Pasha
Defend Kebab
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User ID: 481
Pasha
Defend Kebab
5d ago
Great news! Now that we established Israelis live long enough and we shouldn’t care about them dying of causes which aren’t statistically important, we can finally stop sending them massive amounts of direct and indirect aid. Imagine how many Africans can be saved from aids in exchange for stopping a single ballistic missile hitting Tel Aviv.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
6d ago
Israel is not supposed to be “a Middle Eastern country”. It’s supposed to be a European colony situated by historical coincidence in Middle East, offering safety to a minority religious group of Europeans who deemed themselves too vulnerable in Europe. If the best you can say in favour of this country that it offers its citizens better survival rates than the civil war Iraq or Syria, then it’s quite a failed project. This is of course not a fringe remark, there is a reason why vastly more Ashkenazim live in the US than in Israel and Israel is turning into a madhouse of the most lunatic religious Ashkenazim and low human capital Mizrahi Jews.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
6d ago
Israel has good relations with the current dictators of Jordan and Egypt, both held in place by enormous American aid and effort so that they would keep having good relations with Israel. It always has to face the possibility that in an Arab-spring like event or a US withdrawal from Middle East, it will be once again bordered by very hostile governments.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
6d ago
This is nonsense in the same way that people argue terrorism kills less westerners than sharks or lightning strikes and therefore caring about terrorism exposes some bias or ignorance. With your same logic, one can show that traffic accidents or obesity is much more dangerous to average Israeli than any hostile action as well. What are you arguing about then? Let’s get cutting the IDF budget for healthy eating campaigns.
But of course this is all atrocious nonsense. Just like how you should of course care many orders of magnitude more about a sentient adversary trying to kill you compared to random accidents, your own state security forces murdering you knowingly to avoid an awkward situation for the politicians is something again many orders of magnitude worse and more troublesome.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
6d ago
That’s a lot of words for saying “I don’t like the people who mention bad thing so I will make up an imaginary argument in my head and win it”. Congratulations I guess.
The OP uses the Hannibal directive as an example of how Jews are very unsafe in modern Israel in a way they aren’t in pretty much any other modern country. This is trivially true no matter how much you foam about the true intentions of the people who mention this uncomfortable fact.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
6d ago
North Korea is backed by two giant nuclear superpowers directly bordering it. Its main adversary is literally at the other end of the globe. Israel is in quite a different situation
Pasha
Defend Kebab
6d ago
Wall Street Journal literally 2 days ago:
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/washington-struggles-to-rein-in-an-emboldened-israel-14fa3a74
A senior administration official said the White House coordinates closely with Israel and has considerable influence over Netanyahu because the prime minister knows that “the United States literally is the sole reason the state of Israel exists.”
The idea that the US assistance is not crucial because Israel is a high income country on paper is either extremely motivated reasoning or just an indication of knowing pretty much nothing about the situation.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
6d ago
Strangely, it looks to me like very few early Zionists seemingly actually justified Zionism in Palestine in terms of Yahwe and high level of Jewishness etc. These were mainly secular socialist/liberal/masonic people. Yet the emotional pull of the religious land seems to have had overridden any cerebral secularism.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
6d ago
You seem to be claiming that Hannibal directive (or more broadly an IDF strategy of killing hostages if necessary to stop hostage taking situations) isn’t real but then instead of explaining yourself you just prose about some crypto Hamas supporters.
When I talked to Israelis about this topic pretty much all seemed to take the existence of such a strategy as given and necessary because Middle East. Do you have any evidence that this is a made up conspiracy?
Pasha
Defend Kebab
6d ago
Unlike almost every other person talking theoretically here, I actually did go to school with corporal punishment. I am not even old this was mid 2000s. I do remember that it was 1) quite good at establishing teacher’s authority 2) pacifying the troublemaker kids into learning a bit or at least not disturbing others and 3) extremely discriminatory. Girls virtually always got a pass, so did the boys with middle class or higher parents. I remember vividly the day when an inspector visiting the class noticed the wooden stick in the corner and remarked to our teacher that the ministry doesn’t approve of this anymore. It disappeared and never came back.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
13d ago
Being multilingual is not a stable situation. Languages exist in a hierarchy wrt each other and their relative strength changes over generations often drastically. In the modern world without some heavy nationalist pressure all but the highest prestige language(s) typically dies out. Surely you have some good experience with this process as an Indian who writes long internet articles in English?
Pasha
Defend Kebab
13d ago
You are spot on with the difficulty of b1->c2 and Anglos seemingly thinking they know a language at about a2 level. Passport bro Spanish might as we’ll be a new creole at this point.
But I don’t agree at all that language is just a tool. Obviously it can be wielded like one when necessary, but for most people the significance of the languages they speak and teach their children is that your language determines your group identity much better than any other marker. You literally cannot be part of a society if you cannot speak its languages to the desired degrees (in modern nation states this is often a single language spoken to native level, but historically it can be multiple languages spoken at different levels like my example of the Ottoman Greek). Any shift in culture and identity must go hand in hand with language shifts. If your children don’t speak the same languages as you you can bet they will find your culture foreign.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
13d ago
Both of these things are true in degrees. Humans are obviously capable of learning at least 2/3 languages well given the right social setting and motivation. There are endless examples of this even in the modern world. But they will almost never know all of these languages at a high literary or native-passing level. When multilingual societies exist it’s always with a certain prestige hierarchy of languages.
