This argument put forth by the pro-israel lobby -- "they just GAVE their houses to us spontaneously, who knows why" -- is very difficult to believe
that's not the argument at all. the argument is that they left their homes to allow the ethnic cleansing of the Jews of the area. It seemed clearly inevitable at the time that the Arabs, greatly outnumbering the Jews there, would wipe them away easily. After the battle was won by the newfound Israelites, they sealed their borders. How could they open their borders to unknown hostile parties?
Of course the Arabs that stayed became citizens in Israel with the same rights as Jews.
Anyway, as you say, that doesn't resolve the fact of how to deal with the refugees today. yet any solution to the Palestinian refugees must equally solve the plight of Jewish refugees. Personally I think the Arab nations should pay for the Jewish refugees, but bypass the middleman and send the money/aid right to the Palestinian refugees.
Egypt has not established settlements by evicting the former residents of Gaza.
You don't believe any Egyptians moved into Gaza at all during the 20 years they occupied it?
Anyway, Israel didn't evict owners of Gaza, the settlements are almost all built on open land. The bulldozers knocking down Palestinian houses, as deplorable and stupid as that is, isn't to build new Jewish settlements.
I'm certainly not justifying the barbarism and violence of much of the arab world. Nevertheless this doesn't justify Israel's activities.
I never said it does, and I agree with you completely.
I take issue that despite these atrocities going on around the world, Israel has a severly disproportionate amount of blame and violence against it.
Seriously, what do you think is worse, what happened to the Sudanese at the hands of the Janjaweed, or what happened to the Palestinians at the hands of the Israelis? How many websites are devoted to the victims/refugees of the Sudanese vs Palestinians? How many UN resolutaions are directed against Sudan vs. directed against Israel? How many people have marched in support of Sudanese refugee rights vs Palestinian rights?
How many times have the Janjaweed offered any land for peace vs. Israel offering land for peace?
Why does the world unite against Israel more severely than other nations doing worse things?
The entire point of zionism was to eject the indigenous population of palestine and create a state of jewish people.
Close but no cigar. There was no intent to "eject the indigenous population", that's just how it turned out. Yeah, of course some rightwingers wanted to do just that but most Zionists didn't, and it wasn't a main point of Zionism. In fact, it was debated whether to even go to Palestine vs. some other European area.
Zionism was not about moving to Israel and living among the people who were already there.
Yes it was. Or at least to offer the people there a place to voluntarily go if they wanted to. Forced transfer was never a point of Zionism, no matter how hard you wish it was so you could easily discredit Israel's very existence.
I don't understand why Israel doesn't just dismantle the settlements and get back into its 1967 borders.
They offered exactly that at the end of the 6-day war, before there were any settlements. The Arab nations refused. In fact, they refused to even recognize Israel, much less negotiate with Israel or make peace with Israel.
Seriously, what was Israel to do, just say "okay, take back the land and by all means keep attacking us until you change your minds."
Israel has managed to re-ignite anti-semitism worldwide
Shut the fuck up, anti-semitism is NOT at all justified by any of Israel's tactics. And by anti-semitism I mean attacks against Jews, Jewish temples, graveyards, and businesses.
anti-semitism is entirely the fault of ignorant hateful people, there is no way t
I'll probably be modded to hell for actually contradicting some of your anti-Israel FUD, but oh well, bye bye Karma.
From a military perspective Israel could probably survive. But from an economic perspective the Israeli economy would not last very long without US support.
Not necessarily, most of Israel's trading is done with Europe. Most of the US support for Israel isn't comes in the form of military aid, and most of that goes directly back into the US economy anyway, to build jets, radars, etc.
Israel barely survived the 1973 Yom Kippur War sneak attack by its Arab neighbors, and the UN didn't even do anything until after Israel pushed the invading forces back and beyond into their own territory. Israel had to win every war against it, one loss would be it's utter demise. US weaponry would give Israel an edge and help prevent further attacks by it's neighbors. Statistically speaking, further Yom Kippur style Wars probably would have eventually destroyed Israel without US military support.
The issue for the Palestinians is that in 1948 the majority of them were forced out of what became Israel by what the serbs called ethnic cleansing.
Tell a lie enough times it becomes true. Most Palestinians actually voluntarily left, at the urging of their Arab neighbors, to get out of the way of the invading Arab armies, and then move back after the Jews are defeated. It is estimated only about 1/3 of the Arabs actually were forced out.
That statistic in itself, however, doesn't describe how to treat those refugees and their descendents today.
And similarly, anti-Israel folks like yourself ignore the similar number of Jews that were forced out of Arab countries, or "ethnically-cleansed" since you prefer that terminology. However, since they were welcomed by Israel, they seem to lose refugee status and suddenly become the 'bad guys' because they're now Israeli.
Then after the 1967 war the remaining Palestinian territories were invaded by Israel which has occupied them since and has been illegally attempting to annex them through the settler movement.
Bullshit, there was every reason to expect Egypt, Jordan, and Syria to invade and you know it. If Israel didn't sneak attack it would most likely cease to exist today.
