JarJarJedi
Streamlined derailments and counteridea reeducation
User ID: 1118
JarJarJedi
6mo ago
I'd think by now Trump got so many messages his inbox is permanently full. They already tried to smear him, jail him, bankrupt him, murder him... I don't think he needs any more messages to get the idea there are some people that aren't exactly in love with him.
JarJarJedi
6mo ago
There is likely to be a far greater actual number of deaths than what's reported
That would be true if "reported" number were the number that matches the known casualties. Nobody in Hamas is interested in reporting anything like that. Thus, actual numbers bear no relation to what Hamas is reporting - it could be much less, it could be much more, Hamas reported numbers are just propagandist exercises. Sure, they can't report 1 millions people died from an airstrike on a single house, so they have some constraints on their reporting, but if they say 47 people died, nobody is going to contradict them. "Actual" isn't even seen in the vicinity of it.
as well as a huge number of civilian deaths relative to combatant, perhaps in the area of 2:1 at best, in all likelihood far worse.
This is a completely baseless assumption. IDF takes a lot of precautions to allow civilians to evacuate before engaging in certain areas. These efforts are well documented. They do not avoid casualties completely, and sometimes there's just no possibility of it - like having an active fight with Hamas striking from the midst of civilian population (there are numerous instances of rocket launches from "humanitarian zones" - it makes sense, if IDF says they won't strike certain area, that's exactly where you want to deploy your most precious resources, doing otherwise would be stupid) or high-value target is located in the presence of their family, etc. So yes, of course there are civilian casualties, and a lot of casualties (since Hamas is an irregular military) for which their status is impossible to determine, but numbers like "far worse than 2:1" are completely baseless. US army btw is much less sensitive to civilian casualties in overseas conflicts than the IDF - for the simple reason they can pretty much always get away with it.
JarJarJedi
6mo ago
Thanks for the quote!
“If they’re indeed U.S. money, it seems there should be no taxes on them at all
My paystub would like to be the witness of the opposite. It's full of money, and so much of that money is so much taxes. My savings account - which also is entirely composed of money - is taxed on the capital gains also. And, of course, none of the investment bullion coins are ever used as money, this is plain bullshit - nobody is using gold dollars, which could cost from $400 to $200k or above, depending on particular coin, as a legal tender, even if in theory one could. One has to be a complete idiot to do so. But if such an idiot exists, and buys a gold dollar for say $400 and then uses it as legal tender at its $1 book value, I do not think the IRS is going to charge any capital gains taxes there - moreover, one could likely claim a $399 tax loss here and the IRS would likely accept that.
I'd say it is surprising how such weak bullshit appears in official Congressional record and is discussed and not laughed at derisively, but unfortunately it's not surprising at all and I have to admit I've seen worse than that. Still, very weak water. No surprise at all it's not successful.
JarJarJedi
6mo ago
but something, somewhere, still had to burn for it.
I weep for those hydrogen atoms that were forced to combine into helium, probably without their consent, and for that mass that were converted to energy to provide me with my civilized existence. Let this be an acknowledgment we all live from the energy that once was the mass belonging to those native hydrogen atoms.
JarJarJedi
6mo ago
However, capital gains on bullion remain taxable by both state and federal governments
What's the argument for treating this specific investment differently from all other investments?
JarJarJedi
6mo ago
You suggested that this number is untrustworthy,
It is. Its only source is a terrorist organization known for lying about casualties many, many times.
and countered by citing Israeli statements that it killed 17k Hamas operatives
I didn't "counter" anything, I just provided a source of information. Whether or not you believe these numbers (about 10k of which are validated with names and identification, but the rest is an estimate) does not change the fact that presenting unverifiable numbers from extremely untrustworthy source as a fact is misleading and wrong.
but on the face of it this is not a refutation of the 40k figure.
