coffee_enjoyer
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User ID: 541
coffee_enjoyer
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4d ago
Why do we need God
We are social creatures who pursue social things; that is 99% of our existence and joy, we are fish in social waters. God is a kind of social perfection which allows for optimal human flourishing (or the pursuit thereof) via social cognition. God is conceived in such a way that He supercedes all other social pulls and pressures. Functional descriptions of God, in which He is heard and obeyed because of His social force, are both prior to any philosophical speculation about divinity, and primary in the theistic world religions. Functionally, God is that which demands full attention and allegiance. If you have a community which has full attention and allegiance to God — the Blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see, to Him be honor and eternal dominion — and that God is good, even Love, then you have a good community. Everything else is implementation detail or distraction.
Why do we need the Christian God
The Christian God is especially good. The will and interest of God is shown in Jesus, who is widely considered to be one of the goodest persons ever, even by anti-theists. Christians have been at the forefront of relieving social and moral ills for centuries. There are 2000 years of odes and elaboration upon Christ which can be read by Christians (though some of this is theological, meaning it is worthless). There are 3800 years if you assume that Christ was foreshadowed in Genesis and Job, and if you subscribe to the ancient idea that every culture has a shadow of Christ, then you can see Him in every world myth. Even more importantly, Christians have the best and most reverent music.
The competitor to Christianity is just Islam, which has serious problems in terms of effecting wellbeing. Its liturgy is required to be in Arabic; its music (they don’t call it music) is set in stone; the figure of Muhammad is not as pristine as the figure of Jesus; its emphasis on Hadith makes it too legalistic and ritualistic to be truly utilitarian; some of the Surahs are no longer relevant; etc. This God is not your Father, but the Christian God is (ideal in an evolutionary sense).
Buddhism is irrelevant. Something like compassion meditation is awesome, and I’m sure there are some good stories. But this really isn’t good enough. Its not prosocial enough, its not dramatic enough, it doesn’t test us enough. If Christians wanted, they could steal all the good parts of Buddhism, but the opposite could not happen.
What were/are the flaws in previous/current societies that had at least surface level success (outside of the Modern West) that could be remedied with Christianity
I’m not sure precisely what you mean. Outside of the West, I can see Koreans enjoying better communities through Christianity, by inducing more sharing and fewer conspicuous status purchases. It could probably induce family formation. More selflessness means more philanthropy and less waste. That kind of thing. The current feminism hysteria could be cured by (1) revering the Mother of God, (2) revering Christ as the Saving Victim.
coffee_enjoyer
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5d ago
In the early Greek manuscripts of Luke
τοῦ ἡλίου ἐκλιπόντος / tou heliou eklipontos— “the sun was eclipsed.”
https://www.textkit.com/t/luke-23-45-eclipse-or-darkening/15248/4
Footnote A here: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2023%3A45-47&version=NET
Luke 23:45 tc The wording “the sun’s light failed” is a translation of τοῦ ἡλίου ἐκλιπόντος/ ἐκλείποντος (tou hēliou eklipontos/ ekleipontos), a reading found in the earliest and best witnesses (among them P75 א B C*vid L 070 579 2542) as well as several ancient versions. The majority of mss (A C3 [D] W Θ Ψ ƒ1,13 M lat sy) have the flatter, less dramatic term, “the sun was darkened” (ἐσκοτίσθη, eskotisthe), a reading that avoids the problem of implying an eclipse (see sn below). This alternative thus looks secondary because it is a more common word and less likely to be misunderstood as referring to a solar eclipse. That it appears in later witnesses rather than the earliest ones adds confirmatory testimony to its inauthentic character.sn This imagery has parallels to the Day of the Lord: Joel 2:10; Amos 8:9; Zeph 1:15. Some students of the NT see in Luke’s statement the sun’s light failed (eklipontos) an obvious blunder in his otherwise meticulous historical accuracy. The reason for claiming such an error on the author’s part is due to an understanding of the verb as indicating a solar eclipse when such would be an astronomical impossibility during a full moon. There are generally two ways to resolve this difficulty: (a) adopt a different reading (“the sun was darkened”) that smoothes over the problem (discussed in the tc problem above), or (b) understand the verb eklipontos in a general way (such as “the sun’s light failed”) rather than as a technical term, “the sun was eclipsed.” The problem with the first solution is that it is too convenient, for the Christian scribes who, over the centuries, copied Luke’s Gospel would have thought the same thing. That is, they too would have sensed a problem in the wording and felt that some earlier scribe had incorrectly written down what Luke penned. The fact that the reading “was darkened” shows up in the later and generally inferior witnesses does not bolster one’s confidence that this is the right solution. But second solution, if taken to its logical conclusion, proves too much for it would nullify the argument against the first solution: If the term did not refer to an eclipse, then why would scribes feel compelled to change it to a more general term? The solution to the problem is that ekleipo did in fact sometimes refer to an eclipse, but it did not always do so. (BDAG 306 s.v. ἐκλείπω notes that the verb is used in Hellenistic Greek “Of the sun cease to shine.” In MM it is argued that “it seems more than doubtful that in Lk 2345 any reference is intended to an eclipse. To find such a reference is to involve the Evangelist in a needless blunder, as an eclipse is impossible at full moon, and to run counter to his general usage of the verb = ‘fail’…” [p. 195]. They enlist Luke 16:9; 22:32; and Heb 1:12 for the general meaning “fail,” and further cite several contemporaneous examples from papyri of this meaning [195-96]) Thus, the very fact that the verb can refer to an eclipse would be a sufficient basis for later scribes altering the text out of pious motives; conversely, the very fact that the verb does not always refer to an eclipse and, in fact, does not normally do so, is enough of a basis to exonerate Luke of wholly uncharacteristic carelessness