Plus, you mention the occupation, and conveniently ignore that prior to this, West Bank was occupied by Jordan, and Gaza was occupied by Egypt. Why, then, weren't these occupations fought against? Why did Egyptians, Syrians, Jordanians, and Palestinians all focus their attacks against Israelis? Why didn't the Palestinians EVER ONCE fight their Egyptian or Jordanian occupation?
The problem with Israel is that you can't have a democratic Jewish state any more than you can have a democratic white people's state or a democratic Christian state.
True enough, and similarly you can't have it any more than a non-racist Muslim state. So if you think it's bad for Israel to be a Jewish state then you must simultaneously condemn every single Muslim state, both Arab and non-Arab.
There is a whole rack of discriminatory legislation that makes Arab Israeli citizens second class.
Hey, don't stop there, why not talk about similar legislation that makes Jews second class citizens in some other states. Jews are specifically forbidden to be citizens of Jordan. If Israel made a similar law for Muslims there'd be worldwide condemnation, but no condemnation goes for Jordan.
Let's look at the PA. I bet you're not aware that it is illegal under penalty of death for any Palestinian to sell land to any Jew. Period. Note - not Israeli, but JEW. Why doesn't any human rights champion condemn this? It seems only Israel is the violator of human rights in the region.
Israel has turned itself ito an appartheid state.
It wasn't Israel turning itself that way, it was the actions BOTH of Israel and its Arab neighbors that led to the situatio
As long as there are about 23 Arab states with essentially similar "Jim Crow" laws either pro-Muslim, anti-Jew, or both, then Israel is no more racist than the rest of the Arab League.
Why do you single out Israel, and none of the other countries for those similar or worse problems?
For example, any Jew is ABSOLUTELY FORBIDDEN to become a resident of Jordan. No such law exists in Israel for Muslims. Yet people claiming they're fighting Israeli Apartheid are silent on these other more intense apartheids. Jews were kicked out of Jordan after it's creation, just like Arabs were kicked out of Israel. Yet these forced transfers were perfectly valid in the eyes of the UN and supposed human-rights champions.
On a different not, how do you feel about minority scholarships? Blacks have been discriminated against ever since the founding of the USA. Should there be certain scholarships to help certain gifted black aspiring students that would have otherwise been unable to pay for college due to effects of said discrimination? Is that racist?
More than half of the settlements were created after the Oslo peace accords. Israel broke its side of that bargain long before the second Intifada.
True, but many of these 'settlements' consist of 3 or 4 trailers on a piece of barren land, many without settlers even living there. Others consist of some settlers moving from one settlement to another. Counting numbers of settlements is a completely meaningless statistic used only for misleading, which seems to have worked on you.
You should instead count numbers of actual settlers or total land area taken by the settlements.
did happen in my school, you can even see the dye on the handle. Well, it's more like thick ink than dye, and it doesn't shoot out, it's just covering the inside of the handle. My friend gently put the tip of the cuff of his jacket in there and the red ink there.
Also, we had 2 or 3 fake fire alarm pulls within a month. For the last one, they had a fireman at every door as we were walking in checking our hands for the ink.
Needless to say they didn't find the perpetrator. But it was rumored to us anyway (before my friend dipped his cuff into the handle) that there was ink there. So anyone that would have pulled the alarm could just use a spare shirt or rag under their hand to avoid the ink trap.
But anyway, yeah, ink is definitely there, I saw it with my own eyes.
Privitization of public utilities and resources in many cases produces bad results for the people, but makes the regulatory agency rich.
case in point is the water utility system in El Salvador, where my girlfriend is from. The water used to be okay, but it was privatized. Now it's utterly horrible, there's lots of dirt and hairs that come from the faucet. Her mom and grandmother do the following for their drinking water - Brita-filter it, boil it, then Brita filter it again in a different filter. And there's no incentive for the water company to fix the problems either. Now the government there wants to privatize more utilities, naturally there's large outcry from much of the populace.
The same way you don't know that when you purchase something with a credit card, they don't go and scan your prints off the receipt you just signed and run that against the FBI database.
If you're against using fingerprints here, then you should be almost as against touching anything that has your name on it, as the prints could just as well be sent to the FBI.
The only thing with these lockers is that there's a step removed to send in the prints. Yet they could still do that, only with more work, using credit card receipts or anything else.
Hey, congratulations, you're my first freak (on slashdot, that is). I've gone years without anyone naming me their foe, I guess that record is ruined now that I've commented on politics. Oh well, politics, religion, they're bound to come up sometime.:-)
Anyway, yeah, astroturfing is all present in politics. I saw many people in the 2002 Maryland gubanatorial election with signs saying "another democrat for erlich", and the vibe i got from these guys was that they were bigtime republicans to begin with. I'm damn sure we'll see "another republican for kerry" signs this time around too, many from bigtime democrats.
