View on the recent Gaza/Israel stikes

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Sugarpop, you're trying to tell us the Israelis have no right to survive. Stop such genocidal nonsense yesterday if not sooner. Antisemitism rubs Adolf Hitler's runny mental shit all over your soul, and you can't get clean.

The Palestinians are being used as catspaws by the Muslim nations in the Middle East to fight a proxy war with Israel, over a land the Jews were in before ever there was a Muslim. If it was just between the Palestinians and the Israeli Jews, the fight would have been over by the 1956 Suez Crisis. Blame Jordan, Iran, Egypt and Syria: these are the nations that either still don't want peace, valuing their feud with the Jews over any peace and prosperity, or acted that way at one time -- Egypt's cleaned up its act most.

Consequently to all this, my sympathy for the poor Palestinians remains just about zip. They have to hang all their assholes, yesterday. They aren't doing that. What do you say about people who refuse to hang their assholes? Does the idea that asshole-sympathizing may be in play here come in at all, do you suppose?

[xoxoxoBruce]

It's raining.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

It's raining.

And so, this Michael Yon article sets forth yet another exigesis on just how those in authority in Palestine remain spherical assholes on the grandest scale available to them. To support this kind of behavior over that of the Israelis, whose forbearance should be the stuff of legend, shows you in the worst possible light, SP: as a complete whore for all that is evil.

{Edited at Classicman's suggestion: and before you blow up at me, read the rest of this thread, particularly post #268. Remember which contender in this strife is the democracy, and which are not.}

"Whore for evil" is something none can say of me. There are those, yet swimming in the great darkness, even yet unenlightened, who will complain about me all afternoon long, with an appendix after supper -- but one thing they cannot say is that UG attaches to evil. I scourge it. You don't feel like being scourged, then don't even be mistaken for an evildoer.

Now tell me: was this really what you set out to do??

[classicman]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

as a complete whore for all that is evil.

Edit that before its too late. That is/was completely uncalled for.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by classicman

Edit that before its too late. That is/was completely uncalled for.

I know I'm speaking harshly. I'm trying to tell her, in the strongest possible terms, not to be one of those. It would not be acceptable conduct. She can, I think, still pull back.

And to Redux: thanks.

[sugarpop]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

And so, this Michael Yon article sets forth yet another exigesis on just how those in authority in Palestine remain spherical assholes on the grandest scale available to them. To support this kind of behavior over that of the Israelis, whose forbearance should be the stuff of legend, shows you in the worst possible light, SP: as a complete whore for all that is evil.

{Edited at Classicman's suggestion: and before you blow up at me, read the rest of this thread, particularly post #268. Remember which contender in this strife is the democracy, and which are not.}

"Whore for evil" is something none can say of me. There are those, yet swimming in the great darkness, even yet unenlightened, who will complain about me all afternoon long, with an appendix after supper -- but one thing they cannot say is that UG attaches to evil. I scourge it. You don't feel like being scourged, then don't even be mistaken for an evildoer.

Now tell me: was this really what you set out to do??

So you are calling me a whore for evil? Nice. I'm done with you. You're an asshole, in the worst possible way.

[sugarpop]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Sugarpop, you're trying to tell us the Israelis have no right to survive. Stop such genocidal nonsense yesterday if not sooner. Antisemitism rubs Adolf Hitler's runny mental shit all over your soul, and you can't get clean.

No I'm not. Show me where I said that.
And I'm not antisemite, I'm antiZionist. There is a big difference. HUGE.

The Palestinians are being used as catspaws by the Muslim nations in the Middle East to fight a proxy war with Israel, over a land the Jews were in before ever there was a Muslim. If it was just between the Palestinians and the Israeli Jews, the fight would have been over by the 1956 Suez Crisis. Blame Jordan, Iran, Egypt and Syria: these are the nations that either still don't want peace, valuing their feud with the Jews over any peace and prosperity, or acted that way at one time -- Egypt's cleaned up its act most.

That is not accurate. As others have pointed out, Jews were not the first people on that land. It sounds to me like you don't have a clue as to what you are talking about with regards to the rest.

Consequently to all this, my sympathy for the poor Palestinians remains just about zip. They have to hang all their assholes, yesterday. They aren't doing that. What do you say about people who refuse to hang their assholes? Does the idea that asshole-sympathizing may be in play here come in at all, do you suppose?

