SecureSignals
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User ID: 853
SecureSignals
1yr ago
Another follow-up, the Guardian is reporting that of the 9 killed, one was a 10-year old girl. I'm not trying to "won't someone think of the children!" here, I'm pointing out that Israeli IEDs don't magically not pose a threat to the civilians in the areas in which they are planted.
SecureSignals
1yr ago
I think this is about as great a scenario that we could possibly ask for from Israel.
Why didn't they make the US aware of it, then? Because they know the US would have opposed it to avoid escalating the conflict. So "this is about as great a scenario that we could possibly ask for from Israel" is so far from the US foreign policy position on this conflict, where are you even getting that from?
Why is the US foreign policy apparatus intent on avoiding escalation into a regional conflict but you're indifferent to it?
SecureSignals
1yr ago
Has the CIA done this in the war on terror? No, it hasn't. You know who has done this? Insurgents and Mossad.
The US was apparently not even in the loop on this operation, also making this another demonstration of Israel's insolence. The CIA would not have approved of this attack and it has not done similar attacks in its own War on Terror.
SecureSignals
1yr ago
FYI these were improvised bombs detonated in crowded marketplaces. That's why I said they are terrorist tactics. This is not a tactic the US has engaged in in its war on terror.
SecureSignals
1yr ago
This is incredibly disingenuous Hoffmeister. In the first place because, a single video instance is not enough to prove the statement "these explosives were not a danger to anybody standing near the person holding them". But even more so because you have no idea what injuries the people around may have suffered. Just because someone runs away doesn't mean they aren't injured.
What I find hard to understand is why don't you just admit that these explosives do create danger for the civilians around them, and then just say it's justified? We don't have any notion for how many non-Hezbollah may have been injured. But we have video evidence of one detonating within a few feet from children.
If those children were standing on the other side of that fruit stand, they would have been head-level with the bomb. So say it was "no threat to them" is just an obvious lie.
SecureSignals
1yr ago
Actually, the practice of using hidden/planted IEDs has had a terrible civilian casualty ratio which is why the United States does not use this tactic. That's not to say every single instance has harmed civilians, many IEDs in Iraq only killed Americans. But as a practice it's not considered good to flood public/civilian areas with hidden explosives, that is a terrorist tactic.
SecureSignals
1yr ago
That is absurd, obviously a bomb in a crowded place is a danger to people standing near the person with the hidden bomb. We don't have any numbers on civilian casualties yet, the ideas that these bombs didn't harm anybody standing near them strikes me as extremely improbable.
SecureSignals
1yr ago
Ok? It's obviously an IED. Traditionally, terrorists and insurgents in Iraq/Afghanistan have used IEDs to target American military personnel within planted, hidden explosives. Now Israel is using IEDs for the same purpose against Hezbollah. So why object to my statement that Israel is embracing/normalizing tactics using by terrorists? Just admit they are and argue it's a good thing if you're inclined.
SecureSignals
1yr ago
A drone strike also requires a chain of command to strike a certain target at a certain place, an IED does not. So some of these may have been detonated in schools, hospitals, or diplomatic facilities, crowded markets, places which would not be targets for drone strikes following a chain of command. Apparently the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon was injured, was the Iranian ambassador a target? There's no accountability like there would be for a drone strike.
The insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan also planted many well-placed IEDs which only harmed American military personnel. That is regarded as a terrorist tactic regardless. And obviously this attack is closer to an attack by IEDs than it is to a drone strike.
These are not "bombs in a market", because that implies that the market, in general, suffers the harmful effects of the bomb.
Obviously a bombing in a market causes the market to suffer the harmful effects? What are you even denying at this point? It causes obviously immediate disruption and panic and potential injury to bystanders. In the long term it creates fear and instability.
SecureSignals
1yr ago
You think this is closer to a drone strike than it is to an IED?
My objection is that IEDs in marketplaces are a terrorist tactic, and that we are probably closer to this becoming normalized.
SecureSignals
1yr ago
The US has already deployed an enormous naval presence to the region. It has vowed to defend Israel if it is attacked. The prospect of joining the war is very real, and it is already costing the US billions of dollars in aid and the expenditures involved in dedicating so much naval power to defending Israel.
