DebateGate
General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: Michael Tee on June 03, 2010, 04:47:22 PM
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This is the argument in a blog called Stump that I just found.
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/thestump/2010/06/03/greater-israel-greater-schmisrael-the-zionist-entity-is-mad-as-a-bag-of-cats/ (http://blogs.crikey.com.au/thestump/2010/06/03/greater-israel-greater-schmisrael-the-zionist-entity-is-mad-as-a-bag-of-cats/)
Basically, that the raid was so fucking nuts and undisciplined that it reflects a split between the old-line Likud leadership and the new Likud blood, recently-arrived refugees from post-Soviet Eastern Europe more interested in provoking bloodshed for domestic political reasons than in maintaining important foreign alliances such as the one with Turkey. Netanyahu being out of the country at the time, it is still not clear just who authorized this fiasco, and nobody is rushing forward to take the "credit" for it either.
The writer compares this little disaster with the earlier in-your-face assassination of a Hamas leader in Dubai, also an exercise in instant blood gratification on an even smaller scale for a very large diplomatic set-back on many different fronts. Again, what kind of sloppy planning allowing so much televised detail, for what paltry benefit?
I strongly recommend the article. And the blog. A few spelling and other errors of a minor nature, but a very interesting take not only on the alleged revelations of disunity but also on many other facets of the current situation.
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It’s also why Turkish anti-americanism – at least until the Iraq war – was so muted, especially in the country’s metropolitan West. Israel’s actions over the past 5 years have boxed him into a corner. This was an alliance so important that Israel was the only country in the world that officially took the position that there had been no Armenian genocide – even though that event spurred Hitler on to believe that a Holocaust would be achievable, with global acquiescence.
What?
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Apparently in discussing the Holocaust, some of the Nazis told Hitler that this would bring a shitload of disgrace down on their heads, that they'd be universally regarded as inhuman monsters forever, and Hitler's answer was something like, "Bah! Who now remembers the Armenians?" Meaning that the Armenian massacres raised a huge stink for a few years and then blew over, so the Germans could expect to exterminate the Jews without having to pay much of a price for it.
The Turks are very sensitive to charges of genocide and resent being labeled as the perpetrators of the world's first genocide. When motions were presented to various parliaments around the world calling for condemnation of this particular genocide, the Israelis decided against acknowledging that the massacre of the Armenians was genocide, for fear of alienating their Turkish "ally."
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Apparently in discussing the Holocaust, some of the Nazis told Hitler ... the Israelis decided against acknowledging that the massacre of the Armenians was genocide, for fear of alienating their Turkish "ally."
Man , that is weird.
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The US hasn't officially recognized it as genocide either
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The U.S. position was a concession to Turkey as a NATO member. There were serious threats by Turkey to pull out of NATO if the U.S. Congress officially commemorated the massacre as a genocide.
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And?
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And?
And the sky started to fall and fire rained down from Heaven upon the United States.
And nothing. Life went on as before.
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So the US is allowed to pass on a symbolic resolution, but the Israeli's aren't?
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They're both in the wrong. Genocide is genocide and has to be condemned universally.
But Israel is more in the wrong than the U.S.. because they of all people ought to know better. They sure as hell insist that people refer to the massacre of the Jews as genocide.
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Diplomacy is not always smash mouth. Sometimes allowing a people to save face is important. Symbolic resolutions won't raise the dead.
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Not about raising the dead but about preventing future genocides. Saving the living and those not yet born. Nobody should "look the other way" on genocide. It's a horrible crime. A zero-tolerance crime. The symbolism in condemning a friendly nation says that no connections, no influence can save you from condemnation. Our condemnation is severe because we don't reserve it for selected offenders and give our friends a pass on it. It's too horrible a crime to permit us to look the other way for anyone.
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Oh Please
They looked away during WWI and then WWII and Rwanda and now in Darfur. Whoever they are.
Who is kidding who?
Symbolism never saved a life, it just makes those who believe in token acts feel better about themselves.
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<<They looked away during WWI and then WWII and Rwanda and now in Darfur. Whoever they are.>>
"They" are us. Unfortunately.
<<Who is kidding who?
<<Symbolism never saved a life, it just makes those who believe in token acts feel better about themselves. >>
Maybe it doesn't happen overnight. It's the old "Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness." Say there's a process, it's long and it's slow, but it starts somewhere. Starts with definition, with naming the crime: genocide. Starts with international conventions, a convention against genocide. Starts with legislative condemnation. Think of them as building blocks, foundation blocks. You START with the symbolism. I don't say you end there.