It was not intended as "refutation" of anything. I do not have the exact numbers, but there is a lot of research - including one that I quoted - that indicates Hamas numbers are bullshit. I do not have better numbers, and I think nobody does, but it is not the reason to treat numbers which are bullshit as if they were factual.
or this represents the best effort at a refutation that can be made with Israeli numbers
It is neither "refutation" nor "best effort" - again, for best effort see the actual research (some of which I quoted, but more available) on the actual numbers. Simply parroting Hamas is not research. Even with this research, probably nobody has any figures that aren't an extremely rough estimate - and people who could improve it are very, very invested in keeping the numbers as dirty as possible, because it serves them much better to inflate the numbers.
and found a UN one saying
"UN" here likely means Hamas again - the only UN organization on the ground is UNRWA, and UNRWA is a) using data provided by Hamas sources (the report quotes "Gaza ministry of Health", which is Hamas structure) and b) is thoroughly structurally infiltrated by Hamas by itself - by which I mean, very many UNRWA workers are themselves, personally, Hamas operatives, and enough of them directly participated in October 7 atrocities that UN requested US courts to provide immunity to them for those crimes. That is going beyond the obvious fact that UN and especially "human rights" branches of UN vehemently hate Israel and regularly single it out for false accusations of atrocities, while ignoring much worse events happening anywhere else.
I assume they were not 17 year old children-on-paper but phenotypically obvious younger children?
And why exactly do you assume that? UN traditionally counts everybody under the age of majority, even if killed on the battlefield with weapons in hand, as "children". And Hamas gets them very young - by 17, they can operate a Kalashnikov, an RPG and an IED quite well. There's no indication in the paper that "children" means anything but "anybody under 18". I do not make any specific claim on the age distribution of those you are mentioning, but just "assuming" out of the blue that it means what you want to mean is completely unfounded.
around unless one is positing Hamas was holding bring-your-kids-to-work day.
Which is exactly that they are doing, only it's not only a "day", it's everywhere and all the time. We're talking about irregular military, with no identification, using blending into the population and hiding in (and under) high-resonance civilian structures (schools, hospitals, mosques) as the primary military tactics. This is not just "bring your kids to work", this is "being surrounded by your - and others - kids at work is your work, because they are the reason you're still alive". Given the relative power balance, Hamas quickly loses any direct soldier-to-soldier engagement with the IDF. They can only do two things - hide and ambush - which becomes harder and harder as IDF controls more territory, since you have to get out periodically to eat and bring supplies, and territorial control means you get caught eventually, just ask Sinwar - or blend into the civilian population and attack from the midst of "bring-your-kids-to-work". That's the only way they can fight, so no wonder this is exactly the way they are fighting.
JarJarJedi
6mo ago
Please explain which word in the description "Hamas operatives" that I used is giving you the trouble?
JarJarJedi
6mo ago
Another hint is the recent declaration of a famine by FEWS
Gaza gets more than enough aid to feed the people there. Of course, the distribution is challenging, with Hamas still being on the ground, still being very interested in presenting the picture of mass starvation, and also of course the whole process is grotesquely corrupt, with the aid which is supposed to be free being sold, etc. But even given that, there's no mass starvation is Gaza. There might be some nutritional imbalances and food quality issues, I mean living for an extended time on basic foods probably not a lot of fun, but that's a different picture.
and I can see the argument where if your enemy is taking refuge in a hospital, then destroy the hospital
But that's not what happens. I mean, "if" here is redundant - every single hospital in Gaza is used by Hamas as a base, it is a fact. There's absolutely no question about it, and the same of course is true for every school, mosque and other building with lower probability of IDF just blowing it out from the sky. But hospitals are not just destroyed with everybody in it. What is done about it is the hospital is surrounded, and then evacuated, and then it is searched (with multiple Hamas tunnels, weapons caches and often explosive traps inevitable discovered). Of course, this does not always goes smoothly - Hamas operatives sitting inside the hospital sometimes get ideas that shooting at IDF may be fun, and get the return fire, and so on. That stage is usually when civilians get hurt, but it doesn't usually take long to eliminate all active resistance. During the evacuation, of course Hamas operatives will pretend to be the sickest patients in urgent need to be in another hospital - e.g., in Kamal Adwan the first evacuating ambulance had 21 people inside, out of which 13 were completely healthy Hamas operatives (IDF has pretty good face recognition and by now very extensive lists of Hamas members, so it's not as easy as saying "I'm a sick civilian, please let me go"). The civilians that aren't identified as Hamas are provided with tents, generators, food and field medical facilities. Do civilians get hurt in the process? Yes, they do, but it's not like the whole thing is destroyed and everybody inside is instantly dead (though this is exactly the story that was told when Islamic Jihad hit another hospital with it's rocket and they tried to sell it as IDF attack - they counted 500 or so casualties within minutes, they're good like that, and nobody in the press cared to doubt it). Does replacing proper hospital facilities with whatever field medicine can be provided lead to some additional casualties? It probably does, but I don't think anyone has any accurate count of it.
