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Flash From the Past: Why an Apparent Israeli Nuclear Test In 1979 Matters Today
Lasrick writes: Stanford's Leonard Weiss writes about growing evidence that Israel and South Africa cooperated on nuclear weapons testing in the 1970s, and in fact conducted a test: "On September 22, 1979, a US satellite code-named Vela 6911, which was designed to look for clandestine atmospheric nuclear tests and had been in operation for more than 10 years, recorded a double flash in an area where the South Atlantic meets the Indian Ocean, off the coast of South Africa. The detection immediately triggered a series of steps in which analysts at national labs in the United States informed their superiors that the recorded signal had all the earmarks of a nuclear test... The event has been a subject of controversy ever since, but is now recognized by most analysts as the detection of an Israeli nuclear test with South African logistical cooperation." Weiss goes through the history of the investigation and new evidence that has come to light, and relates it to the rhetoric surrounding Iran's nuclear energy program and the recent agreement Iran struck with the P5+1, as well as to efforts for a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East. Terrific cloak-and-dagger read with plenty of technical details.
Two apartheid states working hand-in-hand. Quelle surprise.
Who would israel use nukes against? Only a fool would nuke your neighbors, even if they hate you.
Why does the US and UN continue to allow Israel to have them? They don't really need the weapons, they can't use them in anyway without starting a massive war that will basically eliminate their country.
By having the weapons, it causes their neighbors to want them to keep forces equal. So you have fucking crazy states like Iran constantly trying to even the playing field with Israel.
The only reason I can see for Israel to have them is leverage over the US and other countries. As long as their nukes exist (or everyone thinks they exist), there's a kind of cold war that can be easily sparked into actual war, so the US, UN, etc can't unilaterally do anything to either side without potentially sparking an even bigger war.
Since Israel is one of the bigger powers in the region, this unstableness prevents the larger powers from getting involved and gives more slack to do what they want.
(this isn't meant to be anti-israel rant, just a theory. I'm generally pro Israel as a western style democracy in an otherwise fucked up region of the world).
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
I have lived amongst many Muslims here in africa. Not one has even mentioned converting me.
However on my first trip to Atlanta, i got given a bible on day one
Israeli doctrine allows for unprovoked attacks on neighboring countries.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I dare you to try to identify another culture in the history of humanity that actually openly celebrates the murder of innocent civilians like way too many Muslims did on 9/11.
More specifically: some muslims openly celebrated the murder of innocent civilians and were caught on camera. Some extremist christians do similar things. Some extremist jews do similar things. Some Russians do similar things. Muslims don't have a monopoly on mediaval behaviour.
I dare you to try to identify another culture in the history of humanity that actually openly celebrates the murder of innocent civilians
Didn't the US have a little problem with lynching in the past?
But I guess you're going to say all those blacks were criminals, right? No white supremacist would ever just want to see black guys dead, 'guilty' or not.
The thing you have to realize is that almost all humans are very, very good at dehumanizing their out groups (i.e.: the 'not us' people), to the extent that there are no innocents among those groups (hell, they're not even human. They're 'less than dogs').
'The only good [x] is a dead [x]' isn't just some farcical mythological exclamation, it is deeply ingrained in our biology. It takes hard work to build up civilization to prevent that instinct from surfacing and even then that layer of civilization is very thin and easily destroyed.
Muslims were literally dancing in the streets on 9/11
If I'm not mistaken, there are no records of Muslims in the biggest Muslim nation on earth (Indonesia) dancing in the streets because of 9/11, nor do I believe that American Muslims did so. Ask yourself what the difference is between the dancing ones and the non-dancing ones and their relation to the US (and their relationship with Israel). I'm not saying they are right to hate the US or excusing them for it, just that their human capability for hating enemies and disregarding the humanity of those killed in 9/11 is fueled by that relation, not by the specific religion they were brought up with.
I don't know if you've looked at the ongoings in central and southern Africa in the last couple of decades, but I'm pretty sure there have been some pretty horrendously acting Christians there as well: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/afr...
