>I’m not dumb and don’t appreciate the comic book, insulting reference. You asked me why a Netflix entertainment show portrays someone as black, as if that means anything. Works of fiction are that. Fiction. And their casting decision has been widely mocked by historians. I responded with an argument of what I considered equivalent seriousness.

I don't need to, the FBI doesn't disagree with me.

>So why is [Cleopatra currently depicted](https://slate.com/culture/2023/05/queen-cleopatra-black-netflix-show-race-history.html) as Black? If I pick up a comic book about Spider Man in New York City, does that make Spider Man real? Will I see him if I go to NYC? >In this [subreddit](https://slate.com/culture/2023/05/queen-cleopatra-black-netflix-show-race-history.html) the consensus was that Jesus along with the Hebrews would appear to definitely not be White, Middle East peoples are not white. Egyptians are not white. Asia is not white. The Pacific Islands are not white. And none of those peoples are black. Something being not-white does not mean black. There is more than white or black. >But there is no **clear consensus** that Jesus and the original Hebrews weren’t Black.  There is. [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002929717302768](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0002929717302768) Canaanites direct descendants are Lebanese. Canaanites are neighbors and directly referenced in Israeli history. Let us look at what modern day Lebanese people look like. [https://www.google.com/search?sca\_esv=95374ddcdb4e68e2&rlz=1C1UEAD\_enUS991US991&q=lebanon+people&tbm=isch&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiJwsiAnLaEAxVDMEQIHb1-DucQ0pQJegQICRAB&biw=1280&bih=601&dpr=1.5](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=95374ddcdb4e68e2&rlz=1c1uead_enus991us991&q=lebanon+people&tbm=isch&source=lnms&sa=x&ved=2ahukewijwsianlaeaxvdmeqihb1-ducq0pqjegqicrab&biw=1280&bih=601&dpr=1.5) All that dark hair, dark skin. Not black. Not white either. If you wanted to use a color, it would be light brown. But they are **definitely** not black.

Still can't engage with the argument? Poor lil fella

Reads as" I have no good arguments so I am plugging my ears to reality and ignoring the blatant holes you've punched in my bullshit.

>Laughable! Indeed, the blind appeal to authority is laughable. You have not provided any evidence. For all we know, you are not even telling the truth. Adorable. Meanwhile... the other coronaviruses that jumped from animals to people... 229E, NL63, OC43, HKU1, SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, COVID-19. So why is only the **last** of that line of naturally occuring jumps from animals to people the lab leak? Hmmmm? Again, you are literally looking at 1-2-3-4-5-6 and instead of assuming 7 comes next assuming 117 comes next. "Common sense" hahahahaaha

There is no common sense here. And if you have this evidence, such that you are persuaded, why are you unable to produce it? And what is common sense? You see a series of 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8 and think 9 comes next? Or do you think 119 comes next? Please, try to apply some common sense here and explain why 119 makes more sense than 9.

>Source. The sum total of anthropology. Middle easterners are distinctly different from Sub Saharan (black) Africans. Just as Northern Africans, like Egyptians, are distinctly not black.

Oh? And what is their unambiguous evidence?

>And yet years later and no host nor evidence of natural transmission. This is not evidence, just conspiratorial thinking. A host is not necessary. Being in a line of natural events, you need greater evidence of the lab leak to controvert the long trend of natural occurrence. You are arguing for a suspension of the observed trend in favor of something you have no evidence for. That is not a persuasive argument. It isn't much of an argument at all, really.

Its not the benefit of the doubt. There is zero unambiguous evidence of a lab leak. Zero. there is speculation galore. Covid-19 is one of many in a long series of coronaviruses that have transitioned naturally from animals to humans. It is not implausible that Covid-19 is just the next in that line.

Honestly, defending Nazis sounds like a great way to get banned from any community of reasonable people. And Germany has laws about Nazi shit for a reason. They thoroughly educate their children about what happened and forewarn against any repeat, and part of the prevention is the banning of any and all public displays of Nazism. If a sovereign democratic state that was previously the world's most common synonym for evil wants to, as a collective society, make it absolutely clear that this sort of behavior is unacceptable that seems just fine.

>so they are wicked for it. And engaging in wholesale slaughter of noncombatants is also wicked. Hamas is wrong. Israel is wrong. Palestinians are the victims caught between. This is not that complicated.

Republic is just a cute name for what political scientists call a representative democracy. If anyone ever tried to claim that a republic is somehow distinct, they are letting the world know that they have no idea what they are talking about.

