JarJarJedi
Streamlined derailments and counteridea reeducation
User ID: 1118
I'm not sure what "even Jerusalem Post" adds here. JP does not have any sources besides Hamas' reports. Nobody does. They discount it in certain way, but it's just baseless and unverifiable assumptions, I don't see why it should be given more weight that anybody else's. Are you able to find any substantiation to these figures that ultimately doesn't converge on believing Hamas' word?
I don't have any independent sources either, I just do a rough estimate based on what I learned about how much they are willing to lie. Like, if Israel attacks a building and they say 10000 people died, nobody is going to believe that - too much. But if 5 people died and they say 50 - there's a chance that goes through. Saying something like 7 would be pointless - too little added, saying something like 500 would strain the credibility too much, probably - the real multiplier is somewhere within those bounds. Of course, I have no means to accurately estimate it either beyond that.
JarJarJedi
4mo ago
I don't think it's "stupid". I think it's a power move - showing that in fact those who want the monuments to stay are not "fellow citizens", but a disgusting basket of deplorables, and moreover, that the opposite side is feeling so strong they do not need to hide their sentiment anymore, neither out of respect nor out of practical necessity.
then they should have been permitted to leave and set up their own nation
But why would they be permitted anything? That would require considering them equals and peers, entitled to the same rights and freedoms as everybody else. But they are not, they are a disgusting basket of deplorables. They are not permitted anything except to shut up and be thankful they are not being sent to reeducation camps. At least not yet.
Because if you go the "we won, bitches, bend over and take it" route, then you are setting up for more civil wars
The Left feels they own pretty much every institution in the nation, and the right owns what? A bunch of rednecks with guns in their basements? They spoke openly and repeatedly at how they consider it to be laughable against the power of the government. And they are not entirely wrong in that. The Left has been willing to apply both chaotic power (antifa, BLM, now Hamas support gangs) and the lawful power (look what happened to Proud Boys and Jan 6 protestors) very forcefully and successfully, and the Right, with all their bragging about how many guns they have, has not been able to do jack about it. So no wonder they are very confident about pressing further, and are totally unafraid of any escalation. They feel they can handle anything, and easily.
JarJarJedi
4mo ago
I wonder why places where people live are called "towns" in Lebanon but "settlements" in Israel.
insisting that Hezbollah withdraw thirty miles away from the border.
Actually I think this is a mistake here - 30 km or 18 miles. This is not a random number - that's where the Litani river is - and by UN Security Council Resolution 1701, Hezbollah is not supposed to have any military presence south of Litani. Of course, Hezbollah has been blatantly ignoring it all the way since 2006, but now Israel is insisting on finally implementing this decision.
20k in Gaza
It is important to note here that the only source for this data is Hamas, these numbers are not verifiable outside Hamas, and people giving those numbers are the same people that told us there were over 500 casualties from an Islamic Jihad rocket falling on Al Ahli hospital (they said it was Israeli attack) which was a complete fabrication. Moreover, they declared the number within less than a day (which would be utterly impossible if they actually counted anything). Given that absolutely no identity information is disclosed about any of the supposedly deceased (except Hamas terrorists high profile enough to deserve official acknowledgment when they are eliminated) - not that, again, it'd be possible to verify that information outside Hamas - a smart person would consider these numbers with enormous amount of skepticism. The real number is probably around 10x less.
No, it's not. It's actually full of lies. Palestine part being just chock full of it - in no way it happened like it's described there, that the Arabs just peacefully sat there and were unprovokedly attacked. And phrases like "The British handed over Palestine, with your help and your support, to the Jews" can't cause anything but a bitter laugh from anybody that knows the actual history of the question - the Jews had to fight the British bitterly to just get the partition agreement (which was basically "the Arabs get all that they managed to capture by now and the rest goes halfsies", except even less fair) - which Arabs soundly rejected and went on genocidal offensive against the Jews, because they thought why share anything if we can just murder them all and take everything? By the time, btw, they had several massacres of the Jews under their belts. I am not implying they may not have some legit complaints - in a multi-century conflict, everybody has something to complain about - but presenting it as "they just attacked peaceful us" is a humongous lie. And anybody who believes it does not understand anything in the history of Middle East and is not qualified to have their own opinion about current or future events there.