But in the above, it seems to me copium to interpret that word as other than a real eclipse in the context. The natural reading is that it was an eclipse, which is why Origen went so far as to say enemies of the church inserted the word in to scandalize the church among the intelligent
coffee_enjoyer
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5d ago
I’m not necessarily pointing to invention here, though the similarities are pretty shocking. Re: the line from Isaiah, that’s true, but the second half of Isaiah is sometimes referred to as the “fifth gospel” because of its prophecy of the Messiah (according to the theology). In any case, it is still hundreds of years older than Ad Herennium.
But Ad Herennium was the most important book on rhetoric in the Middle Ages, which likely means it was esteemed around Christ’s time. So it’s not impossible that the authors used the go-to manual on rhetoric to emphasize certain aspects of the event. I suppose a more literalist reader can just as well say, “of course God would author the real events in line with the best rhetoric and memory advice; the only new info here is that Cicero had some Godly wisdom about rhetoric”.
coffee_enjoyer
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5d ago
There are some fun similarities between Cicero’s Rhetorica Ad Herennium (90bc), which is a treatise on rhetoric and memorization, and the Passion narrative in the gospels. Cicero explains how to craft the most memorable mental scene, one that can be recalled with fidelity in the future:
since in normal cases some images are strong and sharp and suitable for awakening recollection, and others so weak and feeble as hardly to succeed in stimulating memory, we must therefore consider the cause of these differences, so that, by knowing the cause, we may know which images to avoid and which to seek.
If we see or hear something exceptionally base, dishonourable, extraordinary, great, unbelievable, or laughable, that we are likely to remember a long time.
All normal stuff. Now the examples he provides next:
A sunrise, the sun's course, a sunset, are marvellous to no one because they occur daily. But solar eclipses are a source of wonder because they occur seldom, and indeed are more marvellous than lunar eclipses, because these are more frequent
We ought, then, to set up images of a kind that can adhere longest in the memory. And we shall do so if we establish likenesses as striking as possible; if we set up images that are not many or vague, but doing something; if we assign to them exceptional beauty or singular ugliness; if we dress some of them with crowns or purple cloaks, for example, so that the likeness may be more distinct to us; or if we somehow disfigure them, as by introducing one stained with blood or soiled with mud or smeared with red paint, so that its form is more striking, or by assigning certain comic effects to our images, for that, too, will ensure our remembering them more readily.
These elements are all explicit in the Crucifixion:
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the solar eclipse (the earliest manuscripts actually specify that it was a solar eclipse, rather than a darkening of the sky)
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the crown
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the purple cloak
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the disfigurement (“many were astonished at you— his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of the children of mankind”)
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the blood (the beating, scourge, then crucifixion)
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the comic effect: the irony of the actual king being mocked as a fake king
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all the things which Cicero mentions earlier, combined (and the usual subject of sermon): base, dishonourable, extraordinary, great, unbelievable
The crown and robe are also brought into the narrative in a very peculiar way in John:
Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, “Behold the man”
The word behold here is ἰδοὺ, can be is translated as see!, or look!, remember! and similar interjections. Essentially a call to pay attention.
coffee_enjoyer
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10d ago
If our relationship with Israel is characterized by Israel doing America’s dirty work, then: (1) why are our politicians handing synagogues hundreds of millions in free funds, yearly, as SS notes? What does this have to do with our geopolitical interest? This is more readily explained by a group of people having sophisticated lobbying capabilities. (2) Why did Trump specifically go after students who criticized Israel on social media, rather than students who criticize America or the West broadly? (3) Why do we, in effect, subsidize the entirety of Israeli society, from their subsidized colleges and subsidized healthcare to their subsidized religious institutions? We are Israel’s security in the region for free; they gave nothing, not money or troops, for our wars in the region, and they will not be repaying the $1,000,000,000 we spent on their defense vs Iran. If Israel were the client state of our Empire, you would expect them to pay Caesar’s tax, right? Instead, we hand them our resources for no obvious gain. It should be the other way around. As Mearsheimer spoke to Tucker Carlson the other day,
And the lobby is so effective, it is so powerful, that we basically end up supporting Israel unconditionally. What that means, Tucker, is in those cases where Israel’s interests are not the same as America’s interests, we support Israel. We support Israel’s interests, not America’s interests.
