Who represents the Protestants? Or the Muslims? Does the President of Iran represent the Shia and are all Shias answerable for his actions?

You are equivocating a people with a religious movement. I said the Jewish people. This is a racial group, it just happens to correspond also to the members of the Jewish religious group, but I was not referring to the members of the Jewish religious group, but to the racial group.

Who other than Netanyahu speaks for the Jewish people and to be more pertinent, who conducts foreign policy, provides security for this group? Because there is a serious failure of leadership here.

Netanyahu does not represent the Jewish people. He is the prime minister of a state, not a religious authority.

Then who does represent the Jewish people here? Ask someone in a neighbouring state who represents the Jewish people here?

Or do we have a vacuum of leadership/representation of the Jewish people?

You could also say it's analogous to the last days of the Third Reich in that the war is already decisively lost,

I would say that this part of the analogy fails. The war from the viewpoint of the Arab world is not lost, or over.
Israel is bolstering support for Hamas and other anti-Israeli groups who will revisit this issue in the future.
In terms of living alongside their neighbours in peace, Israel has lost. They have become a pariah state which is insulting their neighbours in every way and on every level. They are overtly hostile, while conducting collective punishment and unspeakable horrors on a captive Arabic population. Their status and position in the Middle East is now under threat and possibly unsustainable

If Israel is going to remain in its current form it will become an isolated fortress, bristling with weapons. The only alternative to this outcome is for Israel to remove the extremists from Government and extend the hand of friendship and compromise to the Palestinians. Even then it will be a long and difficult road. The first (an isolated fortress) would be vulnerable, unstable and reliant on being propped up by the US.
The second is almost inconceivable at this point and could fail and descend into further wars at every turn.
As I see it, Israel has already lost and Netanyahu, who represents the Jewish people, in this, has blood on his hands.

It's relevant in "the end justifies the means" thinking prevalent in typical right wing thinking.

Interesting, but I assumed that Genocide was so grave a crime that nothing excused it, no excuse was sufficient to justify committing it.

The Israeli’s claim that the attack on 7th October was a genocidal act, therefore they are justified in committing genocide as a response(they vehemently deny they are committing genocide, while insisting that 7th October was a genocide).

It looks like they are engaging in cakism, (having your cake and eating it), which we are familiar with in U.K. re’ Boris Johnson.

Yes Israel didn’t offer a defence. They seem to think that 7th October is relevant. It isn’t.

Qatar is one of biggest helpers of Hamas... that's why the relationship. So you prefer that other countries assist Hamas too???

Only in that Qatar has conducted successful negotiations between the two sides.

Regarding Hamas, there is always now going to be an attack force like Hamas and there is always going to be a negotiation with such a force for a peace to be reached, there’s no other way.

The fact that large scale humanitarian aid doesn’t seem to have got through is worrying. The international community has repeatedly offered aid, which has not been delivered as far as I know for many weeks.

Yes, they broke the rules the moment they withdrew food water and medicine from a captive population.

Also I think the term genocide might need to include the destruction of a country. The buildings, infrastructure, farmland etc.

I doubt Israel would survive for long the Samson option.
Qatar has done good work, but I doubt it will change anything.

If Israel is going to survive they should look at a map and reflect on who their neighbours and near neighbours are and how many there are.

Hamas aims to eliminate Israel/Jews; Israel aims to eliminate Hamas. Perfectly proportional. In the long run it works out better for the Palestinians who will no longer be oppressed by Hamas. Call it liberation.

Liberation if they survive as a people.

Whether the Gazan’s as a people survive this offensive seems not to matter to the Israeli’s. The collective punishment and limiting of aid demonstrates this.

To starve an entire captive population so as to restrict the resources of a small number of militants is disproportionate. To reduce a whole country to rubble for the same reasons is disproportionate.

And counterproductive.

But if an idea means the semantic elements, then animals definitely lack the possession of the mental concepts and abstract ideas based on linguistic expressions.

Yes, this would indicate though that ideas are both semantic, abstract etc and part of conscious and subconscious mental processes of life, as we see in animals.

Perhaps the intellectual, analytical, contemplative thinking of humanity is just a thin layer on top of the more mundane thinking which is intrinsically part of life. Maybe people think that this thin layer is more important in life, the quality of life, than the mundane because it is such a concern for people. When seen in the round it is of very little importance other than in the advantages it offers in aiding survival in a competitive environment.

This brings me back to the thought that animals may have as rich, or richer life experience than people. Even though they might not be self conscious of the fact etc.

My train of thought leads to the realisation that living beings “think” and to reduce these thoughts to chemical (and electrical) reactions in a physical body, is to ignore sentience and self consciousness and reduce living beings to zombies.

This reduction also makes a separation between human thought and animal thought, which I don’t think exists, although there is clearly a distinction in the level of self awareness in the thinking process between humans and animals. To assume that because animals are not intellectualising like humans that they are not self conscious and consciously thinking is to deny their level of sentience and understanding of their life, world and existence.

