Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!

[sebastian_dangerfield]

This is all twaddle. If you can't handle complexity or having more than one thought in your head at a time, then by all means, keep things simple and clear. Also, don't talk about the Middle East with anyone.

I could throw this right back at you. Looking at the whole of it illuminates nothing regarding a radical change in tactics by Hamas. If you can't handle the process of spotting and dissecting the most salient issue, then by all means, keep farting the line, "We must examine all in context."

By the way, I don't have any issue with examining it all in context. One can do that and at the same time look at the particular issue of Hamas' recent slide into depravity. I happen to think it's unnecessary to do the former here, but I don't object to it as long as it's not done to obscure consideration of the latter, or worse, normalize it within that broader context.

Oh, come now. A few posts ago you were explaining how everyone in Hamas should be rounded up and executed. Did you only come to that clarity in the last two weeks?

Yes. Because Hamas drifted into death cult status with ISIS, it must be treated like ISIS. If all Hamas had done was lob bombs into Israel, as it had in the past, a proportionate similar response would be all that was warranted. So no -- I very much did not think Hamas deserved to be executed prior to the recent attack. Now, I do.

You have some need to keep equating and comparing them, a need I don't share.

You're compelling me to do so by responding to the argument that what Hamas did was uniquely extreme and outside the bounds of normal war within this or any other conflict by saying "Well, Bibi set the stage for it." As I have noted in numerous prior posts, I don't think that issue has anything to do with examination of Hamas' singular actions here. But if must stipulate that Israel does not have clean hands here, which I do, it is only fair to note that its are slightly soiled, while Hamas' are now soaked in blood.

I don't think it's true or useful to say that. Hamas is quite rational in its way. Iran too.

That's fair. Barbarity is not automatically insane. It can be a very deliberately considered device.

(I think psychotics can be rational, FWIW. But that's not how I was using the term.)

Yassir Arafat has been dead for almost twenty years. I appreciate your need to dumb things down for moral clarity, but the idea that Israel tried for peace and the Palestinians were the obstacle is too simple even for an episode of West Wing or Madame Secretary.

The last useful talks were during his tenure. And he created the wedge that renders all future talks pointless - a demand for right of return.

I get it. You're on Team Israeli, so you are going to absolve Israeli and you want to talk only about how bad Hamas is.

I'm happy to talk about Israel's past misdeeds. I just don't see that as anything near as important an issue as the shift in Hamas' tactics. The brazenness and violence of it indicates either desperation among Hamas' leadership, or the Iranians, or perhaps a belief Israel is uniquely weak because of the political infighting. Probably all three. It also signals that the Gaza Strip will never be part of any two state solution as long as Hamas is there.

Of paramount interest will be how MBS reacts after this hopefully cools down a bit. If he resumes normalization of relations with Israel, Hamas and Iran will have shot their shot (Israel will not allow this to happen again) and missed. That would be a dagger in the heart of Tehran.

"Lamentable". But Hamas is worse. I guess "lamentable" is something.

Is that even in question? You're not suggesting that Arafat's and Bibi's cynical politics are on par with ringing a festival and murdering ravers, murdering families hiding in safe rooms, and raping women in front of their friends and families and then killing them?

If badness is a mountain, Arafat and Bibi are at base camp. Hamas, like ISIS, sits at the peak.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I could throw this right back at you. Looking at the whole of it illuminates nothing regarding a radical change in tactics by Hamas.

I was responding to the question of supporting Israel, and despite all the heat you're generating, you're not exactly illuminating about Hamas's change in tactics. Is anywhere here supporting Hamas?

You're compelling me to do so by responding to the argument that what Hamas did was uniquely extreme and outside the bounds of normal war within this or any other conflict by saying "Well, Bibi set the stage for it." As I have noted in numerous prior posts, I don't think that issue has anything to do with examination of Hamas' singular actions here.

Not what I said. Thanks for clarifying that whatever you were saying was based on a misunderstanding.

