One person benefiting his past company which was established long before that person came around and in which he was never a majority owner and which just happens to be one of the *only* qualified companies in the country to actually do the work anyway...
is ethically about the same as
One person being given sole ownership of a company with a monopoly over an entire industry when many other alternatives exist.
You can't be serious. My original comment intended 'fair' to mean that the Palestinians have equal access to weaponry.
I misunderstood what you meant. To me, as I said, fair fighting is about how you fight, not what you fight with or how well you do.
You're saying that it's unfair that Palestinians resort to guerilla tactics?
Guerrilla tactics are not the same as terrorism. Check out the Wikipedia page on guerrilla warfare -- "Guerrilla warfare is the irregular warfare and combat in which a small group of combatants use mobile military tactics in the form of ambushes and raids to combat a larger and less mobile formal army."
There's no way you can call having weapons caches in schools a guerrilla tactic, for instance. In fact it's the exact opposite of guerrilla since it advertises their presence in a known, fixed location (rather than a mobile camp) and actually *invites* an attack, in the hopes that a bunch of kids will die and they will get on the news. Or, less cynically, it advertises their location and relies on the humanity of the other side not to attack -- and again, that is not guerrilla.
Fact is that I have much more complex feelings about the situation. I am part of a very large and wonderful Jewish family for one thing, so it is not trivial to dismiss Israel and all that it means to them. The final solution in my mind is a single state with any remaining racist zealots of any stripe marginalized and severely punished for any racist utterance. This may seem like 'losing' to a radical Zionist, but most people would call that a major win for Justice and Humanity.
Your solution sounds great but it's just an ideal without a plan for how to achieve it. Also consider whether it's even possible to achieve. Who would mete out the severe punishments for racist utterances? What happens if the majority is actually racist? (They can't be marginalized by definition.)
The problem with solutions like the one you present is they rely on social changes and the emergence of new social behavior rather than working with ground realities, objective goals, and when possible technical solutions.
BTW I am not Jewish and I don't see the relevance of that either way.
Huh? What are you talking about? Why don't you read what I said again. "Fair" should not be predicated on one side winning but on the manner of fighting. A fair fight doesn't mean there's a 50/50 shot at winning, or that the good guy wins. It means stuff like "not hitting below the belt" and "not kicking the other guy in the balls while he's not paying attention" and "not having one guy call up 10 friends to help him out." I mean wtf are you talking about? How is it specious to define a fair fight in terms of the manner of fighting rather than the outcome of the fight? You don't make any sense.
The fact that Israel is far dominant militarily means that in a fair fight they would completely dominate the situation and it would be over. In another situation where Israel were weaker, a fair fight would result in them losing.
It's really telling that you simply cannot have this discussion without spouting complete crap. You don't even make a pretense at neutrality. Now tell me about how neutrality is immoral when human rights are being violated or some crap.
Ditto for HAMAS. There's no requirement to minimize civilian casualties for them. It works both ways.
No you're deliberately twisting what I said. It's still required to minimize civilian casualties, but not at the cost of putting yourself at "much greater risk" (my words).
Imagine that tomorrow terrorists will start killing soldiers who are off-duty. Say, with armed drones shooting ricin pellets. Would that be OK?
Definitely no. Yet when Israel does this, it's all OK.
Are you kidding? Instead of targeting innocent women and children with rockets being fired haphazardly into neighborhoods and schools? I bet you *anything* that Israel would rather have off-duty soldiers targeted than that.
The crucial point however is that only Israel (as the vastly dominant side) has the power to stop this nonsense.
How so? Why does Israel have more power to control the desire and will of its people in wanting to end the terrorist threat from Palestine than Palestine has the power to control its people in wanting to continue attacking Israel? Oh, you think Israel should turn the army against its own people perhaps? Well whatever politician does that won't last long.
Or do you actually mean they have the power to end it by totally crushing Palestine?
I really don't understand your crucial point.
History is only a part of the equation.
Okay but then you should stop putting that in every single argument you make, e.g. talking about Palestinian actions in terms of "reactions" to Israeli aggression. That's history. It's time to leave it out if you are seeking an honest solution, because history can't be changed.
Disparity of power and dignity of those oppressed for so long is now the key element, without acknowledging which nothing will get resolved.
Note how you put "so long" in there, once again bringing in history when you admit it's not key. But here it is, rearing up in your "key element" again.
Anyway, ignoring that, I would also add that cultural identity is a key element. Neither side wants to lose their culture, so any solution like "destroy Israel", "just let all Palestinians become Israeli", or "let Palestine be absorbed by Jordan" is not going to work.
My proposal is to carve out parts of northern Israel (for sea access) and Syria and Jordan and call that Palestine. Give part of Jordan to Israel to make a slightly wider country (seems more practical). Israel and Palestine will both be entirely contiguous and both have sea access.