Bottom line:
Humans don't need a lot to deeply hate an entire group of people and rather see them die than live.
I'm an atheist and even I know religion is not going to die. Faith/superstition/curiosity about the ineffable is part of the human condition, religions will always emerge to prey on that aspect of humanity just as humans exploit other human vulnerabilities (disparities in power, wealth etc.). There is no way any clever argument is going to prevent humans taking advantage of other humans.
The best hope, to my mind, is to try and reduce the disadvantages with which so many in the world find themselves encumbered, teach them to read, join them to the internet etc. Allow people to travel freely across national borders (fat chance of that happening), treat people fairly no matter their origin, protect the vulnerable (especially children).
Inequality is fertile soil for the corralling effect of religions. I certainly admire the great works done in the name of various churches, but I think we should remember that these were achieved by humans that could just as easily been inspired by a personal faith as one of the "name brands" without the incumberance of fighting between the brand leaders.
There are plenty of things to fight over, lets strike religion off the list and work on overcoming the others
Nullius in verba
And why the fuck are we supposed to specifically differentiate Indonesian Muslims
You don't have to, but you are proving my point exactly: Humans don't need a lot to deeply hate an entire group of people. I showed you ~220 million members of a group who did not engage in celebrating the deaths of 9/11 (and are generally quite peaceful) and you respond by implying that they and all other members of their group will do terrible things to naive people. If that's not blind hatred of an out group, then I'm not sure what would qualify as such.
Likening unrelated and dissimilar historical circumstances is a red herring.
I was providing the exact thing that was requested: "I dare you to try to identify another culture in the history of humanity that actually openly celebrates the murder of innocent civilians"
I identified (granted: implicitly) white supremacist culture as one that has quite undoubtedly openly celebrated the murder of innocent civilians. QED.
"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building."
- Anne Coulter
Please consider that just for a minute. Imagine if some commentator said "My only regret with Osama bin Laden is he didn't order the planes to fly into the Wall Street Journal." Would they then be welcome on news programs, asked their opinion, sell hundreds of thousands of books, and basically be a spokesperson for ideologically "pure" members of the Democratic party, instead of being rightfully shunned?
You need to open your eyes a little. One of the reason why blacks don't clutch their pearls quite so much over the relatively microscopic handful of terrorist deaths in the U.S., is because they've suffered terrorism for a century: the KKK burning crosses on their front yards, lynchings, and racist police on a hair-trigger, murdering completely innocent people and planting evidence (and getting off scott free, even when the evidence comes to light). But see, terrorism don't matter when it's just black lives being lost - at least not for the millions that Coulter, Rush, and many other mainstream Republicans. They don't even want to call it terrorism. White terrorists are all just "criminally insane", not like real terrorists - you know "them", "those people".
And that sort of shit is really what burns my ass (and I`m not Muslim). Yes, some Muslims did stupid, terrible shit. In more recent ``Christian`` history, we have Kim Davis getting a standing ovation to fucking eye of the tiger after being jailed for multiple instances of contempt because she refused to marry gays like her fucking job says to (apparently it`s against her religion, while her 4 marriages and infidelity weren`t somehow)
And we conveniently forget that in Iran, the major reaction to 9-11 was not celebration but actually this, because they recognize that - regardless or religion - all lives are valuable and a terrible thing had happened. Despite that, some people still want to put Iran in the same camp as ISIS (guess who was fighting ISIS before the rest of us got involved), and major outlets like the New York Times had articles that advocate an unprovoked bombing of Iran as a better alternative than a peaceful settlement.
I`ve met some pretty terrible Muslims in my life. For the most part they were holier-than-thou assholes that thought that praying twice a day made them ``good people`` in spite of their conduct. I see the exact same shit from certain members of Christian churches, as well as Jews, etc. There will always be bad people out there, and there are plenty who would use their so-called religion or beliefs to pretend they are good whilst actually doing evil.
There are 0 Israelis who live in Gaza. There are 0 settlements in Gaza. All the Gazan Israeli wars of the last 10 years wars have been Gaza attacking Israel.
