Populism is, essentially, plebeian mentality, and plebeian mentality is antidemocratic, simplistic, black-and-white, thus authoritarian.

It's not that the elites would have become corrupted; it's that (also because of democarcy), plebeian people, ie. people from low socio-economic classes have been able to attain positions of power (in politics, economy, education, art). These people have probably accumulated wealth and obtained higher education degrees, but they still are plebeians at heart. — baker

This is a very interesting point you make, @baker.

Plebeian mentality might well be the root of the ideology. Our society, even if there is a democratic republican system, is still very meritocratic. Actually strives to be meritocratic, hence there will be always "the Plebeians". Meritocracy with capitalism creates income inequality, and that is structural, a basic part of simply supply and demand. What we do to erase the worst effects of this inequality is up to the society and the amount of social cohesion the society has. Still, Plebeian mentality won't go away. You will find this kind of thinking in every country, no matter how liberal or libertarian they are.

And when have democracy, it shouldn't be a surprise that actually what people think does matter. Yet if things are generally OK and people are happy, there simply isn't a reason for the juxtaposition and hatred in the way populism tells it. It simply isn't accepted in the public narrative or in the Overton window. Those holding the most radical "Plebeian ideas" simply don't say them aloud as they would be laughed upon.

In a way, populist ideology becomes publicly acceptable. It's the populist politician that changes the Overton window. The populist politician first says something outrageous, which before would have ended a politicians career, and suprisingly to the media that follows politics, he's getting support. And usually it's the media that is bashing him or her that actually makes then people to hear about this new politician. And when you a general dissatisfaction about how things are, these "outrageous" comments are exactly what the dissatisfied want to hear. That he is denounced makes him popular. The denouncement creates the "elite" that is hostile against the people and encourages more to believe in the populism.

And perhaps here is the so-called "elite" formed, because something has been unacceptable in the Overton window, it seems that criticism against breaking the accepted norms becomes "a concentrated effort by the elite to attack the populist". Hence the elite that the populism talks about is formed basically by all those who go to criticize the movement. They are the talking heads, the supporters and the sheeple brainwashed by the "elite".

People are not only not equal, people generally despise the very idea of equality. — baker

Equality in some matters. Legal equality. Equality in voting. Equality with the rights of freedom. Equality in being citizens of our countries.

Not equality in income and wealth as we surely have different kinds of jobs. I can just iddle my time writing here and not work, so why would somebody that works ten times more have equal income?

As I stated above, this inequality cannot be erased away. Only the worst aspects that it might lead can and should be taken care of.

Morally speaking, 10/7 is worse than Pearl Harbor because at least Pearl Harbor was a military target. — BitconnectCarlos

It's telling that you forget the Philippines and the Filipinos. An invasion that started ten hours after Pearl Harbor, lasted until 1945 with half a million to one million Filipinos dying in WW2. This was a pre-emptive attack which a land invasion followed. But that's hardly something you would take notice, because it doesn't fit to the narrative to remind people that actually the US was a colonial power back then.

The behavior of the IDF has been remarkable humane, comparably speaking. — BitconnectCarlos

Of course. Guess we all need a refresher now on what 'comparably speaking' means.

(The Guardian) Israel is facing growing international pressure for an investigation after more than 100 Palestinians in Gaza were killed when desperate crowds gathered around aid trucks and Israeli troops opened fire on Thursday.

Israel said people died in a crush or were run over by aid lorries although it admitted its troops had opened fire on what it called a “mob”. But the head of a hospital in Gaza said 80% of injured people brought in had gunshot wounds.

On Friday, a UN team that visited some of the wounded in Gaza City’s al-Shifa hospital saw a “large number of gunshot wounds”, UN chief Antonio Guterres’s spokesman said.

The hospital received 70 of the dead and treated more than 700 wounded, of whom around 200 were still there during the team’s visit, spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said.

Are you saying Populism is something like "voting," Basically? — Vaskane

Populism is a political narrative. It surely can be used in any society, but it is part of the political discourse in a democratic system. If people are satisfied (at least to some degree) with the system and there aren't huge political problems, then populism stays on the fringe with a tiny part of the political system. There's always those people who think this way, just as there always are radicals in a democracy.

Populism becoming mainstream tells something about the political environment, which I think the point that @Tzeentch has made.

I think Nietzsche's quote on homogenization of the masses still applies through populism and thus rears conditions to build the strongest of tyrants. — Vaskane

Nations do need some kind of homogenization starting from being equal citizens. Even if patriotism and nationalism have their dark sides, you has to remember that they also connect people who otherwise have little if anything common. It's important for social cohesion.

Yet Pakistan didn’t perform or wasn’t cooperative as required. — neomac

And why is that? Because the state of Pakistan had it's own security agenda, which the Bush administration didn't care a shit about. There were there only for the terrorists ....and either you were with them or against them .And that's why it failed.