Probably because he accused people who favor Bush of trolling to take votes for Kerry when then post pro-bush, and then Posted a long pro-Kerry post. Pot-Kettle. Just a guess.
not quite, just pointing out that there ARE repubs trolling sites masquerading as lefties to encourage people to not vote for kerry. same as there ARE microsoft astroturfers posting pro-microsoft fud on various blogs. Of course not all anti-kerry or pro-microsoft stuff is such astroturfing or trolling, but it does exist, and i want to let people know about it.
no pot/kettle/black since i'm obviously pushing kerry and stating it. i don't see how i could have been a troll. I can see you someone either right or left of me would not like what i'm saying, but that doesn't make me a troll.
Clinton still had a clear plurality, both in the popular and the electoral votes. There wasn't a sense of unfairness (and this is before the whole Supreme Court deal).
well, Kerry did he'll repeal the upper-class tax cuts, that he'll try to prevent off-shoring (i don't know specifics here, though), which should help the economy. He also said he will revamp the health-care system (again no specifics). He doesn't want a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage
I also believe he wouldn't form his cabinet from diehard conservatives, that he would work better with the UN, etc.
Bush also wants to privatize more services, including medicare, which I strongly disagree with. Bush has also blurred lines between state and religion, which I don't think Kerry has any intention of doing. Bush is adamantly pro-life, Kerry is pro-choice.
Those are some key things off the top of my head about differences between Bush and Kerry. I guess Kerry doesn't have much specifics for fixing the economy, fixing Iraq, fixing health care. But some of Bush's moves (major tax cuts, privitization, alienating UN) which failed one could be pretty sure Kerry wouldn't have initiated on his own anyway.
Voting for either dork in these states is throwing your vote away.
Not necessarily. Enough people voted for Gore in the non-swing states that he was safely able to say he won the popular vote. This fact took away a good chunk of credibility of Bush's administration.
I'm voting for Kerry this time around, and I want my vote to count for this popular vote, even though the popular vote has no political power. It does have the ability to send a message, though.
Well, I'm not sure about that, but I think it's likely, at least for now, he'll undo some of the really controversial clauses of the Act. Also, Bush is looking to expand the Patriot Act even further. I think Kerry would be much less likely to do this.
Do you think he will pull us out of Iraq?
Frankly, if Kerry is elected today he cannot pull us out of Iraq right now, he's obligated to Iraq. We totally destroyed that country's infrastructure, it's chaos and almost a political vacuum. Pulling out now would be just as irresponsible as attacking in the first place.
The efforts shouldn't be in immediately pulling out but restoring order and a 'fair' government in Iraq. I have no friggin' clue how to do that now, but we made our bed there, and now we have to sleep in it. The only way to bring dignity back to our foreign policy and our colleagues UN would be to 'fix' Iraq, not run away from it.
Bush or Kerry? The lesser of two evils is still evil.
True enough. But anybody reading please keep in mind that republicans have started going around trolling liberal-leaning blogs (like/.), parading as ultra-liberals. Their point is to give pep-talks such as this to sway the liberal votes away from Kerry, towards Bush.
I'm certainly not accusing you of being such a troll, but I just want other readers to be aware that such right-wing efforts are going on.
Anyway, as for me, I think the stakes of this election are way too high. Think of all the REALLY controversial stuff Bush didn't do because he needed to maintain his swing voters. He'll have no such obligation to them if he's re-elected.
I really don't think Kerry is that evil. At least not much more than most other candidates, including Nader. I voted Nader in 2000 (my state was solidly democratic), so I totally know where you're coming from. But IMHO the stakes are WAY too big this time around.
This time I'm voting Kerry for several reasons. He seems much more centrist, so hopefully he can unite the majorly partisan congress. Remember that the big-time conservatives would hate Nader nearly as much was we hate Bush, and this would cause even more partisan splitting. Gingrich really fucked the country up by effectively making war against the 'other' team, and now the whole politics is way too fractured. I'm hoping Kerry can pull the more moderate republicans to him, bringing some sanity back to the Capitol.
Also, it seems like the election will be close again. This time I want my popular vote to be counted for Kerry. When they said Gore got more popular votes last time than Bush, my vote wasn't counted. If Gore would have lost the popular vote by 1 vote, I would have been sad that I didn't vote for him. So yeah, I want the results to include me for Kerry.
Anyway, I don't see Kerry doing anything particularly damaging, especially anything that Bush wouldn't have done already. And my biggest priority is to make sure Bush doesn't drive this country off a cliff any more than it's already been pushed, so I must do all I can to get Bush out. If that's voting for Kerry, then that's fine with me.
But anyway, I really don't think Kerry is all that bad. I don't know of any candidates that are perfect, and ALSO not too radical that they'd be able to effectively form a coalition with the other Congress members.
I don't have any use for the Bush machine but they are hitting the nail on the head calling him a flip flopper.
So are you implying that a candidate should never change their mind on any issue, even if they realize their original opinion may have not been in the public's best interest?
Huh? It's not Kerry's wife's company, it's his wife's ex-husband's company. Sure she's a semi-major stockholder, but she's not CEO, COO, CFO, and doesn't have more than 50% of the shares. So how does this come under Kerry's jurisdiction?
If your reply is that she should sell the shares of said company, she's probably held back by FTC of how many shares she can legally unload anyway.
