mistermack

This is so pathetic. Air strikes are ok. Killing women and children at long range is ignored. Israel has been striking Gaza, killing women and children on a weekly, sometimes daily basis. Not a peep from you lot. Now they're killing ten times the number that they lost, and a hell of a lot more children. Is that the rule, killing on foot is somehow worse? 

The truth is that it's racist. Israelis can kill as many as they like, week in week out, and all they have to do is claim they aimed at Hamas. Arabs kill a Jew, and it's an atrocity. It's racist double standards. 

28 minutes ago, CharonY said:

What kind of disqualifies them as freedom fighters is the fact that they are a) killing non-combatants and b) sacrificing their own people to elevate their cause.

Just as our parents did fighting Hitler. But nobody doubts that they were fighting for world freedom. 

If a few hundred Jews broke out of Auschwitz and went on the rampage, killing Nazis, they would get plenty of understanding now. Gaza IS a concentration camp. Those people are living a lifelong torture. It's hardly surprising they produce some angry young men. 

But that's exactly what Israel wants. They LIKE being portrayed as victims, it gives them a free hand to pursue the final solution to the Palestinian Problem. 

2 hours ago, dimreepr said:

if they really want freedom they'd be far more effective if they organised a mass fence cutting protest

You seem remarkably out of touch with the real world. Protests has been met with Israelis using them for target practice at long range. Including school children. 

1 hour ago, swansont said:

They can, but it’s not common

It would be amazing if it was common. They have identical genes, an identical gestation period in an identical mother, supplied with identical blood with probably an almost identical hormone regime. So whatever sparks of the difference was always going to be very rare. The fact that it happens at all though, shows that it's not just genetics at work. 

The story of "gay genes" is looking more complicated, it used to be an outright NO if you searched for it, but going by you link, there is some evidence of genetic influence in sexuality. It may be just a case of a statistical tendency arising from certain genetics, rather than an outright cause and effect. 

No ‘gay gene’: Massive study homes in on genetic basis of human sexuality (nature.com) 

This just gives the headlines for free, but it shows the other side of the research coin. 

Identical twins often have different sexual attraction. One can be straight, the other gay. This has been scientifically tested. So sexual inclination can't be wholly down to your genetic makeup. So even if a gay gene is discovered in the future, it obviously doesn't work the same on every individual. It could be that one twin got a different dose of hormones in the womb, or just a tiny difference in development of an organ led to a different path in brain development. 

22 minutes ago, zapatos said:

Can you answer my questions please? And if you can do so without belittling my knowledge I'd appreciate it.

No, your question includes inherent false assumptions, and your understanding of how the world operates appears to be badly lacking. 

23 minutes ago, zapatos said:

So if one are fighting for the freedom of their people, then the targeted killing of women, children and civilians is not immoral? Or is it just a little bit immoral?

Maybe you've heard of WW2 ? Harry S Truman ordered that about 200,000 mostly civilians, women and children included, should be blasted or horribly burnt to death. With the consent of Winston Churchill. You can still find their statues all over the place. It doesn't say immoral on the plinth. 

3 minutes ago, zapatos said:

Are you saying they called for an invasion of Gaza? If not, what shots do you believe they have 'called' during this current situation?

Do you have any idea of how politics works? Do you think it's all done by public pronouncements? You seem to have a very simplistic view of the world. Israel knows how far it can go. It's all done behind the scenes.

6 minutes ago, zapatos said:

But not Hamas? Do you feel Hamas is in some way superior morally to Israel in this exchange?

Absolutely morally superior. They are fighting for the freedom of their people. They are freedom fighters. Israel is fighting to keep what's been stolen. If you suffer a house invasion, you have the right to fight. So do they. 

1 hour ago, CharonY said:

I doubt anyone has much of a moral high ground here.

Maybe not, but the moral depths are firmly occupied by the state of Israel and it's US backers. It's no good wringing your hands and tut tutting about what Israel is doing. It's the US government that calls the real shots.  

The population of Gaza :  2.4 million. Size of Gaza : 

Opportunities for the people of Gaza are zero. These people are born, live and die in a concentration camp, while alien people enjoy all of the stolen benefits of the lands that are their heritage. And yet any resistance is portrayed as terrorism by most of the world's media. 

The reason Gaza exists is its 2.5 million population (rapidly decreasing at the moment) which would completely change the electoral balance in a democratic Israel. So 2.5 million people are kept in what is essentially a concentration camp. For political expedience. And our governments are fine with it, because they are given no option. The pro Zion movement pulls the strings in the US, and the US gives the orders to most of the world. 