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Then you must be applauding the Turks use of symbolism when they admit bad things happened and they will do their best to not let it happen again.
Hell i feel much better typing that sentence.
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<<Then you must be applauding the Turks use of symbolism when they admit bad things happened and they will do their best to not let it happen again.>>
Yes, I do, because it's a start. But it's nowhere near the Germans' admission. The Germans never denied that the Holocaust was genocide. The Turks should stop their denials and just fess up. Otherwise they look like they're failing to acknowledge the enormity of the atrocity. "Bad things happen" covers a lot of things, even the massacres of Anatolian villages by retreating Greek forces that immediately preceded the Turks' massacre of the Armenians.
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Yes, I do, because it's a start. But it's nowhere near the Germans' admission.
Perhaps that is because Turks aren't Germans.
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I think it's more of a universal human quality - - either you admit to your misdeeds or you bluster your way out of it. Turks are not Germans, but that can't be the explanation for the difference. It could be that the Holocaust and Germany's other crimes were followed by the complete devastation of the entire nation and a 45-year enforced severance of the country, so that everyone could see the failure of Nazi ideology and a destruction so complete as to appear as evidence of the hand of God, whereas no such punishment ever followed the Armenian Genocide so the gravity of it was never made so apparent to the Turks. The other difference could have been that the Turks see the genocide as payback for the Greek army's massacres of the Anatolians, whereas the Nazi extermination of the Jews was a totally gratuitous act and as such, that much more reprehensible.
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It could be that the Holocaust and Germany's other crimes were followed by the complete devastation of the entire nation and a 45-year enforced severance of the country, so that everyone could see the failure of Nazi ideology and a destruction so complete as to appear as evidence of the hand of God, whereas no such punishment ever followed the Armenian Genocide so the gravity of it was never made so apparent to the Turks.
Very good!
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So Hitlers advisors were basicly right.
Forgiveness or forgetfullness happens when there is good diplomatic reason for it.
The Twentyeth Century saw geonicide in several places that we don't commonly remember , but we excoriate the perpetrators who afterward lost the power to cover the crime , or the diplomatic clout to brazen it out..
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<<So Hitlers advisors were basicly right.>>
They were and they weren't. It was all about reputation only, so even if they had been 100% right on reputation, nobody really gives a shit any more. Countries don't give a shit about reputation. I don't think Hitler's advisers (the ones who counseled against the Holocaust) had any inkling of the coming avalanche of information overload that was about to engulf the West fifty years after the war. Nobody knows what happened ten years ago, let alone what happened in WWII.
<<Forgiveness or forgetfullness happens when there is good diplomatic reason for it.>>
Forgiveness happens with the passage of time, after all the victims die off. My kids don't give a shit about Germany (which I guess is as it should be, my wife and I never tried to implant hatred of anyone in their hearts) but I'll hate the fucking bastards as long as I live. Not the individual German, but the country, the idea of Germany, the people they were. It's personal. I'll never forget the middle-aged Europeans we met who told us how we were the same age as their son or daughter would have been. One couple had a grocery store near our first apartment, and their daughter would have been the same age as my wife. It was heart-breaking. But even that hatred is weakening as time goes on. We moved away, Heidi (the mother) passed away, we just don't think about it that much.
<<The Twentyeth Century saw geonicide in several places that we don't commonly remember , but we excoriate the perpetrators who afterward lost the power to cover the crime , or the diplomatic clout to brazen it out..
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We excoriate. Good word. We excoriate. They don't feel a thing, but we feel good excoriating. We don't have the power to punish but we sure as hell have the power to excoriate. Words, words, words, just streaming off the keyboard. It's cathartic, makes us feel a little better for shooting our mouths off, but the perpetrators are laughing even as we are excoriating. They know that they have killed, and they also know that we never can, that we are just pounding our keyboards in impotent rage. That's gotta be funny to them.
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<<The Twentyeth Century saw geonicide in several places that we don't commonly remember , but we excoriate the perpetrators who afterward lost the power to cover the crime , or the diplomatic clout to brazen it out..
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We excoriate. Good word. We excoriate. They don't feel a thing, but we feel good excoriating. We don't have the power to punish but we sure as hell have the power to excoriate. Words, words, words, just streaming off the keyboard. It's cathartic, makes us feel a little better for shooting our mouths off, but the perpetrators are laughing even as we are excoriating. They know that they have killed, and they also know that we never can, that we are just pounding our keyboards in impotent rage. That's gotta be funny to them.