Well, Massachusetts does have legal unions, didn't they? That's where Kerry's from.
I personally think Kerry would fully support gay marriage if there wasn't such a large Christian base that would instantly alienate him if he did publically support it. Ie, he has to kind of remain ambiguous in order to not lose such a major block of voters, especially in the swing states. Sucks, but that's the way it goes.
I think Kerry wouldn't mind gay marriage at all. Bush, on the other hand, is born-again, and believes it's a major evil that must be eradicated.
Personally, I think that in maybe 5-10 years (depending on the outcome of this election, of course) the next constitutional amendment will actually ALLOW gay marriage, and allow equality independent of sexual orientation. Well, maybe in more than 10 years, but I still think that will be the next amendment.
I agree with much of what you say. As much as I hate the republican party, they really 'get it' as far as marketing goes, and banding together to support the team. Hell, look at how much money/effort they waste just making sure bush looks picture-perfect regarding lighting, angles, scenery, in nearly all his public appearances. The newspapers have commented that every picture they get is near perfect, they never had this success w/ clinton's administration.
the democrats don't have this unity, and really don't seem to understand the importance of charisma for candidates. Well, Edwards has it, but look at Gore, Kerry, and Gephardt. yeah yeah, for us 'smart' folks we don't care about charisma. But if you're catering to sixpack joe, you really have to market it. Democrats have really been 'betamaxed' by the bush administration.
You vote for a third party. Really, people, it's not that hard.
Interestingly enough, many republicans have been trolling various blog sites lately, under the guise of being bush-hating left-wingers, encouraging others to vote 3rd party strictly to take votes away from Kerry.
I'm not blaming you of being a republican troll, but I'd like people reading your post to be aware of this possibility.
Republicans, Democrats... All the same.
If you really think this you are either entirely oblivious to history and politics, or under the hypnotic spell of radical leftist or rightist propaganda.
I think I may vote my concience this time. I'm begining to think that voting reform is a more worthy long term goal then replacing Bush the tool with Kerry the tool.
I would normally agree with you, but this election is far too important. Ie, the stakes are way the hell too high. It's a math problem, kind of like like the prisoner's dilemma. Is 4 more years of worsening hell worth getting a guy that IMHO isn't all that bad?
In 2000 I voted for Nader because, like you, I hate the two party system and wasn't too enthralled by the democrats options. I was in a solidly-democrat state (Maryland). However, in 2002, a republican governor was elected, so I don't know how solid the democratic base is anymore. And even so, I want to make sure my popular vote is counted towards Kerry.
But this time around is so so different. I really feel if Bush gets elected again our country will go down the shitter real fast. I mean, there were many even more controversial things he didn't do because he had to maintain the swing voters to vote him in for the 2nd term. Expect no such moderation if he's re-elected.
My priority this time is to make damn sure Bush stays out of office. Look at the math. It's either gain a small amount vs losing a SHITLOAD. It's really like prisoner's dilemma, do you talk or not, how do the respective punishments compare.
I don't look at it as the lesser of two evils, I look at it as a great evil and a centrist.
Also, interestingly, I've heard that many republicans are going around trolling blog sites as ultra liberals, encouraging people to vote 3rd-party, to take away votes from Kerry.
Well, you do what you gotta do, but this time I gotta make damn sure we get this born-again ultra-conservative tool out of office. As for Kerry being a tool, I think he's too intelligent to be as much of a tool as Bush. Any president (even Nader) would fall for special interest groups of any kind, but IMHO Kerry is orders of magnitude better than Bush.
sorry, i'm a physicist, and that's one of my pet peeves.
there are so many examples of it. For example in school textbooks and magazine articles you'll often see sentences like "XYZ Lake is about 100 miles wide (that's 160.93 kilometers)". Or near my old house there was a sign saying "Speed bump - 252 feet". And the width of the speedbump was about 5 feet anyway.
So yeah, that's just one of my pet peeves. sorry, didn't mean to be too much of an ass;-)
I estimate US military spending for the same time period to be three trillion four hundred seventy-four billion four hundred million.
SNIP So I estimate that Hubble cost 1/579.1 of what what is spent on the US military
I think you need to learn a little something about how to use significant figures and uncertainty.
But, how much scientific information do we gain from the ISS? As I understand it, most of the work currently done on the ISS is maintaining the ISS.
well, there are experiments being done in ISS, mainly dominated by two fields.
astrobiology which is the study of biological processes in space environments. If we're going to go to mars we need to know how the human body reacts physiologically to zero g, etc. there are already some problems w/ calcium and some other things, so they're studying ways to make exercise equipment or other things to offset these effects.
microgravity because there are interesting things done here that cannot be done anywehre else on earth (except the vomit comit, but that's only for about a minute of zero-g time each cycle). there are interesting projects done on phase transitions, where the minute effects of gravity would completely kill off phase boundaries. as boring as this might sound to many of you, for the condensed matter physcists and material science engineers it's pretty important becuase these experiments will confirm theories not possible in gravity. also some people do other things, like how spark in a spark-gap act differently in zero g. this research would be important for making equipment to construct structures in space (not the pre-fabbed stuff from earth, mind you).
so yeah, there are some interesting projects in ISS. maybe not is fundamental as the SCC would have done, but still science nonetheless.