[…] anytime the Egyptians or the Jordanians get uppity about Israel, the United States reminds them, “You better behave yourself because we have huge economic leverage over you. You have to be friendly to Israel.” So Jordan and Egypt never cause the Israelis any problem […] as I said to you before, we have a special relationship with Israel that has no parallel in recorded history. Just very important to understand it. There is no single case in recorded history that comes even close to looking like the relationship that we have with Israel. Because again, as I said, states sometimes have similar interests, and this includes the United States and Israel, but they also have conflicting interests. And when a great power like the United States has conflicting interests with another country, it almost always, except in the case of Israel, acts in terms of its own interests, America first. But when it comes to Israel, it’s Israel first. And if you go to the Middle East and look at our policy there, there’s just abundant evidence to support that.
I believe there’s one simple answer [as to why this is the case]. The Israel lobby. I think the lobby is an incredibly powerful interest group, and I’m choosing my words carefully. It has awesome power, and it basically is in a position where it can profoundly influence US foreign policy in the Middle East. And indeed, it affects foreign policy outside of the Middle East. But when it comes to the Middle East, and again, the Palestinian issue in particular, it has awesome power. And there’s no president who is willing to buck the lobby.
If Israel were our forward operating base, then it would be easy to support them: Israelis would be working day and night to secure a better future for Americans. Their tax dollars would go to our institutions and their blood would be spilled in Syria / Iraq / Afghanistan for us. Alas, this does not appear to be the case.
A couple asides on Pegasus: its ancestor PROMIS was indeed developed by the CIA and sold to Israel, and then from Israel it was disseminated to other countries. The person doing this dissemination was no other than Ghislaine Maxwell’s father Robert Maxwell. But Israel, rather than acting purely as a FOB to America, has its own interests in mind:
"L'Oeil De Washington" contends that a bugged version of PROMIS was sold in the mid-1980s for Soviet government use, with the media mogul Robert Maxwell as a conduit. According to the book, Israel's knowledge of this operation became a bargaining chip in trying to curb U.S. arms shipments to Iraq before the Gulf War; the Israelis threatened to tell the Russians their computers were open to American surveillance. Apparently, the U.S. called Israel's bluff and lost. One of the book's major sources, the Israeli arms merchant Ari Ben-Menashe, told the authors that in 1989 the Soviet spy agency, the GRU, shut down all of its computers for a week after learning that they were bugged by PROMIS.
coffee_enjoyer
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12d ago
But it’s a big deal if a group of Zionists, by way of Mega Group founder Les Wexner who seeded Epstein with 200-400 million dollars, was involved in blackmailing influential Americans to do Israel’s bidding as part of some insane fifth-gen lobbying campaign. It’s a very big deal that Jeffrey Epstein’s own brother says
In the 2016 election, we were talking about the election and Jeffrey told me that if he said what he knew about the candidates, they would have to cancel the election
(as I predicted in a comment weeks back). There’s a lot of evidence that this is what happened which I won’t rehash as I’ve commented on it enough recently.
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15d ago
you bolded 'against an unarmed population,' which isn't relevant to the statute
The civilians, you mean? As I’ve mentioned in my last few posts now, the claim about a war crime occurring is only about the civilians, who are no threat to the security force. We know this from the context. We also know this from the other article I provided you. The reason not to take a single sentence in isolation is because he is narrating his experiences, not writing a textbook, as I mentioned. The actual context is as follows, given the preceding sentences:
The actions on the sites — escalation of force, no standard operating procedures to dictate that, no rules of engagement provided to the armed contractors on the ground, the indiscriminate use of force, lethal and nonlethal, against unarmed civilians. I want to make that clear. We aren’t there on the distribution sites defending ourselves against Hamas. We are using indiscriminate force, targeting civilians, escalation of force that goes far beyond the measures of appropriate, against an unarmed, starving population.
So, because he’s talking about lethal indiscriminate use of force against civilians, that this would violate intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking part, provided that its conditions are met upon litigation, for which there is additional evidence as well. Does this clarify things? Remember, this is just a transcript of a person talking, so “Why would anyone need that, even if to defend themselves for their defend their lives, against an unarmed population” can be rendered “Why would anyone need that — (even if to defend themselves for their defend their lives?) — against an unarmed population”.