In short, if you have the finest hammer in the World, don't start thinking that everything is a nail. Accept that you can use only in limited cases a hammer and you simply have to go with other tools, even if your citizens just desperately want it to be "Hammer time"!

But how clearly wrongheaded did it look the idea of exploiting that "window of opportunity” within Bush administration, back then? — neomac

So clearly wrongheaded that few people including myself saw the error that was being done. All you needed was read a bit. What was telling then was Scott Ritter, who had been part of the weapons inspection team and wrote a little book about there being no WMD program anymore before the invasion. Of course he faced the wrath of the US later and once those bridges are burnt, the only thing to get income is to be Putin's spokesperson.

And since then it was news like a train in the US stopped because someone panicked that there was a Sikh abroad (as obviously a Sikh man is a dangerous muslim terrorist because he has a turban), the message was really evident that American crowd was taking everything in and the Bush administration was milking the traumatic experience. Just like Bibi is doing now in Israel.

I remember very well even in this forum (which had an older version before this) many Americans coming angrily to defend their President on the reasons to go to war in Iraq. He got faulty intel? What could have he otherwise done? Many saw as their civic duty to defend their President on this Forum.

Luckily Trump happened. Trump shattered the stupid idea of "The Prez just got bad intel". Trump crushed Jeb Bush just for being a Bush and told the truth that even the Trump supporter understood it. Hence everyone now that has some knowledge of the facts understand just how active role in promoting the war in Iraq the Vide President and his team had. Members of his team were convicted and would have faced jail if the "Prez" hadn't pardoned them.

True but other societies may also use brute force and other aspects not permitted by democratic means. — Vaskane

And a democracy to function, it ought to have the ability change the individuals that are in power. Violence already means that democracy isn't working.

Violence is something that we shouldn't get to. And this come to my point: if an ideology is confrontational from the start and creates juxtaposition, then it's abuse is easy. Political ideologies have to be viewed from how absolute idiots will take them. Those that ideologies that accept or promote violence are the worst. Marxism is a good example: a communist revolution morphs quite quickly to simply killing the rich. Or those perceived to be rich. After all, if the Capitalist system has to be overthrown violently, doesn't that mean killing people? Many Marxists would disagree, but they aren't the ones with the rifles going house to house to look for the class enemy, usually.

Naturally the present populism doesn't start from such a situation. But basically it has doubts about the whole democratic process. With populism there is this obvious "us" and "them" and "they", where the elite, "they", aren't some specific individuals.

Well, some people are decency-challenged. — jorndoe

When you take the side of the aggressor, you have to vilify the victim. Hence a) Ukrainians have no agency over their own country and b) they have to be corrupt and neo-nazis.

Hmm, after 554 pages @Tzeentch, perhaps we indeed should let the historians answer these issues.

If you have the time, here's a good (but extremely long) discussion by Lex Fridman and historian of Ukraine. Lex asks him seemingly everything that comes to his mind about Ukraine. NATO enlargement and why Putin attacked and what was the situation in the peace talks at start of the war all all discussed. Luckily you can find the topics on the youtube video (for example why did the peace talks fail starts at 2:09:30) or then listen for more than three hours. A long walk is great when listening, exercise is healthy.

Well, yes. Kind of.

They often correctly sense there is something wrong with the political elite. — Tzeentch

That's the point: there is much to tell what is wrong. It can be a great narrative.

Many times it can be the politician that falls out from the "in-crowd", messes up or gets his hand in the cookie jar. You won't find a better person to tell how crooked the elites are!

The real issue is, what really to do then!

Populism doesn't appear overnight. Usually years of neglect precede it, which is where all the anger and discontent comes from. — Tzeentch

I agree. It can be really a really long thing that really takes ages to happen. Disillusionment doesn't happen in a day.

The political elite no longer have the best interest of the nation at heart, and they have usurped the mechanism by which the nation could correct that. — Tzeentch

Yet are these individuals? Or is this a class or something vague?

If innocent people get targeted, that is of course regrettable. — Tzeentch

The real question is if targeting people is the answer in the first place.

And one thing is how do you define someone to be the culprit. Is trying, but making mistakes wrong? Or not doing anything about some issue when believing it's not your responsibility in the first place.

Prodding the bear, lol. Still going strong with Putin's narrative of US coups and NATO enlargement. And let's not forget Ukrainian Nazis! :joke:

Oh poor, poor Russia!

"Populism" is a term that is used when a political elite continuously refuses to acknowledge problems that exist inside a society. — Tzeentch

Umm...let's look at some definitions populism.

a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups.

Populism is a range of political stances that emphasize the idea of "the people" and often juxtapose this group with "the elite". It is frequently associated with anti-establishment and anti-political sentiment.

Populism, political program or movement that champions, or claims to champion, the common person, usually by favourable contrast with a real or perceived elite or establishment. Populism usually combines elements of the left and the right, opposing large business and financial interests but also frequently being hostile to established liberal, socialist, and labour parties.

