gets custody of the car and who gets custody of the cat.
30
-
30
-
30
-
30
-
29
-
29
-
@3:37 “You know, I have friends who are aristocrats, I have friends who are upper-class, I have friends who are working-class … well, not working-class .” (My emphasis) And that, dear Reader, is why if Sunak becomes PM, he stands not a chance of holding those working-class northern seats the Tories won under Bozo; as, for all Johnson’s posho privilege, he had a disjointed, buffoonish charisma that cut through to ex-Labour voters, that Sunak can only dream of having. Labour, for all their current lacklustre lack of identity and policy, must be genuinely looking on and thinking … “yep, we just might.”
29
-
29
-
29
-
29
-
Russia, the biggest country by landmass, twice the size of Canada, the second biggest; given this, why can’t those ‘Russians’ in Ukraine just move to Russia, if they are unhappy? Ukraine is a sovereign territory. Has been since 1991. Up until 2014, it seems ethnic Russians were ok with living in Ukraine, co-existing with non-ethnic Russian Ukrainians, much like the Flemish share what we call Belgium with the Walloons. My feeling about all this, and it’s just a guess, is that even the ethnic Russians in Ukraine would be quite happy to live in a sovereign, self-governing Ukraine. My strong feeling about all this, is that since at least 2014, Russia (Putin, mainly) has stirred the pot and played on potential ethnic tensions that actually weren’t really that strong. Again, I have no proof, but my instinct, having closely observed this for nine weeks, is that this is actually about one man more than anything. Putin just couldn’t get over the ‘greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th Century’ (his words), that is, the dissolution of the USSR, and as he is about to pop his clogs, he was impelled to take his revenge for this before he does shuffle off this mortal coil. We should not underestimate just how much this really is one man’s war, and on that score, it just bespeaks how primitive we still are as a species, when we don’t have mechanisms in place to deal with these outlying, power-tripping fuckwits.
29
-
Surely the key thing in this whole debate is the preference and rights of biological females as it's they who are potentially having their private spaces occupied. My guess (but it’s a guess based on extensive experience) would be that the vast majority of women (ie with cervix) wouldn’t want biological men in their private spaces, regardless of whether these men self-identify as “women”, and even if they have fully transitioned through physical/chemical castration. Put it this way: if I were a young mum taking her pre-teen child to the public swimming pool, would I want biological men (regardless of their trans status) sharing the changing rooms with me? Answer: no. This does not mean I’m “anti-trans”; it means I am pro-protecting safe spaces for biological women. I don’t care how you self-identify, just as long as your chosen identity doesn’t adversely affect my life. The analogy would be with organised religion: I’m agnostic; believe in and worship what you want, but when this unfavourably impinges on my life, that’s when my hackles are raised. Religion should be a private matter and not pervade the public sphere and potentially adversely affect the lives of others. With trans people, they can do what they want within the law, express themselves how they want, call themselves what they want (and I will honour this), but if the majority of biological females don’t want them actually physically invading their private spaces, this wish should be honoured in practice.
29
-
28
-
28
-
28
-
28
-
28
-
28
-
28
-
27
-
Reform are just speaking to those who think immigration is out of control. When you get Labour and the Tories admitting immigration is out of control you can be sure immigration is out of control. The ‘gay’ thing always bemuses me. Never got the ‘hate what another human does when it comes to their sexual orientation’ memo. Makes utterly no sense. I tend to dislike people for their ideas, their beliefs, their opinions, their dress-sense, and not something over which they have utterly no say or control. It’s like dissing people with a different skin colour. Pointless. Not only pointless, but totally stupid and moronic, as no one chooses their skin colour, just as no one chooses their sexuality. But here’s the clincher for me: even if we did choose our skin colour and sexuality, it still wouldn’t bother me one iota that some random has a different skin colour or sexuality. The sooner we can move beyond this primitive nonsense as a species, the better. If it’s consenting adults, it’s quite simply no one else’s business what they get up to. To me, being homophobic is a bit like feeling resentful of someone digging Uranus because you’re not an astronomer! 🔭
27
-
Of 54 African nations, as we speak, only 1 is classified as a ‘full democracy’: Mauritius. The rest are flawed democracies, hybrid democracies incorporating strongly authoritarian anti-democratic elements, or outright dictatorships. The truth is that too much of Africa is still mired in tribalism and too few States have made the requisite efforts to bring their countries into the sunny uplands of the least worst way of politically organising human affairs. The key here has to be education. Of the salient things functioning democracies need to embrace in order to have any chance of working, such as participation, free and fair elections, representation, accountability, transparency, responsiveness, pluralism, and the rule of law, far too few African nations tick even half of these boxes. Until they do, chiefly through education, Africa will remain benighted and doomed to anti-democratic trouble and strife.
27
-
27
-
27
-
26