Apparently porn is sex for money, but legally it's not prostitution. So in that case, these OF influencers can just bill their private services as coaching lessons for aspiring actors.
It'd be nice if Israel would let UN fact-finding missionaries or other independent research teams into Gaza to find out (in addition to not barring and/or killing humanitarian aid workers)
It’s perfectly normal for militaries to have press restrictions in conflict zones, for opsec among other good reasons. No one bats an eye when Ukraine does it for example.
1. Ukraine’s media restrictions are virtually non-existent when compared to those enforced by the Israelis in Gaza, including the intentional bombing of media offices. Keep in mind that Hamas has repeatedly called upon Israel to allow foreign press and NGOs to visit and see what’s happening on the ground.
2. The Ukraine war is a conventional war between sovereign nations with standing militaries with equivalent capabilities (air force, anti-air defenses, armored vehicles, bomb shelters, etc). The Gaza genocide is an onslaught by a sovereign nation with a well equipped military against a militant group in a dense urban area. Leveling entire city blocks when fighting against an opponent that has no air force or anti-air capabilities is not only unimpressive, but also breaks the principle of proportionality.
1. It's pretty much the same - no press in dangerous areas unless invited and escorted by the military. The only major difference is that Ukraine is >1000x larger, and has safe areas far from any fighting where such press restrictions aren't needed.
2. You're making a bunch of separate accusations without connecting them to the topic at hand, which was press restrictions.
No, they’re not the same, and (2) is very relevant.
Let me reiterate: Ukraine is a sovereign nation with a sovereign military that has the ability to enforce restrictions within its own territory.
To bring your bad analogy more in line with reality on the ground, imagine if Ukraine was still part of/occupied by the USSR/Russia, and Russia enforced press restrictions across all of Ukrainian territory during a Ukrainian insurgency. However, in this theoretical USSR, Ukrainians did not get Soviet citizenship, and were under a total blockade.
> The only major difference is that Ukraine is >1000x larger, and has safe areas far from any fighting where such press restrictions aren't needed.
But Israel never allowed press into the strip, even during “ceasefire” periods - like right now! This implies that Israel is not somehow paternalistically concerned for press safety; it simply wants a media blackout.
So no, this “major difference” is irrelevant when comparing restrictions between the two conflicts.
I'm not sure what you're getting at. Universally, modern militaries don't like journalists wandering around near their assets.
> and Russia enforced press restrictions across all of Ukrainian territory
Your analogy isn't very different from reality. Russia does enforce press restrictions near military assets, including in occupied parts of Ukraine.
> However, in this theoretical USSR, Ukrainians did not get Soviet citizenship, and were under a total blockade.
That would seem very unfair, if Russia did it just because they're mean and not because this hypothetical Ukraine had launched tens of thousands of rockets at them. But I'm not sure what it has to do with press restrictions.
> even during “ceasefire” periods
The ceasefire was pretty much dead once Hamas attacked IDF soldiers in Rafah. Now it's just a lower-intensity conflict. Still not a great idea to have random journalists waltzing around and tweeting photos of military assets.
> it simply wants a media blackout
This is a funny explanation because there are millions of cameras in Gaza anyway, and this is the second most covered conflict (by metrics like article count) in all of human history. Not much of a "blackout" at all.
Alright, your good faith arguments have convinced me! To summarize:
On one side, two sovereign nations setting press restrictions in areas they control. Standard stuff.
On the other side, a genocidal state blockading a tiny strip of land for 20 years waging a campaign that has killed & maimed so many children that we have lost count unilaterally enforcing a total international media blackout. Also standard stuff.
Silly me, how could I even argue about this? It’s just so damn obvious! Sometimes, arguing with random anons on HN pays off :)
You're just changing the topic with unrelated accusations. How nice or mean you think a military is irrelevant to the fact that they don't like random journalists tweeting photos of their military assets.
Why should the license model of the source code prevent developers from making a living? Why should companies which release their software under proprietary licenses also be the only ones able to profit from it?
As Stallman said: Think free as in free speech, not free beer.
Interesting. In Spanish there is libre ("free" speech) and gratis ("free" beer). Now that I think of it, libre is part of the name of many linux packages (Libre Office). Never made that connection before.
