World News

38976 readers

2040 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]

Recommendations

How to spot Misinformation and Propaganda

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

548

It’s an Absolutely Terrifying Night in Gaza Right Now (www.yahoo.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/world

246 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Some people, communicating via satellite phones, have described the attack as the “heaviest bombardment yet,” according to independent journalist Sharif Kouddous.

“People can’t call ambulances or civil defense. We are being bombed in an unprecedented manner,” said an unidentified journalist at a Gaza hospital, according to a translation by The Nation’s Palestinian correspondent, Mohammed El-Kurd. “The sky around us just lights up [with explosions], and no one knows what’s going on.”

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah - we should be glad that weapons technology actually evolved to a point, where carpet fire bombings of cities like Dresden or Hamburg (WW2) are a thing of the past.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Don't forget Tokyo! Those we're all war crimes interestingly enough.

Oddly the siege of Gaza may very well fall into that category with the amount of ordinance that's been dropped, although the terminology would likely be different due to the guided aspect.

Carpet bombing of cities, towns, villages, or other areas containing a concentration of civilians is considered a war crime[5] as of Article 51 of the 1977 Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions.[6][7][8]
The term obliteration bombing is sometimes used to describe especially intensified bombing with the intention of destroying a city or a large part of the city. The term area bombing refers to indiscriminate bombing of an area and also encompasses cases of carpet bombing, including obliteration bombing.

Perhaps it might even get it's own unique term someday. I do find it quite similar from what I'm reading on the first instance of carpet bombing though, the bombing of Barcelona

Along with the variance of the times between each individual attack, this had a demoralizing effect on the civilian population, which suffered prolonged anxiety quite out of proportion to the number of bombs dropped over a long period of time. Coupled with the fact that there was little discernible military value in the choice of targets within the city, and the cessation of the attacks for no apparent reason

Edit: sorry meant to add this as well

The Italian bombers dropped 44 tons of bombs.[7] Rather than aiming at military targets, the Italians intended to destroy industrial areas of the city and demoralize the Republican side, in what some authors have described as the first aerial carpet bombing in history.[1] Their targets and declared objectives were military warehouses, arms factories, trains with soldiers, and the port, but civil buildings, cinemas, consulates, and theatres were also hit or destroyed during the bombing.[8]

[–] mea_rah 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's probably worth pointing out that the Geneva Convention article you're quoting was written a couple decades after both Tokyo and Barcelona events.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I guess take it up with the Wikipedia editors if you don't like it?

[–] mea_rah 3 points 1 year ago

I'm not saying it's not a war crime according to the definition. I was just pointing out that the specific crimes precede the definition by a couple of decades.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

But they weren't war-crimes at the time and in fact, to the contrary, were very much in the spirit of war as it was being prosecuted by all of the belligerents.

There's been a lot of really good work on the history of air power and the logic that led to deliberately targeting civilians in WW2 on all sides. It wasn't necessarily as nakedly bloodthirsty as it appears to us now looking back. If you honestly believed that targeting civilians would shorten the war and ultimately result in less suffering, it was actually a moral decision, or at least morally ambiguous.