The statute does not say that. It forbids directing any attack whatsoever 'against individual civilians not taking direct part in hostilities.' The fact that attack is performed with a rifle with live bullets is entirely irrelevant
Right; as I mentioned, his complaint is in the use of shooting people with lethal ammunition as faux crowd control. Perhaps you just really hate how he said this. They use live bullets for this. So the bullet matters, relative to rubber bullets; and even the gun they got mattered, because Israel usually uses an even less lethal munition (in the case of their needing to use it), which may show intent. You know how police who want you to leave can use pepper spray, but they can’t immediately shoot you in the head? All of the follow up questions you pose are based on this misunderstanding / misreading.
If I didn't bother to check the cite and replied, 'Oh, wow, and Aguilar says every contractor is using a rifle with live bullets to deal with civilian crowd control! That must be hundreds or maybe thousands of violations of international law right there!' would you have corrected me and clarified the war crime is actually just using those rifles to shoot non-violent civilians? Would you have said, 'Aguilar's remarks were off-the-cuff, you can't take his words at face value?' Or are you just retreating to the motte after I've challenged the bailey?
I care about the substance of relevant points, not nitpicking an isolated sentence in a person’s verbal testimony. I don’t know why you think this guy would be a professional speechwriter or something. I can’t help but feel you’re doing everything you can to obfuscate the points so you can discount his testimony, something you wanted to do as a prior perhaps. You are hung up on one sentence that has an aside in it (indicated by the hyphen), when the very preceding paragraph explains what he means, and when I even linked you with a very easy to digest short video where about the soldiers committing a war crime. As best as I can understand your argument as it relates to the substance of the discussion, it is: “I interpret him as claiming that carrying a specific ammunition type is a war crime. -> therefore his testimony is invalidated”. (Even were this true, it would be very silly, because he’s not a war crimes lawyer).
misreading
I’m accusing you of not understanding basic things, because you replied “I mean, it won't be. Israel hasn't signed on to this statute.” But whether Israel signed on to this statute is literally immaterial as to whether it’s a war crime. It’s not even 0.01% relevant. It’s a war crime if it goes against customary international law. Will you accuse me of not reading your post holistically by hyperfocusing on an isolated sentence?
Especially since this is the infamous ICC which the US and Israel refuse to subject themselves to.
Yeah, this also doesn’t matter. This isn’t how customary international law works.
I'm pretty sure Israel's opinion on this question matters a great deal for whether the trial is ever going to happen
No more than in Nuremberg. If they are found to have violated international customary laws, they can be executed regardless.
It does not matter that Israel has not signed on to the first Additional Protocol, because it’s now customary international law, making it binding to Israel (and to everyone). This was even reiterated in 2020 by Israel:
Israel is not a party to the Additional Protocols, but is fully committed to the customary law rules that are reflected in some of their provisions. In this regard, Israel reiterates its position, which it shares with other States, that some provisions in the Additional Protocols do not reflect customary law. In Israel's view, among those provisions is the First Additional Protocol that, in whole or in part, do not reflect customary law, are, for example, the provisions found in articles 1(4), 35(3), 55, 43 to 45, 37(1) and the articles concerning belligerent reprisals, alongside a considerable number of other provisions in the First and Second Additional Protocols that we will not elaborate upon here in the interest of time. Assertions to the contrary, made by certain actors, lack substantiation in sufficient State practice and opinio juris.
Now, again, it doesn’t matter that Israel isn’t a signatory whatsoever, and even their opinion on what constitutes international custom isn’t determinative of anything, but it’s telling that they do not even specify article 54 as a reason for their not being signatory. (That’s, of course, the purpose of the lawyerly language that follows; but lawyerly language will not save malefactors from either God or international courts of law). This is probably because, as of few months ago, any reasonable nation would have considered “you’re not allowed to purposefully starve civilians” part of the custom of international law.
Aguilar claimed that M855 is some super special uniquely evil armor-piercing military combat KILLING
It is only by your own reading that he compares M855 to another lethal ammo type, rather than the various sub-lethal ammo types. I don’t consider this any point against him, and I think it is unreasonable to read his sentence as indicating such. He was a commander of special operations who previously fought ISIS, and previously commanded the entirety of the West Asian special operations (I’m pretty sure; from something I found online). He knows his munitions.
If it's not about M855 specifically, why'd he spend so long telling us how terrible it is?
I think he’s shocked that he was equipped like this, with lethal rounds, when tasked with giving aid to starving unarmed people. Maybe he doesn’t assume people would assume the ammo type is so lethal. He’s talking to normal people, not military guys. As I sourced to you in his video, his group was using the lethal ammunition to disperse the crowd. This all seems quite reasonable to me.
in fact the scenario you're calling a war crime -- using lethal weapons in self defense against unarmed civilians -- is not forbidden by that cite; it actually looks a lot like it's explicitly permitted.
