Slashdot Mirror
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.
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
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.
A complicated and nuanced situation that's not nearly so clear-cut as you maintain.
If you get a chance, it's very much worth a visit to Israel and Palestine. Will give you a chance to see how things really are on the ground. Palestinians who live within the green line (pre-1967 boundaries) are as you say Israeli citizens that the Israelis call Israeli Arabs. They can vote, and they have relative freedom of movement. However they are treated by many as second-class citizens. The Knesset system is badly broken and as such doesn't really represent people, Jewish or Arab, since seats are apportioned according to a party's percentage of the popular vote. Arab MKs are often marginalized by government. They have never been a part of the government coalitions as far as I know. Israeli Arabs feel like the Israeli government favors Jewish school districts and cities when it comes to funding. In some parts of Israel, such as around Haifa, there has been relatively good integration between Palestinian and Jewish villages and neighbors. But in other parts of the Galilee things are often tense.
In the West Bank, Palestinians are not Israeli citizens, and crossing Israel to get to Gaza to see relatives has always been a difficult task. The vast majority of Palestinians live in the West Bank and aren't citizens, though Israel very much controls their movements.
Inside Jerusalem, things are the most apartheid. Though Israel has annexed Jerusalem, none of the Palestinians there have been granted citizenship. Also, they are not considered residents of the West Bank by the Israelis either. So while a Palestinian in the west bank can travel from one part to another, Palestinians in Jerusalem cannot travel anywhere without getting Israeli paperwork. It's the worst of both worlds. Israel acts like Palestinian Jerusalem residents are favored, but in reality they are more restricted.
So I can understand how people draw parallels between apartheid in SA and Israel. The situation is very much the same. The demographics is why Israel can never annex the west bank too, as doing so would absolutely make them just like SA.
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.
"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".