Of course, his ethnographical and anthropological exercises are pure ideological bullshit too, but that's expected. What's unexpected is that anybody on the West - who actually have access to the wealth of historic sources - can buy it. But I guess since "education" now means learning each other's pronouns, I should't be too surprised.
The next fallacy is "you steal our oil". The actual picture is exactly the opposite - if not for oil, nobody would care even a tiniest bit what Arabs think or what happens to them. If not for Western glut for oil, none of the rich Arab states - and none of the personal riches of his own family - would exist, and none of them would have even the tiniest bit of influence on the world's events that they have now. The only underlying reason why any of it is possible is because the West is sending torrents of money and resources towards the oil-extracting nations. Now, it is true that most of these nations are shitholes in a myriad of ways, and the torrents of riches are distributed among a limited number of powerful people (Bin Laden family soundly in the middle of it) while the rest of the people are kept miserable and oppressed. But it's not the West who oppresses them - the West gives them, collectively, way more than enough resources to make a good living. It's their own political system that does it to them.
Then there's a magnificent switch - while the West gives us money, which are stolen by our own leaders, it's not any of our fault, it's the West's. However, we on the other hand are entitled to murder anybody on the West, because unlike us, who are not responsible for absolutely anything that happens in our shitholes, everybody in the West is responsible for what happens to us. You can't have any more self-serving and psychotic world view - and yet somehow it's "reasonable argument"? Not in a world where "reasonable" still means anything.
Interesting is the mention of Sharon there. As some of us know, Arabs are very salty about Sharon because one Arab faction killed a lot of Arabs from another Arab faction in Lebanon (which is a pretty routine occurrence, but this time there was a way to blame a Jew for that, so it goes into history book as an unique and singular atrocity that the likes of it never happened before). He is also the guy who evacuated Jews from Gaza and gave it to Arab self-government, who promptly elected Hamas to manage it. You can witness how it worked out in real-time now. All this bullshit about "if you just leave us alone with our Sharia we'll be peaceful" was tested by Sharon himself - and as everybody but the idiots expected, it turned out to be a horrendous lie, which cost Israel over a thousand lives, unspeakable suffering and continues to extract its cost, and will cost more lives and suffering inevitably. Of course, Sharon had an excuse that he may have not known that it's what would happen. We do not have this excuse. And yet, some people still call it "reasonable".
I admit I have to skip a lot of drivel about how we're supposed to be good people and then maybe the warriors of Islam won't murder us (lie: they would anyway), but did I miss any other "reasonale" argument? I don't think so, but you are more then welcome to formulate it and point it out to me.
JarJarJedi
4mo ago
I was distracted lately by other events and did not follow Karabach matters that much, but do I understand it right that there wasn't a major fallout from this beyond Armenian population moving to the mainland Armenia? No mass casualties, no genocide attempts, the casualty numbers are relatively low. Pashinyan seems to be OK with taking the L and putting the matter to rest, and despite some protests, his position seems to be shared by the majority in Armenia - even if they are understandably not happy about it, they are willing, at least for now, to let it go. And if Aliev is content to not escalate it further, e.g. by cutting through Armenian territory to Nakhichivan, the matter could actually get settled?
JarJarJedi
5mo ago
To assume that groups like "all Jews" or "all capitalists" have a lot of common interests and their intersection is substantial and brings them to concerted action is quite contrary to observed evidence. Jews are notoriously disagreeing on pretty much everything - thus the saying "two Jews - three opinions", including such things as if Israel existing is a good thing (there are Jews that think it isn't, as we unfortunately just recently confirmed) and a myriad other lesser issues. Same for capitalists - judging by the donations and public expressions, there is a capitalist behind pretty much every ideological stance (including, mind-bogglingly, one that declares capitalists should be shot and their wealth should be taken away). In this situation believing in such concerted action requires going against a lot of evidence and experience.
However, if we take the government bureaucracy, evidence suggests they frequently act in concert, these actions are frequently not in the interest of those who they nominally serve, and these actions are frequently aimed at increasing their power and almost never aimed at the reverse. In this situation, believing that they are "deep state" requires dismissing no evidence and embracing all of it. There's the difference.