Your definition is more like saying "Yep. Populists got it right!" :wink:

Many of this thread's participants seem to view "populism" as something negative, and therefore try to understand it in negative terms: "anti-democratic", "authoritarian", "truth-denying", etc. — Tzeentch

This is a very valid point. Why would it be so negative and why would it lead to authoritarianism? And perhaps this comes into topic I would hope to be discussed.

In politics there are two different questions to answer: a) What is basically wrong and b) How this problem will be solved.

And usually what is enough for a politician to get to answering part a). If a politician can in a simple fashion or in eloquent new way just say what's wrong and why, that basically it. If it's the issue that has nagged voters, yet perhaps they haven't come around to understand it so clearly, obviously someone just telling the truth will get support. Because to answer question b) is very complex and many times confusing. So your problem can be rampant corruption. Or unemployment and a failing economy which doesn't seem to have any answers. Then for the real political message of answering b), one can just declare "I can fix this!".

So if that is basically universal for all politicians, then what makes the populist different? In short, it's the antagonism, which is in the core message of populism: the culprits are the elite, who are against
the common honorable people. And if the populist has been part of the elite, that's absolutely no problem: he or she can just say: "Believe me, I know these people, I've been part of them!" And immediately the populist is made, by his or her own count, as a rebel and the enemy of this elite, who he or she has betrayed here when coming to the help of the common people.

A political ideology that has antagonism and starts from an inherent juxtaposition might not be the most helpful to create social cohesion, and can surely be abused.

Before anybody makes the remark here that "Isn't sometimes antagonism justified", it surely can be so. Revolutions do happen because of justified reasons. You can have a corrupt, out of touch elite that is ruining the country and when there is no other way to correct the system, then you can have in the end a revolution. But then it should be about the individuals in that elite, not about general hatred toward elites. It should be about correcting the culture of corruption and unlawfulness. It is abot the absolutely crucial question of how to solve the problems and what to build in the place of the old. When the ideology itself is antagonist from the start, it has the difficulty to then make the small fixes that are needed. There's the urge to just throw everything away and you can end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Also when you have started from the idea of the "evil elite" that you have to oppose, it's quite logical to replace this with your "own elite" of the right-minded. It isn't that your objective is to listen to your opponents and try to get some consensus. The populist has the moral high ground: he or she is working for the people, the common man and woman.

Yet do note what Bernays says:

This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. — Edward Bernays, Propaganda

And it isn't just the democratic society, It's every society. That vast numbers of human beings live together simply necessitates cooperation, specialization of work and an economy. All this needs rules. One might be critical of them, but they are needed.

So I do not understand why you are claiming that Bush didn’t take into account especially Pakistan nor in what sense he could have taken into account both Iran and Pakistan. — neomac

Isn't it obvious?

That the Pakistanis did support their creation and gave it a safe haven. Or you really think that OBL who was was next to a Pakistani army base in an area where many military personnel lived, was there just by coincidence and the Pakistanis didn't know anything about it? And when Trump had given the stab in the back for their own Afghan government, the Pakistanis likely coordinated the quick military operation that took over the country.

So the US invaded and occupied a country, which not only had a tradition of fighting successfully Great Powers that invaded it, but now there also was a safe haven, a country next to Afghanistan where the Taleban could rest, reorganize and train and coordinate the fighting from.

So yes, George Bush didn't take into account that the Taleban would simply continue the fight from Pakistan. And guess he didn't want to make Pakistan, another former ally of the US, another nuclear capable axis-of-evil state like North Korea. Nope. Once Kabul was free from Taleban, mission accomplished and onward to the next war.

And when OBL was killed, did the war end? Of course not! That's what you get when your response to a terrorist attack done by 19 terrorists is to invade a country where the financier of the strike has been living. Getting the terrorists won't end the conflict, because those insurgents opposing you are fighting you as the invader of their country. To me it's quite obvious, but people can live in their bubble and have these delusional ideas that a whole country has to be invaded in order for it not to be a terrorist safe haven.

The case of Iran is obvious when it comes to Iraq. It's telling that the Saudis told exactly what would happen if Bush senior would continue the attack from Kuwait to Baghdad. But younger Bush had to go in, because there was the "window of opportunity".

I don’t think one can see much of a plan doomed to fail from that speech alone. — neomac

Obviously you have to put the speech into context with everything else. But there are obvious warning signs:

Like "War on Terror". What is this war against a method? What actually does it mean? Going after every terrorist group anywhere or what? What's the idea here? Especially when any war that the US fights is de facto top-down controlled: in the end the POTUS makes the decisions, is the "decider" and gives the "go ahead". And when the issue is like killing under aged American citizen because his father was a terrorist (or had promoted terrorist rhetoric after been in an Egyptian prison), it's totally logical for the intelligence services want a "jail free card" and the President to take the decision, and not face themselves a congressional inquiry. So when the President and the White House is (and has to be) so connected to warfighting, how many different wars you think they can handle? Fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, the Sahel, Philippines.