JarJarJedi
6mo ago
the nice bits where people want to live are often much smaller
"Nice bits" are much more defined by neighbors than anything else. I mean, there's not a lot of people living in, say, Montana (compared to the area). Maybe it's because it's cold in winter? But how people live in Alberta, Canada then which would have even harsher winter? I think given enough infrastructure (which is downstream from people paying for establishing it) a lot of places would be fine for people to live in. Maybe not everybody gets to live in places with 100% optimal climate - even then people live both in Florida and in Alaska, so obviously not everybody has the same understanding of the optimal climate - but there are a lot of places with perfectly livable climate (given modern infrastructure) and a lot of them right now is completely empty. Like, not "rural" but just nothing at all for miles and miles. I personally enjoy having some empty spaces and don't really want to convert 100% of Earth surface to human habitat, but I can't help noticing there's a real lot of capacity out there, much more than needed to accommodate another billion. How to do it properly is a tough question, but livable space doesn't seem to be a major issue here.
JarJarJedi
6mo ago
America might be a country of immigrants, but tell that to the Pequots.
Native American cultures indeed has been largely wiped out by European settlement. But America hasn't ceased to be the country of immigrants since the Piligrims arrived, and there were many other ethnic groups that came later. Scandinavians, Irish, Italians, Jews, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Cubans... and many others. And yet, it did not destroy the Protestant culture in America - at least not in the way that the Europeans destroyed the Native American ones. It looks like America can deal with the permanent immigration just fine, under some conditions: a) immigration is limited to the numbers that could be successfully assimilated within reasonable time b) the immigrants actually see the host culture as human culture they have to at least coexist with, yet better - accept and c) the host culture itself is strong and independent enough to provide the immigrants with some framework to which they have to adhere - if there's just "diversity is our strength" and nothing else, then there's nothing to assimilate and everybody just keeps whatever they got, without forming a joint culture. I think, in keeping with these conditions America can welcome Indians just fine (and people like Vivek, for example, are a decent example of that) - but I don't think open borders would preserve these conditions.
JarJarJedi
6mo ago
Bridges and tunnels are definitely legit military targets and always have been, same for railways, depots, ports, etc. Power plants are trickier since many of them serve predominantly civilian population, but e.g. in Yemen they were attacked (of course, Yemen has targeted Israel civilian targets many times, so they do not have much standing to complain). In general, since the advent of the total war concept, the industry - power, manufacturing, warehouses, supply routes, etc. - has been consistently targeted as part of the war. Russia's war in Ukraine is a bit unique as they are trying to pretend they are not waging a real war but just "special operation" to "liberate" their Ukrainian brothers from the clutches of the Nazis who they elected, but if we don't take this bullshit seriously, targeting manufacturing and energy infrastructure seem to be a pretty common thing in war. And certainly in the event of "real" war there's no surprise they have plans for that, any serious army would.
Compare with the upwards of 40K dead Gazans.
While doing so, remember that the 40K number is provided by Hamas, which is extremely motivated to inflate the number and is known to lie about pretty much everything. There's absolutely no possibility of independent verification of these numbers, so they can not be compared with verified and documented numbers like IDF casualties. Here: https://henryjacksonsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/HJS-Questionable-Counting-%E2%80%93-Hamas-Report-web.pdf is some analysis of the Hamas numbers. Again, it is probably impossible to know the real numbers. IDF estimates they killed about 17 thousands Hamas (and whatever smaller fractions there are, like Islamic Jihad or PFLP) operatives. Probably not a very accurate number either as I doubt they bothered to search and identify every single killed combatant. Beyond that, I am not sure how can one make any supportable numbers.
JarJarJedi
6mo ago
Palestine: a year in review.
I suppose there should be a link somewhere for it? Right now it doesn't link to anything.