JarJarJedi
5mo ago
But it's not "something else entirely". The only change is that a) it's not secretive and b) there's no explicit plotting as designated activity, otherwise the claim is the same, the result is the same. And I would claim most "conspiracy theorists" would agree with me that this is an acceptable description of what they claim is true about the deep state. If you ask any of them "if we assume all you say about deep state is true, except for the secret plotting part - there's actually no any documents called "plot" and all the actions are taken in the open - would you say it confirms what you thought or overthrows it completely?" - I think nearly every one would say "confirms".
JarJarJedi
5mo ago
It is obviously false that there's an organised secretive organisation embedded in the government bureaucracy that's plotting to subvert democracy and implement their own nefarious and evil agenda.
If you remove "secretive" and replace "embedded in" with "which is", and also replace "plotting" with "acts as" - why it is obviously false? Especially if we assume their own agenda is to grab as much power as they possibly could and never let it go and never allow any restriction and reduction of their size and their influence? It's not obvious to me at all that this is false. It certainly looks consistent with the empirical data.
JarJarJedi
5mo ago
For one InBev that kinda sorta noticed there are Nike, Target, Disney and many others that keep being relentlessly woke.
JarJarJedi
5mo ago
You use images of hot chicks, fast cars, sweeping vistas, and the fucking moon landings
Nope. You talk about one specific set of ads. But there are many more contexts than that. You do advertise luxury cars with hot chicks. But not cheap used family vans. Not mortgage brokers and realtor services. If you want to sell somebody a dream of laying hot chicks - you use hot chicks. If you want to sell somebody a dream of a happy family in a comfortable van and a cheap, but surprisingly decent looking McMansion - hot chicks won't help you there. Happy family pictures would however.
"why do you care so much?"
I can answer that (no, I am not under that pseudonym, I am completely different person) - because I am told everywhere all the time that I should. Every company has an equity statement, keeps racial statistics, and brags about representation. Did you try to apply for a job lately? Literally every single company would ask you for racial data (they say it wouldn't be used in hiring process, but I wonder why ask then?). Every sizable company constantly brags about these things, and pays people to deal with them and then promote their actions in public. I'd be super-happy to go to my happy pre-woke world where I could just ignore it, where I did, but it's kinda hard when you are surrounded by messages that claim that's extremely important 24/7. You start noticing things.
Why is your (and apparently so many other's) sense of self and feelings of validation so wrapped up in being represented on screen.
It's not. But I still notice things. It's a blessing and a curse.
JarJarJedi
5mo ago
White men don’t exist.
Almost true, but not exactly. My bank, for example, has a landing page where they show the usual stock pictures of happy people, presumably after using their bank services. I haven't seen a white male for a while there. But recently there were - not just one, but two. And a kid between them. If you get my drift. So there are situations where white men exist. Still waiting for a situation where white heterosexual men exist...
those making the decisions are so ideologically committed that they’re willing to hurt their own bottom line in order to “do the right thing.”
I think this is an experimentally established fact? I mean, Bud Light, Victoria Secret, Disney?
they do so with no guarantee that their rival agency is going to follow the same set of rules,
Here I think they have pretty good guarantee. First of all, they are all product of the same indoctrination system. Second of all, if somebody steps out of the line, online mobs - and in the case of especially stubborn target, actual mobs with actual weapons - will take care of them pretty quickly.
It's not a conspiracy - at least no more than things like money or English or Christianity are conspiracies. It's all in the open.
Was listening recently to Orwell's biography, and while they discussed Orwell's service at the time of the Spanish Civil War, I realized that most books I've read about the subject were from people either directly or indirectly supporting the Communist side (Orwell, of course, served on the red side and was wounded pretty gravely there). While I am not saying what they wrote were lies, their sympathies inevitably colored how they approach the matter. So I wonder - can anybody recommend some good works about the period which aren't written by leftists? I am not looking for right-side propaganda, but for an honest effort, just not from the left side, because I already seen those and now want to see something different if possible. Can be fictional or documentary, but I don't want a dry historic "this happened, then that happened, then that happened" but something more narratory, engaging and explanatory even if it's a documentary.
JarJarJedi
5mo ago
Good point. While I was living in California and visiting San Francisco, I have seen very flamboyant gay and trans types, and I am not personally a huge fan of that. I also have seen people sleeping on the streets, shooting up on the streets and defecating on the streets. To be honest, the latter types bothered me much, much more.