Firstly, it's not certain that STIS it out for good. It looks like a bad inductor MAY be the faulty component, but there's still a chance engineers can figure out how to save it. Actually, there has been no official comment on this yet anyway (at least as of yesterday), so this is just unofficial hearsay.
Secondly, STIS is used in about 30% of Hubble scheduling. So this means that 70% of science can still be done even if STIS comes back online.
As for putting a better scope up there ASAP, that ain't gonna happen before the NGST would go up. Anyway, if there was to be a manned servicing mission, which seems to be more and more likely, perhaps a new STIS replacement can be installed, thereby saving the 30% of science that would otherwise have been lost.
The new telescope in Arizona is planned to produce visual images 10 times sharper than Hubble
for the bazillionth time, Hubble is more than just pictures. Ground-based scopes are limited to optical frequencies, Hubble can see from near IR to near UV.
More importantly, though, imaging is only one small component of astronomy, it's the spectra where much of the 'real' science is done. Spectra need to be very clean, the atmosphere not only blocks certain frequencies out of optical, but adds its own absorption/emission spectra on top of that.
So basically this telescope is NOT a replacement for Hubble, no matter what they're claiming to get funding. It will complement Hubble, that's for sure, but definitely not replace.
Slashdot Mirror
that's not the argument at all. the argument is that they left their homes to allow the ethnic cleansing of the Jews of the area. It seemed clearly inevitable at the time that the Arabs, greatly outnumbering the Jews there, would wipe them away easily. After the battle was won by the newfound Israelites, they sealed their borders. How could they open their borders to unknown hostile parties? Of course the Arabs that stayed became citizens in Israel with the same rights as Jews.
Anyway, as you say, that doesn't resolve the fact of how to deal with the refugees today. yet any solution to the Palestinian refugees must equally solve the plight of Jewish refugees. Personally I think the Arab nations should pay for the Jewish refugees, but bypass the middleman and send the money/aid right to the Palestinian refugees.
Egypt has not established settlements by evicting the former residents of Gaza.
You don't believe any Egyptians moved into Gaza at all during the 20 years they occupied it?
Anyway, Israel didn't evict owners of Gaza, the settlements are almost all built on open land. The bulldozers knocking down Palestinian houses, as deplorable and stupid as that is, isn't to build new Jewish settlements.
I'm certainly not justifying the barbarism and violence of much of the arab world. Nevertheless this doesn't justify Israel's activities.
I never said it does, and I agree with you completely.
I take issue that despite these atrocities going on around the world, Israel has a severly disproportionate amount of blame and violence against it.
Seriously, what do you think is worse, what happened to the Sudanese at the hands of the Janjaweed, or what happened to the Palestinians at the hands of the Israelis? How many websites are devoted to the victims/refugees of the Sudanese vs Palestinians? How many UN resolutaions are directed against Sudan vs. directed against Israel? How many people have marched in support of Sudanese refugee rights vs Palestinian rights? How many times have the Janjaweed offered any land for peace vs. Israel offering land for peace?
Why does the world unite against Israel more severely than other nations doing worse things?
The entire point of zionism was to eject the indigenous population of palestine and create a state of jewish people.
Close but no cigar. There was no intent to "eject the indigenous population", that's just how it turned out. Yeah, of course some rightwingers wanted to do just that but most Zionists didn't, and it wasn't a main point of Zionism. In fact, it was debated whether to even go to Palestine vs. some other European area.
Zionism was not about moving to Israel and living among the people who were already there.
Yes it was. Or at least to offer the people there a place to voluntarily go if they wanted to. Forced transfer was never a point of Zionism, no matter how hard you wish it was so you could easily discredit Israel's very existence.
I don't understand why Israel doesn't just dismantle the settlements and get back into its 1967 borders.
They offered exactly that at the end of the 6-day war, before there were any settlements. The Arab nations refused. In fact, they refused to even recognize Israel, much less negotiate with Israel or make peace with Israel.
Seriously, what was Israel to do, just say "okay, take back the land and by all means keep attacking us until you change your minds."
Israel has managed to re-ignite anti-semitism worldwide
Shut the fuck up, anti-semitism is NOT at all justified by any of Israel's tactics. And by anti-semitism I mean attacks against Jews, Jewish temples, graveyards, and businesses.
anti-semitism is entirely the fault of ignorant hateful people, there is no way t
From a military perspective Israel could probably survive. But from an economic perspective the Israeli economy would not last very long without US support.
Not necessarily, most of Israel's trading is done with Europe. Most of the US support for Israel isn't comes in the form of military aid, and most of that goes directly back into the US economy anyway, to build jets, radars, etc.