Before calling that an injustice to Syria/Jordan, remember that these countries were all arbitrarily defined by colonial powers. It's morally correct to adjust those borders in order to fix this severe problem which resulted from that arbitrary decision rather than to suddenly claim the current borders are sacrosanct for no reason and let the problem fester.
It's not effective militarily, but it's effective in terms of propaganda. Look at yourself, you are sitting here concerned that Israel bombs schools, but not commenting at all on terrorists who use the schools. Why is that? Why condemn Israel and not terrorists? And if you condemn both, great, but now put forward an argument for why Israel should change its tactics without reciprocation from the other side?
What if you use a flamethrower for self-defense, kill 1 gangster and 10 innocent bystanders? Especially, if you had (say) a taser and could have used it without harm for bystanders but with greater personal risk.
Ignoring the taser, I would have no problem with someone using a flamethrower in self defense and hurting innocent people if the alternative were that the person would be murdered by the gangster.
Taking the taser into account, it's obviously more difficult. I'd have to hear why he didn't use the taser. What is the criminal armed with?
Either way, I understand you're saying that Israel has the capability of using less destructive means to deal with terrorism. I disagree. There's no moral requirement to put yourself at much greater risk (entering enemy territory, dealing with people who hide amongst civilians, and dealing with people who you thought were civilians but morph into terrorists when your back is turned) for the sake of saving a few people. And if there is such a requirement, it rests on both sides -- i.e. the terrorists are more to blame than Israel because they are the ones creating the untenable situation. It's like the Geneva Convention, if you're fighting someone who doesn't honor it, you don't honor it either. Common sense.
And recent assassination is just barbaric (they slowly strangled a helpless man). It's terrorism, pure and simple.
Okay fair enough, but think about this -- in this instance they are using exactly the techniques you want. There was no risk to innocent people. They killed one dude who they knew was a terrorist. And yet you're sitting here complaining about that as well and calling it terrorism. You should examine your statement.
The thing is, wouldn't you take military action or, if you can't, take terrorist action if you were in their shoes?
A simple criteria for terrorist action is to judge whether the consequences of defeat are greater than the consequences of terrorism.
If Israel were rounding up Palestinians and putting them to death, terrorism (any action whatsoever) would be justified.
But to take another example, if Canada conquered the US, I would not become a terrorist because Canada is not a "bad" country. They would not be exterminating Americans and the chances of peace would be high. Historically this is very common -- think how many wars there were in Europe that did not result in extermination. Most of them are merely about tax control, religious control, etc. I don't think resisting that is worth becoming an inhuman terrorist. Fight, sure, but I'm not going to blow up women and children, hide my weapons behind women and children, use women and children as hostages, etc. If you become a bigger problem than your enemy, you're doing it wrong.
the Palestinians will become a displaced nation; a nation without country. The Jews replaced themselves by the Palestinians. So we still have a problem, we just changed a rich victim for a poor one. They will become a nation like the Kurds - and guess what, the Kurds also resort to terrorism.
That's true but here is my suggestion. You have to involve other countries besides Israel. Surrounding countries that attacked Israel in the past are just as responsible for the Palestinian problem as Israel. How can that be disputed since the problem would not exist if they hadn't done so? So maybe some land needs to be taken back from Israel (they have offered this in the past), but more needs to be taken from surrounding countries and given to the Palestinians. Either that or surrounding countries (and Israel) should be forced to each accept a certain percentage of the Palestinian population. Either way, it should not be Israel's burden alone, because that is ignoring the key players that caused the Palestinian problem.
As for the Kurds I feel the same way. Take over part of Turkey and Iraq and Iran and give it to the Kurds.
Remember these countries were defined arbitrarily after colonialism and maybe they are not ideal. They need to be redefined to make it more ideal. I don't see a problem with that, morally or otherwise, and I feel like the result could only be better than what we have now.
All of this wouldn't be news except for the fact that Israel has the unconditional support of the US by working on two fronts. By lobbying in Washington it has a tight grip over US foreign policy.
That is only half true and you know it. It would also not be news if Palestine didn't have the unconditional support of (nearly) the entire Muslim world, including all of the Middle East. Iran is a well-known funder of terrorists against Israel in the name of Palestine. Every major jihad movement in the world cites Palestine as an issue.
Any critic of Israel is immediately labeled an anti-semite, or at least immediate concerns of anti-semitism raise around that person.
That is a legitimate problem, BUT again, it is only half the truth. Anybody who criticizes terrorism linked with Islam and Palestine specifically is immediately labeled an "Islamophobe", a racist, a supporter of genocide, etc. It's bullshit. There's no room for honest debate on either side except by people who don't care about labels and unfortunately those people have no political power (either in the West or the Muslim world).