If they’re shooting civilians, who are not endangering their lives, then it constitutes directing attacks against the civilian population. There are ample sources of Israel doing this, not just from Aguilar. So I provided you another video where he explains that this is what’s happening.
using lethal weapons in self defense against unarmed civilians -
It was not in self-defense, it was in crowd dispersal.
you just pushed it aside and baldly asserted that this behavior will be found to violate the statute once it gets to trial (which you know will never happen).
It’s very obviously against the statute to kill civilians, who are not endangering their lives, as evidenced in what I sent you, no matter what the excuse is. This is according to Aguilar’s testimony. I don’t know how many more times I can reword this to someone who is intent on finding every plausible way to misinterpret it. Remember, it’s a long video of him talking, not writing a high school thesis; the meaning of what he says is clear when you listen to the audio or even just read what he says with an holistic understanding (not just focusing on the verbiage of an isolated sentence).
The starvation charge has nothing to do with the carrying-lethal-weapons charge
Huh? It’s another example. All of this is talked about in the OP. So I’m providing you another example, if you’re for some reason intent on disagreeing with Aguilar because he didn’t talk about munitions neurotically enough or something, or if you think he meant the starving children were threatening his life.
I feel comfortable saying neither you nor Aguilar meet this minimum standard
I feel comfortable agreeing with you that you feel comfortable saying a lot of things. In this, we can find some common ground. I guess because we’re rehashing:
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You weren’t familiar, at all, with what is normatively used in crowd control scenarios in Israel, even for lethal ammo. I corrected you.
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You read his statement as implying that a lesser-lethal ammo can go in his specific gun, rather than sub-lethal ammo, which is just a misreading.
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You read his statement as indicating that the crowd was trying to assault them, which is just wrong, so I provided another source clarifying that the civilians never posed a risk.
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You had no idea about the concept of customary international law, or that the first protocol is binding to Israel insofar as it is customary
coffee_enjoyer
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15d ago
intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking direct part in hostilities
This, as with any law, will be pursued with litigation and deliberation to work out details. The entire application of law is not based on a single sentence with no rational determination applying to it. The above, along with Additional Protocol I, Article 54, “ Protection of objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population”, which states “Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited”, leads one to think that Israel is committing war crimes. In addition,
intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare by depriving them of objects indispensable to their survival, including wilfully impeding relief supplies as provided for under the Geneva Conventions
is a crime, and regarding said relief, if
part of the population of an occupied territory is inadequately supplied, the Occupying Power shall agree to relief schemes on behalf of the said population, and shall facilitate them by all the means at its disposal. […] Such schemes […] may be undertaken […] by impartial humanitarian organizations
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16d ago
Everyone understands that combatants are killed in war. This is unremarkable and no reasonable person seeks revenge for war. What’s less remarkable is when an Israeli soldier purposefully shoots your daughter or sister in the head for no reason. Any young male who experiences this and wouldn’t seek revenge for it is the lowest of the low coward. Certainly my American ancestors who fought in the Revolution wouldn’t have submitted to that sort of rule. Neither would my Irish fifth cousins in the IRA. I would feel content knowing that my great grandparents who were ethnically cleansed from their ancestral home by someone born in Poland speaking a German dialect would look at me as a hero. (We can see how empathy goes a long way in explaining the Gazan PoV; this is an exercise.)
notice that bombing Nazis didn't create more Nazis. Why?
Both sides were bombing each others cities, for essential military reasons that likely reduced sum total casualties over the war.
coffee_enjoyer
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16d ago
Israel has been committing grave violations of international law since the King David Hotel bombing, the Nabka, etc.
they certainly aren't soldiers as the word is used in the field of international law.
Very few are complaining about the treatment of the actual men fighting Israel.
You’re interpreting his statements somewhat uncharitably. Remember that he’s explaining these things in a long video, verbally and narratively, so the words have to be understood in the context.
Elsewhere he specifies in what sense he means indiscriminate killing:
“On May 28, at secure distribution site #2, this young boy, Amir, walks over to me, reaches out & kisses my hand…”
“This boy is not wearing shoes. His clothes are falling off of him because he is so skinny… He doesn’t have a box — he has half a bag of rice, lentils, and he was thanking us.”
“He walked 12 kilometers to get there … and when he got there, he thanked us for the crumbs he got … and he set them on the ground with his frail, skeletal, emaciated hands, and he kissed me and said ‘thank you.’”
“And then he collected his items, walked back to the group, and then he was shot at — with pepper spray, and tear gas, and stun grenades, and bullets…”
“They are shooting into this crowd. Palestinians, civilians, human beings — are dropping to the ground. And Amir was one of them.”
“Amir walked 12 kilometers to get food, got nothing but scraps, thanked us for it… and died.”
