Darzin

Jews meaning Israeli citizens of which 1/5 are Arab.

In general I think if you can't stomach the rules of engagement in WWII you shouldn't be having a war in the first place. All these horrific wars of choice America has engaged in since has poisoned that discourse.

Civilian causalities are horrible but you can't just look at that as a metric, I doubt Nazi Germany managed five figures in terms of American civilian causalities and regardless America killed an order of magnitude more. Yet no one would deny that war was just. Hamas started a war they knew they would lose and are facing the consequences of that. Is it sad that innocent people bare the brunt of their decision yes. The same as the majority of Germans in WWII probably would have accepted peace once their cities started getting reduced to rubble. War is a terrible thing which is why unleashing it should be used as a last resort. But I don't think Hamas can hide behind dead Palestinian babies and more than Hitler could German ones.

Perhaps Hamas should have considered the fact that Israel provides the water and electricity to Gaza before starting a war.

Hamas defacto controls a state weather it's recognized or not with a GDP per capita higher then several sovereign nations. And what they have used it for is endless futile war. The borders of Gaza have stayed pretty much the same since 1948 and Israel voluntarily dismantled the settlements there in 2006. Hamas' "resistance" is not defending anything.

Hamas has controlled Gaza a place with fairly hard borders no settlers, no soldiers and no occupation for more than a decade. Rather than building it up into any kind of state they have used their sovereignty to launch endless futile attacks into Israel. These attacks have no purpose except to kill to civilians. There is no military utility to blindly firing thousands of rockets into populated areas. There is no goal for a Palestinian state in sending militia out of Gaza to kill festival goers and people in their homes. If Ukraine started raiding Russia just to kill Russians I'm sure the vast majority would condemn it. In fact these acts of "resistance" have irreparably harmed the chance for a Palestinian state. Many (most?) Israelis see Gaza as proof that any Palestinian state will only be used to launch endless attacks against them. The Israelis disengaged in Gaza dismantled their settlements and ended the occupation there and for their trouble have received sixteen years of futile attacks and war.

Nationalism and religion, the same reason that Jews flocked to the levant, while Soviet Jews refused to move to the Jewish autonomous oblast. They wouldn't even have to do that though it'd be pretty easy for Palestinians to get "a state" just not the state they want. Here is Trump and Bibi's peace plan (not exactly the most pro Palestinian people) and not the best deal yet it offers a state. Bibi may be bluffing but if the Palestinian leadership called that bluff they'd get a state. I think the Palestinian leadership and populace are pretty deluded about what they can get Israel has everything they want they don't have that much pressure to negotiate. The Arabs have lost every single war and now the Palestinians are in a weak position but they could easily get, a state, rather then moving away.

I don't know why the Palestinians would leave Gaza. Gaza has very hard borders that have been some of the most stable in the Israel Palestine conflict. It's one of the least disputed pieces of land in the conflict with no Israeli soldiers or settlements and no occupation. In every peace plan I've ever seen it forms a future Palestinian state. It's also not land Israel particularly wants. The West Bank is far more desirable to Israel because of cultural significance, holy sites and being the heart of ancient Israel. While the elevation is significant for military purposes. Israel wants to keep control of the elevated hills and the Jordan valley. You can't force Egypt to take Gaza, Israel has offered it to them before and they've refused. I doubt you could even bribe them. Egypt sees Gaza and Hamas as an actual threat to their government. Hamas comes from the Palestinian chapter of the Muslim brotherhood the current military government's archenemy and a banned and repressed organization in Egypt. Taking Gaza would be taking a city full of unrest and revolution, which is a non starter for a government whose biggest fear is another Arab spring. Hence, the capitol they are building out in the desert at the cost of billions of dollars. You're just never going to be able to offer them enough for them to risk their power and lives for that tiny scrap of land.

Yeah I think I misunderstood your point a bit. I would never say that the Middle East has the same level of religious freedom as the west just that the governments their are often surprisingly secular.

Most middle Eastern countries are fairly secular in terms of governance and laws. For example, You can buy beer and liquor in most of the Middle East, despite it being totally forbidden under Islamic law. The function of religiosity is more one in terms of culture, with the red lines and scared cows involving religion rather then say racism and tolerance as in western countries.