JarJarJedi
5mo ago
Also, I have known several trans people (and worked with some on various stages of transition) and none of them were those flaming antifa provocateurs one sees on the internet so frequently. None of them brought that part of their identity to work (I knew only because I have known them pre and post, so it was hard not to know but if I didn't I may not have known at all), none of them were doing anything different from any other guy or gal, in fact. Maybe out of work they were living a wild life, who knows - I certainly did not and neither did the rest of the coworkers. I can't say how many of the trans people are like that and how many are different, it's just a few anecdata points, but I suspect there are much more such people than the militant flamboyant types. So if the OP isn't going to dig for it, he'd likely would never know. Of course, if he plans to do romance at work (bad idea anyway) then maybe more care is required, but otherwise I wouldn't worry too much.
JarJarJedi
5mo ago
If you mean a real phobia, there's probably whole bookshelves already written on how psychiatrists treat phobias. Any competent one would know at least where to find these bookshelves.
If you mean political disagreement that is called "phobia" because of the desire to present opposing opinion as some kind of abnormality ("only a deeply sick person could have an opinion different than mine!") then there's nothing to cure, and the best way to lessen disagreements - though in no way a guaranteed one - is to respectfully and logically present your argument and respectfully listen to the other side's one.
JarJarJedi
5mo ago
Yes, inflatable/blow-up decoys are used massively and are rumored to be the source of the comical Russian reports of destroying more of a particular system or type of armament that existed in reality. It's not that Russians just invented it - somebody likely destroyed a decoy and reported about it upstream, where the figures are aggregated, only they destroyed a cheap wooden box or balloon. Most hits aren't easy to conform and also the low level soldiers have low incentive to do it - who wants to turn from a hero who destroyed a million-dollar American war machine to a doofus that spent expensive ammunition on blowing up a cheap painted balloon? There are numerous interviews online with manufacturers of these decoys, some of them look pretty convincing on video. Russians seem to be catching up on the game too, so I expect by now it happens on both sides with some frequency.
JarJarJedi
5mo ago
Nonsense
I was talking about the partisan structures specifically, not the government structures, and about open and openly practicing Marxists who do not hide their ideology and openly come to elections with it, not Soviet spies pretending to be regular Americans to get to governmental secrets. Maybe "infiltrated" in the hindsight wasn't the best word to use as indeed it also can be used for clandestine activities, but that's not what I meant. I meant if you are an open and genuine Marxist, and do not hide it, you would be much more at home at Dem party now than back then, and conversely, there are many more such people in the party now than there was back then. I would imagine back in Stalin's era there were much more hidden Soviet spies (who we can assume being Marxists by default) in partisan and governmental structures, and even if Russian spies are there now, they aren't probably Marxists anymore. But that's not the part I was talking about.
I'll address the other points later, hopefully, a bit busy now.
JarJarJedi
5mo ago
OK in this case I am sorry for getting it wrong.
JarJarJedi
5mo ago
the unprovoked displacement
What "unprovoked" displacement? Local Arabs had been fighting Jews for several decades by then, and had several successful mass murders under their belts. What does the word "unprovoked" mean in your dictionary?
Of course, the "disaster" was that the goal that they - local Arab population and outside Arab countries - set out to achieve, which is, in modern terms, genocide of the Jews and ethnic cleansing of Israel's territory - not only has not been achieved, but led to significant worsening of the situation for many Arabs. It is a completely accurate description of the result of their decisions to reject a peaceful coexistence and go for the war of elimination instead. That ended in a disaster for them.
JarJarJedi
5mo ago
When was the last time you saw ordinary Republicans protesting for those things?
Republicans are usually much less supportive of intervening into other countries - even tyrannical ones - when they don't mess with us.
Biden has issued statements calling for democracy in Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, etc, against their Marxist-Leninist regimes
If you look from proclamations to actual actions, though, you see that the policy towards tyrannical regimes is always softened - that happened with Obama, and that is also happening with whoever pulls Biden's strings, which some say is the same Obama. Be it Iran, be it Cuba, be it China - beyond some perfunctory words, it's never any serious action. In fact, it's plenty of the actions in the opposite directions.
The think tanks and NGOs that catalogue the human rights crimes of these various countries and demand democracy are also pretty much always staffed by progressive democrats.
I don't know what these NGOs have in their files, deep in their computer drives, but if you look on their public stance, the impression one gets is that there's about two countries that ever commit human rights crimes worth discussing - one of them is the US, and you can easily guess the second one.