Whatever. I came to the conclusion that you and I will NEVER see eye to eye... on anything.

[classicman]

As Allison and I drove around, lost at times, we came across Chinese laborers. She said the Palestinians are angry because the Chinese and other foreign laborers imported from abroad have taken the construction jobs that once belonged to the Palestinians. After all of the suicide bombings and other attacks, Gaza has been essentially sealed to stem the violence, a tactic which has been effective except for the rocket strikes.

Yet world sympathy seems to rest with the terrorists, and Israel is condemned for ‘trapping’ the Palestinians inside Gaza and for any retaliation for the missile attacks.

Europe, for instance, was nearly unanimous in its condemnation of Israel after the Israeli Defense Forces finally counter-attacked in Operation Cast Lead.

I considered going to Gaza, to hear the other side of the story, but after having seen so many terrorists attacks up close, there seemed little value in taking such a chance with my life, just to hear ramble from a leadership that condones and executes terrorism and launches thousands of rockets at school kids.

It makes no sense to risk life and limb only to allow people who intentionally target children to talk through my pen. Not until they stop the terrorism. Those members of the press who transmute Hamas’s crocodile tears into ink only exacerbate the disease.

It simply does not make sense for us to support a Palestinian state, when at every turn they demonstrate that they will simply become more powerful, richer terrorists, with longer range rockets.

Very good Bruce- another somber read from a very credible resource.

[Undertoad]

Hamas steals UN food aid

Wheeee

[sugarpop]

It's just a big fat mess over there. Leave them be and let them destroy one another.

[xoxoxoBruce]

If Israel should be condemned for oppressing the Palestinians by cutting them off from the world, what about their neighbor Egypt?

[sugarpop]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

If Israel should be condemned for oppressing the Palestinians by cutting them off from the world, what about their neighbor Egypt?

Why should we even be involved in the politics of nations halfway around the world? I understand we want to promote democracy and human decency and all that, but frankly, those countries have their own cultures, cultures that are very different from our own. Who are we to judge another culture? We cannot simply judge those cultures by our standards. It isn't right to do that. And how is our intention to "spread democracy" any different than Russia trying to "spread communism" during the cold war? We cannot just go around forcing our way of thinking and being on everyone else.

I personally believe in the whole Star Trek creed of not interfering in the development of other cultures, other than offering certain kinds of aid. We certainly shouldn't be fighting wars for people, giving them weapons or funding wars. Yes, we should work with groups like Amnesty International and the UN to fight genocide, and use NATO to help establish and keep peace in volatile regions, but more than things like that, I think we should mind our own business.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by sugarpop

Why should we even be involved in the politics of nations halfway around the world? I understand we want to promote democracy and human decency and all that, but frankly, those countries have their own cultures, cultures that are very different from our own.

What we see with democracy (I speak in a loose sense) is that it's simply better than autocracy or oligarchy: democracies are slow to war and powerful to prosperity, both of which are very good things, acclaimed by anyone not a sociopath. A culture with an oppression enshrined within it is a culture that is sick, cancerous, bad -- and if its sickness is infectious, this is very bad.

Who are we to judge another culture? We cannot simply judge those cultures by our standards. It isn't right to do that.

Ah, yes: moral relativism. You've been persistently schooled in it, I see. Your education will no longer be impeded by your schooling, SP, when you abandon this philosophy -- for until you do, you will not be able to distinguish that which is good from that which is evil. That's whatcha call dumbth. Somebody wants you incapable of moral choices, and that incapability will screw your entire life up. Hey, when I was a college frosh, I had some of these ideas too. But I haven't been a college frosh these thirty years now; and there's been some growing up done. I gave up any trace of moral relativism when I noticed I couldn't distinguish good from evil by those means. I've never had cause to return, either.

So, in the end: Why do we make moral judgements? It's because we are moral beings, however imperfect, however perfectible. They of the leftward lean would like us not to be so, that they may the better perform the hemipygian deeds, adhere to the ill-thought philosophies, that their baser natures accustom them to. It ain't for me, Sugarpop. For me, it's been, Been there, did that maybe a little, and eww.

And how is our intention to "spread democracy" any different than Russia trying to "spread communism" during the cold war? We cannot just go around forcing our way of thinking and being on everyone else.

