History in the making, Part 2, V.2 - Israel/Palestine - NO RELIGION

In reply to tuna55 :

Yeah I have to disagree with everyone. The analogy was assuming no police, and it still shows how your point that I have no claim is absurd. I cannot express how much I disagree.
 

I think the point was that you can claim all you want, but it will do you no good if you can't enforce that claim. You would have a claim, but you would have no truck. 

volvoclearinghouse said:

Wally (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to AAZCD-Jon (Forum Supporter) :

I'm not saying it's a good thing but it's a vastly different situation than one person writing himself a check which is what an embarrassing number of my relatives believe is happening. 

And there were a large number of people who thought similar things when we went into Afghanistan back in the early 2000's.  Interesting how one's perception of history and current events can change based on which team has the ball.  

I've ben hearing the "existing weapons being used" line so much that I feel it had to have been pushed out to all the news organizations to use as a talking point.  Very common.  This was not the point of any of those articles listed, however.  The point was about the new stuff being built, and the exact states that would benefit from that spending.  Not hard to notice that most of the states mentioned went either red or purple in the last election cycle.  

Its also interesting to note how the recent dialogue is tying the war in Ukraine and the war in Israel together.  While there may be some similarities, lumping them in together seems like priming to get us thinking about WWIII.  It's being done for budgetary purposes- and, as cited, also adding in the southern US border funding.  It's the strategy behind the omnibus spending bills that Congress uses to get budgets passed- toss enough funding around for everyone, and you'll get a majority vote in favor.  Except now it's being done for wars.  

People believed it then, and it was wrong too.  Just because the team changed doesn't make it more or less true this time.  There are plenty of things about the business of government and war to be angry about without latching onto conspiracies with little basis in facts.  As for which states benefit, I would imagine one of the biggest factors is that they are often cheaper states to do business in.  They're going to charge as much as they can for something regardless of where they make it, but they can make more profit in a state with lower taxes and fewer regulations.  I agree that there's an effort to make a more wide spread war more acceptable as there was after 9-11.  Hopefully we're better at resisting it this time.  As much as I'm ok supporting an ally fighting a common enemy on their land, especially in the case of keeping Russia in check, it's a much worse idea to commit our people to their fight.  I also don't think the two conflicts should be as interchanged as often as they are.  There are some valid reasaons for our current approach to both but they are very different situations.    

Boost_Crazy said:

In reply to tuna55 :

Yeah I have to disagree with everyone. The analogy was assuming no police, and it still shows how your point that I have no claim is absurd. I cannot express how much I disagree.
 

I think the point was that you can claim all you want, but it will do you no good if you can't enforce that claim. You would have a claim, but you would have no truck. 

This is more my thinking.  An example would be a bike I had stolen as a kid.  I found the bike, I went to the police to let them know who had it and showed my receipt with the serial number that it was mine.  They wished me luck in taking it back as they were not getting involved.  I was unable to do as I was small for a 10 year old and it's new owner was a large 16 year old.  I technically had a claim but not the means to maintain it.  

Two thoughts.  Money is fungible.  It is easy to use for any and all means, impossible to control once given and can be used for almost anything.  It's actually the basis for money vs a barter economy.  It can be used for anything.  My family is super nice, charitable and tries to help everyone.  My dad once took in a homeless unwed mother of two to help them when they got stuck in West TX with a breakdown.  He got their vehicle fixed and gave  them money for fuel and food.  They took it into the convenience store and rapidly converted it into to junk food and entertainment.  Dad was ticked.  Money is fungible.  Now give a lot of money to suspicious governments for "aid" or their "war."  You don't know what they do with it, who they bribe with it, who they kill with it, who they censor with it or what the results will me.  Anytime I point this out, get mad at me.  Fine, but you missed a key principle that you really ought to think about more.

Second thought.  Talking about any subject without considering all causes and contributing factors is not a complete discussion.  Locking threads, deleting them, downvoting posts, because someone disagreed with you or presented information you don't like is a bad choice.  It hurts everyone except people with real power.  People who use their power to censor dissent with an iron fist.  Why do it in any fashion to one another?  Money is being used to force tech to do it as we squabble over minutia.  I will always fight for Duke and bobzilla  or anyone to say exactly what they think.  I may not agree with either of them, but they will never arrive at mutual understanding without discussion even heated discussion.  If we on this forum can't do that, there is no need to worry about Israel or Hamas.  They are just going to keep killing each other.   Keep telling me I don't understand the 1st amendment while killing it.  I'm trying to prevent that disaster.  
 

