This just in: Israel returns fire on Syrian targets from the Golan Heights

[Zevico]

Please tell me how the Germans humiliated the Jews for decades after the second world war.

Absolute defeat in war has a way of changing culture. In this case, the German people accepted that Nazism was a failure because of its absolute failure. So the Germans did not humiliate the Jews after the second world war. They recognised their folly. The Jews they victimised did not accept the Nazi logic and seek retribution against Germans. So yes, culture explains how people act and why. Plenty of people are poor but not all of them war, kill or steal. Some become rich over time. The reason why is culture. Some people embrace cultures that focus on creating wealth and bettering their standards of living. Others do not, often because of ignorance and lack of the opportunity to know that there is a better alternative; often from sheer ego.

[Kidlicious]

Absolute defeat in war has a way of changing culture. In this case, the German people accepted that Nazism was a failure because of its absolute failure. So the Germans did not humiliate the Jews after the second world war. They recognised their folly. The Jews they victimised did not accept the Nazi logic and seek retribution against Germans. So yes, culture explains how people act and why. Plenty of people are poor but not all of them war, kill or steal. Some become rich over time. The reason why is culture. Some people embrace cultures that focus on creating wealth and bettering their standards of living. Others do not, often because of ignorance and lack of the opportunity to know that there is a better alternative; often from sheer ego.

It's just amazing that you can speak like this when the Jews have stolen their land.

[Jon Miller]

If we are going back in time, without limits, then it wouldn't be WW2, but the >1000 years of oppression.

WW2 was genocide, not just oppression.

JM

[Jon Miller]

How did Jews steal their land?

I don't mean some incidents including the settlements. I mean the whole creation of Israel thing.

There was a war fought. Over both Jewish land and Palestinian land. The Palestinians lost. And wouldn't make peace. And continued to lose.

JM

[molly bloom]

Oh for christ's sake molly, a handful of people getting tortured is not as bad as sending all your young men to get shot to pieces, the economy going to shambles, strategic bombing of major cities, rationing of resources, and famine.

Firstly, not every war is WWI. Secondly- I'm frequently astonished at how eager some rightwingers are that many people around the world should continue to live under autocratic and despotic regimes, where basic rights are ignored or illegal, and where the government exists purely to bankroll the kleptocrats who run it.

I'm not astonished at the reluctance of those same rightwingers to ever go and live in those places though.

Oftentimes in a dictatorship, you can avoid being the tortured one by keeping your head down and not saying anything stupid.

So you and regina wouldn't last long then.

In fact, you could simply be a student, a professor, a journalist, a member of a trade union, the wrong religion, the wrong ethnic group, or have a neighbour or work colleague who disliked you.

Or have a member of the junta who liked your wife, or daughter.

Or have a member of the kleptocracy who wanted your house.

Or you lived in the way of a monumental building project to signify the Dear Leader's staggering achievements in economics, or leadership, or being chief dictator in the region.


But please, you and reg keep sharing your ignorance- it's illuminating in its own sad way.

Thankfully I've also never had to live in a war zone. However, given the choice I would go with the dictatorship.

Easy to say. Which one of the stellar examples of human progress would you have picked and when ?

Guatemala ? Haiti ? The Dominican Republic ? Argentina ? Romania ? Burma ? Equatorial Guinea ? Indonesia ? Uganda ? Paraguay? Zaire ?

Even apartheid South Africa, which H.C. and reg regularly moisten their gussets over, experienced a famine in the 1980s and had had food shortages and rises in infant mortality from easily preventable diseases- because 'under-nourished protein deficient children' * did not have the strength to fight the infections.

Of course the famine and the food shortages were restricted to the majority non-white population. And all this whilst the minority racist government destroyed grain and milk surpluses to keep prices artificially high.

As Albert Luthuli said:

Who will deny that thirty years of my life have been spent knocking in vain, patiently, moderately, and modestly at a closed and barred door ?

What have been the fruits of moderation ?

The past thirty years have seen the greatest number of laws restricting our rights and progress, until today we have reached a stage where we have almost no rights at all.

Sometimes, war war trumps jaw jaw.

*Survey conducted by Professor J. D. L. Hansen, Associate Professor of Child Health at the University of Cape Town. Research showed that Coloured and African children were dying at fifteen and twenty-five times the rate of White children, and that gastro-enteritis, pneumonia and t.b. were the greatest killers.