4 minutes ago, e jane aran said:

I was speaking of "reproduction" only in that sense.

No, you were talking about how Homosexuality didn't get bred out of existence. That's what I was responding to. I don't think there's any reason why it would, for the reasons I gave. In any case, I don't believe there is such a thing as a homosexual gene, or a repeatable cluster of genes. I think homosexuality is down to the natural variation, that occurs in almost every characteristic. Sexuality is a grey area, like many other characteristics. Shades of grey across the population, not black or white. 

Showing a real ignorance of the Bible too. 

In the old testament, the Jews kicked off the indigenous people living on the "ancestral homeland"  using extreme violence. Just because their god said they could.

"I will give into your hands the people who live in the land, and you will drive them out before you." The "promised land" was not empty. Very like today.

30 minutes ago, e jane aran said:

Since homosexuals can't reproduce, how does the trait not get bred out of existence?

Honestly, where the hell did you get that idea? For a start, there was nothing to prevent homosexual females from reproducing down through our evolution. Having sex with the dominant male was not likely to be optional, a million years ago. 

As far as males go, you will find that a great many homosexuals have children with women, today and in the past. Some men with children even change sex, in later life. So there's not much of an impetus for homosexuality to disappear, even if there was a "gay gene". 

6 hours ago, exchemist said:

Are there relics of wooden objects supposed made by Jesus?

Not that I know of. But there have been enough bits of the cross, that he carried and was nailed to, to make new one, so the problem of wood preservation isn't an absolute. And then there is the Shroud of Turin. It's linen, not wood, but they're both vegetable matter. The Shroud is claimed to date from the year 33, but carbon dating puts it at roughly the year 1300 or so. But either way, it shows that long-term preservation is possible. 

The oldest wooden man-made objects ever found are dated to between 1/2 a million and 1 million years old, so it's really just down to storage conditions. 

There were some wooden spears found in Germany along with evidence of butchering of horses, that are 300,000 years old. 

Schöningen spears - Wikipedia  

3 hours ago, StringJunky said:

It doesn't mean they aren't being thought of.

They are, but since Israel is killing more than their number of innocent civilians every DAY, they come a distant second. I'd rather be a live hostage, than be burying my dead Palestinian child. 

10 hours ago, exchemist said:

It is unlikely domestic wooden artifacts of that type would have survived for 2000 years, even if Jesus did practice carpentry at some point, which seems unclear. 

I would have thought that, but which would last longer, a wooden table or a baby's foreskin? Because various bits of his foreskin have been worshipped down through the ages, by Popes and Holy Roman Emperors among others. So the one thing we can be sure of about Jesus is that he had a very big dick, going by the sheer quantity of foreskins that have been venerated down through history. Apparently, his umbilical cord was also saved and is stored away somewhere.

1 hour ago, iNow said:

it’s still a 50/50 race

I agree. There are two possible election outcomes, and both look equally likely. Either Trump will win it, or Biden will steal it. The Donald told me, and he wouldn't lie. 

I'm having trouble finding the betting odds on Biden stealing it though. But what do bookmakers know?

12 hours ago, Sensei said:

..how do you verify if something is fact or bullshit.. ?

In this case it's quite easy. If you call someone an anti-semite, you should be able to provide a simple link to those anti-semitic posts. If you are not just a name-calling asshole. 

I'm still waiting for facts, not windy bullshit.

17 hours ago, StringJunky said:

Things seem to be hotting up with the Israeli population internally:

I think that shows that it's not just me, that suspects this was something darker than negligence. The Israel military are not generally known for a negligent attitude. 

12 minutes ago, MPMin said:

The extended time in the oven will most likely result in a much thicker and dryer crust and a dryer bread over all.

It does. Thicker, dryer and much harder. The way to get a thin crispy crust is to put a tray of boiling water in the bottom of the oven, and heat it to full temperature before putting in the bread. This is especially true for smaller breads like crusty rolls and French sticks. 

It's a bit inconvenient, because you can't use the oven to let the dough rise. Well, you can, but you would have to take the bread out, heat up the oven to full temperature and put the bread back in. And doing that can shake down the risen dough, unless you're really gentle. So you really need a separate warm place to allow the bread to rise. 

34 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

The error he has made is painting the whole group with the idea..