Israel barely survived the 1973 Yom Kippur War sneak attack by its Arab neighbors, and the UN didn't even do anything until after Israel pushed the invading forces back and beyond into their own territory. Israel had to win every war against it, one loss would be it's utter demise. US weaponry would give Israel an edge and help prevent further attacks by it's neighbors. Statistically speaking, further Yom Kippur style Wars probably would have eventually destroyed Israel without US military support.
The issue for the Palestinians is that in 1948 the majority of them were forced out of what became Israel by what the serbs called ethnic cleansing.
Tell a lie enough times it becomes true. Most Palestinians actually voluntarily left, at the urging of their Arab neighbors, to get out of the way of the invading Arab armies, and then move back after the Jews are defeated. It is estimated only about 1/3 of the Arabs actually were forced out.
That statistic in itself, however, doesn't describe how to treat those refugees and their descendents today.
And similarly, anti-Israel folks like yourself ignore the similar number of Jews that were forced out of Arab countries, or "ethnically-cleansed" since you prefer that terminology. However, since they were welcomed by Israel, they seem to lose refugee status and suddenly become the 'bad guys' because they're now Israeli.
Then after the 1967 war the remaining Palestinian territories were invaded by Israel which has occupied them since and has been illegally attempting to annex them through the settler movement.
Bullshit, there was every reason to expect Egypt, Jordan, and Syria to invade and you know it. If Israel didn't sneak attack it would most likely cease to exist today.
Plus, you mention the occupation, and conveniently ignore that prior to this, West Bank was occupied by Jordan, and Gaza was occupied by Egypt. Why, then, weren't these occupations fought against? Why did Egyptians, Syrians, Jordanians, and Palestinians all focus their attacks against Israelis? Why didn't the Palestinians EVER ONCE fight their Egyptian or Jordanian occupation?
The problem with Israel is that you can't have a democratic Jewish state any more than you can have a democratic white people's state or a democratic Christian state.
True enough, and similarly you can't have it any more than a non-racist Muslim state. So if you think it's bad for Israel to be a Jewish state then you must simultaneously condemn every single Muslim state, both Arab and non-Arab.
There is a whole rack of discriminatory legislation that makes Arab Israeli citizens second class.
Hey, don't stop there, why not talk about similar legislation that makes Jews second class citizens in some other states. Jews are specifically forbidden to be citizens of Jordan. If Israel made a similar law for Muslims there'd be worldwide condemnation, but no condemnation goes for Jordan.
Let's look at the PA. I bet you're not aware that it is illegal under penalty of death for any Palestinian to sell land to any Jew. Period. Note - not Israeli, but JEW. Why doesn't any human rights champion condemn this? It seems only Israel is the violator of human rights in the region.
Israel has turned itself ito an appartheid state.
It wasn't Israel turning itself that way, it was the actions BOTH of Israel and its Arab neighbors that led to the situatio
Why do you single out Israel, and none of the other countries for those similar or worse problems?
For example, any Jew is ABSOLUTELY FORBIDDEN to become a resident of Jordan. No such law exists in Israel for Muslims. Yet people claiming they're fighting Israeli Apartheid are silent on these other more intense apartheids. Jews were kicked out of Jordan after it's creation, just like Arabs were kicked out of Israel. Yet these forced transfers were perfectly valid in the eyes of the UN and supposed human-rights champions.
On a different not, how do you feel about minority scholarships? Blacks have been discriminated against ever since the founding of the USA. Should there be certain scholarships to help certain gifted black aspiring students that would have otherwise been unable to pay for college due to effects of said discrimination? Is that racist?
More than half of the settlements were created after the Oslo peace accords. Israel broke its side of that bargain long before the second Intifada.
True, but many of these 'settlements' consist of 3 or 4 trailers on a piece of barren land, many without settlers even living there. Others consist of some settlers moving from one settlement to another. Counting numbers of settlements is a completely meaningless statistic used only for misleading, which seems to have worked on you.
You should instead count numbers of actual settlers or total land area taken by the settlements.
Also, we had 2 or 3 fake fire alarm pulls within a month. For the last one, they had a fireman at every door as we were walking in checking our hands for the ink.
Needless to say they didn't find the perpetrator. But it was rumored to us anyway (before my friend dipped his cuff into the handle) that there was ink there. So anyone that would have pulled the alarm could just use a spare shirt or rag under their hand to avoid the ink trap.
But anyway, yeah, ink is definitely there, I saw it with my own eyes.
case in point is the water utility system in El Salvador, where my girlfriend is from. The water used to be okay, but it was privatized. Now it's utterly horrible, there's lots of dirt and hairs that come from the faucet. Her mom and grandmother do the following for their drinking water - Brita-filter it, boil it, then Brita filter it again in a different filter. And there's no incentive for the water company to fix the problems either. Now the government there wants to privatize more utilities, naturally there's large outcry from much of the populace.
If you're against using fingerprints here, then you should be almost as against touching anything that has your name on it, as the prints could just as well be sent to the FBI.
The only thing with these lockers is that there's a step removed to send in the prints. Yet they could still do that, only with more work, using credit card receipts or anything else.