The last useful talks were during his tenure. And he created the wedge that renders all future talks pointless - a demand for right of return.

You forgot to say that he created a permanent impasse by dying and leaving no one for Israel to negotiate with.

What's the principle that explains why Jews should have a right of return to a country that did not exist until 1948 and where their ancestors may never have lived, while Palestinians should not have a right of return to the country where they did live? I am interested in your answer both to the normative question of principle, and also in your answer to the pragmatic, positive question of how there could ever be a durable peace if the fundamental bargain is so unfair to Palestinians. At the risk of stating the obvious, is it not basically this imbalance, and Israel's refusal to negotiate about it, that prompts young Palestinian men to join Hamas and slaughter innocent civilians?

You're not suggesting that Arafat's and Bibi's cynical politics are on par with ringing a festival and murdering ravers, murdering families hiding in safe rooms, and raping women in front of their friends and families and then killing them?

If badness is a mountain, Arafat and Bibi are at base camp. Hamas, like ISIS, sits at the peak.

You are the one who finds it impossible to discuss these issues without comparing the relative "badness" or culpability of each side. I keep saying I'm not interested in that. Not sure why you don't get it.

Rhetorically, the practical effect of your insistence that we only talk about Hamas's change in tactics, and about how Hamas is worse than Israel, is that Israel gets a pass for whatever it does, because Hamas is worse, we completely ignore what Israel has done to make things worse than they could be, we ignore the many Palestinians who aren't in Hamas, and we get no closer to any kind of solution. Bombing and invading Gaza to try to eliminate Hamas is not a solution, much as invading Iraq because of 9/11 got us ISIS.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

You forgot to say that he created a permanent impasse by dying and leaving no one for Israel to negotiate with.

Arafat created a permanent impasse by dragging Barak and Clinton thru a peace process that was 90% done, only to back peddle at the last second and demand what he knew would blow up the deal - right of return. He conveyed to Israel and the world that the PLO was not and would not negotiate in good faith for realistic two state solutions.

What's the principle that explains why Jews should have a right of return to a country that did not exist until 1948 and where their ancestors may never have lived, while Palestinians should not have a right of return to the country where they did live? I am interested in your answer both to the normative question of principle, and also in your answer to the pragmatic, positive question of how there could ever be a durable peace if the fundamental bargain is so unfair to Palestinians.

There isn't one. You know my view of religion, so it won't surprise you to hear that any claim to the land based on that is void in my opinion. So then we're left with the law of power. The Israelis did live in the area historically and received and held the land for the last eight decades. Not unlike the Native Americans here, who will never get back that which was lost, nor will the Palestinians. Time marches on and the realpolitik has been for a long time (indeed, embraced by Egypt, Jordan, and soon, Saudi Arabia) that Israel is there to stay, as a Jewish state.

You can argue the Brits fucked up the boundaries, the state should have been elsewhere, whatever. It is what it is. It's there, and most of the Palestinians who lost land are long dead, and their families could have received equivalent land or money under various different deals, but have refused.

And finally, perhaps most importantly, what did those Palestinians lose? Desert. They'd not done anything with it and it wasn't worth anything. The Israelis made the state of Israel into what it is today, because they installed a liberal democracy. Would the Palestinians have done so? No.

Yeah, it's unfair, but any more unfair than giving generations long removed from Israel a right to return to it and reclaim something that's been improved 100X only by the hard work of the current residents?

I totally agree with you that it's a really messy situation. I don't like the law of power ruling any more than anyone else, but if you look around this country, are things much different? We're never giving reparations to descendants of slaves or land back to indigenous peoples because it's just not realistic, and too much time has elapsed for the concept to have any validity. Israel, Northern Ireland... these places are the same.

You can't give the Palestinians back the land, so that means the only thing you can give them is money. How? I don't know.