JarJarJedi
6mo ago
I am not sure what exactly Russia is constructing (a fascist empire would be a good general description but it lacks specific details) but it has very little to do with what we understand as Western civilization, and it is ideologically opposed to it. You can call it "civilization-state" in the meaning of its own, peculiar to that state, civilization which is built on the principles alien to the Western one, and that's exactly my point.
JarJarJedi
6mo ago
Could be just some bot farm closing this year's budget.
JarJarJedi
6mo ago
And the reason they don't because it's only needed when you can't use iCloud, and you can't use iCloud when your country is debanked for starting a war. I don't know how Apple's internal project management works, but I suspect a task "make data migration work if my country is under sanctions" is not very high on the list.
JarJarJedi
6mo ago
using them apparently interchangeably with "anti/pro American strategic interests"
That's nonsense. Having war in the middle of Europe is not German or Polish or British or Spanish or Greek or any other European interest. Russian imperial plans is not "American" problem, it's the problem for everybody who is part of what we call "Western civilization".
That's not the same thing really as being 'pro Western civilisation'.
True. They are allies. That was my point.
Putin actually leans into a lot of Christian elements
Of course, Russia's ideology has always been that they are the "true" Christians and all the non-eastern-orthodox Christians are heretics, and thus taking over Byzantine inheritance and serving as sole protector of the Christian faith is the Russian destiny, thus it's called the "third Rome". Putin invented nothing here, he just reheated the policies of Russian Empire. Of course, this implies inherent conflict with the West, who also considers itself the continuation of Greko-Roman civilization - they are the fakes, and Russia is the true heir, so until they recognize this fact, there can be no peace (though there could be some temporary tactic armistices and alliances, of course).
"Russia is the enemy of American-led global supremacy"
Again, nonsense. Russia is the enemy of the EU as much - likely more - as America. Of course, if you want to go back to the Holy Roman Empire, maybe Russia isn't the enemy of that, but it's the enemy of everything the Western civilization is now, and not just tactically, but strategically - at least until it abandons the "third Rome" ideology, which definitely won't happen while Putin is alive.
I personally believe they assisted or overlooked Ukraine in destroying the Nord stream pipelines and therefore participated directly in crippling "western civilisation" for the foreseeable future.
You can believe whatever you like, but some German politicos being bought by Putin is not really a sign that Europe wants to submit to the glorious Russian empire. Some politicians, sure, would like a share of Gazprom billions, no doubt about it. But those politicians don't represent much beyond their own greed.
JarJarJedi
6mo ago
Saudi Arabia (I mean the royal family) are huge friends of Western civilization. That's like their entire survival strategy, has been for decades. They took major part in US-USSR proxy war if Afghanistan, for example (on the US side), and many other projects too. They may have very distinct customs internally, but they never positioned themselves as being in active existential opposition, quite the reverse. As for Rwanda and Zimbabwe, I have no idea what works there and probably nobody cares either.
America leverages its technology and its economy to destroy those it disapproves of.
"Disapproves of" is the big lie here. America may disapprove of a lot of things, but the problems with Russia are way, way beyond "disapproval". That's the country that a) started a hot war in Europe and b) pretty much declared itself as an the eternal strategic enemy of the Western civilization. I think they don't have much platform to complain some Western things are working less than smoothly there. And no, not being able to easily copy information from one American iphone (which you can still buy) to another American iphone (which you can still buy) so that you can use an application created by American company, is not properly described as "being destroyed by America". In no world, in no universe, in no circumstance it is.
it doesn’t give much of a damn what the rest of us in ‘Western civilisation’ think.
Most of Europe, except some folks being directly paid by Russia and some folks who proclaim their love of Russia out of stupid contrarianism, aren't exactly in love with Russia either. Those who border it very much aren't. And, the position in existential opposition to the West is the official Russian doctrine, so there's no matter what Luxembourg really thinks about it, it's what it is.
JarJarJedi
6mo ago
No, never. I don't thank my stove or my car, why would I do that?
JarJarJedi
6mo ago
We did this. No regrets.
JarJarJedi
6mo ago
because you can't pay for iCloud in Russia
Here's the source of the problem. If you live in an anti-civilization country, don't be surprised some Western civilization things are not working for you. It may be not your personal fault and you may not have another choice, but that's the problem and everything else is downstream from it. Apple and Meta products aren't built to cater for users that live in anti-civilization countries and never will be, and it's not reasonable to expect them to. Your choice is using R-Fon and Vkontakte or suffer what you must.
