tadmjones

Perhaps Ben Gvir is correct and given the population of Gaza is currently 50% children as has been reported , this specific time in history makes the idea of putting an end to such an aberration through removal more palatable to world sentiment given the ability of a younger generation to more easily handle a major assimilation to a novel environment.

Without verifying the facts , I would judge Benny Morris’ commentary and conclusions as coming from a good faith and objective perspective on the history of the roots and subsequent events of the extended conflict. I like the way he said that until certain materials are available he can not make any specific judgements concerning certain things even though he does state his impressions based on what he knows specifically now. As to the integrity of his scholarship , not being in a position to ascertain personally, I would assume a fair treatment , especially on hearing the subject matter of his latest work on the war crimes committed in the region in 48.

If the there were no counter productivity, why does the presenter suggest shorter lockdown periods may have been beneficial, so essentially she is saying the length of the actual lockdowns had ,one would assume, less than optimal consequences. Are counter factuals determinative? Thenpolicy makers knew early that the IFR was not what was being reported to the public , and those who tried to speak to actual situation were censured from public discourse and shunned professionally. Prominent officials in the US were seen evading mitigation efforts , do you think they did so despite knowledge to the danger those actions posed to themselves or the public? Was there any recorded influenza deaths during the ‘waves’? The named waves which by the way really helped keep ‘us’ informed about the ferocity and global transmission continued to be during the whole pandemic, until it finally ended. Do the mentioned studies include economic forecasts of the consequences of the non corporate businesses that didn’t survive the lockdowns , the consequences that are still ongoing ? As far as determining life years or some such, how do they account for the effects on educational development of the children affected by the unnecessary school closures, and the danger or lack thereof to (or from) the little germ ba.. er I mean children was known very early. The prevention of safe and effective treatments basically caused the appearance of a need for lockdown measures , to say nothing of what the active suppression of alternative treatments did to the appearance of justification for mass inoculations. Theese are now easy to see in hindsight , no ?

Thanks for a refresher on the Christian notion of sin , going through some of the linked material reveals I am /have been under a more comfortable apprehension of sin in the other Abrahamic traditions. Sin more as a failing as opposed to a corporeal state.

We know now that Covid wasn’t as dangerous as we were being told, that lockdowns weren’t only not necessary but were counterproductive. The policy makers that engineered the ‘innovated methods’ for voting in 2020, were the same policy makers that were aware that Covid and the mitigation efforts were not necessary or productive. I wonder what the rationalization for election suspension will look like from such rational and objective quarters when it comes to assessing the next round of innovative measures. Are you still masking ?

Honestly I said it because it is something you hear from people that take on or speak to the ‘Palestinian cause’, so I assumed it is a position you would defend. But as far as I know it isn’t true given the official positions of the Israeli govt in relation to their Arab citizens. The main point being an apartheid can only be carried ‘in country’ . One country treating the citizens of another country , or at least non citizens of the one country differently even under the law is not apartheid, it’s just discrimination involving citizenry, and not necessarily immorally motivated. Israeli security forces assisting in any takings in the West Bank doesn’t feel real kosher to me , but technically not apartheid. Definitely ethnic cleansing , I’ll give you that , but it seems if the West Bank ceded itself to Israel and to a person the inhabitants accepted Israeli citizenship they would be better off in the long run. Even though given regional power politics it may be better if it was incorporated into Jordan’s territory, the Arabs would take it a s a win, I bet. I know even less about Kashmir , is it correctly described as a territorial dispute between Hindu and Muslim populations, as a consequence of the creation of the Muslim state of Pakistan ?

I think you are confused about the distinctions between : Arabs, Muslims, Palestinians, Jews and Israelis. I don’t have any say in the matter and not much personal concern, but I think the region would be ‘better off’ if Jordan gains control of most of the West Bank and Gaza gets incorporated into Israel ‘proper’. The current population of the strip can make individual decisions to either give up or ‘renounce any Palestinian citizenship’ and try somehow to assimilate or relocate. It seems evident the idea of establishing an actual Palestinian state in that immediate region pretty much died at last as recently as the seventies. And yeah three or four generations ago a lot of people were fucked out of their inheritance , but it is past due time for this aberration of quasi internment on a population scale to end , otherwise you are condemning future generations of Gazans. It would be ridiculous to claim Israel’s prosperity is an outcome of their treatment of Palestinian’s , it is more the case their prosperity has been hindered in the continued dealings. All said in my humble opinion.

Are Arab Israeli citizens maltreated in Israel by its government? Does Israel practice apartheid within its borders/jurisdiction?

