joigus

Members of the Knesset, bankers, entrepreneurs, etc. All of them Arabs. Almost none of them seem to be impelled to stab people to death on the street, blow themselves up, etc. Isn't that peculiar? Why is that? Same ethnicity, same language, same traditions. Completely different behaviour. No abuse on them, no shortage of anything apparently, apart from the regular strifes of life, like finding a job or having access to a house in a certain area. They easily and frequently become friends with the other Israelies. I've been curious about that for many years. Everybody should be amazed. Many people today --certainly many political commentators-- seem not to be in the least curious about this fact. To many of these people, as Drummond said to Brady in Inherit the wind, I'm tempted to say, "It frightens me to imagine the state of learning in this world if everyone had your driving curiosity" I find it very, very peculiar. Maybe some of our knowledgeable members can clarify this in simple analytical terms, and giving a rest to terms of hyperbole like "fascist", "concentration camp", "genocide", etc that anybody can apply to anybody else without giving it much thought. Analysis is better conducted in dispassionate terms. I've personally have had enough of cliches already.

I can't believe you can't figure out my analogy.

And anteaters look a great deal like pangolins, but it's pangolins who are to blame for the spread of COVID-19... No, wait! That's another misinformation thread. Anteaters and pangolins, mmm... Someone must be guilty. It's either the ant-eaters or the pangolins. Certainly there's always someone to blame!! Here's an idea: Let's sell rockets and tunnel-drilling tools to the ant-eaters, and... Plus No, no, I know, I know, let's sell anti-rocket systems and drones, and other stuff to the anteaters. All with the tax-payer money of the armadillos... See what I mean?

Santa clause = the Santa that I learned about as a boy "that I learned about as a boy" is the clause, of course.

I've drunk of many sources, really. I greatly respect you, as the rest of the interlocutors here, but I realise we will probably never agree on this. And I don't think personal testimonies really settlle it. Most of my friends think like you too, so my ideological ambience has been quite a different one. So far I've only quoted Haniyah from Al-Jazeera. I didn't quote any so-called 'Zionist' sources. In fact, I could continue this discussion by only quoting Islamic and Cold-War era Soviet sources, if you want. It would be much harder though because I could prove that the numbers of victims that Hamas is providing quite simply cannot be true, and the rest of the world is taking them as just the truth at everyone's peril. But it can be done with just testimonies of the 'good guys'. I would be able to prove how tilted public opinion is to one side, at least in the West. The Muslim-Islamist actors in this drama have never made a secret of their real intentions. The actors in the Soviets that provided support for them during the Cold War did make it a secret, but it eventually leaked. Why the West systematically chooses to ignore it is not anybody's guess. It's a political weapon of prime importance. It polarises people's minds. It makes us (you and I, for example) potential enemies for reasons having zilch to do with our actual personal situations. You must take a side!!! You mention the Nakba, which is still in living memory, and was roughly at the same time as the exile of the Mizhrahi Jews, that's also in living memory. Here's another Muslim quotation (this one appeared on the eve of the famous Nakba): Here Mustafa Amin, the editor of Akhbar el-Yom, is quoting the Secretary-General of the Arab League, Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam. Seems like someone knew there was going to be a war of extermination before it happened. And happen it did. Notice he doesn't say "the Palestinians". He says "Palestine's Arab population". This distinction is essential. Back in 1945 Palestine was just a place. Nothing more. It's no coincidence that the 3rd most common Palestinian surname is al Masri, or El Masry. What does 'El Masry" mean?: "The Egyptian". I'm well aware of the fact that there are many rotten apples in the Zionist basket. There are Zionists who dream of a world colonised by religious Jews. And that the Messiah will not come until that dream is fulfilled. Those are just religious bigots. Same as Muslims who turn 'religious' and start saying, and thinking, and acting out on the idea that the world must be all for Islam, that the other peoples of the Book must pay the jizya, and that the politheists must die or convert. Religion is poison, whether it kills you, me or others depends on accidents in life. But the mechanisms of propaganda have worked on the minds of many people from all sides of this conflict, including many modern Western antizionist Jews who are not willing to make many fine distinctions, or perhaps are just tired, or who knows. Anyway, we're getting sidetracked here, I don't have the time to draw the argument as carefully as I would like to now, and the counterarguments to what seems to be @MigL's and my own's position here are piling up. But carpet bombing , @TheVat Com'on! There were leaflets and flyers, as well as phone calls and SMS messages in advance. The bombs were guided and from the footage I've seen, the targets were very specific. In many cases, secondary explosions reveal that the targets must have been explosive depots. In one particular case, from the footage, two or three 'fighters' or 'terrorists' were next to a cart pulled by a donkey. They were hit, but the donkey survived, only somewhat startled. That doesn't look like carpet bombing to me. Same as this (really!) doesn't look like a concentration camp: And the green-and-white map, @John Cuthber, that's just a piece of photoshop artistry. Nothing more. It doesn't mention the exile of hundreds of thousands of Mizhrahi Jews (or at least it paints them in no colour). It doesn't picture by what mysterious process two million odd of these 'Palestinian' became 'Israeli Arabs' and decided to stay in non-heavily-policed areas so-called 'Israel'. The least I can say is I see nothing of what I want to understand from those propaganda pieces that we are shown, from both sides if you will (although I generally see one and have to dig deep for the other). And yet I'm offered them every day as if must take a side. You must take a side!!!