I think you are stretching to create moral equivalence in two situations that are not equivalent. They have similar outcomes (death of civilians) and that is what you are building your case on, but you are ignoring all morality in what produces those outcomes. That's fair if you really are a strict consequentialist, but most people tend to back away from that in other situations (e.g. self-defense vs. accidental death vs. murder).
Funny you were so apt in finding three massacres by Arabs and yet you didn't find any by Jews.
Your claim was about Arabs NOT massacring Jews, so I gave evidence against that. I didn't claim Jews didn't ever do any massacring.
Palestine is very racist? I'm the one not sure of what you mean exactly but I was talking of Israel. That beacon of democracy and human rights... for Jews. Be an Arab-Israeli and you'll be treated differently, pretty much like the Apartheid in South Africa.
Do you think Jews in Palestine are not treated differently? Anyway, my point again is that both sides do it, and honestly I don't mind. Palestine and Israel are enemies, so of course they will treat each other badly!
While Palestine resupplies and rearms their militants and terrorists with decrepit and hand-made weapons that, according to the latest Gaza campaign and my calculations, have a kill ratio of 400:1, Israel keeps supplying it's terrorists and militants with state of the art weaponry, from tanks to jet fighters, not to mention nuclear WMDs, all with American tax payer's money.
This is evidence showing that Palestine has no interest in peace. Normal people do not arm themselves to fight an unwinnable war, deliberately targeting civilians because nothing else has any impact, and counting only on the good graces of the enemy (and political correctness) to avoid complete destruction.
The UK didn't storm Northern Ireland with planes and tanks and phosphorus bombs, leveling buildings and killing women and children on the pretext that they needed to eliminate IRA terrorists now did it?
Well that's a good point. There are many cases where terrorism is handled better than what we see in Israel, I have to agree with you there.
And I'll just note here that the IRA lost support when England gave concessions. The IRA is not supported today, even though the IRA still exists. In Palestine, when Israel gave concessions, that simply emboldened groups like Hamas and they lost no popular support. Why do you think that is different? (I don't know.) Or am I wrong?
But I agree with you when you say the best alternative really is full control of Palestine. But that's for the Jews. Because for the Palestinians, that's really the worst possible alternative. It amounts pretty much to ethnical and cultural obliteration. There is no room in Israel for Arabs.
I agree with you, but I feel that Arabs have helped put themselves in that position. Since the founding of Israel, Palestinians have sought military action and terrorism against Israel.
You don't see a moral difference between troops stationed near a city and "troops" stationed in a school, weapons caches and all, while there are actually children there and classes going on? Come on.
I agree it's fucked up but it's true. If one side presents itself as seeking peace here and now and the other side presents itself as seeking destruction and extermination here and now then regardless of historical issues the one side seems more fair.
Really, the argument you're making for the Palestinian side is self defeating because it just encourages each side to dig a little more to find a grievance, and you can always find a grievance. You're never going to win that one decisively. Oh, the Jews killed this leader in a riot. Oh, but the Palestinians had this riot. Oh, yeah, that was in response to this. Oh, but the Palestinians provoked that.
Be honest. Here and now, ignoring history, who is more right? Should that have an impact on who is more right when we don't ignore history? You can say it shouldn't, but why? At what point do you accept that people have changed and deserve a new chance?
Thanks for the detailed reply. I don't have time to do justice to the whole thing, but I did read it all.
Yes, scientists is every field inevitably have to deal with miscalibrated sensors. They inevitably happen, they inevitably exist. And someone who wants to look for them they will find them. If someone wants to make a list of them, to publish, they can do so. However a rather obvious point is that when miscalibrations happen the error can go in either direction, and that the two possibilities are generally statistically equal.
Miscalibrations are not necessarily symmetric about the true calibration. For instance, I believe car speedometers are designed to favor going out of sync in the positive direction and often times are purposely set to report a higher than actual speed. A spring-based scale will become miscalibrated as the spring wears out and will start reporting heavier weights. I'm not claiming to know why these temperature sensors are miscalibrated but you can't just assume it all balances out. The example of urban heat islands would be a miscalibration that tends positive since cities tend to expand and grow (and thus cause more sensors to become miscalibrated) more than they tend to shrink (thus causing sensors previously calibrated for that environment to show lower readings).
I did a search trying to find what you're referring to, and the closest I could find is some Siberian records were lost during the collapse of the Soviet Union. That is very unfortunate, but it hardly discredits the data we do have.
I think I read it in an article similar to this one after the "Climategate" stuff:
According to the report, UK’s Hadley Center purposely excluded data from Russian stations for no other reason than the fact they did not show warming. The IEA says that Hadley only used data from 25% of the available Russian stations thus omitting 40% of Russian territory. Those stations that Hadley did choose to use were in urban areas where the Urban Heat Island effect is likely to come into play and skew temperatures warmer.