What do you think will happen when an administration starts a "Global War on Terrorism"? What kind of myriad involvement you will have everywhere when you try something like that?

You get more than just a fancy service medal:

On the other side, Saddam was a maverick and had more enemies than friends in the region while the influence of his biggest supporter (the Soviet Union) was already gone. So he was an easy enemy. — neomac

LOL! So you think that Osama bin Laden and his little cabal called Al Qaeda weren't mavericks? :lol:

I don't think there's any trace of the Taleban being involved with the September 11th attacks oir that they had been informed about them. And what was the "diplomacy" between the US and Taleban in turning OBL to US authorities? As I've stated, it wasn't enough just to get OBL and Al Qaeda leaders to be put into trial. Nope, Americans wanted revenge, punishment! So what did Bush say to the Taleban? This, in a statement in front of the Congress enthusiastically applauding it:

The leadership of al Qaeda has great influence in Afghanistan and supports the Taliban regime in controlling most of that country. In Afghanistan, we see al Qaeda's vision for the world.

Afghanistan's people have been brutalized -- many are starving and many have fled. Women are not allowed to attend school. You can be jailed for owning a television. Religion can be practiced only as their leaders dictate. A man can be jailed in Afghanistan if his beard is not long enough.

The United States respects the people of Afghanistan -- after all, we are currently its largest source of humanitarian aid -- but we condemn the Taliban regime. (Applause.) It is not only repressing its own people, it is threatening people everywhere by sponsoring and sheltering and supplying terrorists. By aiding and abetting murder, the Taliban regime is committing murder.

And tonight, the United States of America makes the following demands on the Taliban: Deliver to United States authorities all the leaders of al Qaeda who hide in your land. (Applause.) Release all foreign nationals, including American citizens, you have unjustly imprisoned. Protect foreign journalists, diplomats and aid workers in your country. Close immediately and permanently every terrorist training camp in Afghanistan, and hand over every terrorist, and every person in their support structure, to appropriate authorities. (Applause.) Give the United States full access to terrorist training camps, so we can make sure they are no longer operating.

These demands are not open to negotiation or discussion. (Applause.) The Taliban must act, and act immediately. They will hand over the terrorists, or they will share in their fate.

What you should note that the terms, not open to any negotiation, were not only to give the leaders of Al Qaeda (which is a vague group of people), but also to accept that the US forces could roam freely around the country closing military sites they deem to be terrorist sites and take whoever was deemed to be a terrorist.

And later in the speech the idea of promoting this war to about anyone anywhere (at least if they are muslim extremists) is obvious:

[/quote]Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.[/quote] (The whole speech here)

The Gulf war was also an easy cause because it was a relatively narrow conflict between two Arab countries, one bullying the other, over internationally acknowledged borders with no major or incumbent geopolitical stakes for the US. — neomac

Exactly. And that means the war had a specific objective that could be met. But just read above what Dubya says above about the GWOT. Is that clear path to a specific obtainable objective for a war that has an end? Of course not! It's just rhetorical talking points that were very apt for the occasion. Yet it came to be the guiding line in the GWOT.

But I’m not sure to what extant the US could have done otherwise in light of what was known back then and given its hegemonic ambitions. — neomac

What I find is tragic is that when too many people die, legal procedures how we treat terrorists or other homicidal criminals goes out of the window. Hence, I think it's an impossibility that 9/11 would have been treated as a police matter and the perpetrators would have been dealt as criminals and not to have a war in Afghanistan. Some other nation without a Superpower military could have been forced to do that. But now it was an impossibility. Not only would Bush have looked as timid and incapable of "carrying the big stick", he would have been seen as cold. If it would have been Al Gore as the president, likely the war in Iraq wouldn't have happened, but Afghanistan would have. And the real history is well known. To please the crowd wanting revenge and punishment, the Bush administration gave us the Global War on Terror. Something which still is fought around the World by the third US president after Bush.

It's something that Biden warned the Netanyahu government not to do. But Bibi surely didn't care and is repeating exactly something similar.

Notice that 20% of the Israeli citizens are Arabs/Palestinians and they do not suffer from the political, economic, legal, and social discrimination — neomac

Notice that we are talking about the Occupied Territories. So a question back to you, why then a one-state is impossible? The answer is that Zionism isn't meant for the non-Jews, so the State of Israel has a problem here.

What also I can concede is that the ethnocentric nature of the Zionist project is incompatible with Western secular pluralism, and this factor can very much facilitate structural discrimination even if it doesn’t straightforwardly lead to an Apartheid state. — neomac

I agree, this incompatibility here is the real problem. Hence all the talk of a two state solution.