A second survey, conducted a few years later, revealed that an eighth of African children between the ages of seven and fifteen living in the Pretoria area suffered from protein deficiency, and a further fifty-six per cent were in the 'low' category.

A previous survey had established that only 0.2 per cent of White children suffered from protein deficiency. The same survey showed that twenty-five per cent of African children suffered from a Vitamin B2 deficiency, while nearly 50 per cent were at risk from pellagra, due to a nicotinic acid deficiency.

[molly bloom]

And I suspect that it's true in Syria.

Mmm, when is living under a dictatorship like living in a war zone ?

“In 1982, the regime basically said, ‘That’s it. That’s enough. We have to deal with this once and for all. We have to show that we’re in control,’” Syria expert David Lesch told FRONTLINE for our November film, The Regime, an excerpt of which is embedded above. Estimates vary, but between 10,000 to 30,000 people are believed to have been killed or disappeared in the massacre that also left parts of the city in shambles. “It looked like a war zone,” remembered Syrian scholar Amr Al Azm.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/foreign-affairs-defense/syria-undercover/on-30th-anniversary-of-hama-massacre-syrian-troops-lock-down-city/

I'm not sure why there is so much dissent toward's Kuci's position

Fundamentally, because you're ignorant about much of 20th Century world history.

And the choice isn't 'dictatorship & possible life' versus 'war zone and certain death'.

And finally because you seem not to grasp that democracy, health care, free elections, the secret ballot, potable drinking water, the freedom to dissent, et cetera, are things that sometimes, people will fight for, at the cost of their own lives- if not to secure them for themselves, then for the next generation. Easter 1916, is an example that immediately springs to mind.

[molly bloom]

Nobody cares about me :/

I do- I was thinking about you and Siro when I read Friday's 'Guardian' . I don't pray, but I certainly hoped you were both safe.

[molly bloom]

So yes, it is Arab culture.

So American culture is 'only' Pat Buchanan or Jerry Falwell ?

You sure are stupid.

[Kidlicious]

How did Jews steal their land?

I don't mean some incidents including the settlements. I mean the whole creation of Israel thing.

There was a war fought. Over both Jewish land and Palestinian land. The Palestinians lost. And wouldn't make peace. And continued to lose.

JM

How clever.

[molly bloom]

On what planet did this conflict end 'decades ago?'

Regina Centauri. It's quite a dim planet, receiving very little illumination.

[giblets]

If politics were inexplicable there would be no point in discussing it. But human actions and politics are not inexplicable. What you're really asserting here is that you believe this to be true but don't feel the need to explain why. It just is. Well, who am I to question your faith, no matter how contrary to reality it may be?

Okay then. The Jews stole Palestinian land because they're selfish *******s.

[The Mad Monk]

So why did Hamas decide to start firing rockets into Israel? I don't know what they thought they would accomplish aside from Gaza getting raped again.

They never stopped.

Originally Posted by Wiki
Palestinian militants have fired rockets into Israel continually throughout 2012. According to a summary by the Israel Security Agency, 92 separate attacks occurred in October, with a total 171 rockets and mortar shells fired against Israel. Palestinian groups regularly planted bombs alongside the border and attacked Israeli farmers with rocket attacks.

After a week in which dozens of rockets struck Israel and Israeli conducted strikes against militant targets in Gaza in response, in a major escalation on 24 October, Gazans fired 80 rockets and mortars into southern Israel in a 24-hour period. Thirty-two missiles struck the Lachish region and 28 the western Negev. A rocket strike on the agricultural area of the Eshkol region severely wounded two Thai workers.

Q: Why is Israel killing Gaza leaders, and not West Bank leaders?

A: West Bank leaders haven't been randomly pitching 100 pound rockets into their cities all frikken year.

[Zevico]

Why is losing a war successful strategy for Hamas? Simple: losing is winning if you can make yourself out to be a good power and survive to fight another day with international support increased or intact.

http://pjmedia.com/barryrubin/2012/11/19/the-suicide-strategy-how-arab-forces-expect-to-be-weak-start-losing-wars-and-still-hope-to-win/

[giblets]

Losing is winning! Or maybe Hamas just can't win no matter what they do. Whatever sympathy they get will be from people who already hated Israel.

[Zevico]

Losing is winning! Or maybe Hamas just can't win no matter what they do. Whatever sympathy they get will be from people who already hated Israel.

Not at all. People's views are not fixed in stone. Enough propaganda can affect low information voters for example.