It's not like there still are more than 100 innocent civilians kept as prisoners, raped, abused, undernourished, deprived of their medicines, under a death threat every single day since last October 7th, in Gaza; in some cases, executed for logistic expediency. It's not like more than 80,000 Israelies have been displaced from their homes thanks to Hezbollah. It's not like any Israeli Arab is culturally, ethnically, linguistically indistinguishable from a non-Israeli Arab from Gaza or the West Bank (aka 'Palestinian') but, for some magical reason, those are not being ethnically cleansed. It's not like children are being trained by Hamas to torture and kill Israelies in special training camps, and in the specific case of Be'eri children were given torches to burn people alive in their panic rooms. Because, you know, it's more fun when a child commits murder. It's not like Hamas has purposefully and systematically made civilian people and facilities blend in with military depos and headquarters and made guerrillas dress as ordinary guys, or as women in burkas. It's not like the leaders of Hamas* themselves have said that the death of their children is a necessary sacrifice and those that die on behalf of the advancement of Islam are now in Paradise. Oh, wait. It is. It is exactly like that. Oh, yes. It is. Hamas and Hezbollah are cults (same as ISIL, ISIS, etc), steeped in 7th-century ideology post-processed as a political brand for the purposes of the advancement of the Islamic Republic of Iran to become the next Caliphate. They will never sit to negociate anything, mid or long term. * Ismail Haniyeh: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/10/israeli-forces-kill-three-children-of-hamas-leader-ismail-haniyeh-in-gaza

Why is the Bible relevant in General Philosophy? I'm sure the Bhagavad Gita has a different take on it. Philosophy is supposed to be objective.

"Evil", referring to Nature, is a figure of speech. You're stretching the concept, using a trope. From Oxford: From Merriam-Webster: As you can see, the more literal meaning in both sources involves intention. The other ones are tropes.

'Cruel' = unnecessarily harmful of painful If I inflict pain or harm on you, but I can't help it for one reason or another, I'm being cruel If I inflict pain or harm on you out of an existencial threat on me, I'm not being cruel, I'm acting out of necessity

I remember having had this discussion with my little brother when we were both very young. I pointed out that a really cruel god that keeps us as toys for his/her/its nasty little games was a logical possibility. He told me to shut up immediately. He's proven to be a very intelligent man, actually, but at that point he couldn't bear the thought. We were raised as Catholics, btw.

More specific even. A common occurrence: Haitians with a Pekingese. Impossible to rule that out.

Are you sure there's not a dog with them?

It's very very hard to get priority/recognition etc in modern mathematics. It's a very cute proof, that's all I can say.

That's exactly what I thought too. Based on size and proportions and from what I've seen in documentaries... They look kinda slender, not as bulky as other whale species.

Beautiful. Do you happen to know the species?

Let's hope no doctors who were time traveling forward from the '90s have been harmed in this vicious attack.

Interesting topic IMO, got off to a bad start IMO for reasons adroitly pointed out. Conspiracy theory = Contention that a question generally considered as settled, actually is not due to a relatively small clique of influential people keeping the gates to "the real truth" hermetically closed for years on end. Doesn't work because of reasons pointed out that I like to call objective descriptions of "reality" being congruences of nearly limitless lines of both reasoning and evidence, the more unlikely to hide the longer alleged CT lasts.

How does? I can only tell the difference between "fishy" and "just about right".

Education.

Nature has no will. Thereby the fallacy. "Live long and prosper" is just a Vulcan salute, not what Nature has in store for us.

Sure. When this topic surfaced before, I remember we went over the difficulties of interstellar travel too. People tend to forget how bleak outer space is, how incompatible with human life, or any kind of life for that matter, and the sheer vastness involved. I more or less tried to include aspects like these in my camel analogy.

Agreed. On a related line of reasoning: And, Connecting to my previous argument, you're giving one particular reason why you never find camels in the North Pole: Why would they bother? In few words, it's an argument from silence, and although that doesn't rule it out necessarily, it should make us be weary of its rationale. It is my understanding that Fermi himself didn't pursue it very much at all. I get the feeling that there can be no blue potatoes. My firm belief is based on two recurrent experimental facts, One: Every time I see a potato, it's not blue Two: Every time I see something blue, it's not a potato But that may just be because in this part of the universe all potatoes are non-blue. As to erasion, that's more of an argument from noise.

Ok, this discussion is well over my head, but the reason I asked whether the rock was constantly affected by water was precisely motivated by the colour. You seem to rule out the possibility that the greenish colour be due to microscopic mats? I know I'm probably thinking of the obvious. A geologist's pick would settle it, of course. As to local knowledge, againg probably thinking of the obvious, I always try to get as many information leaflets, brochures and such from the local tourism office. Surprisingly enough, you sometimes find some valuable specifics about the geological history of the area, botanicals, etc. I'm sure you know all these things and just didn't get the chance to settle this then and there.

Ok. Thank you. That's a tad more information than I needed. Unfortunately I won't be able to pay you a visit any time soon. I'll take a look at the most significant bits when I get the time. Also, if you don't mind my saying, I would advise you to lower down a bit your expectations of getting credit. Most of these series have been summed and understood centuries ago.

Ok. I'm not gonna say much here, but I'd bet DT would rather have had a hall packed full of crooks now (the Thomas Mathhew kind, if you know what I mean). Now, that was a bloodbath.