Typical setup is something like 1 language representing high culture, 1 language for of commerce and 1 is for talking to your grandma. For example an Ottoman Greek of 1890 might read his novels and newspapers in French (always obsessing about having perfect grammar and spelling), do business negotiations and bureaucracy in Turkish (noticeable accent, lacking high vocabulary, but can talk to important men about important things) and in the evening talk to his female relatives in Greek (short sentences, familiar topics, constantly inserting vocabulary from French/Turkish, might struggle to write). This social structure is extremely common in history and is dishonestly presented as proof of how people can be “multilingual”. This man is not a “Greek” yet, he is an “Ottoman Greek”. He sends his sons to the new Greek high school and hopes they will one day read and write their higher ideals purely in Greek instead of Turkish or perhaps even French.
Even the most educated people can typically do high culture in 1-2 languages maximum and any other language acquisition will have to come at some cost. I have in fact lived a short period in Singapore and got to observe a bit how Singlish works. Most people I met who were highly proficient in English (and could code switch to mostly neutral American English) had very limited ability in their parents tongues. As you go lower in social strata you meet more people who juggled 2+ languages daily but weren’t that good in either of them.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
13d ago
It wasn’t chilling, but it was definitely enraging to watch the initial videos without any context other than police brutality. A bunch of cops slowly killing a man who seemed helpless while dozens of people around begging them to stop. After the body cam was released (showing he is high as a kite, very violent, already losing his breath due to the drugs etc) I swore to myself to never again come to emotional conclusions from video content without A LOT of autistic context
Pasha
Defend Kebab
19d ago
Can someone explain to me why these companies are open sourcing their models? Developing/training this stuff seems enormously costly, what’s the business case for just giving it away?
Pasha
Defend Kebab
27d ago
I also did such dating, no judgment. Replied under the other thread
Pasha
Defend Kebab
27d ago
Main driver in wmaf relationships is usually the Asian woman being very into the man and doing way beyond an equivalent white women to keep the relationship going. I have seen this countless times and experienced once myself dating such a girl (I am Turkish, white presenting enough for East Asians). It’s definitely quite a pleasant and attractive feeling as a man when a woman works so hard for you and this is the main attraction for most white men in such couplings.
I still think white women would definitely win in an “equal” setting where they aren’t insufferable and fat. Unfortunately they often are in relative terms.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
28d ago
I doubt you could get an article published suggesting this but if you look at the revealed preferences of almost any other group of people when they have any choice to mate with Europeans at all, this seems quite obviously true. “Western” bit is a stretch though. Slavs or actual Caucasians obviously win over English/French at physical beauty. Southern Europeans too imo.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
28d ago
It’s not necessarily looking ugly or strange but the fact that someone can’t figure out that they look off-putting even though they could fix this with some work, is profoundly disturbing. It suggests something unhinged about you as you are the sort of person without anyone in your life to tell you such a thing. What did you do to drive everyone away? What other social norms are you oblivious about?
Pasha
Defend Kebab
1mo ago
I am surprised everyone seems to be missing the obvious explanation. Bezos is a guy who has been transitioning from businessman into a power player in American elite and needs to build up connections with the media, capital and political elite. She is probably an absolute operator who knows everyone, seen everything and can plot power moves in a way very few people are capable of. And she obviously knows how to take very good care of a man.
Another similar businessman, Elon Musk just tried his hand in politics obviously without the guiding hand of such a woman. Look how that turned out for him
Pasha
Defend Kebab
1mo ago
In what way? I am seriously struggling to think of any analogoes other than a vague “it isn’t going as planned”. And even then it’s going badly in a wholly different and opposite way. In the occupied territories Russia has zero resistance and can govern as if everything is normal. But the initial battle plan was a fiasco. This is the exact literal opposite of Iraq invasion
Pasha
Defend Kebab
1mo ago
I don’t think I understand your cop-out unless you are saying “some women like bald men”
Pasha
Defend Kebab
1mo ago
There are many (much much greater) injustices in the Ottoman collapse and many people who constantly try to “fix” them. You see them often standing trial in The Hague or topping CIA most-wanted lists for crimes against humanity. Kurds didn’t get a state because they are a loose combination of mountain tribes who speak a somewhat similar language to each other with zero history of having a state or associating with each other politically. It’s not a coincidence any Kurdish political group immediately becomes a proxy servant for a larger state.
Speaking of proxy politics, did you ever actually wonder why Iraqi Kurdistan is a relatively stable safe and prospering place? Would you mind googling a bit about the Turkish military bases (136 of them according to BBC) in the country providing this security or how much of their economy is based on trade and investment from Turkey or how Iraqi Kurdish politics actually manage to stay stable? (Hint: it’s totally controlled by two clans which are both Turkish state proxies and compete/rotate for offices peacefully via negotiations with Turkish foreign ministry)
I understand you have some personal grudges against Turkey and Iran but how much more do Syria and Iraq need to be weakened for this great pro-western Middle East to emerge in your imagination? Have you by chance checked any news since year 1999?
What are these “secular people” in Turkey going to do once in power to please you? Can you give me some examples of how Turkey is a more Islamic country today than in 2001? Also I am looking forward to some examples of any Islamitising influence out of Turkey that caused anyone ever any trouble. Somehow Sunni jihadi movement is entirely funded and armed and manned by the Saudi and Qatar, both hardcore American allies/clients, but the grand strategies for fighting it never involve fixing any great injustices in those countries
Edit: yeah kebabs are good but they are good literally everywhere. Is Erbil the only place you ever visited in the Middle East or something?
Yes I am. Turkey is an ally and military/economic partner to Israel and has always been, regardless of what politicians on both sides like to say in public.
Also I live and pay taxes in a country that does send the direct/indirect aid.
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