By your own logic, to dismiss those findings out of hand is to assume that the scientists behind the report are corrupt or incompetent.
I think an important thing is to completely separate science and politics. To completely separate scientific matters from political matters....
Whether Global Warming is real is a scientific question.
What, if anything, we should do about Global Warming is a political question and an economic question.
Precisely. However, Global Warming research organizations are unabashedly political. That's part of what puts their claims into doubt. On an individual level, Global Warming scientists who I've seen interviewed are not of the "I'm doing this for the sake of research" variety but more likely to be of the "I'm doing this to show the world that we need to take action" variety.
First principles, 1 2 3. (1) It is undisputed that the levels of CO2 (and related gases) are rising at a substantial rate.
Okay, granted.
(2) There is no dispute that that fossil fuel burning and related human activities are overwhelmingly responsible for those increases.
Well, technically there is dispute, but whatever.
(3) It is undisputed first-principles physics that CO2 (and related gases) do trap infrared radiation - they do trap heat.
True.
From trivial facts and first principle physics, the effect at issue is real. It exists. That part of the fighting needs to go away.
But note that even if granted, your first principles are not enough to say that t
That analogy would almost work if Kelly created the slum so that he could study it, or if the solution to the slum were as simple as Kelly performing an operation for an hour or two.
you can't claim the moral high ground while using military ordinance against occupied residential structures.
Cool so in the direct conflict neither side has the moral high ground. How about in the goals of the conflict? One side goes for extermination of the infidels, the other goes for cessation of violence without extermination. There is a moral high ground there.
How about surrendering? Could they use that conventional method? You know, the one that has been used in war for thousands of years? Hey the English surrendered to the Americans, and guess what, England is still around. The French surrendered to the Germans, and they're still around. The Germans surrendered to the Allies, and they're still around. SURRENDER IS A VALID TECHNIQUE.
Look, "freedom fighter" is a catchy name that everyone including terrorists wants to co-opt, but if you're fighting for a cause that's hurting your own citizens much more than what "the enemy" is doing to you, you're doing it wrong.
So to summarize, you don't support their methods, but "it boils down to" you debating that they are appropriate or understandable. Cool.
We talk righteously about Jews who were forced into ghettos and then violently rebelled against their oppressors
WTF are you talking about? We talk about how the Jews were forced into ghettos *and then put into death camps where they were starved to death or simply exterminated with poison gas*. Are you really just forgetting that part? If Jews had just been rounded up and arrested in WWII, well that's bad and all, but it would be a hell of a lot better than the Holocaust!
And when did Jews violently rebel en masse? Do you even know anything about WWII? A lot of Israeli philosophy today is based on the fact that NOT violently resisting was a fatal error.
but then on the other hand when it involves Arabs against Jewish occupiers
If only that were true. It's well known that Hamas purposely occupies places like schools and residential homes. How can you draw a comparison between that and Israel's "terrorism"? You are purposely abstracting too much.
The only reason that Israel is still supplied with vast no-questions-asked transfers of wealth and arms from the unwitting US taxpayers is because Israelis have a strangle-hold on US politics
The reason they have vast support is you'd have to be blind and stupid not to see the tactics and motivations of the people Israel has to deal with and conclude that Israel is worth supporting.
Fair enough, Palestinians have never been organized or powerful enough to actually *accomplish* that but if you read anything about stuff like Hamas you see they definitely want to conquer Israel. Certainly Palestinian allies have tried to conquer Israel.
maintain a racist state
Palestine is very racist, not sure what you mean by this.
try to fabricate a Jewish past in Palestine
No, they actually do try to fabricate that past. They make up all kinds of events like the extermination of Palestinian villages (as you mentioned).
fully annex it while pretending to be interested in a peace treaty
Palestine always pretends to be interested in a peace treaty -- while they resupply and rearm their militants and terrorists.
The fact is that the Israelis are not interested in peace. They want the full of Palestine and that's it.
How do you know that? From another perspective it's really obvious that Palestinians aren't interested in peace. In that view, Israel may want peace but it's not practical and the best alternative really is full control of Palestine. Right now Palestine is a haven for terrorists and a rallying cry for terrorists across the Muslim world. How is that situation helping anyone?
Yes, how dare he do what smart people throughout history have done -- analyze something and learn what they can -- rather than just sit in the corner crying about how unfair it all is.
Slashdot Mirror
Really?
One person benefiting his past company which was established long before that person came around and in which he was never a majority owner and which just happens to be one of the *only* qualified companies in the country to actually do the work anyway...
is ethically about the same as
One person being given sole ownership of a company with a monopoly over an entire industry when many other alternatives exist.
Okay then, just wanted to make sure.
You can't be serious. My original comment intended 'fair' to mean that the Palestinians have equal access to weaponry.
I misunderstood what you meant. To me, as I said, fair fighting is about how you fight, not what you fight with or how well you do.
