creating safe zones for civilians is exactly what israel should not do because it is well understood in advance that hamas will hide in the safe zones.

israel needs to rely on it's substantive intelligence to hit actual targets and kill actual bad guys and civilians need to take some responsibility in being proactive about getting out of the way. i understand it's a small space and that's hard, but it's how it is.

if you are a civilian in gaza, you should be seeking to find somewhere that is isolated to hide in, not going to civilian safe zones, refugee camps or un food distribution zones. hamas will get there first, and you'll be entering a target zone. it is safer for you as a citizen if there is a lack of governance and a lack of social cohesion; seek out small, autonomous collectives that hide in the cracks in the system, instead.

this is unfortunate, but it's real; there is little that israel can do to protect civilians when hamas makes blending into civilian populations and hiding in safe or non-combatant zones a central part of it's strategy. it's impossible to follow the rules when your opponents flaunt them, and the blame for this should be put on hamas, not on israel.

i can't comment on individual examples of vengeance or insubordination in the idf, which should be condemned when or if they are found.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/israel-hamas-war-truce-ends-buffer-zone-1.7047324

Israel said it had recalled a team from Qatar, host of indirect negotiations with Hamas, accusing the Palestinian faction of reneging on a deal to free all the women and children it was holding. 

it is predictable that they would not let the women they impregnate via raping them leave, as they would then become their property, under islamic law.

what naomi and others miss is that if you let people with anti-semitic biases engage in a process that is legitimate on it's face, it becomes anti-semitic. my experience with "progressive" activists in canada is that most of them really don't like jews very much. i have one jewish ancestor 200 years ago, and it's better if i don't tell people about it, because once i do i get labeled as a jew and marginalized. it really does affect people's perceptions.

spraypainting slogans on a storefront is pointless vandalism, but if they wanted to get their point about this fund across without being labeled nazis, they should have chosen their words more carefully. if it sounds like a nazi and acts like a nazi, most people will decide it's a nazi; and, frankly, the truth is that it probably actually is one, too.

naomi's concern should be about nazis co-opting the action she feels is legitimate, however pointless the action might have been.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/antisemitism-anti-israel-indigo-1.7046501

the bill c-18 deal just signed by google is not what was legislated. the legislation calls for google to make bilateral agreements with independent news organizations in order to allow them to appear in google's search results, which forces google to pay for a service it provides to news organizations for free. the actual agreement has google pay into a fund that is distributed to news organizations.

as a distant observer, my concerns were with free speech advocacy and academic freedom, which were under attack by the initial legislation. i opposed the legislation for those reasons. this agreement changes my concerns, but they do remain.

if i were google, i would want to ensure that a healthy news industry existed in canada and i would also want some influence over the news in exchange for my contributions to it's stability. that actually places google in a position where it will gain undue influence over news organizations due to the fact that it's paying them, as a result of this government dictate. it is not healthy for democracy in canada for a large corporation like google to have a cartel-like influence over the entire journalism industry, but that is what we should expect as an outcome from this agreement, the google news industry cartel that oversees google news content and which has a near monopoly on news access in canada.

i liked google's aggregate because it wasn't integrated. i may need to look elsewhere.

roger was syd's friend; he cared about him, and wanted the best for him.

syd was lucky to have friends that cared about him.

they should really make a movie about syd and roger. it would be quite touching.