And we have just a slight disagreement on just what makes a state to be an Apartheid state. You won't call it that, others here like me will call it so.
.

Maybe Finland might not fulfill your delusional fantasies of ethnic cleansing.

At least no Israeli officials came here to talk about it. They went to DRC, actually (see Israel in talks with Congo and other countries on Gaza ‘voluntary migration’ plan). Naturally DRC denied this, when the news was broken about the secret talks. So your not alone with these final solution fantasies.

I had noticed and remarked on the fact that Noah Harari was extremely exercised and worried about the situation in Israel 6 months before the attacks. There were increasingly vocal protests in Israel during this period. — Punshhh

The large hideous terrorist strike did unify the country, but it hasn't fixed the underlying problems. Israel had turned hard to the right already. Religious zealots and these people who openly embrace "final solution" type policies is totally normal. This was the case even before October 7th, of which Hariri and others have been worried about. And naturally you can see that not all Jews support the actions of current Israeli government.

I think the reason is that no democracy can survive perpetual war and the occasional "mowing the lawn" and assume it's normal peace time. It isn't. And since actually there isn't an existential threat for the nation as perhaps in 1948, then there has been no urgency to have peace and Bibi's opposition to any peace has won the day. Since it's been so great for decades, why not continue for more time. And hence the you cannot negotiate with "human animals" will prevail.

Yet little by little as the famine works out, the views are changing. Good example is the UK foreign secretary's statements just few days ago (see here). Only the US is fully committed to follow the Netanyahu government where ever it goes. Even if Joe can bitch about it being "over the top", it hardly will save the US.

Get me? — Vaskane

Umm.. a bit hard to follow.

But then again, so is reading Nietzsche.

I came here to discuss how democracy is just another term for homogenization of the masses. A homogenized mass is easier controlled. Gustave Le Bon's "The Crowd," can teach you that too. Same with Edward Bernays' "Propaganda." — Vaskane

Ok. Well, in such complex systems as our modern societies, the masses are quite heterogenous. Not as if we would be all peasants or hunter gatherers. Perhaps that's why you need "Propaganda"...or marketing.

So, do you think that control isn't needed? Just how we are controlled matters. Democracies, or should we be more exact and say republics (not excluding constitutional monarchies with parliaments) just have some safety valves that authoritarian and totalitarian systems don't have. Hence the difference isn't just about marketing, or polishing it to look better.

The populist has a very simply model on how this system of control works.

That it's about Israel and Palestine, well, maybe not challenge for proof then if you don't want to see it in your thread. — Vaskane

I think you misunderstood my reasoning here.

If this thread becomes political, meaning it discusses Israel/Palestine, then it's not a philosophical discussion and is sent away to the Lounge. People running the site don't want that crap here, because easily tensions rise. That was my point.

Yes, I know, but something went wrong and it’s been going wrong for a long time. — Punshhh

This is so true. Israel is really changing. The Israel @BitconnectCarlos is depicting is something especially the older generation still sees in the country as they look at how Israel fought against it neighbors in the 20th Century and wasn't the dominant military power with a nuclear triad as it is now. Or how right wing the country has become. (Comes to my mind how an old-timer like Joe Biden views Israel)

Here's a truly good interview by Ezra Klein of Richard Haas about the present situation. It is worth listening to in my view. Handles both wars: in Gaza and in Ukraine.



As a career diplomat Haas is from the old school of US foreign policy (like the late Bent Scowcroft): He states very well what is wrong with the current US foreign policy when it comes to the Middle East. Haas can talk about this, he had his finger at creating the large Western and Arab coalition that pushed out Saddam Hussein from Iraq. The US is now just going along with Netanyahu's war, which has no political ends in sight. (Haas remarks that "it's as if Clausewitz hasn't been translated to Hebrew.) And this is interesting as Noah Hariri made the same point.

It leaves me feeling that this kind of old school American foreign policy where the US took into account what is happening in the region and tried to form coalitions has been replaced unilateral actions. And illogical, but good sounding talking points that are said to please the American listener (or should I say voter). And if (when) Trump comes around, I'm not seeing any improvement. Even without Trump, the likely outcome that things will be even worse.

The are differences, of course. And of course, as it's so obvious in our times, the term populist can also be hurled as an insult on someone who doesn't actually fit the category

I would say that the True-Finns are populist too. Or at least they genuinely declared themselves to be "populist" in their earlier party program, although the actual program was far more of being popular (popularist?) and in the end on both occasions it has been in the administration (now it's on it's second time in a coalition government) it behaved quite ordinarily as a coalition member. And when your party program supports the Welfare state, your party leaders give aspiring speaches of solidarity to the the Ukrainian Parliament in Ukrainian (and get an standing ovation), and the party has disagreements with other populist or right wing parties in the European Parliament, then yes, all populist parties aren't cut from exactly the same mold.

Yet there is still something similar with the populist movement.

