SuddenDownpour

That also serves as a response to his blabbering.

"Aren't you ashamed that you should have worse intentions for yourself than nature had?"

"My dude, you literally live in a barrel. And cover yourself already."

For your own link:

The ANC repeated its position that the armed struggle against the country's white-ruled government, which began in 1960, was a just war and that civilians had not been deliberately targeted.

But the ANC statement said some of its guerrillas weren't sufficiently trained and "were never thoroughly under the discipline of the ANC."

Avoiding harming civilians was a deliberate modus operandi of the ANC, the same way that Hamas deliberately kidnapped civilians. They cannot be blamed for attacking military bases - they should be blamed for attacking that which was neither military bases nor infrastructure.

If you want a general ethical position on the issue that I have found consistent so far:

• Hamas is fundamentally different from other liberation groups, in that Hamas doesn't intend to integrate the descendants of colonizers into the country they want Palestine (the whole of it) to be. For instance, the ANC saw the white South Africans as South Africans - they were colonizers, sure, but they would be citizens of the country they intended to rule, so instead of targeting civilians, they attacked military targets and infrastructure.

• We see everyday what the Israeli government does on this sub, any person who isn't predisposed in their favor can easily understand that they're a few steps away from going full nazi.

• The vast majority of civilians on both sides are innocent, and don't deserve to be brutalized.

So it isn't really a matter of whether you prefer Israel or Hamas, it is first and foremost, a matter of making sure civilians aren't subject to abuse, and are capable of living their lives freely and in peace. Of course, it also needs to be understood that the construct that is the political system of Israel-Palestine (this is, only Israel exists as a sovereign country, while "Palestine" is a couple of not too self-governed territories over which Israel practices sovereignity) provokes a continued abuse and misery that will ignite further conflict sooner or later. So while the first priority is getting a cease fire now, aiming for a real, practical 2 state solution or 1 state solution where both Palestinians and Israelis are free citizens without being subject to the whims of the other party is needed if we don't want to have a similar mess in 5, 10 or 20 years.

Every time I see an article from The Daily Beast posted here it's such an annoyingly clickbaity headline that I wish the whole thing would just burn.

That does sound less terrible.

That may easily be interpreted as: "Not only is this guy an asshole, he's also SMUG about it!!!"

My mind fights my mind every day, and every day, my mind loses that fight.

Communism is when two old men kiss

Absolute bullshit move. If we're going to help Ukraine, it shouldn't be by forcing them to take a loan when they're at their lowest, at their moment of highest need. They should just be given the Russian assets and be called a day.

In case anyone wants to argue we aren't "forcing them": if your only options are living amongst the rubble for years and selling your future, you are going to have to sell your future in order to be able to eat today.

Still, I hope my metaphor went across.

Murdering and kidnapping civilians with the purpose of enacting their political goals does fit the label of terrorism. Then again, Israel does also murder and kidnap Palestinian civilians (and I mean kidnaps, because they don't have the legal grounds to imprison people at the West Bank) for the sake of their political goals, and they don't get called terrorists. So I call both Hamas and Israel terrorists, but a good general corollary is that there's always political motivation behind someone using or not using that label.

I didn't downvote, but I would argue that you can't call someone a freedom fighter if their ideology or political position fundamentally opposes freedom, just because they are fighting for the cause of one particular oppressed group. To put a comparison: some Ukrainians that fought against the Soviet Union during WWII could have seen themselves as freedom fighters who were fighting for the right of self-determination of their nation (as they were fighting a dictatorship, and that was probably their main intention), but you absolutely cannot call yourself a freedom fighter when you're helping the nazis occupy half of Europe.