My contention is that animals experience life in very similar ways to humans, but without that additional layer of intellectualisation. So their life and experience will be just like ours minus the intellectual thought.

I think experience can be abstracted as ideas, but experience itself is not ideas. Ideas are the mental entities which has been abstracted in thoughts.

Right, so thoughts are the product of mental activity. While experiences don’t necessarily involve mental activity for them to be experiences.
Is there a cross over, a grey area here, or a clear distinction between the two?

“Cats appear to think”
I bring up cats because they are doing things which we do, but without much abstract thought, if any.
So they are having experiences, learning from them and modifying their behaviour in response to them absent thought. Or with minimal thought.
Secondly we have much more in common with cats and therefore all mammals, than one might at first think. Indeed the only difference might be a layer, or level of intellectual thought.
Therefore if human thought includes mental activity other than intellectual thought, by definition cats and indeed all mammals are thinking too.
We can also conclude that they are doing something akin to intellectual thought without being self consciously aware that they are intellectualising. Because we can observe strategic, social and territorial behaviour.
In essence I’m saying that instinctive behaviour is very much thought, thinking.

How would these people who are explaining away thinking describe what a cat, or for that matter, a spider spinning a web is doing?

Provided it is understood which of your 4 categories (assuming what you say about British empiricists is a separate category) of idea is being discussed this should be straightforward.

I would point out there is a grey area where experiences become ideas. Do you see experience as fitting one of the categories?
Also there is the position of instinct in this. My cat has an instinctive response to sudden movement. But if it’s a familiar movement, or sound my cat doesn’t have the same response as to an unfamiliar movement. Has the cat thought about this, or is it a learned instinct? What is it about the cat which enables this behaviour/experience, to an highly sensitive degree?
Is the cat thinking and if so, is it all thought, or is there a cut of point?

The issue seems to be with your definition of idea. Do you mean every product of brain activity, or every product of thinking?

Fingers crossed they won’t.
I see Russia as a failed state now. I expect it would be Washington versus Beijing. In which case I don’t see it happening.

Yes, that sounds about right. I was thinking of three fortresses. North America, Europe and the region of China. The rest of the world would be cut loose.

Hopefully nuclear bombs won’t be thrown into the mix.

I noticed that, they are talking about all the water on the planet boiling off into space.
I didn’t mean to be that alarmist.

What I was thinking of by runaway is when the tipping points and feedback loops become triggered and fall like dominoes. Releasing, (or stop removing) greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere which dwarfs the amount we have been releasing by burning fossil fuels. Once that point is reached life will become very tumultuous and difficult.

I don’t think we can know what that means. But what we do know is sea level will rise more rapidly to a maximum of over 90 metres. Ocean ecosystems will collapse, most land ecosystems will be under extreme stress, many will collapse. Growing enough food to feed the population will become impossible. And this will last, or get worse for thousands of years.

It may be out of date terminology these days. Or climate scientists don’t mention it because it’s too scary and might be counterproductive to efforts to raise awareness of the issues.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_greenhouse_effect

Yes insects could inherit the earth. It largely depends on which animals become extinct and which survive. It may only be bacteria though if the warming gets to much.

Civilisation collapse is an interesting topic. There is evidence of them imploding, over exploiting resources or succumbing to disease. In the case of easter Island, they became extinct.

I doubt very much that any of these means would wipe out humanity. That would require a significant natural intervention, like an asteroid, or rapid changes in the global conditions. However I consider our current bloated civilisation(in terms of numbers) to be more vulnerable than smaller cases.

The issue with climate change is the consequences of a rapid mass extinction, or the rapid changes that would result from a runaway climate change process. These would both impact simultaneously and I doubt if humanity would survive. Although some mammals might survive, or vertebrates at least.

If mammals survived humanity would evolve again.

In the event that we mitigated climate change rapidly and managed to reverse it to some extent, we might just hang on. Although this would depend on the extinction event to be quite limited and the runaway affects of climate change were slowed sufficiently for us and nature to adapt.

Fair dues.

My biggest fear now is that humanity and the earth will be decimated by the attempts to "solve" global-warming/climate-change.

Your arguments fail if one simply substitutes the idea of pollution for the idea of greenhouse gasses.

The collapse you describe in the economy is not such a big threat. It will be painful and might required decades of authoritarianism and revolution. Or even a collapse in civilisation. But the threat from climate change is existential. Anyone who has looked into it realises this and usually refrains from telling others for fear of becoming a doom monger.

Peaceful coexistence is fine, there is no need to go the whole hog and 'mesh with western values' not sure what they are. After all, the Abraham accords were all about peace.

Yes that would be great. For a while after WW2 it looked as though it could have gone that way.

By mesh with western values I mean they didn’t conform with political, cultural and social norms. This isn’t a criticism of the Arabic way of life, they are just different to the established western world order. The blame for the failure to live peacefully alongside following the WW2 falls fairly and squarely on the U.S./U.K. coalition.

The decent into McCarthyism in the U.S. following WW2 and the pathological paranoia about communism is the root of the failure.