Where did I do that? The orders come from the top. And I put it up as a suggestion. I look who's benefitting, and it's Netanyahu and the militant Zionist parties. They are the ones with the motive, and they're in power. 

This sort of "sacrifice" tactic is hardly new. Winston Churchill employed it at the start of WW2, when the RAF were getting bombed to bits by the Luftwaffe. He sent bombers over to bomb Berlin, ( i think it was ) in the desperate hope that Hitler would divert his onslaught from airfields to London. He knew perfectly well that it would cost many thousands of civilian lives, but he judged it was a price worth paying. 

Compared to the London Blitz, the Hamas attack was a skirmish. 

Wikipedia says this : 

"The first RAF raid on Berlin took place on the night of 25 August 1940; 95 aircraft were dispatched to bomb Tempelhof Airport near the centre of Berlin and Siemensstadt, of which 81 dropped their bombs in and around Berlin,[11][12] and while the damage was slight, the psychological effect on Hitler was greater. The bombing raids on Berlin prompted Hitler to order the shift of the Luftwaffe's target from British airfields and air defenses to British cities."

2 hours ago, MigL said:

Sure.
And women want to be raped.

I've never said that.

2 hours ago, MigL said:

They dress provocatively to entice men to commit rape so that men will be jailed and feminists will rule the world.

I've never said that.

2 hours ago, MigL said:

Seriously, how do you come up with this stuff ?

I didn't. You did. 

2 hours ago, MigL said:

And do you mind if I call you an anti-Semite ?

I'm still waiting for the facts behind that pathetic name-calling stunt.

2 hours ago, MigL said:

B Netanyahu is still in deep shit; I don't see him lasting after the end of this special operation

Considering all the things you see which are not there, I'll have to take that as utter drivel. As usual. 

18 minutes ago, TheVat said:

Not agreeing, but I can't say it is impossible that an extreme cadre within the government would try this. 

I started my post with " I think ". Nobody will ever know if it was deliberate. But if you look at the forces that Israel has, and the intelligence network, and the intelligence capability of the US, then it looks obvious to me that they were making very little effort at defence, and were hoping something would kick off. Maybe they didn't expect such a big strike by Hamas, but then again, in the context of the future of Israel, that was just a scratch, compared to the gains they are aiming at. 

And on a personal level, Netanyahu's own position is already benefitting. He still has national disgrace hanging over him in the courts, unless he can keep control.

11 minutes ago, MigL said:

And do you mind if I call you an anti-Semite ?

Not if you can back it up with facts. Only an asshole would indulge in name calling, so I'm sure the facts are on their way. 

Israel kills about 9,000 civilians in order to kill a few hundred Hamas fighters. And they call it self defence. Real self defence would have involved more security around Gaza in the first place.

I really do think that Israel wanted all of this. They enticed Hamas to launch an attack with lapse security, so that they would have an excuse to go into Gaza. It has a whiff of "final solution" about it. A few thousand Israeli lives lost is worth it to people like Benjamin Netanyahu, it advances the eradication of the "Palestinian Problem" and solidifies his own position. 

A few weeks ago, he was on a growing rack, with anti government demonstrations and reservists refusing to serve. All of that is history now. Sheer luck? I don't think so. 

6 hours ago, Boltzmannbrain said:

This question gets explained starting at 6:00

That's an excellent find. I prefer the river picture that he went through first, but the whole video is to the point and well done. 

It wouldn't work for villages, but for remote cities, I favour nuclear, combined with district heating systems and heat pumps. 

Nuclear plants discharge huge amounts of waste heat to the environment, via cooling towers or rivers or seas. If you used that heat for district heating, 

and used heat pumps to extract as much heat as possible, you would have a pretty efficient system. Air source heat pumps are pretty crap, but if you have abundant warm water to power them, heat pumps would work really well. 

Actually, the same principle applies to coal, gas, or oil fired power stations. They all discharge vast amounts of waste heat. You could design something along those lines for a big village in a cold climate. District heating would involve a lot of investment, but would pay off in the long run. 

I was just arguing in the abstract. 

In strictly theoretical terms, I would trade a human life for an animal, in some circumstances. (not mine though).

If the animal was one of the last ten Rhinos on the planet, and the human was a serial killer, (and I was fully convinced of his guilt) I would choose the Rhino every time. Actually, if the human was a serial burglar, I'd still choose the Rhino to survive. Or shoplifter. Or graffiti sprayer.

I wouldn't go as far as Hitler did though.