You're saying that it's unfair that Palestinians resort to guerilla tactics?
Guerrilla tactics are not the same as terrorism. Check out the Wikipedia page on guerrilla warfare -- "Guerrilla warfare is the irregular warfare and combat in which a small group of combatants use mobile military tactics in the form of ambushes and raids to combat a larger and less mobile formal army."
There's no way you can call having weapons caches in schools a guerrilla tactic, for instance. In fact it's the exact opposite of guerrilla since it advertises their presence in a known, fixed location (rather than a mobile camp) and actually *invites* an attack, in the hopes that a bunch of kids will die and they will get on the news. Or, less cynically, it advertises their location and relies on the humanity of the other side not to attack -- and again, that is not guerrilla.
Fact is that I have much more complex feelings about the situation. I am part of a very large and wonderful Jewish family for one thing, so it is not trivial to dismiss Israel and all that it means to them. The final solution in my mind is a single state with any remaining racist zealots of any stripe marginalized and severely punished for any racist utterance. This may seem like 'losing' to a radical Zionist, but most people would call that a major win for Justice and Humanity.
Your solution sounds great but it's just an ideal without a plan for how to achieve it. Also consider whether it's even possible to achieve. Who would mete out the severe punishments for racist utterances? What happens if the majority is actually racist? (They can't be marginalized by definition.)
The problem with solutions like the one you present is they rely on social changes and the emergence of new social behavior rather than working with ground realities, objective goals, and when possible technical solutions.
BTW I am not Jewish and I don't see the relevance of that either way.
Huh? What are you talking about? Why don't you read what I said again. "Fair" should not be predicated on one side winning but on the manner of fighting. A fair fight doesn't mean there's a 50/50 shot at winning, or that the good guy wins. It means stuff like "not hitting below the belt" and "not kicking the other guy in the balls while he's not paying attention" and "not having one guy call up 10 friends to help him out." I mean wtf are you talking about? How is it specious to define a fair fight in terms of the manner of fighting rather than the outcome of the fight? You don't make any sense.
The fact that Israel is far dominant militarily means that in a fair fight they would completely dominate the situation and it would be over. In another situation where Israel were weaker, a fair fight would result in them losing.
It's really telling that you simply cannot have this discussion without spouting complete crap. You don't even make a pretense at neutrality. Now tell me about how neutrality is immoral when human rights are being violated or some crap.
If it were a fair fight Israel would have completely dominated them and they would have surrendered and there would be no problem.
No, in reality your idea of "fair" is predicated on the idea that Israel loses, not anything about the manner of fighting, which makes you a bigot.
Ditto for HAMAS. There's no requirement to minimize civilian casualties for them. It works both ways.
No you're deliberately twisting what I said. It's still required to minimize civilian casualties, but not at the cost of putting yourself at "much greater risk" (my words).
Imagine that tomorrow terrorists will start killing soldiers who are off-duty. Say, with armed drones shooting ricin pellets. Would that be OK?
Definitely no. Yet when Israel does this, it's all OK.
Are you kidding? Instead of targeting innocent women and children with rockets being fired haphazardly into neighborhoods and schools? I bet you *anything* that Israel would rather have off-duty soldiers targeted than that.
The crucial point however is that only Israel (as the vastly dominant side) has the power to stop this nonsense.
How so? Why does Israel have more power to control the desire and will of its people in wanting to end the terrorist threat from Palestine than Palestine has the power to control its people in wanting to continue attacking Israel? Oh, you think Israel should turn the army against its own people perhaps? Well whatever politician does that won't last long.
Or do you actually mean they have the power to end it by totally crushing Palestine?
I really don't understand your crucial point.
History is only a part of the equation.
Okay but then you should stop putting that in every single argument you make, e.g. talking about Palestinian actions in terms of "reactions" to Israeli aggression. That's history. It's time to leave it out if you are seeking an honest solution, because history can't be changed.
Disparity of power and dignity of those oppressed for so long is now the key element, without acknowledging which nothing will get resolved.
Note how you put "so long" in there, once again bringing in history when you admit it's not key. But here it is, rearing up in your "key element" again.
Anyway, ignoring that, I would also add that cultural identity is a key element. Neither side wants to lose their culture, so any solution like "destroy Israel", "just let all Palestinians become Israeli", or "let Palestine be absorbed by Jordan" is not going to work.
My proposal is to carve out parts of northern Israel (for sea access) and Syria and Jordan and call that Palestine. Give part of Jordan to Israel to make a slightly wider country (seems more practical). Israel and Palestine will both be entirely contiguous and both have sea access.
Before calling that an injustice to Syria/Jordan, remember that these countries were all arbitrarily defined by colonial powers. It's morally correct to adjust those borders in order to fix this severe problem which resulted from that arbitrary decision rather than to suddenly claim the current borders are sacrosanct for no reason and let the problem fester.