And then you immediately have the following problem: only efficiently strong countries can keep peace. Lebanon and Syria are on brink of being failed states. How does the PA suddenly become a strong country? Egypt is strong enough, even if the 'Arab street' hates the peace with Israel. Yet Palestinians aren't Egyptians. Far easily populists in the Palestinian side could pose this as just a part of throwing back the crusaders. After all, it took 192 years to throw out the Crusaders.

I don’t want to be the party pooper, but if the hat fits…

These failed states are spreading, along with extremism. The large power blocks really should hunker down now and prepare for climate breakdown.

It is a tragedy that the Arab world has failed to mesh with western values, for whatever reasons. I’m not blaming them, the blame stands more with the duelling between the US and the Soviets.
Even the rich Arab states, who were spared due to their oil, are living on borrowed time.

Likely the power blocks, North America, Europe, China, will build metaphorical walls and even real walls eventually. Whether any other blocks can form quickly enough to build stability, we will have to see. If not they will probably join the failed states.

Their strategy is in part predicated on the special resonance of Israel, and so it shapes their decisions in what seem to be fundemental ways.

Quite the Israel Palestine problem is the touch stone for movements in geopolitics. Quite literally at the wailing wall and the temple of the mount.

Although, I suspect that it’s importance will wane as the Global South and Far East become more active on the global stage.

Just curious. What “made” them a state?

The usual suspect.

I’m not a fan of the empire.

Yes, I know. That’s why I can’t see a solution which is acceptable to both sides.
As we are all I can see is the Palestinians being entirely removed from the land which Israel deems part of Israel. With the backing of the US and an international coalition.

There is another outcome which is less likely, that Israel becomes a failed state like Syria, or Iraq. But even then, the Palestinians will still likely be removed.

Hence I'm firmly in the view that this conflict has no peaceful solution anywhere near.

Yes, there is no chance of a peaceful solution which both sides accept on the horizon*.

For either side the other side would need to accept what they will never accept and even if they did reach a compromise, which is impossible, it would be impossible to keep the peace in the long term.


*I don’t like to talk in these blunt terms and would prefer to believe that this could return to the 2 state solution as has been outlined numerous times.

I see Israel as the 51st state of the US. But it’s more than that, the Jewish diaspora from all Western nations see her as their homeland and many go to live there. Maybe do some settling. This has resulted in a complex situation in which society in these nations feel a kinship with Israel. See her as “western”, while she is a construct, shaped in the psyche of the Jewish people.

The state of Israel has drifted into an apartheid state subjugating the Palestinian population. Her Western allies are perceived as endorsing Israel’s project through their inaction, or failures, in insisting that Israel observe Western protocols.
This would explain why Western leaders feel they have to turn a blind eye to Israel’s genocide. They are impotent, Their populations are being gaslit with Israeli propaganda, lobbying and influence.

The only person who could exercise influence on Netanyahu now is Biden. If he makes a wrong step Trump and Co would launch a campaign labelling him as anti-Semitic etc, weakening him prior to the next election.

Tonight the IDF is closing the noose on Al-Sheifa hospital. Arabic Twitter etc is watching closely and talking of consequences. Let’s hope they can restrain themselves.

Al-Shifa hospital is in a catastrophic situation, the IDF is less than a kilometre away with intensive fighting, as I write. Many thousands of civilians are sheltering there.
What happens next will speak volumes.
https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2023/1108/1415313-msf-gaza/

The difference is that Israel is a small state surrounded by many unstable autocratic states. If they over react they will let the genie out of the bottle.

Are only in theory.

So there is to be an iron curtain, after all. It’s simply a question of its precise location now.

You put so much on the shoulders of ex-vikings, the Normans? The invasions for Ireland started only in the 12th Century and I don't know just how English were the Norman and the Plantagenet kings were.

And I'm not so sure if English rulers would have been less bellicose if Harold Godwinson would have won the battle of Hastings.

I go back to that event because for most of that thousand years those Norman baron’s colonised and controlled British society. It did fade into the aristocracy in recent centuries. However we still live very much under their legacy. And their direct decedents were and in some cases still are major land owners.
It’s not so important who they were, but more that the reigns of power were held by this group for most of our recent history(post 1066).

The buccaneering started in 1066. A thousand years of empire.

There are bigger problems than Brexit at the moment. All public services and a lot of sectors are in crisis, or collapsing. Brexit adds a bit to this, but this failure along with economic failure is more as a result of a decade of austerity followed by the pandemic.
The idea that Brexit was a mistake is spreading, which is now a majority view. But neither of the big two political party’s are talking about any attempt to forge closer links with the EU. Both ruling out rejoining SM, or CU.

The Tory political tradition via Eton and Oxford is a hangover from the British imperialism of the 19th century. Hopefully it is now broken.

The economic crisis in the U.K. is really dire. I heard an influential Tory backer interviewed on Radio 4 this morning. Saying that Brexit is a mistake, that the U.K. will become the sick man of Europe again and will probably be bailed out by the IMF.

“The steal”. Will Boris’s support swing behind Mordaunt now.