JarJarJedi
6mo ago
Looks like Ukrainians also starting to do something about the Russian fleet: https://maritime-executive.com/article/sanctioned-russian-ship-was-sunk-by-terrorist-attack-owner-claims
If so, we can expect more Russian-connected ships developing sudden mechanical problems and going under on high seas.
JarJarJedi
6mo ago
Yes, they have been denied emergency landing in every Russian airport.
The reason why it has been shot is likely that when it was about to land in Grozny, there was an attack by Ukrainian drones (not on the civilian airport itself, AFAIK, and Ukrainians probably had no idea what if anything was flying there). Since the previous drone attack on Grozny, which infuriated Russians and Chechens beyond description, they installed a number of air-defense systems, and they were running them in the "shoot everything in sight" mode once they learned about the new attack. Of course, they neglected to warn the civilian dispatchers in advance, because nobody bothered to think about it, so when the plane has been about to land, there was a kind of "oh shit!" moment, and they denied landing to it at the last moment, but it was too late, the plane already have been hit. Since it was an anti-drone missile, it did not destroy the plane, so if they shot the system down and allowed it to land right there it likely would have survived. But they did not, since nobody ordered that. And then they switched into the common Russian coverup mode, in which dropping the plane into the sea and claiming it probably hit some birds or Ukrainian drone destroyed it would be the best solution. Unfortunately, the pilots managed to land it - so there's an proof it has been hit by a Russian missile.
I wonder what Azerbaijanis are going to do about it? Are they going to just say "shit happens" and let it go, or there would be some consequences to their relations with Russia?
JarJarJedi
6mo ago
It's not about lying. People routinely interpret events the way that fits their convictions, and routinely dismiss things that may disagree with those convictions, often even without realizing it. That's why, for example, peer review in science exist. If somebody does some research which they believe is true, but then some reviewers point out the original researcher omitted or misinterpreted some facts and the conclusions are unwarranted, would it be correct to call the original researcher a "devious liar"? I don't think so.
I think we can safely assume Saul genuinely believed all he was preaching, and was convinced his Christianity is exactly what Jesus would want to happen. I can not know that for a fact, but I have no objection to assuming it. That does not contradict the fact that what we know as "Christianity" has been largely built by him and the veracity of all the claims ultimately goes back to him.
As a martial arts practitioner, I often encounter people claiming that they continue certain traditions - often claiming the same tradition coming from the same sources. Nevertheless, many of those people adopt radically different approaches and practices. How can that be? Are some of them - or all of them - liars to claim the traditional roots? I do not think so. Traditions are complex and changing with time, and different people take different things and develop them in different directions. Some directions flourish, some wither. Same tradition can be developed and embodied in many different ways.
Saul created his own embodiment of what he saw as a (quite young by then) Christian tradition, and that's largely what we know as "Christianity" now. For better or worse, there's no other. Even if there were, I think it'd be quite hard to claim one of them is more "true" than the other. But having none - at least none that is not traced back to Saul - what do we have to stand on comparing to Saul's Christianity?
So what? Again, I do not see how anything useful follows from that fact. Here's the only mention of gold in the Constitution:
We can immediately notice several things: a) it never says gold and silver are "units of account", it just bans states from introducing legal tenders that aren't gold and silver b) it actually contains no limits on the action of the Federal Government. Beyond that, however, the line from "states can only declare gold as legal tender" and "investment in gold can not be taxed" is not at all clear to me. It's like saying "English is an official language of the US government, therefore any university course taught in English should be free". Like what's the fricking connection between the one and the other?! Those are different things!
And BTW it is obvious this section only limits the States and not the Feds because Feds can enter into Treaties and Alliances, or coin money, of course. And when something that is prohibited overall is concerned (like Nobility) it is mentioned twice - once here and once in limitations on Congress.
But it did not. States still didn't make anything to be legal tender. Federal government made the paper dollar legal tender, but the Constitution contains no limitations on the action of the Feds in that regard. You may argue that was a stupid move economically or abhorrent morally (I agree gold confiscation definitely was), but there's nothing the Constitution can help you with here. And not by omission - there's a big part that contains things that the Congress can't do - just making paper money legal tender is not in the list.
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