Anyway, yeah, astroturfing is all present in politics. I saw many people in the 2002 Maryland gubanatorial election with signs saying "another democrat for erlich", and the vibe i got from these guys was that they were bigtime republicans to begin with. I'm damn sure we'll see "another republican for kerry" signs this time around too, many from bigtime democrats.
not quite, just pointing out that there ARE repubs trolling sites masquerading as lefties to encourage people to not vote for kerry. same as there ARE microsoft astroturfers posting pro-microsoft fud on various blogs. Of course not all anti-kerry or pro-microsoft stuff is such astroturfing or trolling, but it does exist, and i want to let people know about it.
no pot/kettle/black since i'm obviously pushing kerry and stating it. i don't see how i could have been a troll. I can see you someone either right or left of me would not like what i'm saying, but that doesn't make me a troll.
Clinton still had a clear plurality, both in the popular and the electoral votes. There wasn't a sense of unfairness (and this is before the whole Supreme Court deal).
I also believe he wouldn't form his cabinet from diehard conservatives, that he would work better with the UN, etc.
Bush also wants to privatize more services, including medicare, which I strongly disagree with. Bush has also blurred lines between state and religion, which I don't think Kerry has any intention of doing. Bush is adamantly pro-life, Kerry is pro-choice.
Those are some key things off the top of my head about differences between Bush and Kerry. I guess Kerry doesn't have much specifics for fixing the economy, fixing Iraq, fixing health care. But some of Bush's moves (major tax cuts, privitization, alienating UN) which failed one could be pretty sure Kerry wouldn't have initiated on his own anyway.
Would someone, preferrably the moderator (AC if you have to), please explain why this was moderated as a troll? Thanks.
Not necessarily. Enough people voted for Gore in the non-swing states that he was safely able to say he won the popular vote. This fact took away a good chunk of credibility of Bush's administration.
I'm voting for Kerry this time around, and I want my vote to count for this popular vote, even though the popular vote has no political power. It does have the ability to send a message, though.
Well, I'm not sure about that, but I think it's likely, at least for now, he'll undo some of the really controversial clauses of the Act. Also, Bush is looking to expand the Patriot Act even further. I think Kerry would be much less likely to do this.
Do you think he will pull us out of Iraq?
Frankly, if Kerry is elected today he cannot pull us out of Iraq right now, he's obligated to Iraq. We totally destroyed that country's infrastructure, it's chaos and almost a political vacuum. Pulling out now would be just as irresponsible as attacking in the first place.
The efforts shouldn't be in immediately pulling out but restoring order and a 'fair' government in Iraq. I have no friggin' clue how to do that now, but we made our bed there, and now we have to sleep in it. The only way to bring dignity back to our foreign policy and our colleagues UN would be to 'fix' Iraq, not run away from it.
True enough. But anybody reading please keep in mind that republicans have started going around trolling liberal-leaning blogs (like /.), parading as ultra-liberals. Their point is to give pep-talks such as this to sway the liberal votes away from Kerry, towards Bush.
I'm certainly not accusing you of being such a troll, but I just want other readers to be aware that such right-wing efforts are going on.
Anyway, as for me, I think the stakes of this election are way too high. Think of all the REALLY controversial stuff Bush didn't do because he needed to maintain his swing voters. He'll have no such obligation to them if he's re-elected.
I really don't think Kerry is that evil. At least not much more than most other candidates, including Nader. I voted Nader in 2000 (my state was solidly democratic), so I totally know where you're coming from. But IMHO the stakes are WAY too big this time around.
This time I'm voting Kerry for several reasons. He seems much more centrist, so hopefully he can unite the majorly partisan congress. Remember that the big-time conservatives would hate Nader nearly as much was we hate Bush, and this would cause even more partisan splitting. Gingrich really fucked the country up by effectively making war against the 'other' team, and now the whole politics is way too fractured. I'm hoping Kerry can pull the more moderate republicans to him, bringing some sanity back to the Capitol.
Also, it seems like the election will be close again. This time I want my popular vote to be counted for Kerry. When they said Gore got more popular votes last time than Bush, my vote wasn't counted. If Gore would have lost the popular vote by 1 vote, I would have been sad that I didn't vote for him. So yeah, I want the results to include me for Kerry.
Anyway, I don't see Kerry doing anything particularly damaging, especially anything that Bush wouldn't have done already. And my biggest priority is to make sure Bush doesn't drive this country off a cliff any more than it's already been pushed, so I must do all I can to get Bush out. If that's voting for Kerry, then that's fine with me.
But anyway, I really don't think Kerry is all that bad. I don't know of any candidates that are perfect, and ALSO not too radical that they'd be able to effectively form a coalition with the other Congress members.
So are you implying that a candidate should never change their mind on any issue, even if they realize their original opinion may have not been in the public's best interest?
If your reply is that she should sell the shares of said company, she's probably held back by FTC of how many shares she can legally unload anyway.
I personally think Kerry would fully support gay marriage if there wasn't such a large Christian base that would instantly alienate him if he did publically support it. Ie, he has to kind of remain ambiguous in order to not lose such a major block of voters, especially in the swing states. Sucks, but that's the way it goes.