I am interested in your answer both to the normative question of principle, and also in your answer to the pragmatic, positive question of how there could ever be a durable peace if the fundamental bargain is so unfair to Palestinians. At the risk of stating the obvious, is it not basically this imbalance, and Israel's refusal to negotiate about it, that prompts young Palestinian men to join Hamas and slaughter innocent civilians?

Yes. I agree. But I also think it's a lack of a future that drives them into Hamas. Rather than disengage, Israel should have subsidized more of the industry that was growing north of Gaza and given aid to the area itself. The more Gazans worked with Israelis and made decent wages, the more money Gazans had, the more its people would develop a sustainable economy as opposed to a welfare state dependent on Iranian money.

We fucked that up. The Israelis fucked that up. We should have tried to buy off/improve these people (those two are not mutually exclusive). Instead, Sharon cut it off, and Netanyahu encourage Hamas for his own political gain.

We piss away so many billions on bullshit around the world. Why we haven't thrown a few billion at placating/improving the Palestinians baffles me.

You are the one who finds it impossible to discuss these issues without comparing the relative "badness" or culpability of each side. I keep saying I'm not interested in that. Not sure why you don't get it.

I've said why. I think Hamas' recent attack is depravity. They've not been depraved before.

Rhetorically, the practical effect of your insistence that we only talk about Hamas's change in tactics, and about how Hamas is worse than Israel, is that Israel gets a pass for whatever it does, because Hamas is worse, we completely ignore what Israel has done to make things worse than they could be, we ignore the many Palestinians who aren't in Hamas, and we get no closer to any kind of solution. Bombing and invading Gaza to try to eliminate Hamas is not a solution, much as invading Iraq because of 9/11 got us ISIS.

We can talk about both, as we are here. But when something so grotesque happens that the perpetrator deserves to be globally condemned in the harshest possible terms, noting in immediate response that the victim isn't exactly blameless is a counterproductive diversion.

An imperfect analogy is the George Floyd thing. In the fallout of that a number of stories cited the fact that he had a long criminal record, that he came from a poor background, that police were ill trained, etc. All these things were true. But IMO they all detracted from what needed to be assessed in a vacuum - the cold blooded killing of the man. That first had to be processed. And I think it had to be seen for nothing more than the brutality it was. Because it was so shocking. Among all the other takeaways that would follow, this had to be front and center, and stand alone: A guy was choked to death under a police boot on camera while three other officers watched and did nothing.

I still cannot figure out how that horrific event occurred. And similarly, I still cannot figure out how Hamas soldiers raped mothers in front of their families and shot them.

An event of depravity is always part of a bigger book. But needs its own chapter, devoted to nothing else but it.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Arafat created a permanent impasse by dragging Barak and Clinton thru a peace process that was 90% done, only to back peddle at the last second and demand what he knew would blow up the deal - right of return. He conveyed to Israel and the world that the PLO was not and would not negotiate in good faith for realistic two state solutions.

I thought the failure of the process happened when Rabin was assassinated by a right winger after Netanyahu and the opposition branded Rabin a traitor and Nazi and paraded a coffin around their rallies and Hamas similarly branded Arafat and openly attacked him and his supporters. From that point on, it was just a slow death for the Oslo accords.

By the way, a right of return, to the Palestinian state in a two state solution, is likely most important to Lebanon and Jordon. 70 years of dealing with refugees has a bit of a destabilizing effect. The right of return is much more an intractable issue in a one state solution, or in Netanyahu's one state and its controlled territory approach.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Arafat created a permanent impasse by dragging Barak and Clinton thru a peace process that was 90% done, only to back peddle at the last second and demand what he knew would blow up the deal - right of return. He conveyed to Israel and the world that the PLO was not and would not negotiate in good faith for realistic two state solutions.