They tried taking the high road, the Gazans still won't accept living in Gaza and not Israel.
Gaza is surrounded on all sides by a blockade which doesn't allow them to import or export any significant goods, or leave and come back to a university, for example. It reminds a lot of Jews, including me, of the Warsaw Ghetto.
A blockade is an act of war. A people have a right to defend themselves against an attack.
The people who are firing those missiles and making those attacks are usually not controlled by Hamas, but are smaller militant factions, which don't want peace with Israel and often sabotage the peace efforts.
Israel claims that those militant factions are the "responsibility" of Hamas. If that's true, then logically, the Israeli government is responsible for the illegal land grabs and killings by the settlers, for example, but I can't remember an Israeli prosecution of settlers for killing Palestinians.
Israel would also be responsible for the illegal killings of civilians during the Gaza wars, including the "white flag" incidents where Israeli soldiers killed Palestinians, including children, who came out carrying a white flag as ordered (documented in the Goldstone report), but Israel has never prosecuted a solider for killing a Palestinian, or even admitted that it happened.
Between 1940 when it was established and mid-1942 when the uprising started the 1,125 calories a day allocation caused over 1/5th of the population of the Warsaw Ghetto to starve to death. When the first uprising happened the Germans killed another 10% of the population within 3 months are exported the remaining population to death camps.
In Gaza the death toll from multiple uprisings is around 1/4%. The starvation is not remotely similar. It is an obscenity to compare the Warsaw Ghetto to If you are a Jew, you ought to be ashamed of yourself for saying something like that.
I read Emanuel Ringelblum's Warsaw Ghetto diaries, and I read the Amnesty International reports of Israeli human rights abuses. I read the accounts of how ambulances took pregnant Palestinian women to the border crossings, where the Israeli border guards forced them to get out and wait, until they delivered their babies at the crossing, where many of the children (and some of the mothers) died. I read a story of how a 50-year-old Palestinian man with a heart attack arrived at the border crossing, trying to get to an Israeli hospital, and the border guards wouldn't let him through, and he died. My father had a heart attack at the same age, he went to the hospital, and he lived another 20 years. I used to call the Israeli public relations office to verify these stories, and they simply lied. I saw many uncomfortable similarities between what I read in Ringelblum's diaries and what I read (and verified) in the Amnesty International report.
When I grew up, people used to say, "How could the world stand by silently when Jews were being killed?" Well, now you know. Palestinians are being killed, just as the world, including you, are standing by silently. I made a vow that if it ever happened again, I wouldn't stand by silently. That's why so many Jews led the opposition to the Vietnam war (and to every war).
If you are a Jew, or even if you're not, you should be ashamed to stand by silently while Palestinians are being killed.
Gaza has declared a state of war. The parent asserted that the Palestinians were interested in peace but the settlement enterprise prevented it. Gaza has no settlement enterprise.
I don't think Gaza declared a state of war, but I do know that immediately after -- at American and Israeli urging -- they had their elections, and Hamas won, the Israelis blockaded most of Gaza's imports and exports. There was no provocation. According to the Israelis themselves, they're deliberately keeping the Gazans in a state of "starvation." The doctors on the ground say that they're not getting enough food, medical supplies and other necessities. I remember Ringelblum saying that when the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto complained that they weren't allowed enough food, one of the arrogant Nazi officers said, "You Jews are very clever, you can smuggle in all the food you need." (The penalty for smuggling was death.) I saw the Israelis brag about the inadequate food they were supplying, and that's when the similarity to the Warsaw Ghetto became stark.
If that's true, then logically, the Israeli government is responsible for the illegal land grabs and killings by the settlers [in the West Bank], for example
I don't know how something that the operating government permits can be "illegal"
After WWII, a movement of international lawyers -- led in large part by Jewish lawyers, motivated by the example of the Nazi crimes -- wrote a body of law to make these activities illegal. Those were codified in the Geneva Conventions and other international laws. Even the Israeli government's own lawyers, such as Theodor