He says so himself: — Vaskane

Actually, I think that many people would consider themselves as Zionists in the way Chomsky considers him to be one. Yeah, that's old Noam. But I think that topic is for a thread at the lounge.

In fact this is one of the reasons why the early Zionist like Herzl, Berdichevsky, Chomsky, Lessing, so on and so on deemed Israel should be SUPRA-NATIONAL vs SUPER-NATIONAL. — Vaskane

I assume this Chomsky you talk about isn't the Noam we know, because I don't think he's a zionist.

Nietzsche is a great philosopher to quote, but perhaps it would be better to make the link here. Or is it that Nietzsche thinks that democracy will get authoritarians elected? Well, when people have been really disappointed in their democracy (or basically in their whole society), they indeed have gone with of with the radical ideas.

Corruption of the elite causes populism (basically, wide-spread discontent among the people), which causes a rejection of the system since it is deemed to be corrupt, though it isn't necessarily anti-democratic, but it can be. — Tzeentch

Good that you point out this, because here lies one important reason why populism is in the end anti-democratic.

After all, if you have corrupt leaders, then obviously the antidote would be put them on trial, have stronger institutions starting from an effective justice system, more transparency. That's what you do with criminals.

Yet notice the difference where populism starts with: it doesn't think that it would be a few bad apples, it goes against a collection of people, the elite. The justice system is designed to deal with individuals, the populist starts from the idea that the whole system is rigged to serve the elite. The "ordinary man" cannot get justice against the elites. What populists are against is a vague group of people they assume to be this elite that actually works like a cabal. It is the hostility and the confrontational juxtaposition in the rhetoric and in the narrative, that the elite is against "the people", which goes far beyond just condemning some individuals.

Condemnation of a class of people isn't something that fits well with democratic thinking. So basically populists have a problem with democracy.

Hence just as noted above, these movements end up being authoritarian, because they don't trust democracy or that people could govern themselves. Perhaps because the elites have too much control of the people or will easily use their influence take that control. The populist movement is really out there to replace the elite with it's own elite dedicated to serve "the people".

And who are then these wonderful "real people"? Naturally they are the supporters of the movement, the agent trying to overcome this other. Hence it is these people that the populist has listen to, which the populist thinks is enough democracy. Others might be in cahoots with the evil elite.

The populist narrative wouldn’t be required if the state was truly democratic. Instead we get a representative government and a vast administrative state, all of which teams with people who want to run the lives of others. — NOS4A2

Yes, it starts from the fact that people aren't happy with the representational model. As @jkop mentioned, direct democracy is one option, but how does that work in societies made from tens or even hundreds of million of people is a problem for direct democracy. Representative government and a democracy already asks a lot from the society to work properly.

The reign of the elites is already authoritarian. — NOS4A2

If you think so, then likely you will think that any representative body is authoritarian.

I don't think Israel is special in this regard. As an American, Pearl Harbor and 9/11 come to mind as comparable instances casualty-wise -- both of which led to "the gloves coming off." Can you cite me an instance where comparable casualties did not lead to further escalation? — BitconnectCarlos

As stated earlier, the Japanese attack wasn't comparable to a terrorist attack. It really was a traditional military invasion. Remember that the US owned the Philippines and the Japanese invaded your colony. The US was also invaded in the Alaska. That's far off from a terrorist strike.

But sure.

The best comparable situation that comes to mind was when the Austro-Hungarian crown prince was murdered in cold blood in Sarajevo by terrorists that had relations to Serbia. Austro-Hungaria had to declare war! Who cares if they lost the whole Empire (and Serbia was put into Yugoslavia), leaders had to react with the "gloves coming off".

And then there are the false flags like the terrorist attack on a Moscow suburb. Putin had to get a "round two" with the Chechens who had humiliated the Russian Army in the First Chechen War. That war was great for Putin and his presidential campaign! When have problems at home, go for war.

So I guess Bibi will think that once he's taking care "once and for all" about the issue, his popularity will come back.

Regarding the "Jewish psyche" mentioned earlier, here's Golda Meir: — BitconnectCarlos

Who btw was forced out because the Yom Kippur war had as a surprise to her and her administration, just like "Al Aqsa-flood" came as a surprise to Bibi.

But naturally when your war kills 30 000 in a few months and children are starving, anybody needs to be firm in one's convictions to be doing the right thing.

Have you btw noticed that Putin is also playing the Hitler card? Evil nazis everywhere.

It sounds as if you are making an objection to me — neomac

Sorry if I was rude or impolite, didn't mean to.

So what’s the point of bringing that up? — neomac

Just to emphasis that in order to have peace after war, it's not so simple as politicians say it is. Simple easy sounding solutions (just destroy them) end up in quagmires.

