I don’t think the analogy to Egypt works, because they have a peace treaty.

We all know Israel and Saudi Arabia have a shared adversary in the form of Iran. The US wants them to normalize so they can take care of that front.

As for getting impaled on the stick, I’d say Pakistan got impaled on the stick, because its likely they were the ones hiding Bin Laden.

As for Saddam falling on the stick, that was due to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait over several reasons: a desire to reunify, oil, and Kuwait debt. That’s on top of having a history of using chemical weapons for mass murder.

And as we know, the US loves oil, but so does the world. Globalized markets want to be stable, and the US helps with that

A lot of people dont understand US foreign policy. Do not interpret my post as taking a stance.

US foreign policy is all about 3 key issues, carrot and stick diplomacy, containing China and Russia, and protecting the global market.

Carrot and stick diplomacy is using positive reinforcement to make changes in totalitarian governments.

Containing China is all about making friends with countries near China and putting a base there, along with allowing companies, military arms deals, and joint intelligence to happen in that country.

• That is why the US wants Saudi Arabia and Israel to normalize. And do to that, the US turns a blind eye to tons of bullshit done by countries in the Middle East. If they were to normalize, then a solid logistics chain from Europe to the Gulf can be established, and the two countries would bolster the front there. Then the US could pivot its power projection over to Taiwan.
• The US is powerful, but its not tactically sound to manage three fronts at the same time.

If you remember how pissed off the US got when Russia put missiles in Cuba, then you can see why China and Russia will team up with everyone they can to foil this plan to contain them.

Since the world is now globalized, the US has to protect lots of boats carrying oil, chips, and food. If something fucks up, then everyone pays for it. Of course, if youre resisting western imperialism then its in your best interest to make people suffer by blowing up the boats.

Now geopolitics makes sense.

From here, then if youre an idealist, you can make an informed opinion on US foreign policy. Should the US continue its world police campaign at the expense of people suffering under its allies?

Can you achieve US foreign policy goals without suffering?

Will a reversal of US foreign policy lead to more domestic suffering in the West due to economic turmoil?

These questions should be debated and examined thoroughly.

Well if you are like “hurr durr 3rd parties”.

The most ironic part of this is that Al Jazeera happened to live stream 2 angles of the entire incident. You can see the rocket launches, and the failed booster of the specific rocket, synced with phones on the ground already recording because they noticed the launch.

You can see how the rocket booster failed over the hospital, and then the explosion.

The videos were geographically confirmed by Geoconfirmed on Twitter, who only geoconfirms things without more analysis.

US intelligence is corroborating this with satellite imagery.

Hamas doesn’t have the firepower to cause that big of an explosion, but Islamic Jihad definitely has more powerful rockets that could have done that. They announced a launch like 4 minutes prior to the strike on their telegram I believe.

Absolutely not, at first I thought it was infact an Israeli airstrike, but upon pouring over multiple angles of video that has been geographically confirmed, it’s fairly damning, and fairly convincing that it was not in fact, an Israeli airstrike.

The incident had been broadcasted live by Al Jazeera too, so even if you have a bias in favor of Hamas and Palestinian struggles, all signs point to a self-inflicted tragedy.

Despite that, its far too late since everyone already started protesting at embassies in greater numbers. PA president and Jordan leader cancelled meetings with Biden.

The situation is deteriorating rapidly.

You should double check whats going on. I’m sure everyone who jumped to conclusions is going to look like a clown in the morning.

I couldn’t say that confidently when it happened, but now with new information, absolutely.

This is an old thread, but I thought I’d give my thoughts.

I absolutely love the Android Open Source Project. The amount of things you can do with Android are spectacular. Pixels especially are wonderful devices.

However, it’s come to my attention that I think iPhones make better “Phones” than any other device.

Apple is in a unique position of having fast and sleek operating systems and software, and wonderful integration.

Homestly if you’re not running privacy focused stuff, like your own homeserver, or a custom OS, or anything. Apple is the best for your privacy.

The reason I believe this is due to their implementation of their Apple TV Box. Google’s TV stuff is designed first and foremost to give you advertisements, even on the home screen, and Apple does no such thing. Needless to say, I switched TV Boxes. Upon researching what Apple does with your data, I’m becoming convinced that the Apple ecosystem has become a better option for consumerist services, like social media, news, streaming, and banking.

It’s not enough to make me get rid of my Android Pixel, but I’ve been heavily considering getting an iPhone, iPad, Watch, Mac Mini.

Powerful math tools, diagnostic tools, chatroom apps, forum apps, Signal, games, emulation, privacy tools, all mostly open source software, they’d all go on an Android Pixel running a custom OS still.

I’ve seen USB-C flash drives, do you think those would help too.

How easy is it to transfer a file from one device to the other? For example, let’s say you had to transfer photos, a pdf, an epub, and a video file. How easy is that?

And then do you think it’s going to be much easier when USB-C comes out so I can use a flash drive to do all the work?

Do you use Apple News at all?

Do you carry both on your person or does one go in the bag.

I think that covers most of my curiosities.

Edit: Also thanks for answering politely!

Outside of the popular streaming apps, I’ve found streaming apps to be a lot better and less buggy on Apple devices.

Waze has some of its functionality taken away on Android Auto.

And since I’ll be uninstalling the phone app on my Pixel, I was going to use the Phone and Messages app for regular texting, that’s a preferential thing. I’d use Signal but it doesn’t do SMS anymore.