It features a bunch of internationally known figures (mainly world leaders) in drag (or gender-swapped). So obviously something not achievable without AI video generation
I think it's interesting as a gimmick, but generally really don't like AI-generated videos. My main issue with them is more to do with capitalism than AI video generation though.
Cars have the benefit of transporting humans and goods around.
It's more like saying a hypothetical car which moves itself by using gasoline as a propellant rather than fuel for its combustion engine would have negative value.
Sure, using fuel (of all things) for propulsion would be one way to move a vehicle, but it would be inefficient by design.
Bitcoin, at least, was created during a time where there was no alternative to security-by-inefficency, but PoS and other consensus mechanisms are pretty battle-tested now
Bitcoin has the benefit of being the first way in human history of being able to transfer value between two countries in a way that a corrupt bureaucrat, judge, or customs official can't freeze, reverse, or steal it. That's the benefit Bitcoin brings humanity, and to me, I prefer it to having a car.
Proof of Stake is an absurd security proposition. Stakeholders are immediately centralized. In every single PoS coin, the governance immediately becomes the exchanges because they always hold the most coins. They can and have used this to guide PoS coins towards governance unfavorable to the users, like as happened with Steem.
Bitcoin consumes 20 to 40GW to process 7 transactions per second. Using 30GW means about 4 billion joules per transaction. And transactions per second don't scale with more electricity. It is the least efficient technology ever created.
They were temporarily debanked under highly debatable circumstances. Regardless of your political leaning, if you care about basic human freedoms, the level of power the government has over the access individuals have to their finances (in addition to the degree to which every social institution is deeply entangled with that financial system) should be a cause for concern.
The Truckers were on Canadian soil and subject to Canadian law, there was no reason to freeze their accounts like this. They should have been pursued in criminal courts, during which their access to legal counsel should not have been obstructed.
> Many members of the UN are openly biased against Israel, many are officially against the very existence of Israel and have always been, and they happily vote on any condemnation of Israel regardless of what Israel does.
"regardless of what Israel does" they haven't tried ending the occupation yet; do you really think they would be condemned for doing so?
This is misinformation. Although Israel did pull its settlers from most of Gaza in 2005, it retained air, sea, and land border control. That is still a military occupation. The reality is, Israel never ended the occupation in Gaza.
No, the misinformation is yours. Israel pulled out Jews from all of Gaza, going back to the pre-1967 line. Gaza shared a land border with Egypt (Rafah crossing) which Israel did not - and could not - control.
While Israel retained air and sea passage control, the blockade as we know it only came after Hamas was elected as the Gaza government and not before.
(this is the opportunity to note that after the Israeli pullout from Gaza, Gazans could have chosen many different paths but they chose Hamas to lead them into the catastrophe they've become)
Gaza has been considered occupied by the UN, the ICJ, the ICC, the EU, and pretty much any body which studies international law, since 1967. Israel is the only entity who claims they have not been occupying Gaza during this period.
> this is the opportunity to note that after the Israeli pullout from Gaza, Gazans could have chosen many different paths but they chose Hamas to lead them into the catastrophe they've become
Even in 2005, after Israel's removal of their settlers and before Hamas came to power in 2007, Israel was still occupying Gaza, according to an ICJ ruling, based on Israel continuing to exert control over Gaza.
> Israel was still occupying Gaza, according to an ICJ ruling
That's not what the court said. Its language was
> In light of the above, the Court is of the view that Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip has not entirely released it of its obligations under the law of occupation. Israel’s obligations have remained commensurate with the degree of its effective control over the Gaza Strip.
As it often does, the court used intentionally ambiguous language to try to get a majority of judges on board. But the most natural reading seems to be a novel idea that occupation is non-binary, and Gaza lies somewhere on a spectrum of being occupied or not.
No, Gaza was considered definitively occupied again starting in 2007, after Israel instituted air and sea border control, and control of its 2 land borders with influence on its Egypt border as well
UN reports have consistently referred to Gaza is occupied; your point about the ambiguity of the ICJ's 2004 ruling is noted, but it looks like UN's policy was to provisionally consider that a claim that Gaza is still occupied, while in 2022 or early 2023, requesting the ICJ put out a clarifying advisory opinion.
No one said law was consistent or made sense.
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