When democracy is spread abroad, prosperity follows, oppression recedes. Where was there prosperity in the Soviet bloc? Was there anyone not oppressed? Even the Party animals and the nomenklatura could end up shot or in the Gulag. (Holding unpopular opinions/being not politically correct in a nondemocracy is very bad for your health. Here in a democracy, it just gets you into internet flamefights.) There's your answer for how very different we are from those. You have not been taught our quiet nobility yet, SP, and you need it now.

As for "forcing:" we don't force, no matter what the anti-American Left will repetitively say. There are approximately eleven million people in the States right now who personify my argument. These are the illegal immigrants. They want to partake of our way of thinking and being so badly they break in to get it. Quite illegally. Think about that for a minute. They're here because they want what we do and how we do it more than anything else, including not getting arrested. Add to these eleven million the ones who ARE here legally, and you've got quite an example. Show me another nation with that kind of attractiveness. Again, how many nations are getting their doors kicked down and fences climbed over, to partake at literally any price? I can think of some other places that are really really nice; I've seen a few of 'em; but I can't think of one to compare with our City on the Hill for sheer mass of people trying to get in.

I think we should mind our own business.

I say all this is our business, and unless we turn into a hermit kingdom, it will remain our business. We are the most successful capitalist democracy ever seen, anywhere on the globe. We achieve that by our global reach, and we cannot do without it. Humanity will prosper all the better the more it imitates our best features. All of humanity's androgenic woes come from not practicing America's ways, but sticking with ancient despotisms and oligarchies. The wisdomless invertebrates who taught you do not comprehend this -- their bowing before ancient despotisms and oligarchies is not understandable, except in terms of closet fascism for the braver/more crazed ones and abject cowardice for all the rest.

The Left would very much like you not to understand any of this, Sugarpop, for once you do, you turn away from the Left as an aggravating aggregation of egregious dweebs -- a committee with three or more legs and no brain. The leftwards people do not value general prosperity, nor good conduct. They are the Left because they value only Power, with a capital P. They are the latterday Ebenezer Scrooges, monomaniacally fixated on but a single thing. Scrooge illustrates how it's the dose that makes the poison -- and hints that you'd have to be absurdly lucky to fully learn his lesson as late as he did.

Your life's education begins with an openminded reading of Russell Kirk -- though Robert A. Heinlein isn't bad this way either, only he wrote fiction and Kirk's an essayist.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Many antisemites attempt to cloak themselves under the allegedly more respectable mantle of antiZionism -- but their fraud is transparent. Frankly, I reckon antiZionist Jews to be completely out of touch with their own people's interests: it is manifest that statelessness is a very dangerous condition to be in in Europe. With a Jewish State around, abuse of Jews has much declined -- is that not historically demonstrated?

As for yelling about "show me where I said that," SP, need I tell you that when you write words, there are thoughts behind the words -- whether these thoughts are acknowledged consciously or not. Ideas birth words -- and it is not difficult to see what those ideas are. Nor is it very complicated in your case to see that your words leave a scent of the anti-Semite on you. Anti-Zionism is, well, the realm of two schools of thought, and I wouldn't give two bits for the both of them taken together: stupid, unpractical Jews who can't see their own people's best interest in the mortal world, and stupid and brutal bigotry against Jews from outsiders. I'd not ally myself with either silly bunch.

As others have pointed out, Jews were not the first people on that land. It sounds to me like you don't have a clue. . .

Here you show a mighty misreading of what I actually said -- you're listening too much to what you were unfortunate enough to think I said, instead: I did not say "first people," I said "the Jews were in before there was ever a Muslim." The Jews have a defensible prior claim, if you want to assign sacredness to who's there before whomever else. Stop kidding yourself, or I will both chew on you like a dog toy and insult your intelligence the while. You aren't winning this. Not ever.

[Aliantha]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Here you show a mighty misreading of what I actually said -- you're listening too much to what you were unfortunate enough to think I said, instead: I did not say "first people," I said "the Jews were in before there was ever a Muslim." The Jews have a defensible prior claim, if you want to assign sacredness to who's there before whomever else. Stop kidding yourself, or I will both chew on you like a dog toy and insult your intelligence the while. You aren't winning this. Not ever.

So by your logic here UG, you'd support indigenous American people blowing up non-indigenous simply because they have a 'defensible prior claim' to the land?