Yeah. Civics has failed. The US is a democratic system. Full stop.  A representative democracy is still a democracy.

Libertarianmeme is modded by the same jackboots that mod libertarian. 

Surrounded by walls. Travel controlled. Importa controlled. Israel denied them the ability to build and airport and a seaport. Yes. It is a total blockade under totalitarian Israeli control. Welcome to reality. Prisoners are also allowed to leave prison under supervised work details. The rest is just a bunch of excuses defending mass murderers.

>Aaaand here is the point. Yes they should stand in the middle of freaking nowhere instead of doing it next to civilians on purpose. That is literal suicide. Nobody just stands in the open waiting to have a jet drop a bomb on them. Maybe Israel shouldn't be running the world's largest open air prison under total blockade, continually visiting abuses upon a people that fosters a small offshoot of violent extremists? No. It is the fault of the violent extremists that they choose not to stand out on a beach completely exposed in the open 24/7 so that Israel may kill them when ready. Also, there is no guarantee that Israel would accept that the sum total of their enemy was standing out on the beach. What is to stop them from saying that was a diversion and all the really important people are hiding among the civilians and then bombing the fuck out of civilians? Oh yeah. Nothing.

[https://www.npr.org/2024/02/01/1228462647/what-does-hamas-have-left](https://www.npr.org/2024/02/01/1228462647/what-does-hamas-have-left) >Well, Israel says about 9,000 Hamas fighters have been killed and perhaps a similar number wounded, and various Israeli estimates put the Hamas fighting force at the beginning of the war at around 30,000 or so, give or take. But these are just Israeli estimates that NPR can't independently verify. We don't have hard numbers because Hamas refuses to provide figures. ... >I believe that war being shitty is a fact. When tanks roll in and missiles start flying, no one cares about being nice or right anymore, they care about winning. The international community, Geneva Conventions, and Rome Statute all contradict you. Total war is unacceptable. The entire world agreed to a set of rules. >No one cried when Russia launched cruise missiles into civilian infrastructure. They did. Have you not been paying attention? The US sent Patriot surface to air defense systems following those incidents. >The best way to save Palestinian lives is for Hamas to lose quickly. What does it mean for Hamas to "lose"? Be specific.

[https://www.npr.org/2024/02/01/1228462647/what-does-hamas-have-left](https://www.npr.org/2024/02/01/1228462647/what-does-hamas-have-left) >Well, Israel says about 9,000 Hamas fighters have been killed and perhaps a similar number wounded, and various Israeli estimates put the Hamas fighting force at the beginning of the war at around 30,000 or so, give or take. But these are just Israeli estimates that NPR can't independently verify. We don't have hard numbers because Hamas refuses to provide figures. ... >I believe that war being shitty is a fact. When tanks roll in and missiles start flying, no one cares about being nice or right anymore, they care about winning. The international community, Geneva Conventions, and Rome Statute all contradict you. Total war is unacceptable. The entire world agreed to a set of rules. >No one cried when Russia launched cruise missiles into civilian infrastructure. They did. Have you not been paying attention? The US sent Patriot surface to air defense systems following those incidents. >The best way to save Palestinian lives is for Hamas to lose quickly. What does it mean for Hamas to "lose"? Be specific.

"They" is the 30-40k people amidst >2M people. Those numbers are *Israeli* numbers. Whose numbers are you using? So you believe in collective punishment? If your neighbor committed a crime, it would be okay for you to be killed in revenge? People really do just love to tell on themselves.

It’s amazing people like you can say things like that. “Well, they used human shields, so that justifies killing 97 innocents for every 3 combatants”. You tell on yourself without hesitation. Yikes.

And what? Launch a rocket then just stand out completely exposed on a section of beach? And that’s still no guarantee that civilians won’t be targeted. People in West Bank, where Hamas is not in power or operating, are seeing a drastic increase in being murdered by Israel. Turns out, and we have plenty of evidence of this, Israel just hates Palestinians and looks for any opportunity or justification to make them suffer or die.

Yes. No shit. Your astute observation is almost as impressive as pointing out that humans need clean drinking water to survive.

That's pretty simpleminded thing to say. They are confined to a tiny, walled in, city under total blockade. There is literally nowhere in Gaza where they won't be directly adjacent to, or mixed in with, civilians. No shit, sherlock.

>I posted a reasonable response to a photo of an IDF soldier guarding Arab men. Except it wasn't reasonable, was it? 2-3% of Gaza is Hamas. The overwhelming majority of dead or noncombatants.