It's also a diplomatic rebuff. The Biden administration has made its position clear- to avoid a regional conflict. For good reason. Obviously the Biden Administration does not believe this is in the best interests of the US. You can say that they are wrong, but to pretend "we just can't know if this is in our interests" is incredibly naive. What exactly does the US stand to gain from more war on behalf of Israel? How does the US benefit from a regional war? It doesn't, it can only be costly.
Everything you are saying now could have, and was, said on the eve of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Do you have specific reasons to believe that this hypothetical war will be more like Syria, and less like the Iran-Iraq War (two Middle Eastern countries going at it, the West basically unaffected) or the Six-Day War?
The Six-Day War led to an intractable quagmire in the entire region. But there is plenty of reason to suggest this will turn into a protracted conflict. Israel wasn't able to pacify Gaza in six months, much less six days. Against Hezbollah? Yeah, that's going to look more like Syria and Iraq/Afghanistan than the Six Day War because Hezbollah is more well-armed, financed, they are experienced fighters. They are entrenched. There is very good reason the Biden administration's policy is a negotiated settlement and not a regional war.
SecureSignals
1yr ago
Obviously if they want a full-scale war it makes sense to do this. I said it doesn't make sense unless they want a full-scale war.
SecureSignals
1yr ago
I guess it's strange to on one hand say, you only care if someone you know personally is drafted, and then on the other hand admit that these other wars have had terrible consequences. But since you don't know what the impact of war on Lebanon and Iran will be, you are indifferent as to whether or not the US goes to war with those countries?
It sounds like you're just carrying water, honestly.
I don't think it's uncharitable of me to suspect that you're making this false equivalence because you hate Jews, Mr SS.
Ok, what's the real equivalence? Is this attack closer to a terrorist attack, or is it closer to something the US has done in decades of waging war in Iraq and Afghanistan? Can you point to any conduct in the US in engaging in those wars that compares to this? It's unprecedented, and the closest base of comparison are terrorist attacks. If you don't agree, you can just point me to where the US has engaged in this in its own "War on Terrorism".
SecureSignals
1yr ago
Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria all being strong data points that ME war has negative effects on the home-front doesn't persuade you? Or maybe you don't think Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syrian wars have had negatives impacts on the US and Europe?
SecureSignals
1yr ago
Israel can defend itself and stop trying to use terrorist tactics to draw the United States into another ME war.
SecureSignals
1yr ago
I don’t particularly care if there is a “regional war” or not, provided that nobody I personally care about gets conscripted to fight in it
That's a really silly perspective. So if it causes a lot of damage to your home country- economically, politically, geopolitically, militarily, you don't care as long as you don't know someone who was conscripted?
SecureSignals
1yr ago
I don’t know, this just seems too badass and super-competent to not inspire some level of positive reaction among people who are not already committed to the pro-Hezbollah position
Some of us don't want a regional war, but Israel obviously does. What is the point of this except provocation? Intermingling hidden explosives among civilian populations is not impressive, it's called terrorism.
SecureSignals
1yr ago
Israeli Terrorism?
It dovetails with our recent discussion of how Israel has normalized the practice of assassination as a core strategy of warfare. And now watching these videos of pagers exploding reminds me of the videos I've seen of Islamic terrorism: Life going on as normal in a marketplace or something, then an explosion with women and children around. We will get more details about the deaths/injuries, but there are rumors of an Iranian ambassador being injured and there will most likely be injuries among women and children across Lebanon and Syria.
I just don't understand the point of an operation like this except to provoke fear and a regional conflict. It's not going to cause Hezbollah to surrender or significantly disrupt their wartime capabilities at the northern front. It's just a terrorist attack. Is the US going to publicly disavow this, or is rote terrorism now going to be normalized by Israeli operation in the region?
Ethnocentrism can manifest in subtle ways, like your ability to relate more to an application because its closer to your own experience or identity... But it's not even subtle. Jews are overrepresented by at least 500% their population proportion (probably more, I seriously doubt Hillel is counting all ethnic Jews despite your counterargument), White Gentiles are underrepresented by 60%. It's always tricky having an intuition for the far tail ends of distribution, It could easily be determined with data collection and crosstabs, but they don't want to do it.
Even if you consider the present state relative to what you believe to have been peak Jewish enrollment, the decline in the representation of White Gentiles is much more significant than the decline in the representation of Jews. And, I don't think there has been nearly as large as a decline as you are suggesting in Jewish enrollment.