They want him to react but I think they may have miscalculated this. There is a decent chance they lose power in Gaza over this and have to go back to being just militants.

I expect these attacks will kneecap the growing western support for Palestinians. This is as much a mass shooting as a military operation. I've seen multiple videos of Hamas fighters shooting random civilians and just attacking the populace.

I've been disappointed with a lot of Western commentary regarding the breakaway republics of the former Soviet Union. They tend to treat them on par with the Donetsk and Luhansk republics, but those all formed much more organically then the Donbass republics, with many erupting into rebellion almost immediately as the Union disintegrated. If Georgia wasn't forced to stay in the USSR I don't see why the Abkhaz ASSR should have been forced to stay in Georgia for example. Now most of these breakaway statelets have become pawns of Russia by virtue of being tiny and unrecognized, but that wasn't always the case. I don't see why we should cheer the Georgian "reunification" with Abkhazia any more than a Chinese "reunification" with Taiwan and yet many Western commentators do. It's a small hypocrisy that annoys me.

Ukraine's relations with some of it's biggest supporters are getting disturbingly rocky over grain imports. Seems the Russians cancelling the grain deal is really hurting Ukraine. I'm not sure how much of this is Polish posturing for elections but it seems very worrying to me. I'd like Biden or some of the leaders in Western Europe to step in with some kind of subsidy deal to allow Ukraine to export grain from European ports at reasonable prices. Rather than having Ukraine desperately trying to flood the markets of it's European allies.

I know socialism is a slippery term but I really dislike the framing of government social services as socialism. Having a fire department should not be considered an example of socialism unless your the most unhinged of unhinged libertarians. A fire department or even universal healthcare in social democracies still exist in fundamentally capitalist societies with capitalist modes of production.

It's hard to see how China doesn't directly contradict wealth being a zero sum game. Under Mao China has a far more equal wealth distribution but was far poorer. Post Deng Xiaoping wealth inequality has skyrocketed but literally hundreds of millions of people have entered the middle class and even the standards of the working class have significantly improved. Wealth inequality has increased and yet everyone has benefited.

Virtually every single communist country with the exception of Cambodia under Pol Pot embarked on massive industrialization campaigns. The Soviet Union notably on it's collapse left several massive environmental disasters on a scale unprecedented in developed Capitalist nations. Industrialization is a function of modernity not Capitalism.

This has already happened with Hutchinson and Christie. It doesn't seem to have made much difference.

No, conservatives will use sexist and racial attacks against those they don't like, but it doesn't stop them liking women and racial minorities who agree with them. Sarah Palin was in many ways the proto Trump and the Trumpy type of Republicans loved her at the time despite her being a woman.

The Polish leadership pressured the pilot to land anyway despite the weather. This was 100% a case of a pilot doing unsafe maneuvers to please his boss and feeling the pressure of the VIPs in the back. The plane left Poland, there was an alternate airport available, it's really hard to see how the Russians could plausibly be blamed for the crash. Here is an exhaustive write up on the details.

No it's not. This is a total misread of the situation. China has not provided Russia any meaningful aid and has been neutral throughout the conflict. China has very carefully avoided supporting Russia too much. China is friendly with Russia yes but so is India. This is a Russian war through and through.

I feel like there is a bit of talking past each other going on in this topic. Obviously listening to an audiobook is just as valid and informative as reading a paperback book. But reading as a skill is pretty obviously different then listening to an audiobook, I'm surprised so many posters are ignoring that. Reading is a skill like any other that we can practice and get better at and is fundamentally different from listening.

I was saying the first part but not the bold. I mentioned he was a millionaire because there is a common belief going around that he was a billionaire when he wasn't. Stockton's pockets weren't that deep and Oceangate wasn't profitable.

It very much is true. Stockton Rush wasn't a billionaire, he was wealthy and had a few million to his name but the venture capital invested in Oceangate was several times that of his small fortune and still wasn't enough to do things properly. He could have never floated this venture on his own and even with all the investment and high ticket prices Oceangate was losing money each trip. It was all around unsustainable with too high overhead (even with every corner cut) and not enough paying customers.

It isn't "strong AI" and yet the company that made it has problems controlling it which should give people pause about strong AI.