For example: Just to "go to" Afghanistan and destroy Al Qaeda and the supporting Taleban was what George Bush had in mind. He didn't want to have anything to do with "nation building". Did he take into account Iran or especially Pakistan, the backer of Taleban? Nope. So the US got it's longest war, which it even more humiliatingly lost than the Vietnam war. And Pakistanis can celebrate (as they did) outsmarting the Americans.


That was the plan. And simple naive plans backfire. Usually because they are stupid plans.

Just compare to his father who a) got an OK both from the UN and from Soviet Union and China for the use of force, b) arranged an overwhelming alliance, c) listened to his allies and didn't overreach and continue to Baghdad, d) had an cease-fire

that the enemy accepted. Had even a parade after the war.

After the cease-fire talks, US general Schwarzkopf salutes his counterpart Iraqi Lt. General Sultan Hasheem Ahmad. Saudi Armed Forces commander next to Schwarzkopf, but not shown:

As far as I’m concerned, the dual system in the West Bank occupied territories consists in the fact that Palestinians were/are under Israeli military law and not under Israeli civil laws, because Palestinians are not Israelis — neomac

And since Israel never has had the attempt to make both Jews and Non-Jews there all Israelis, then this is what you get.

If you want peace and have in your country other people then you, then you try to make them part of your country (like Romans decided later that everybody living there would be Romans). Or be even smarter, create a new identity like the English did: Everybody, including them, would be BRITISH. Even that wasn't enough for the Irish, because they had a long memory of how the English had behaved in their country. But it has been a success story in Scotland and Whales.

Now, does Israel try this? No. It's a homeland for the Jews and others just can fuck off. And that's why in the end it is an Apartheid system, because it has at it's core that similary hostility towards the others, similar to what the white Afrikaaners had in their system for blacks.

Lol. That's too expensive for me, at least!

And of course the feeling is extremely limited. It won't give you the feeling what's it like to be in a spin. You can get easily 2,5G even in a sailplane when making hard turns or a loop. Just put the speed over 200km/h and you'll get the momentum. Soaring is easily like being in a huge roller coaster, although it's far more softer as there are no tracks that make roller coaster bumpy and uncomfortable. After learning to fly, I never felt car sickness anymore.

The good thing in aircraft simulators is that you indeed give the same input (use the throttles and the stick similarly) and for computers it's easy to calculate the physics of the plane. Thus modern sims are really helpful. But human motion isn't so and there's so many ways you can walk that simply cannot be "played" well on a computer. So I'm not a great enthusiast of FPS or sport games.

This place! What better way to inform yourself about philosophy and current event than discuss them with you guys.

I've been an avid computer gamer, but I like simulators. Having flown sailplanes in my youth, Microsoft Flight Simulator has only now come to the level where it's really quite authentic and you can navigate actually by looking at the lakes, swamps and urban areas (even if the detail still isn't to individual buildings). The only thing missing is the feeling in your butt, the actual roller coaster ride that flying a sailplane, soaring, is. The sights and sounds are how it is. Then Kerbal Space Program is one of my top simulators, the way you can easily learn how flights to the moon and other planets actually happen. And many other simulators and wargames. Wargames as board games are great, but computers help so much in calculating everything.

Now when older, walking and swimming are the type of exercise that an old guy not in shape likes.

Being a land owner in rural Sweden in 1867 meant that regardless of how well you had taken care of your land you would starve to death unless you revolt or emigrate. — jkop

Emigration happens even in far less dire situations.

A huge number of Finns emigrated to Sweden to work in the 1960's and the1970's, which actually took care of our unemployment problem and Sweden got it's first dose of immigrants, which even looked like Swedes and ought to have learnt Swedish in school.

If emigration had not been an option, then revolt seems probable, at least if one considers the fact that these peasants had no political power, they were too poor to be allowed to vote, and thus easy to exploit by the feudal elite. — jkop

Emigration to America was the real blessing to Europe altogether, actually. Yet the driving factor, as I discussed with @NOS4A2 was the population growth that happened because of modern medicine and improved supply of food thanks to improvements in agriculture and global trade. This population growth didn't happen because of political developments and hence immigration and the industrial revolution helped this. Today Third World countries don't have such a nice situation as 19th Century Europe had.

Yet Sweden is a perfect example of that huge transformations can happen without revolts and political turmoil and blood on the streets. England had it's bloody Civil War, France has had multiple revolutions. Places like Sweden and Switzerland stand out from the crowd.

I take as given that, as a matter of logic, science can’t answer philosophy’s ought questions based only on what ‘is’.

But the science of morality can study why our moral sense and cultural moral norms exist. There is a growing consensus that “human morality” (here our moral sense and cultural moral norms) exists because it solves cooperation problems in groups. — Mark S

Yet it doesn't erase the difference between the objective and the normative. Or science and moral philosophy, as you put it.

If moral norms solve cooperation problems in groups, we can obviously understand that moral thinking goes further than a group of humans. What about other groups, what about other living beings, our World and the environment in general?