It's not effective militarily, but it's effective in terms of propaganda. Look at yourself, you are sitting here concerned that Israel bombs schools, but not commenting at all on terrorists who use the schools. Why is that? Why condemn Israel and not terrorists? And if you condemn both, great, but now put forward an argument for why Israel should change its tactics without reciprocation from the other side?
What if you use a flamethrower for self-defense, kill 1 gangster and 10 innocent bystanders? Especially, if you had (say) a taser and could have used it without harm for bystanders but with greater personal risk.
Ignoring the taser, I would have no problem with someone using a flamethrower in self defense and hurting innocent people if the alternative were that the person would be murdered by the gangster.
Taking the taser into account, it's obviously more difficult. I'd have to hear why he didn't use the taser. What is the criminal armed with?
Either way, I understand you're saying that Israel has the capability of using less destructive means to deal with terrorism. I disagree. There's no moral requirement to put yourself at much greater risk (entering enemy territory, dealing with people who hide amongst civilians, and dealing with people who you thought were civilians but morph into terrorists when your back is turned) for the sake of saving a few people. And if there is such a requirement, it rests on both sides -- i.e. the terrorists are more to blame than Israel because they are the ones creating the untenable situation. It's like the Geneva Convention, if you're fighting someone who doesn't honor it, you don't honor it either. Common sense.
And recent assassination is just barbaric (they slowly strangled a helpless man). It's terrorism, pure and simple.
Okay fair enough, but think about this -- in this instance they are using exactly the techniques you want. There was no risk to innocent people. They killed one dude who they knew was a terrorist. And yet you're sitting here complaining about that as well and calling it terrorism. You should examine your statement.
The thing is, wouldn't you take military action or, if you can't, take terrorist action if you were in their shoes?
A simple criteria for terrorist action is to judge whether the consequences of defeat are greater than the consequences of terrorism.
If Israel were rounding up Palestinians and putting them to death, terrorism (any action whatsoever) would be justified.
But to take another example, if Canada conquered the US, I would not become a terrorist because Canada is not a "bad" country. They would not be exterminating Americans and the chances of peace would be high. Historically this is very common -- think how many wars there were in Europe that did not result in extermination. Most of them are merely about tax control, religious control, etc. I don't think resisting that is worth becoming an inhuman terrorist. Fight, sure, but I'm not going to blow up women and children, hide my weapons behind women and children, use women and children as hostages, etc. If you become a bigger problem than your enemy, you're doing it wrong.
the Palestinians will become a displaced nation; a nation without country. The Jews replaced themselves by the Palestinians. So we still have a problem, we just changed a rich victim for a poor one. They will become a nation like the Kurds - and guess what, the Kurds also resort to terrorism.
That's true but here is my suggestion. You have to involve other countries besides Israel. Surrounding countries that attacked Israel in the past are just as responsible for the Palestinian problem as Israel. How can that be disputed since the problem would not exist if they hadn't done so? So maybe some land needs to be taken back from Israel (they have offered this in the past), but more needs to be taken from surrounding countries and given to the Palestinians. Either that or surrounding countries (and Israel) should be forced to each accept a certain percentage of the Palestinian population. Either way, it should not be Israel's burden alone, because that is ignoring the key players that caused the Palestinian problem.
As for the Kurds I feel the same way. Take over part of Turkey and Iraq and Iran and give it to the Kurds.
Remember these countries were defined arbitrarily after colonialism and maybe they are not ideal. They need to be redefined to make it more ideal. I don't see a problem with that, morally or otherwise, and I feel like the result could only be better than what we have now.
All of this wouldn't be news except for the fact that Israel has the unconditional support of the US by working on two fronts. By lobbying in Washington it has a tight grip over US foreign policy.
That is only half true and you know it. It would also not be news if Palestine didn't have the unconditional support of (nearly) the entire Muslim world, including all of the Middle East. Iran is a well-known funder of terrorists against Israel in the name of Palestine. Every major jihad movement in the world cites Palestine as an issue.
Any critic of Israel is immediately labeled an anti-semite, or at least immediate concerns of anti-semitism raise around that person.
That is a legitimate problem, BUT again, it is only half the truth. Anybody who criticizes terrorism linked with Islam and Palestine specifically is immediately labeled an "Islamophobe", a racist, a supporter of genocide, etc. It's bullshit. There's no room for honest debate on either side except by people who don't care about labels and unfortunately those people have no political power (either in the West or the Muslim world).
I think you are stretching to create moral equivalence in two situations that are not equivalent. They have similar outcomes (death of civilians) and that is what you are building your case on, but you are ignoring all morality in what produces those outcomes. That's fair if you really are a strict consequentialist, but most people tend to back away from that in other situations (e.g. self-defense vs. accidental death vs. murder).