I think Kerry wouldn't mind gay marriage at all. Bush, on the other hand, is born-again, and believes it's a major evil that must be eradicated.
Personally, I think that in maybe 5-10 years (depending on the outcome of this election, of course) the next constitutional amendment will actually ALLOW gay marriage, and allow equality independent of sexual orientation. Well, maybe in more than 10 years, but I still think that will be the next amendment.
the democrats don't have this unity, and really don't seem to understand the importance of charisma for candidates. Well, Edwards has it, but look at Gore, Kerry, and Gephardt. yeah yeah, for us 'smart' folks we don't care about charisma. But if you're catering to sixpack joe, you really have to market it. Democrats have really been 'betamaxed' by the bush administration.
Interestingly enough, many republicans have been trolling various blog sites lately, under the guise of being bush-hating left-wingers, encouraging others to vote 3rd party strictly to take votes away from Kerry.
I'm not blaming you of being a republican troll, but I'd like people reading your post to be aware of this possibility.
Republicans, Democrats... All the same.
If you really think this you are either entirely oblivious to history and politics, or under the hypnotic spell of radical leftist or rightist propaganda.
I would normally agree with you, but this election is far too important. Ie, the stakes are way the hell too high. It's a math problem, kind of like like the prisoner's dilemma. Is 4 more years of worsening hell worth getting a guy that IMHO isn't all that bad?
In 2000 I voted for Nader because, like you, I hate the two party system and wasn't too enthralled by the democrats options. I was in a solidly-democrat state (Maryland). However, in 2002, a republican governor was elected, so I don't know how solid the democratic base is anymore. And even so, I want to make sure my popular vote is counted towards Kerry.
But this time around is so so different. I really feel if Bush gets elected again our country will go down the shitter real fast. I mean, there were many even more controversial things he didn't do because he had to maintain the swing voters to vote him in for the 2nd term. Expect no such moderation if he's re-elected.
My priority this time is to make damn sure Bush stays out of office. Look at the math. It's either gain a small amount vs losing a SHITLOAD. It's really like prisoner's dilemma, do you talk or not, how do the respective punishments compare.
I don't look at it as the lesser of two evils, I look at it as a great evil and a centrist.
Also, interestingly, I've heard that many republicans are going around trolling blog sites as ultra liberals, encouraging people to vote 3rd-party, to take away votes from Kerry.
Well, you do what you gotta do, but this time I gotta make damn sure we get this born-again ultra-conservative tool out of office. As for Kerry being a tool, I think he's too intelligent to be as much of a tool as Bush. Any president (even Nader) would fall for special interest groups of any kind, but IMHO Kerry is orders of magnitude better than Bush.
there are so many examples of it. For example in school textbooks and magazine articles you'll often see sentences like "XYZ Lake is about 100 miles wide (that's 160.93 kilometers)". Or near my old house there was a sign saying "Speed bump - 252 feet". And the width of the speedbump was about 5 feet anyway.
So yeah, that's just one of my pet peeves. sorry, didn't mean to be too much of an ass ;-)
SNIP
So I estimate that Hubble cost 1/579.1 of what what is spent on the US military
I think you need to learn a little something about how to use significant figures and uncertainty.
well, there are experiments being done in ISS, mainly dominated by two fields.
astrobiology which is the study of biological processes in space environments. If we're going to go to mars we need to know how the human body reacts physiologically to zero g, etc. there are already some problems w/ calcium and some other things, so they're studying ways to make exercise equipment or other things to offset these effects.
microgravity because there are interesting things done here that cannot be done anywehre else on earth (except the vomit comit, but that's only for about a minute of zero-g time each cycle). there are interesting projects done on phase transitions, where the minute effects of gravity would completely kill off phase boundaries. as boring as this might sound to many of you, for the condensed matter physcists and material science engineers it's pretty important becuase these experiments will confirm theories not possible in gravity. also some people do other things, like how spark in a spark-gap act differently in zero g. this research would be important for making equipment to construct structures in space (not the pre-fabbed stuff from earth, mind you).
so yeah, there are some interesting projects in ISS. maybe not is fundamental as the SCC would have done, but still science nonetheless.
Secondly, STIS is used in about 30% of Hubble scheduling. So this means that 70% of science can still be done even if STIS comes back online.
As for putting a better scope up there ASAP, that ain't gonna happen before the NGST would go up. Anyway, if there was to be a manned servicing mission, which seems to be more and more likely, perhaps a new STIS replacement can be installed, thereby saving the 30% of science that would otherwise have been lost.
for the bazillionth time, Hubble is more than just pictures. Ground-based scopes are limited to optical frequencies, Hubble can see from near IR to near UV.
More importantly, though, imaging is only one small component of astronomy, it's the spectra where much of the 'real' science is done. Spectra need to be very clean, the atmosphere not only blocks certain frequencies out of optical, but adds its own absorption/emission spectra on top of that.
So basically this telescope is NOT a replacement for Hubble, no matter what they're claiming to get funding. It will complement Hubble, that's for sure, but definitely not replace.