We can surmise that this is what he means by war crimes, that using a rifle with live bullets to deal with civilian crowd control is a war crime. This is a war crime under The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Article 8 (Article 8(2)(b)(i) and 8(2)(e)(i)). In the DemocracyNow video he previously said that razor wire is a war crime —
Geneva Conventions specifically prohibit the use of razor wire to restrict areas that civilians are servicing — hospitals, water points, food distribution points. And we’re using it. Not only did the IDF provide it for us to use it on the sites, we, UG Solutions, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, asked for it specifically. Razor wire is designed to maim and kill, and we’re using that to channelize and herd, if you will, thousands of unarmed, starving civilians. That’s a war crime.
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He explicitly says the rifles are OK
He says that the “fully automatic weapons” were not in itself a war crime. Probably because it can be used with some less-than-lethal munition. Then, when he mentions the ammunition which “in and of itself” is a war crime, he clarifies —
Why would anyone need that, even if to defend themselves for their — defend their lives against an unarmed population? It’s inappropriate. That, in and of itself, that action there, is a war crime.
It’s reasonable to assume that the “action” he’s talking about is starving children getting a little too close or not disseminating as quickly as the group wants, and then being shot with live ammo.
The State Department is just Trump appointees, who are ardent defenders of Israel. So, while someone downstream from a Trump appointee disputed the findings based on a “video”, they
provided no such videos. The spokesperson also accused traditional humanitarian groups of covering up "aid corruption." A White House spokesperson, Anna Kelly, questioned the existence of the analysis, saying no State Department official had seen it and that it "was likely produced by a deep state operative" seeking to discredit President Donald Trump's "humanitarian agenda."
as the article continued. So it doesn’t appear that there is really a video of Hamas looting. I think this can be ignored. Do we expect Trump appointees to tell the truth here? Where is the video showing Hamas looting? One is a study, the other is Rubio. But if the State Dep comes out with evidence then it should be considered.
Your link about Hamas taking aid actually proves the opposite, at least in 2024. Because —
the shortages had also prompted questions of Hamas for its seeming inability to stop the gangs
which means that Hamas did not take or monopolize aid at the time of the article’s writing; armed gangs (probably funded by Israel as I cite in another comment ITT) took the aid. If Hamas had control of aid, a rival gang could not be in control of the aid.
The new anti-looting force, formed of well-equipped fighters from Hamas and allied groups, has been named "The Popular and Revolutionary Committees" and is ready to open fire on hijackers who do not surrender, one of the sources, a Hamas government official, said.
This would only be required if Hamas was not in the business of appropriating or overseeing aid retrieval within the period preceding the article being written. If Hamas was getting the aid, how could a rival group ever hijack so much aid that the citizens of Gaza question Hamas’ ability to fight crime?
coffee_enjoyer
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16d ago
indiscriminate
Indiscriminate means “not marked by careful distinction : deficient in discrimination and discernment”. What definition were you looking at? It does not mean that they fire on everyone they see.
ammo
M855 ammo passes through soft tissue more readily, meaning in a large crowd there will be more casualties per shot; his point is that this is a terrible choice for crowd control. Police doing crowd control use rubber bullets etc. In fact the IDF specifically uses .22 LR in Ruger 10/22 rifles for riots in the West Bank. You weren’t aware of this? NATO is not supplying these munitions so I don’t know why you’ve mentioned NATO.
Taking rubber bullets into a situation where you might well get shot at with real bullets is incredibly dumb
It’s an unarmed civilian population receiving food. Rubber bullets are a smart way to do crowd control.
Would that be the thread with several x-ray images of full power rifle rounds, with no deformation whatsoever, in the middle of children's heads?
It was the one confirmed by numerous third party experts who dealt with gunshot wounds. I’m not sure how Israeli pundits responded to it but they may have called them forgeries.
obvious errors
Hm, I don’t see a single error in his testimony. Which error did you have in mind?
Could be a stockpile. Could be tunnels between Egypt and Gaza, with one found last year so large that a car could fit through. A small tunnel for beans / flour need only be a quarter in size. It could be that civilians are giving food to their relatives, one of whom is a member. It could be a tunnel from Israel to Gaza. Could be an underwater drone of sorts. Could be drones from Egypt to Gaza, apparently being used recently.
edit another important point. There’s an assumption that the number of Hamas units is fixed since the war began, and that Hamas is a monolith. These are silly assumptions. Israel is creating thousands of boys every week who want nothing more than to fight back against Israel — because they just saw soldiers shoot their grandmother, or shoot their little sister, or kidnap their brother, or maybe Israel bombed their entire family, or maybe they were mistreated, or maybe their cousin is starving. No sane young man anywhere in the world would not seek to do something in response to this. So there are new Hamas soldiers being officiated every day. But the officiatiation is not formal and organized. They join small cell structures (in all likelihood apolitical and religiously moderate, if not irreligious) who are then provided with weaponry (and ideas) by a small number of Hamas intermediaries (and these are the extremist ones). Meaning they were civilians being fed as civilians until the inhumane oppression became too much for their heart to bear, and they fight back. The same happened with the Irish against the British —
The British policy of interning persons suspected of involvement in the IRA and the killing of 13 Catholic protesters on Bloody Sunday (January 30, 1972) strengthened Catholic sympathy for the organization and swelled its ranks”.