Funny you were so apt in finding three massacres by Arabs and yet you didn't find any by Jews.
Your claim was about Arabs NOT massacring Jews, so I gave evidence against that. I didn't claim Jews didn't ever do any massacring.
Palestine is very racist? I'm the one not sure of what you mean exactly but I was talking of Israel. That beacon of democracy and human rights... for Jews. Be an Arab-Israeli and you'll be treated differently, pretty much like the Apartheid in South Africa.
Do you think Jews in Palestine are not treated differently? Anyway, my point again is that both sides do it, and honestly I don't mind. Palestine and Israel are enemies, so of course they will treat each other badly!
While Palestine resupplies and rearms their militants and terrorists with decrepit and hand-made weapons that, according to the latest Gaza campaign and my calculations, have a kill ratio of 400:1, Israel keeps supplying it's terrorists and militants with state of the art weaponry, from tanks to jet fighters, not to mention nuclear WMDs, all with American tax payer's money.
This is evidence showing that Palestine has no interest in peace. Normal people do not arm themselves to fight an unwinnable war, deliberately targeting civilians because nothing else has any impact, and counting only on the good graces of the enemy (and political correctness) to avoid complete destruction.
The UK didn't storm Northern Ireland with planes and tanks and phosphorus bombs, leveling buildings and killing women and children on the pretext that they needed to eliminate IRA terrorists now did it?
Well that's a good point. There are many cases where terrorism is handled better than what we see in Israel, I have to agree with you there.
And I'll just note here that the IRA lost support when England gave concessions. The IRA is not supported today, even though the IRA still exists. In Palestine, when Israel gave concessions, that simply emboldened groups like Hamas and they lost no popular support. Why do you think that is different? (I don't know.) Or am I wrong?
But I agree with you when you say the best alternative really is full control of Palestine. But that's for the Jews. Because for the Palestinians, that's really the worst possible alternative. It amounts pretty much to ethnical and cultural obliteration. There is no room in Israel for Arabs.
I agree with you, but I feel that Arabs have helped put themselves in that position. Since the founding of Israel, Palestinians have sought military action and terrorism against Israel.
And Israels build cities near military bases. So?
You don't see a moral difference between troops stationed near a city and "troops" stationed in a school, weapons caches and all, while there are actually children there and classes going on? Come on.
I agree it's fucked up but it's true. If one side presents itself as seeking peace here and now and the other side presents itself as seeking destruction and extermination here and now then regardless of historical issues the one side seems more fair.
Really, the argument you're making for the Palestinian side is self defeating because it just encourages each side to dig a little more to find a grievance, and you can always find a grievance. You're never going to win that one decisively. Oh, the Jews killed this leader in a riot. Oh, but the Palestinians had this riot. Oh, yeah, that was in response to this. Oh, but the Palestinians provoked that.
Be honest. Here and now, ignoring history, who is more right? Should that have an impact on who is more right when we don't ignore history? You can say it shouldn't, but why? At what point do you accept that people have changed and deserve a new chance?
Thanks for the detailed reply. I don't have time to do justice to the whole thing, but I did read it all.
Yes, scientists is every field inevitably have to deal with miscalibrated sensors. They inevitably happen, they inevitably exist. And someone who wants to look for them they will find them. If someone wants to make a list of them, to publish, they can do so. However a rather obvious point is that when miscalibrations happen the error can go in either direction, and that the two possibilities are generally statistically equal.
Miscalibrations are not necessarily symmetric about the true calibration. For instance, I believe car speedometers are designed to favor going out of sync in the positive direction and often times are purposely set to report a higher than actual speed. A spring-based scale will become miscalibrated as the spring wears out and will start reporting heavier weights. I'm not claiming to know why these temperature sensors are miscalibrated but you can't just assume it all balances out. The example of urban heat islands would be a miscalibration that tends positive since cities tend to expand and grow (and thus cause more sensors to become miscalibrated) more than they tend to shrink (thus causing sensors previously calibrated for that environment to show lower readings).
I did a search trying to find what you're referring to, and the closest I could find is some Siberian records were lost during the collapse of the Soviet Union. That is very unfortunate, but it hardly discredits the data we do have.
I think I read it in an article similar to this one after the "Climategate" stuff:
According to the report, UK’s Hadley Center purposely excluded data from Russian stations for no other reason than the fact they did not show warming. The IEA says that Hadley only used data from 25% of the available Russian stations thus omitting 40% of Russian territory. Those stations that Hadley did choose to use were in urban areas where the Urban Heat Island effect is likely to come into play and skew temperatures warmer.
By your own logic, to dismiss those findings out of hand is to assume that the scientists behind the report are corrupt or incompetent.
I think an important thing is to completely separate science and politics. To completely separate scientific matters from political matters. ...
Whether Global Warming is real is a scientific question.
