snooggums

I’m sure the Venn diagram of those who would be happy with decreased revenue, who have a negative view of tourists, and who think there are too many tourists has a lot of overlap but is far from a circle. Tourists do bring in money, but they also do tend to trash the places that they don’t live more than the locals, and can drive out locals.

That number rose to 48% in Catalonia, the region that includes Barcelona, whose 1.6 million residents receive about 32 million visitors annually, and of which one local columnist said last month: “My city has been stolen from me, and I’m not getting it back.”

People in Spain also felt more strongly than others about the short-term holiday rentals sector, which is widely accused of removing accommodation from the local residential market and inflating rents to a point many residents cannot afford.

Here is an opinion piece for Hawaii that echos a lot of the complaints from Spain.

In the last few years, my family made the decision to move to Big Island, for many reasons. Although it is not the primary reason, I can’t deny that being “priced out” of Oahu was a contributing factor.

There are valid reasons for people to be opposed to the volume of tourism when it reaches extreme levels.

*with the number of foreign tourists…

There is a difference between tourists visiting and too many tourists visiting.

The US being complicit with the genocide of Palestinians led to both…

To the best of my recollection she was asked in the context of Gaza and the Oct 7th attack during the debate, not attacks from Iran. The ‘Israel must defend itself’ argument comes up constantly in the context of the massive death toll in Gaza.

I know the situation is complex and foreign states like Iran fund and supply Palestinian resistance, but it seems like a an easy way to deflect criticism by changing the focus from Palestinians to hostike nations like Iran.

When I hear that, who is Israel defending it self from if Gaza and the West Bank are not separate nations? Are they part of Israel and Israel is defending itself against itself?

‘Defend itself’ makes sense in the context of Iran or Hezbollah, but the thousands of men, women, and children killed in Gaza that are not involved in the fighting aren’t external threats. They are victims of apartheid.