Of course, if you take the longer view you will Democrat Presidents taking military action against Marxist-Leninist movements quite regularly throughout the past century.
Well, if we talk about the whole century, the Democrat party wasn't as thoroughly infiltrated by the Marxists as they are now. Marxists were mostly on the fringe, and they are full mainstream now, with wide representation in all institutions of the society. Thus, of course, what has been then and what is happening now is rather different.
JarJarJedi
5mo ago
that Islam is just another religion and that, like Christianity and Judaism and other bronze-age religions that were once full of barbarism and genocidal ideology, the civilizing effects of modern Western liberalism will eventually secularize them
I say, who cares? I mean yes, maybe in 400 years the barbarians' descendants would be as civilized as we are now, or much more, and their descendants would look with horror on what is being done now and conduct ceremonies to honor the innocent victims of Islamic terror in 20th-21th centuries. Why should I care whether it happens or not? I won't live in 400 years, I am living now and the barbarians are committing their barbaric atrocities now. Screw that 1000-year stare the ivory tower idiots try to sell us because they read a couple of history book and now they think for some reason they are oh so much smarter than the rest. If there are barbarians now, they should be judged now. If some crazy Christian dude would come and try to burn heretics on the central square of my city, I think he should be jailed, and if he resists, shot. I want the same treatment for crazy dudes of all religions. If declaring "it's just another religion" helps that, so be it, I don't care. I don't see why either way would matter here.
The thing we need to realize here is we don't need any special case for Islam. On the contrary, we should stop applying special cases for Islam - and that's what is happening constantly in the wokesphere. Rape? Of course it's horrible, one of the most horrible sins imaginable! Oh, you mean it's done by fanatical Islamists who proclaim to be oppressed? Ah, that's different business, we need a nuanced approach here! Woman oppression? That's bullshit, maaan! Oh, you mean woman oppression in Saudi Arabia? Maaan, you can't apply your morals there! Well, yes, I can. Screw that. That's the root of all evil here. If we ever manage our culture to stop doing that, we'd win 99% of the battle already.
But I am pessimistic about Islam, in its current form, being capable of coexisting long-term with other ideologies
Again, I say I don't care, it's not my problem. I mean, it's not on me to figure out how to make requirements on Quran work in the modern world. What needs to be done is the uniform demand to live by the modern world rules, no ifs, no buts, no coconuts, no discounts and "nuanced approaches". If you can do it and keep the Quran - fine, keep it. I don't mind at all, I don't care what you do to achieve it, whatever works for you. If you can't - you should be either forced to, or be forcibly expelled from the places where civilized people live. That should be the test - whether you can follow the civilized society rules.
JarJarJedi
6mo ago
This is beyond horrible, this is literally declaring people suffering from a disease subhuman and cutting off their rights.
BTW I'm sure this is coming from the same people that advocate for giving the drug addicts drugs, syringes and paraphernalia, for "harm reduction".
Is this the sort of thing the ACLU would take up the fight for?
Old ACLU? Possible. New ACLU? Only if you manage to woke-code it - e.g. prove that, say, minorities suffer from sleep apnea 5x from whites (may be plausible btw, given obesity numbers etc.) Otherwise - no chance.
JarJarJedi
6mo ago
True, honest people have nothing to hide from the government, and no reason to object to any coercive measure, as long as it's framed to affect only the lawbreakers. There is no historical example of the government ever abusing such measures or turning them against law-abiding innocent people. In fact, it is clearly impossible, as the person who the government prosecutes is clearly ipso facto not law-abiding.
JarJarJedi
6mo ago
Back then when I've been using IRC I've been running a log server with back history and notifications for my name. And people I conversed with (admittedly, as geeky and more geeky than myself) did so too.
The founding of the country was a long time ago, and the current powers on the Left consider the founders to be irredeemably evil racists, whose legacy should be wiped out. So I don't see how you can expect them to operate within the same ethical framework as the Founders did. In fact, we know they aren't - a lot of heinous crimes are easily justified by the Left as part of "decolonization" and "resistance"- why you expect they would make any exceptions for their ideological enemies? You can consult your modern history textbooks to see what the Left does to their ideological enemies when they get to power. None of the dead old white patriarchal male chauvinist pigs and none of the old parchments would stop them from doing the same. They openly and explicitly rejected this framework already.
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