The entire world is Rome and the barbarians  are at the gates, the leaders are tyrannical morons, money is being used for evil on the promise future generations will pay the debt, and many of you think I'm the bad guy.

Lock it, delete it, downvote it, hire an NGO to do it for you, it doesn't matter.  If we can't be honest with each other here, make some popcorn and get ready for the barbarians because they are coming.

Thirdly free bonus thought.  I still abhor the killing of all children by any means.  Do any of you?  

"  I still abhor the killing of all children by any means.  Do any of you?  "

Good ol' Anthony. Just can't help himself.

In reply to Kreb (Forum Supporter) :

I miss frenchy sometimes. 

Kreb (Forum Supporter) said:

"  I still abhor the killing of all children by any means.  Do any of you?  "

Good ol' Anthony. Just can't help himself.

If you don't agree, please explain.  I think you have a right to explain it no matter what you think.  Honestly, if you're going to come at someone personally by name, it is the polite thing to do.  Go for it. 

johndej said:

In reply to Kreb (Forum Supporter) :

I miss frenchy sometimes. 

I do too.  What happened, shouldn't have happened. 

Kill Civilians? Children? Aged and infirmed? Sure, it's how generals finish wars.  https://www.history.com/news/dresden-bombing-wwii-allies  Win and it's justified.

In reply to Boost_Crazy :

Comparing Israel (as a government and military) to domestic and sexual assault survivors is exceedingly disingenuous and distasteful. The Israeli and Palestinian civilians are both the real victims there. This situation is much more akin to two feuding hot-heads that started a drunken bar brawl, which has done (and continues to do) more to injure the other patrons than each other... Israel (as a government and military) may not be the scumbag who just sucker punched one of the other patrons, but they are certainly not merely a 'victim' of the fight either. 

Can we stop the bickering about each others characters, he said/she said and stick to "news"?

I guess this is a good example of why the  Israel/Gaza situation is a hot mess.
 A group of reasonable civilized people here, GRM, discuss the failures of peoples ability to live in an area. In that discussion we rapidly see dissension and a devolving that leads to stalemate and attacks.   But why cant they just get along!

I don't know that I've ever seen a thread with such a high analogy-to-page ratio. The fact that so many people are attempting to use simplified comparisons speaks eloquently to the difficulty of understanding the actual situation.

In the interests of thinking more deeply about this, let's play a game. Assume you are able to go back in time to a moment between the issuance of the 1917 Balfour Declaration and today, and once there can alter history. Within that timeframe, what single change - different policy, different decision - would you make that you believe would materially improve the situation and why?

(Full disclosure: I do this with my students as a way to show that history is not deterministic and that choices matter, but also that sometimes prevailing forces are such that there are severe limitations on what is actually achievable by the leaders of the time.)

In reply to 02Pilot :

Honestly, and this may be my old age pessimism creeping in, but I don't think there is a change that would have made a difference. If it wasn't hamas/hez etc it would have been another religous zealot fringe group hell bent on killing "
their enemy". Humans are stupid, angry, violent creatures that never seem to learn from their history. 

02Pilot said:

I don't know that I've ever seen a thread with such a high analogy-to-page ratio.

It's like we are a group of energizer bunnies, we keep going and going and going

02Pilot said:

In the interests of thinking more deeply about this, let's play a game. Assume you are able to go back in time to a moment between the issuance of the 1917 Balfour Declaration and today, and once there can alter history. Within that timeframe, what single change - different policy, different decision - would you make that you believe would materially improve the situation and why?

This IS the materially improved situation. The alternative involved systematic annihilation of the Jewish inhabitants of Earth. 

The problem is the world is a small sedan and the children are yet to have figured out how to ride comfortably in the same seat. 

(Yes that was two in a row. The second just wrote itself, like a mysterious opera in a mid century Italian village.)

AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) said:

Kreb (Forum Supporter) said:

"  I still abhor the killing of all children by any means.  Do any of you?  "

Good ol' Anthony. Just can't help himself.