IRA numbers always increased when the British took an oppressive approach. Perhaps we should assume that somewhere between 5% to 90% of boys in Gaza would very much like to fight the IDF in any way they can, and they are more than happy to receive a weapon from Hamas.
coffee_enjoyer
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16d ago
Along the lines of my thesis “it’s literally that Israeli leaders are evil”, they are funding gangs to pillage and monopolize aid. These are the ones most likely involved in the theft of aid:
We in the humanitarian community have repeatedly stated that Hamas is not stealing our aid. That is not to say that looting has not always been a massive challenge; it has. But it was largely being carried out by armed gangs that emerged in the lawlessness and that operate in the Israeli-controlled “red zone” wastelands. I wrote about this in a CNN op-ed as far back as a year ago. Much of that looting was taking place at the Kerem Shalom or Karam Abu Salem crossing in southern Gaza. We had long speculated that the only way for armed gangs to exist in this area would be with Israel’s knowledge. In June, Netanyahu admitted himself that Israel has been arming gangs, most notably a notorious clan operating in the Rafah area, where much of the looting takes place. He defended the decision, stating these clans were helping in the fight against Hamas
coffee_enjoyer
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16d ago
“Israel wants to starve innocent people in order to ethnically cleanse the land for Israelis” is the reasonable takeaway to me, because there is no evidence of Hamas ever taking aid (1, 2), Israel’s actions are entirely inexplicable unless they deeply desire to starve innocent people, nearly every independent international body paying attention to Gaza has called attention to the risk (and now reality) of starvation, important Israeli leaders like Ben-Gvir and Amichai Eliyahu have specifically advocated for destroying food supplies as a tool to get what they want, and an American retired green beret Anthony Aguilar who worked with the designated aid distributor has said that Israelis open fire indiscriminately on civilians seeking aid.
What I witnessed in Gaza at all four distribution sites — I didn’t just go to one for a photo-op. I didn’t go to one to watch a distribution and then say, “Yes, this looks great.” I spent days on end in Gaza at all four distribution sites, at Kerem Shalom, where the aid is loaded for distribution, and at both operation centers that control the daily convoys, logistics operations and distribution for the four sites. What I saw on the sites, around the sites, to and from the sites, can be described as nothing but war crimes, crimes against humanity, violations of international law. This is not hyperbole. This is not platitudes or drama. This is the truth.
The sites have not only become death traps, they were designed as death traps. All four distribution locations were intentionally, deliberately constructed, planned and built in the middle of an active combat zone. Some may argue, “Well, all of Gaza is a war zone.” That may be true, but there are parts of Gaza that are direct — or, determined to be active, operational combat zones where Israeli Defense Forces are operating. Those sites were built in the middle of those areas intentionally. It’s not by accident. That, in and of itself, to designate humanitarian distribution sites to service an unarmed, starving population, to build them deliberately in an active combat zone, is a violation of the Geneva Convention protocols. It’s a violation of humanitarian law. And in my opinion, it’s a violation of humanity in general.
The things that I just described are not just opinions, they’re facts. The sites were designed to lure, bait, aid and kill. The food that we distribute, nowhere near enough. To Mr. Johnnie Moore, shame on you for celebrating 92 million meals delivered into Gaza. Shame on you. It’s a very simple equation: 92 divided by 2.2 million people, divided by 3 million — or, three meals a day. That’s what GHF proclaims. We’ve been distributing aid since the 26th of May, 26th May to now the 29th of June, 64 days of continuous distribution, and we’ve only managed to distribute 92 million meals. When you break that down, again, it’s a simple equation. That’s 14 days of meals. So, out of 64 days, we’ve provided 14 days of meals to the entire population in the enclave of Gaza. That’s inhumane.
Aguilar was previously the Commander of Special Operations of the Central Asian Command. This is not some no name guy. His testimony is confirmed by Dr Nick Maynard of Oxford University, who treated malnourished children. Maynard also suspects that the IDF is deliberately shooting children for sport, which other doctors have said in the past (I wrote a post on this a year ago or so).
But why does Israel want to starve innocent people?