Basically, the prospect that these Jewish-dominated college administrations are discriminating against White Gentiles is 100%. The prospect they are discriminating against Jews with the same weight they are discriminating against White Gentiles is extremely unlikely to me. Maybe they still discriminate against Jewish applicants, but that discrimination is less. It's also possible the numbers of ethnic Jews are being undercounted and there is no discrimination relative to their academic merit. The only thing that is absolutely certain is that they hate White Gentiles and are driving them away from these institutions consciously.
That's interesting, how did it happen that you tutored mostly Jews for elite college admissions? It sounds like you participated in an ethnocentric apparatus you have denied exists. Do the admissions and administration at these institutions have similar sympathies and identification that directed you towards coaching mostly Jews on acquiring admission? It's difficult to determine without the data that they refuse to collect and publish.
There has traditionally been an ethnocentric equivalent for Whites vis-a-vis legacy admissions but that has increasingly been branded as racist and cast out. My alma matter has publicly disavowed legacy consideration as an instrument of white supremacy.
In the absence of data, it's impossible to point to the zenith of Jewish influence over the Ivy League from the perspective of admissions to the student body. But even more so over the administration of the Ivy League which is more relevant in determining the responsibility for the staggering under-representation of White students in those colleges. Recently when this came under discussion, I pointed out that of 8 of the Ivy Leagues, 5 have Jewish presidents, and only 1 had a White president. But now, only a few months later, the only 3 non-Jewish presidents of those Ivies have all resigned under pressure by the Jewish lobby for anti-Israeli protests on student campuses.
Liz Mcgill, the only White Ivy president, resigned in August, followed by Claudine Gay (black) who resigned as president of Harvard and replaced with a Jew (Alan Garber), and very recently Nemat Shafik resigned as president from Columbia. So last time we discussed this, I mentioned that there were only 3 non-Jewish Ivy presidents, but since then all 3 non-Jewish presidents have been forced to resign due to fallout from campus protests over Israel while none of the 5 Jewish Ivy presidents have resigned.
A reasonable person could identify this as the Zenith of Jewish influence over the Ivy League, with almost-entirely Jewish control over the Ivy League, the forced resignation of every single non-Jewish Ivy president in the span of a few months, and harsh crackdowns on campus protests over Israel. Obviously the Zenith in administrative control is going to lag behind the peak admissions.
In 1922, the president of Harvard from 1909 to 1933, Lawrence Lowell, in favor of creating quotas for the admission of Jews, wrote:
The summer hotel that is ruined by admitting Jews meets its fate, not because the Jews it admits are of bad character, but because they drive away the Gentiles, and then after the Gentiles have left, they leave also.
I will allow you to dispute the causality, but what can't be denied is that, at the apparent peak of Jewish influence over the Ivy League since admissions have been loosened since the 1920s, White Gentiles have been driven away from these institutions by administrations with a large amount of racial animus towards White people.
SecureSignals
1yr ago
But why do you support restricting Visas if you care so much about meritocracy? The reason you wouldn't just give every slot to the top N of the world with no visa restrictions shows that it's not all about "meritocracy." There are other, important considerations.
SecureSignals
1yr ago
Jews being discriminated against less than the average white applicant because they, like, wrote an essay about their Grandma in the Holocaust or something would constitute a nepotistic advantage. The fact that the admissions officers are disproportionately Jewish would obviously lend credence to this.
It's impossible to know because they haven't tracked the data with the same urgency they have tracked the data they have pointed to in order to disenfranchise Whites from their own institutions.
SecureSignals
1yr ago
Harvard at least seems to think that the Supreme Court decision changed things.
Obviously they are going to say that so they don't outright admit their admissions process is illegal.
In any case, I thought the whole point of getting rid of affirmative action was so that we would stop caring about things like "[race] makes up [percentage] of the population and so deserves [percentage] of the seats." If you just wanted the racial spoils system inverted in favor of white people, then a lawsuit on behalf of Asians whose goal was admissions purely by test score was probably never going to achieve your goals.
Yeah, and I said as much. You aren't allowed to complain about discrimination towards White students, or claim that these institutions should be partial towards White students. You are only allowed to complain about Asians being discriminated against or support them being partial to non-Whites. I knew the ruling wouldn't change much in practice.
You said "this is about as great a scenario that we could possibly ask for from Israel", which actually flies against everything you have said in this comment? Who is "we" in that context? Not the country at large or its interests? By "we" did you mean the sideline popcorn-eaters? Why would it be the best they could ask for?
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