Ouch , that hits home.
But all the human world is in conversation, I like to think that the consensus that forms here and there has influence and that the communication isn't a waste.
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<<But all the human world is in conversation, I like to think that the consensus that forms here and there has influence and that the communication isn't a waste.>>
I think every fucking word I've written in here is a total waste. I've changed absolutely nothing. Mao was right: all power flows out of the barrel of a gun. Palestine and Gaza won't be liberated by words, even if they had the greatest wordsmiths in the world writing for them 24/7.
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<<But all the human world is in conversation, I like to think that the consensus that forms here and there has influence and that the communication isn't a waste.>>
I think every fucking word I've written in here is a total waste. I've changed absolutely nothing. Mao was right: all power flows out of the barrel of a gun. Palestine and Gaza won't be liberated by words, even if they had the greatest wordsmiths in the world writing for them 24/7.
That is good news for the US.
We have pretty good guns.
I have learned a lot from you , not just what you have put forward , but also what I had to go find in order to present arguement.
Wepons are used after decisions , heaven forbid that these decisions could have been better informed.
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That is good news for the US.
We have pretty good guns.
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Only if the US does not get into a row with the Chinese or the Indians, being as they have potentially as many gunmen as the US has people.
It seems that the AK-47 is a weapon greatly preferred over whatever the US Army is using now, if only because it is so much cheaper to produce.
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<<But all the human world is in conversation, I like to think that the consensus that forms here and there has influence and that the communication isn't a waste.>>
I think every fucking word I've written in here is a total waste. I've changed absolutely nothing. Mao was right: all power flows out of the barrel of a gun. Palestine and Gaza won't be liberated by words, even if they had the greatest wordsmiths in the world writing for them 24/7.
So, once again, Tee favors Israel to remove all safeties off their weapons systems, and let the Middle East know they're not going anywhere. Cool
Speaking of total waste, is this continued perverse aversion to responding to all POV, when they're, dare I say, obviously not some 24/7 accusation of lying, as "some" tried to claim. But hey, it's your credibility. Burn it as you see fit
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I think every fucking word I've written in here is a total waste. I've changed absolutely nothing. Mao was right: all power flows out of the barrel of a gun. Palestine and Gaza won't be liberated by words, even if they had the greatest wordsmiths in the world writing for them 24/7.
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I doubt that anything anyone says here will change anything. No one here has the power to change a thing. I suppose that since you have some relatives and others you know that live in Israel, that conceivably you might change the way they vote in Israeli elections, but the possibility of changing the situation in Palisrael by changing, say, Kramer's mind, CU4's mind, sirs' mind or anyone else's mind in here would not change reality in the slightest.
No one here has any actual influence in foreign affairs. I write senators and congressmen from time to time, but I have never received any hint that my letter has changed any minds.
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That is good news for the US.
We have pretty good guns.
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Only if the US does not get into a row with the Chinese or the Indians, being as they have potentially as many gunmen as the US has people.
It seems that the AK-47 is a weapon greatly preferred over whatever the US Army is using now, if only because it is so much cheaper to produce.
Are they better? All right then lets buy some , if there is one thing that has turned out to be true , it is that a Communist country will sell you the rope when it is time to hang them.
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I write senators and congressmen from time to time, but I have never received any hint that my letter has changed any minds.
These letters are all read and sorted , then measured by the ton.
Enough letters tip a scales, it does make a diffrence.
They are also mostly answered , the very poor answer I got from Max Cleland cost him my vote before the campaign got started.
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I think that AK-47's are so popular because they are cheap to produce, ammo is readily available,and no one has to pay any patent rights to the inventor. I believe you will find that they are produced in many different countries.
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<<I write senators and congressmen from time to time, but I have never received any hint that my letter has changed any minds.>>
Yeah, me too, but Canadians always reply with bland and meaningless answers on beautiful stationery with an embossed Parliamentary crest. Since the elections on both sides of the border are fixed, it's an exercise in stupidity for the letter-writer to bother. In the US, at least they keep tabs on the numbers pro and con, although as you can see in the bail-out, it didn't make a God-damn bit of difference.
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I think that AK-47's are so popular because they are cheap to produce, ammo is readily available,and no one has to pay any patent rights to the inventor. I believe you will find that they are produced in many different countries.
Which of these reccomends them for our use?
The effective range of the M-16 (m-4) is a lot longer. In open country this is an advantage worth a few dollars.