I don’t think you know what the word “literal” means. But anyway, we disagree about how to categorize what is happening in Israel, and possibly what the solution might be, but I don’t think you are a bad person because of it. I don’t even know you. But I hope you have a good day.

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OMG, this comment is such a simplistic, woke narrative that has nothing to do with reality. Your Marxism is showing.

If you look at the first couple of seconds, it looks like the young fellow was fighting with an older guy in a light blue uniform who staggers off and that’s when the IDF guys started beating on the young fellow. Obviously, there is some preceding conflict that the videographer either didn’t record, or which didn’t suit his propaganda narrative.

So many assumptions there. I don’t look down on the Palestinian people. I admire their willingness to fight. But, at a certain point, the war is over. You can have an eternal insurgency, or you can make peace. As I said, the issues that would allow Israel and Palestine to live side-by-side have largely been negotiated already. Look, we all get it. The creation of Israel was done poorly. But ongoing events like October 7 are not healthy or sustainable for either side. Israel isn’t going away. It can’t go away. Israel is a fact on the ground. So what is the point of ongoing terrorism like October 7? Obviously, all that terrorism has accomplished is retaliation and death. There is a better way.

The same choices will probably present themselves to the leadership of Ukraine, sadly. If the US and Europe don’t drastically ramp up support for Ukraine and give them long-range weapons, Russia will grind them down. What should the Ukrainians do if they can’t win? Fight to the last man? Achieve a ceasefire and then spend the next 80 years supporting a holy war insurgency against Russia? No, that’s dumb. That’s a good way to lose the world’s support and also get bombed into oblivion by Russia, and make your people miserable and poor. Ukraine isn’t dumb. They’ll negotiate a ceasefire and acknowledge the de facto borders at the time of the ceasefire. Then Ukraine will build up its economy again and wait for Putin to die and for events to turn their way. Then, hopefully, they will join the EU and possibly NATO.

Palestine could do something similar. Go for the two-state deal. Forget about right of return, forget about Jerusalem, drop the religious fundamentalist bullshit. Trade away Gaza to Israel in exchange for removing all of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Or something similar. Unify the Palestinian people in a common geography and a positive vision for the future. Land deals work. Remember that time Israel handed back the Sinai in exchange for peace with Egypt? Egypt and Israel are still at peace.

What about compensation? Well, the world will help the Palestinians rebuild if they think Palestine will be stable and not an Iranian puppet supporting a terrorist insurgency. The Saudis alone would probably supply tens of billions of dollars to Palestine if Hamas wasn’t there to hoover it up and convert it into weapons and terror tunnels.

I think we all need to cut out the zero-sum thinking because it leads to people becoming so desperate that they are willing to do literally anything to win.

You see, that’s just twisting what I said. I didn’t say that genocide is okay. I said that people who do crimes are responsible for them, not their descendents. And, that eventually the migration of populations, with the possible displacement of the previous population, becomes permanent.

Look, practically all of history is a series of migrations, wars, resistance, conquest, counter-conquest, etc. Action and reaction. The Arab countries tried to eject Israel and Israel beat them back five times. Israel is spear-won territory. The Palestinians continue to fight, as is their right, but they’ve lost. Israel is not going to pack up its bag and give up their country, so the only way to get rid of Israel is to literally genocide them. If the Palestinians continue to fight the way they did on October 7, they should also expect to die, including civilians as collateral damage. That’s war. If they want to stop dying, they should make a compromise with Israel. The two-state solution has been close before, but certain death cults keep scuttling it. You know why? Reasonable people think it is all about land division and compensation. But that was all negotiated previously. At the end of the day, the final sticking point was Jerusalem. The crazy Jews want to rebuild the Temple, and the crazy Muslims want to stop the Jews from tearing down al-Aqsa mosque to do it. It is the nutters, not the average person, who is standing in the way of peace. Unfortunately, you can’t fix stupid, especially not religious stupid, which is why Israel wants to crush Hamas utterly. All of this hand-wringing about genocide is silly and counter-productive. It is based on some woke narrative, not on facts. If the Israelis wanted all of the Palestinians dead, there would be millions killed, not 43,000. They want Hamas dead and for the Palestinians to stop supporting that death cult. If you leave the narrative aside for a moment, 43,000 dead over the course of a year of pretty one-sided war sure does sound a lot more like collateral damage than genocide, doesn’t it?

Oh, you mean the ancestors of the current Dutch population. Gotcha. Okay, well if we are talking about ancestors, then I guess every ethnic group has had ancestors that colonized somewhere or other, since humans don’t live exclusively in the place we evolved. And I’m sure we also agree that people don’t have to answer for the crimes of their ancestors, only the crimes we do ourselves.

What are you talking about? Did the Dutch colonize Palestine?

Very true

Afghanistan: the graveyard of empires

A great power can usually defeat it in the conventional military sense and take the cities, but no one can rule it long term. And many have tried. In that sense, Afghanistan is possibly the greatest blow to American exceptionalism ever.

The Chinese could probably do it using the totalitarian tactics they’re using on the Uighers, including gradual replacement of the population with ethnic Han Chinese. But…yuck, hopefully that’ll never happen.

The US “won” the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan rather quickly and handily, but they lost the subsequent peace. Turns out that’s the hard part.

Has anyone here read any persuasive articles or books explaining why Japan and Germany accepted and flourished under US occupation but Iraq and Afghanistan did not?

Haha, good point. I stand corrected. :)

A new UH-60L is around $10-$20 million depending on avionics and weapons, and I am under the impression that even an old 1990s A-variant would still cost upwards of $2 million.

One example: https://www.hangar67.com/aircraft-for-sale/turbine-helicopters/sikorsky/uh60a-black-hawk

Better stop buying anything made in China then, what with the slavery and human rights abuses. And you should stop using oil and gas products as well because climate change kills. Good luck with that.

Yes, good point.

Sure, but there was a very long debate about the implications of Brexit with both sides getting a comprehensive airing. I’m not defending Boris. Boris is an asshole and a corrupt, clownish demagogue, but the Conservative Party is more than just Boris. The people of the UK voted for Brexit in a refendum and kept the Conservatives in power for 14 years, including twice AFTER the Brexit referendum. Heck, the 2019 election was practically a second referendum on Brexit and the Conservatives got their largest landslide victory since Thatcher was PM. Boris may be an asshole, but the people of the UK have to own Brexit.

Is Tusk similar to Boris? I mean, obviously Boris presided over Brexit which was a real fuck-up. Then again, was Brexit really Boris’s fault? What with the referendum, democracy and all that good stuff. It seems to me that the people of the UK made their own bed in that regard.

That dude has a good sense of humor. He seems like a good leader.

These girls are old school. You make the money, they pump out the children. They don’t believe in birth control or abortion, so if you want to maximize your reproductive fitness, you could do worse than a Catholic girl.

That’s a great story. Ocean survival courses teach the 1-10-1 rule. If you are immersed in cold water, it takes 1 minute for catch your breath and orient yourself. You then have 10 minutes of useful movement before your hands stiffen up, and one hour until you are fully incapacitated. And “cold” means water at 15C or less, which is typical of the north Atlantic.