If you don't agree, please explain.  I think you have a right to explain it no matter what you think.  Honestly, if you're going to come at someone personally by name, it is the polite thing to do.  Go for it. 

You made a statement that insults everyone in the thread. In one line, you question everyone's compassion and basic humanity by questioning something that should go without saying. If you cannot understand how that is an asshat move of the first order, adding further to the wordcount is futile.   

02Pilot said:

I don't know that I've ever seen a thread with such a high analogy-to-page ratio. The fact that so many people are attempting to use simplified comparisons speaks eloquently to the difficulty of understanding the actual situation.

volvoclearinghouse said:

In reply to tuna55 :

All analogies are terrible. 

Exactly.  Analogies are attractive because they attempt to reduce a complicated situation to a simpler one.  However, this is why they don't work.  In order for the analogy to be applicable, it would have to be so complex that it wouldn't be any easier to understand the analogy than the original situation.  The only place analogies work is in religion, where they're typically called "parables", because in that situation there literally is no other way to instill even the smallest nugget of understanding in humans about God.  And even then, they are sometimes understood and applied in different ways.  

In reply to bobzilla :

I tend to agree with Bob on this one.

Someone mentioned the partition map looked like a gerrymandered map.  I am pretty sure that is exactly what they did.  They took the areas the two groups where already living in (like tends to congregate with like, especially when there is a potential for killing each other).  You could make nice square borders, but you would then be displacing a lot of people.

In reply to aircooled :

That was myself, and SV reX.

In reply to AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) :

Interesting.  I read your lengthly post above shortly after it was first written.  A while later I checked this page again and it had been downvoted to the point of being hidden.  Then I got on this morning and it's back up again.  

We don't have free speech in this country.  We have free speech, as long as you don't go too far against the "acceptable" line of dialogue.  And before anyone protests that "free speech only refers to government censorship"....that may have been an argument once upon a time, but now it's quaint.  Speech is a monopoly, and like the big corporate monopolies that existed in the past, it won't be free until that is broken up.

I don't agree with everything Anthony writes.  Or anyone else on this board, for that matter.  But if I see a post hidden due to downvotes, I will absolutely upvote it, every time, on principle.  

I also missed what happened to frenchy.  Did he speak too freely?

EDIT: Apologize this has nothing to do with Israel or Palestine.  Inasmuch as it is relevant to discussing any potentially contentious subject, I felt it needed to be mentioned.  

aircooled said:

In reply to bobzilla :

I tend to agree with Bob on this one.

Someone mentioned the partition map looked like a gerrymandered map.  I am pretty sure that is exactly what they did.  They took the areas the two groups where already living in (like tends to congregate with like, especially when there is a potential for killing each other).  You could make nice square borders, but you would then be displacing a lot of people.

I promise I won't tell anyone. It's our little secret. 

In reply to Driven5 :

There is no "understanding" of the Hamas attack, in any sort of context.  There is no "explanation of something (IE, what Hamas did)" here.  By saying that, it gives their action credence and therefore acceptance.

That.  Is.  Not.  Ok. 

It's attitudes like that, that led to genocide, while the world sat on their hands, doing nothing. Multiple times!

Obviously I have a dog in this fight that statistically, the rest of you don't have.  That drives my actions and makes me furious to read people equivocating here.

Boost_Crazy said:

In reply to tuna55 :

Yeah I have to disagree with everyone. The analogy was assuming no police, and it still shows how your point that I have no claim is absurd. I cannot express how much I disagree.
 

I think the point was that you can claim all you want, but it will do you no good if you can't enforce that claim. You would have a claim, but you would have no truck. 

This right here.  "Civilized" countries are, at their base, a contract between the citizen and the government. The citizen agrees to allow the government a monopoly on force in return for protection, justice under the law, and sundry other things involved with being a "peaceful" country. In tuna55's example, he holds Title to his truck, a legally-binding document that allows him to appeal to his government for redress in the case of theft. The government, in return, will utilize the monopoly of force they have to retrieve his truck, either with the threat of violence, or with naked violence itself, depending on the willingness of the thief to fight for what he has stolen. 

If no such government exists, Tuna's right to keep his truck extends only so far as he is willing to use force or the threat of it to maintain his ownership. 

Scale it up to the size of opposing politys, and bam! whoever can project the most force wins.