There isn't one. You know my view of religion, so it won't surprise you to hear that any claim to the land based on that is void in my opinion. So then we're left with the law of power. The Israelis did live in the area historically and received and held the land for the last eight decades. Not unlike the Native Americans here, who will never get back that which was lost, nor will the Palestinians. Time marches on and the realpolitik has been for a long time (indeed, embraced by Egypt, Jordan, and soon, Saudi Arabia) that Israel is there to stay, as a Jewish state.

You can argue the Brits fucked up the boundaries, the state should have been elsewhere, whatever. It is what it is. It's there, and most of the Palestinians who lost land are long dead, and their families could have received equivalent land or money under various different deals, but have refused.

And finally, perhaps most importantly, what did those Palestinians lose? Desert. They'd not done anything with it and it wasn't worth anything. The Israelis made the state of Israel into what it is today, because they installed a liberal democracy. Would the Palestinians have done so? No.

Yeah, it's unfair, but any more unfair than giving generations long removed from Israel a right to return to it and reclaim something that's been improved 100X only by the hard work of the current residents?

I totally agree with you that it's a really messy situation. I don't like the law of power ruling any more than anyone else, but if you look around this country, are things much different? We're never giving reparations to descendants of slaves or land back to indigenous peoples because it's just not realistic, and too much time has elapsed for the concept to have any validity. Israel, Northern Ireland... these places are the same.

You can't give the Palestinians back the land, so that means the only thing you can give them is money. How? I don't know.



Yes. I agree. But I also think it's a lack of a future that drives them into Hamas. Rather than disengage, Israel should have subsidized more of the industry that was growing north of Gaza and given aid to the area itself. The more Gazans worked with Israelis and made decent wages, the more money Gazans had, the more its people would develop a sustainable economy as opposed to a welfare state dependent on Iranian money.

We fucked that up. The Israelis fucked that up. We should have tried to buy off/improve these people (those two are not mutually exclusive). Instead, Sharon cut it off, and Netanyahu encourage Hamas for his own political gain.

We piss away so many billions on bullshit around the world. Why we haven't thrown a few billion at placating/improving the Palestinians baffles me.



I've said why. I think Hamas' recent attack is depravity. They've not been depraved before.



We can talk about both, as we are here. But when something so grotesque happens that the perpetrator deserves to be globally condemned in the harshest possible terms, noting in immediate response that the victim isn't exactly blameless is a counterproductive diversion.

An imperfect analogy is the George Floyd thing. In the fallout of that a number of stories cited the fact that he had a long criminal record, that he came from a poor background, that police were ill trained, etc. All these things were true. But IMO they all detracted from what needed to be assessed in a vacuum - the cold blooded killing of the man. That first had to be processed. And I think it had to be seen for nothing more than the brutality it was. Because it was so shocking. Among all the other takeaways that would follow, this had to be front and center, and stand alone: A guy was choked to death under a police boot on camera while three other officers watched and did nothing.

I still cannot figure out how that horrific event occurred. And similarly, I still cannot figure out how Hamas soldiers raped mothers in front of their families and shot them.

An event of depravity is always part of a bigger book. But needs its own chapter, devoted to nothing else but it.

It is somewhat remarkable to see you move so quickly from a completely unprincipled approach to what the Palestinians should expect from a settlement to a stridently moralistic approach to Hamas's recent atrocities. I mean, either can make sense on their own terms, but the juxtaposition between the two is jarring. The guy who says the Palestinians are screwed because of the law of power is aghast when Hamas exercises power.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

It is somewhat remarkable to see you move so quickly from a completely unprincipled approach to what the Palestinians should expect from a settlement to a stridently moralistic approach to Hamas's recent atrocities. I mean, either can make sense on their own terms, but the juxtaposition between the two is jarring. The guy who says the Palestinians are screwed because of the law of power is aghast when Hamas exercises power.

The dividing line is easy. Taking land, retaining land, barring right of return. These are of a kind.

Bombing in response to that? I can understand that.

Killing people in a manner on par with serial murderers en masse? Raping women in front of their families? These are of a kind. A very different kind.