What, if anything, we should do about Global Warming is a political question and an economic question.
Precisely. However, Global Warming research organizations are unabashedly political. That's part of what puts their claims into doubt. On an individual level, Global Warming scientists who I've seen interviewed are not of the "I'm doing this for the sake of research" variety but more likely to be of the "I'm doing this to show the world that we need to take action" variety.
First principles, 1 2 3. (1) It is undisputed that the levels of CO2 (and related gases) are rising at a substantial rate.
Okay, granted.
(2) There is no dispute that that fossil fuel burning and related human activities are overwhelmingly responsible for those increases.
Well, technically there is dispute, but whatever.
(3) It is undisputed first-principles physics that CO2 (and related gases) do trap infrared radiation - they do trap heat.
True.
From trivial facts and first principle physics, the effect at issue is real. It exists. That part of the fighting needs to go away.
But note that even if granted, your first principles are not enough to say that t
That analogy would almost work if Kelly created the slum so that he could study it, or if the solution to the slum were as simple as Kelly performing an operation for an hour or two.
you can't claim the moral high ground while using military ordinance against occupied residential structures.
Cool so in the direct conflict neither side has the moral high ground. How about in the goals of the conflict? One side goes for extermination of the infidels, the other goes for cessation of violence without extermination. There is a moral high ground there.
How about surrendering? Could they use that conventional method? You know, the one that has been used in war for thousands of years? Hey the English surrendered to the Americans, and guess what, England is still around. The French surrendered to the Germans, and they're still around. The Germans surrendered to the Allies, and they're still around. SURRENDER IS A VALID TECHNIQUE.
Look, "freedom fighter" is a catchy name that everyone including terrorists wants to co-opt, but if you're fighting for a cause that's hurting your own citizens much more than what "the enemy" is doing to you, you're doing it wrong.
So to summarize, you don't support their methods, but "it boils down to" you debating that they are appropriate or understandable. Cool.
We talk righteously about Jews who were forced into ghettos and then violently rebelled against their oppressors
WTF are you talking about? We talk about how the Jews were forced into ghettos *and then put into death camps where they were starved to death or simply exterminated with poison gas*. Are you really just forgetting that part? If Jews had just been rounded up and arrested in WWII, well that's bad and all, but it would be a hell of a lot better than the Holocaust!
And when did Jews violently rebel en masse? Do you even know anything about WWII? A lot of Israeli philosophy today is based on the fact that NOT violently resisting was a fatal error.
but then on the other hand when it involves Arabs against Jewish occupiers
Duh and are Arabs being exterminated by Jews?
Begging the question -- fail.
If only that were true. It's well known that Hamas purposely occupies places like schools and residential homes. How can you draw a comparison between that and Israel's "terrorism"? You are purposely abstracting too much.
The only reason that Israel is still supplied with vast no-questions-asked transfers of wealth and arms from the unwitting US taxpayers is because Israelis have a strangle-hold on US politics
The reason they have vast support is you'd have to be blind and stupid not to see the tactics and motivations of the people Israel has to deal with and conclude that Israel is worth supporting.
Well, the Palestinians didn't wipe out Jewish villages
You sure about that? Maybe not a whole village at a time but the Palestinians and other Arabs definitely were trying to cleanse "their" land.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Hebron_massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Safed_massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936%E2%80%931939_Arab_revolt_in_Palestine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938_Tiberias_massacre
conquered neighboring countries territory
Fair enough, Palestinians have never been organized or powerful enough to actually *accomplish* that but if you read anything about stuff like Hamas you see they definitely want to conquer Israel. Certainly Palestinian allies have tried to conquer Israel.
maintain a racist state
Palestine is very racist, not sure what you mean by this.
try to fabricate a Jewish past in Palestine
No, they actually do try to fabricate that past. They make up all kinds of events like the extermination of Palestinian villages (as you mentioned).
fully annex it while pretending to be interested in a peace treaty
Palestine always pretends to be interested in a peace treaty -- while they resupply and rearm their militants and terrorists.
The fact is that the Israelis are not interested in peace. They want the full of Palestine and that's it.
How do you know that? From another perspective it's really obvious that Palestinians aren't interested in peace. In that view, Israel may want peace but it's not practical and the best alternative really is full control of Palestine. Right now Palestine is a haven for terrorists and a rallying cry for terrorists across the Muslim world. How is that situation helping anyone?
It means that Dubai is not willing to arrest known terrorists but is willing to go to great lengths to go after unknown assassins.
Presumably when they find the real identity of these assassins, Dubai will not expect any other country to help arrest them.
If India and China reduce population to about 300 million, they probably could have a sustainable lifestyle similar to America.
Yes, how dare he do what smart people throughout history have done -- analyze something and learn what they can -- rather than just sit in the corner crying about how unfair it all is.