From an atheistic or physicalist frame , how is it one can claim 'Darwinian evolution' "works", or works well, sublimely even? Random genetic mutations are practically the extreme example of the arbitrary or blind chance. Shouldn't the idea of evolution be tied to the idea that 'it' is an explanation of change in biologic lineage? The evolutionary 'pressures' that instantiate in creatures exhibiting 'higher amounts of fitness' are not an end of the means of the 'process', unless the 'process' is goal directed.

Maybe just the KJV , the article cites WSJ as its source.

I'm just trying to figure out what was being traded. Maybe they were exporting Amish sheds.

But there is no disputing the fact that Biden's family members have triggered such reports. They also have been shown to use various shell companies and other financial instruments to facilitate payments from foreign entities. What products or services are they providing? Cookies, colas, software, or steel? What is it they are selling ? Curiouser and curiouser it looks , no ?

Israel and the western governments are sinful in the sense that sin means ‘missing the mark’. The failures to meet the mark should be judged in the context of the aim, the overall arc of actions taken toward an aim. And that means the mark or aim is the standard to judge the actions and missteps or failures of attaining the end. A goal or mark can be for evil or for good , failure to attain an evil end isn’t sinful in that it should be condemned. The idea that Israel should be isn’t an evil to be perpetrated on humankind. In as much as the goal of establishing Israel as nation is a good end , the fallibility inherent in human projects means there are guaranteed to be shortfallings. Identifying and trying for corrections are what principles are for , yeah? Israel turned a desert into a veritable paradise, some of the actions taken toward bringing that goal into being may be sinful but the goal isn’t in any real sense evil.

But hypotheticals like that , even somewhat potentially hyperbolic, mess up a nice neat Dungeons and Dragons style of directing moralizations and assigning condemnation.

Brief and somewhat truncated. Israel/Palestine problems have their earliest origins in 1948 , even prior but before 48 there wasn’t such a thing as Israel. It looks like Hamas is just about to end its utility and will be ended , and good riddance, obviously for the death and destruction visited on anyone in its name. But that isn’t yet the ‘end’ of a Palestinian problem, for Palestinians or Israel. Regardless it really is an Israeli problem and something that has almost no effect on me, thank god.

Information is identity? A way to view or conceptualize identity with a bent toward epistemology as opposed to a consciousness independent frame of reference ?

Allowing Hamas to exist , indeed using its existence as a political weapon, does make the Israeli government culpable in Hamas' attack Oct 7, but the Israeli citizens are not. If the investigations into the draw down of the security around the incursion area prove anything more than severe negligence , I'd say the Israeli government is complicit in the whole of the atrocities of that day. But the Israeli citizens were not. Hamas should be wiped from the planet, but even then Gaza would still be a uniquely horrible situation , yeah ?

In that sense then, DO would be right in that we didn't craft it, nature or nature's god did through random chance( which is a weird concept in the context of determinism).

I always vote for both !

As for the title of the thread is it fair to say that Rand was a dualist, eg there are entities of either physical , material stuff(s) and those of mental stuff(s) and they are ultimately reducible to incommensurate kinds?

The Israeli government at one time allowed Hamas to form or allowed them to move into Gaza as a political tool that would be useful internally and internationally in ultimately ending a ‘two state solution’ solution. Do those actions qualify as state sponsored terrorism? I am not making an argument that is necessarily the case , just trying to apply the rigidity of the moral standard to a particular.

Is there an underlying schema that determines the function(s) of the processing, is there a fundamental level ‘below’ which the processing rests or is process the thing ?

I am not well versed in correspondence ‘theory’ so perhaps the following observations may not pertain to a rigorous understanding. But.. If knowledge is a correspondence between awareness, consciousness, or experience, the ‘in here’ portion or side cannot be a mirroring of the ‘out there’ side, because of the cause and effect nature of entropy, no? If the ‘in here’ side of the equation equals the ‘out there’ side of the equation , the states of entropy would be equal and there ain’t enough ‘in here’ anywhere to contain all the ‘out there’. And especially if all abstraction has a physical base, no? The ‘in here’ must be delimited in some fashion from what is ‘available’ ‘out there’, that feels a little Kantian.

I don’t recall any Objectivist treatises on physics, do you mean interpretations of quantum physics published by self identified ‘Objectivists’? And by the same token do you mean you take your standards of foreign policy from Rand’s interpretation of specific events or accept statements of standards from self identified O’ist uncritically, especially as they delineate specific events? Perhaps O’ist forums are not places for discussion , debate , just a search space for the ‘correct’ positions?

By no Iran we would mean no Iranian regime headed by Islamic fundamentalists, yeah? Various Israeli and Iranian regimes have had more allied positions toward each other in the past. Even after the Iranian revolution Israel provided aid to Iran in their war with Iraq.