But you’re right. I’m trying to square the circle. The situation is not resolvable in any fashion that stands as entirely just. I don’t think it can ever be.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

The dividing line is easy. Taking land, retaining land, barring right of return. These are of a kind.

Bombing in response to that? I can understand that.

Killing people in a manner on par with serial murderers en masse? Raping women in front of their families? These are of a kind. A very different kind.

But you’re right. I’m trying to square the circle. The situation is not resolvable in any fashion that stands as entirely just. I don’t think it can ever be.

The dividing line is not easy at all. The Israeli Army forces Palestinians off their land and gives it to settlers. You say, might makes right, such is life. Hamas comes back over the fence and massacres the settlers. You say, this is uniquely awful! Uh, no it is isn't. It is a long-running tragedy of two peoples, each convinced (not without reason!) that they are uniquely world-historical victims, and that that justifies their doing awful things to the other side. Both are aggressor and victim, each in their own unique and incommensurable way. To the Israelis, they are few, the victims of centuries of anti-Semitism and then the Holocaust, and the Arabs are many. To the Palestinians, they are powerless and abandoned by other Arabs, victims of a form of European colonialism that is no longer tolerated anywhere else in the world. Each absolutely and justifiably sees the conflict as existential.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

All the Trump lawyers pleading guilty sure make Fani Willis's charging decisions look better. Changed your mind yet, Sebby?

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

The dividing line is not easy at all. The Israeli Army forces Palestinians off their land and gives it to settlers. You say, might makes right, such is life. Hamas comes back over the fence and massacres the settlers. You say, this is uniquely awful! Uh, no it is isn't. It is a long-running tragedy of two peoples, each convinced (not without reason!) that they are uniquely world-historical victims, and that that justifies their doing awful things to the other side. Both are aggressor and victim, each in their own unique and incommensurable way. To the Israelis, they are few, the victims of centuries of anti-Semitism and then the Holocaust, and the Arabs are many. To the Palestinians, they are powerless and abandoned by other Arabs, victims of a form of European colonialism that is no longer tolerated anywhere else in the world. Each absolutely and justifiably sees the conflict as existential.

1 Have you ever used law to harm another person’s position?
2 Have you ever raped a woman in front of her husband and kids?
3 Have you ever chopped a baby’s head off?

I’m willing to bet for you it is Yes, No, No?

For Hamas it’s the other way.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

The dividing line is not easy at all. The Israeli Army forces Palestinians off their land and gives it to settlers. You say, might makes right, such is life. Hamas comes back over the fence and massacres the settlers. You say, this is uniquely awful! Uh, no it is isn't. It is a long-running tragedy of two peoples, each convinced (not without reason!) that they are uniquely world-historical victims, and that that justifies their doing awful things to the other side. Both are aggressor and victim, each in their own unique and incommensurable way. To the Israelis, they are few, the victims of centuries of anti-Semitism and then the Holocaust, and the Arabs are many. To the Palestinians, they are powerless and abandoned by other Arabs, victims of a form of European colonialism that is no longer tolerated anywhere else in the world. Each absolutely and justifiably sees the conflict as existential.

Could you imagine Israelis entering Gaza and raping and murdering people, gleefully, in a celebratory fashion?

Something has gone haywire in the mind of people who do things like that. It's the reason we have a thing called war crimes. Soldiers just being soldiers does not explain My Lai, or Rwanda, or the massacre of Muslims in Bosnia.

Hamas knew there was a line between what they'd been and ISIS. They knowingly stepped over it. They wanted to shock and horrify. They wanted to be extreme.

Our decision to torture people after 9/11 is a good analogy. We'd blown a lot of goodwill attacking Iraq, an innocent nation. But we still had some shreds of respect in the international community. Then the torture stuff came out, and every foreign nation (save those hosting our black sites) said, "Nope. That's a step too far. No bueno. Not acceptable."