IMO there’s simple answer to this, and it’s the same reason that anyone commits a crime against another for personal benefit which they believe they can get away with. There’s an insufficient “love for one’s neighbor”, an inability to feel empathy or otherwise recognize the shared humanity in another person from a different tribe. This can also be called being evil, as in, Israel has fallen so far from the standards of reasonable goodness that they are closest to its opposite, which is evil. So Israel is doing this because they are evil, very far from good. It is advantageous for them to take the land from Palestinians. It is advantageous even to starve them if you can’t take the land, because this damages longterm health, fertility rates, and intergenerational health. There is no real cultural or religious pressure that promotes love for non-Jews in Israel. So, IMO, the leaders of Israel are evil, and that’s why they are currently starving children for their own benefit.
coffee_enjoyer
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17d ago
The soldier in the linked video (super interesting channel) mentions that the feeling of nearly dying is addicting and lead to beneficial life changes. Naturally, you have to ask “how can this be optimized”, and I concluded that the bunker experience is effectively already optimized.
coffee_enjoyer
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18d ago
Being shelled by artillery in a bunker seems like the optimal context for a life-changing near-death experience.
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you have nothing to do but think. You’re not fighting or engaged in any other activity that could take your mind off of doom. You can’t go anywhere.
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you’re usually in a small dim area, surrounded by other soldiers, creating a totalizing social environment of doom.
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you’re not injured, so the adrenaline doesn’t tunnel-vision you toward survival.
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the artillery strikes are inherently startling on their own, reminiscent of thunder. They occur unpredictably, which sustains its startling effect.
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the sound and vibration of the artillery is a unique cue of your mortality, each time jolting your focus. Each strike renews the cognitive effect.
Fifteen miles; Three miles; three miles; three miles; eight miles; thirty miles. Slightly changed distances in different directions.
The Farm sells all kinds of things, and it’s a perfect example of how poisonous foreigners are to a community. This is a locally owned multigenerational farm, so they price things fairly because their neighbors are their community. They pay good wages, because they hire their neighbors and their neighbors are their community. They are devout Christians, so so they live humbly and give back to the community, which is their neighbors (the list of their giving is absurdly long). There are a lot of older adult workers, who are definitely “inefficient”, but there’s not a sociopath or a foreigner or a corporation owning it, so they care for those whom they hire. It’s a beautiful Americana farm and store. They sell organic, because like most Americans they have a distrust of most commercial pesticides.
If Indians bought the farm, all the employees would be overseas relatives; some of the proceeds would be sent back home; they would have to signal their wealth more, meaning resources wasted on commercial goods; they wouldn’t care about fleecing others; it is unlikely (but I suppose not impossible) that they have the morality to give lots of their profits away, and if they do, it is unlikely to be toward the White American community nearby but instead toward various Indian things, or perhaps to an elite institution that doesn’t need the money. If devout non-Christians owned the store, they would be giving back to their non-Christian institutions, meaning the resources are gone from the community.
Visiting is wonderful; everyone is nice and everything is cozy. It stands in stark contrast to the convenience stores (and in past decade, Dunkins et al), where you have some aggressive impolite overseas Indian staring at you the entire time, and everything is ugly and cheap, and they only hire their relatives.
coffee_enjoyer
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20d ago
They’re using fiber optics drones now which is insane
coffee_enjoyer
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20d ago
But how far away do you need to be to shoot out buckshot or something? Or netting? Drone kill zone is maybe 20 meters.
coffee_enjoyer
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20d ago
It does not appear that either side has figured out a way to hide from enemy drones. If you are in the settlement that they are attacking, you will eventually just die.
coffee_enjoyer
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20d ago
Why are there not loitering counter-drones above troop movements in Ukraine? I’m seeing footage of surveillance drones with high-fidelity video recording, zooming in 16x or 32x onto targets. What’s stopping the development of drones with video recording that feeds into AI and surveils for incoming enemy drones? Ai should be able to determine if something is a drone from visual signature + movement. Then you’d simply have to equip it with some kind of birdshot or have it launch a smaller drone.
It requires empathy to care about civilization. Because it means understanding that there are people just like yourself who will be living in the far future, though they do not yet exist, and they matter as if they were your friend or cousin. Humans come equipped with an interest in securing the wellbeing of those who are like themselves, though there have been some mutations which express other inclinations usually deemed antisocial. If civilization, then their happiness is secured. If barbarism, then doom —
Also, interest in civilization is usually a proxy for intergroup competition. The failure for your group to be fruitful simply means that another group will dominate yours. This will probably be the Chinese when they eventually realize how easy it is to increase TFR. All of your descendants will be less happy, just as the celts were less happy when the Anglo-Saxons ruled over them. Many of their descendants will beg and prostitute themselves. A well-tuned empathy makes you feel about future members of your tribe in the same way you feel about your own child. This is why Kings with paternal feelings toward his subjects were beloved in history; it is probably evolution’s favored form of governance, given that the primates the dominant member shares food and protects the lesser members.
If you truly
you would recognize there is a chain of empathy descending from “caring about someone who has kids”, to “caring about their kids”, to “caring about their grandkids”, all the way down. Because if you care about them then you also have some care for their terminal values, which is going to be their children. Our present happiness is related to our future predictions, so it’s reasonable to feel unhappy if your civilization is trending toward doom.
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