I think there's one thing we simply have to admit to ourselves: we are fascinated by scientific solutions. Solutions and policies that we have come to using the scientific method. We don't like that our decisions especially on complex things is done because or moral or ethical thinking, but we hope to a solution using science. It's logical, science is about the reality, not some dubious moral philosophy. Scientism rules!

Yet if we just understand that "how the World is" and "how the World should be" are two totally different questions that aren't easy to answer and that the first question doesn't immediately give us an answer to the second question, that's a good start.

Not sure what your point is: — neomac

You might set your objective to that you fight a war to an unconditional surrender, but that doesn't mean that it happens automatically. Meaning that the defeated enemy can choose to surrender to you, hear your demands isn't something that automatically happens. Or simply doesn't appear to your surrender meeting. Hopefully you get it.

So the “Apartheid condition” you are talking about, is very much motivated by concerns over Palestinian terroristic attacks like those of Hamas. — neomac

Wrong. The Apartheid system started immediately after the 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza when the military occupation started. Far earlier than the first Intifada. See here.

That Palestinians living in the occupied territories are under military law and aren't citizens of Israel while Israelis living in the West Bank are (and are under Israeli law), is the obvious sign of an Apartheid system. And of course, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza cannot vote in Israeli elections as they aren't Israeli citizens. As there isn't an one state solution.

Usually people living in a country are under the same laws and are considered citizens of the country. Not so in occupied territories that Israel holds. That's one thing of the Apartheid system, which started well before there was any Hamas formed.

In Israel:

Jewish settlers in the West Bank are Israeli citizens and enjoy the same rights and liberties as other Jewish Israelis. They also enjoy relative impunity for violence against Palestinians. Most of the West Bank’s Palestinian residents fall under the administrative jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority (PA), which operates under an expired presidential mandate and has no functioning legislature.

In Apartheid South Africa:

In the Apartheid system The Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act of 1970 made every Black South African, irrespective of actual residence, a citizen of one of the Bantustans, which were organized on the basis of ethnic and linguistic groupings defined by white ethnographers. Blacks were stripped of their South African citizenship and thereby excluded from the South African body politic.

Hopefully you do see the similarities and just why people can refer quite aptly the situation to Apartheid.

3/4 of the population owned very small lots, so one might have reason to suspect that these peasants were simply too poor to revolt against the ruling nobility, church, and monarchy. — jkop

Do notice the extremely important thing: 3/4 of the population owned lots. Even if they were very small lots and had only a couple of cows and few patches of land, these people were land owners. The outcome of this you can see actually looking at map of countryside in Sweden or in Finland: the houses are separate and not in Medieval-type villages. This is the effect of the Great Partition.

Photo of Varmland, Sweden. Notice how separate the houses are next to their fields. They weren't so in the Middle Ages or earlier.


Hence the peasants were not in a similar position like serfdom the peasantry in Russia in the 19th Century or earlier, described so well for example in the book Dead Souls by Gogol.

Here I would disagree with you on the idea of "people being too poor to revolt" argument:

The poverty of peasants isn't at all a reason for there not to be peasant revolts, I'd say it's on the contrary! People that have nothing to lose can lose it. What would they lose if they have nothing to lose? Land ownership is something that makes people to take care of their property. Extreme poverty leads to a very shaky and violent society. And this is shown by how violent slave revolts are and how they have been an existential threat even to Ancient Rome, where slavery was very common. And slaves have it even worse, yet revolts like in Haiti happened.

As I was saying the glorification of the victims of October 7th to justify ethnic cleansing and genocide. — Punshhh

:100: :up:

Some go with October 7th as the justification for "taking the gloves off" and everything else would be "appeasement" for them.

This is a war with no actual plan further (because destroy Hamas is a great talking point, but not a plan what to do afterwards) and the US is sleepwalking further into it. This will lead to further disenchantment towards the whole region.

Does what you are saying imply that horrors of the war (like the ones we see in Gaza) or demand for unconditional surrender constitute a strong argument against durable peace in the region? Because history shows also that one can demand and obtain UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Potsdam-Declaration) and have prospects of a durable peace after enough devastation (including civilians, kids, cities) and even after heavy bombings and nukes. — neomac

If you ask for unconditional surrender and assume to get an unconditional surrender, then there has to be someone that SURRENDERS!

Notice when the Germans surrendered to the Allied, not only was there a German leadership that surrendered and a German army that obeyed the surrender, there wasn't anything like the Werewolves to continue the fight. The Nazi regime had drawn plans to continue an insurgency, but that didn't happen: there was nobody to continue the fight.

Let's take an example here:

Assume the Russians really get fed up with the annoying Americans and notice a window of opportunity and can launch a successful surprise nuclear attack which destroys the US nuclear deterrence and the American military industrial complex. And just a few US nuclear submarines are able to shoot of their SLBMs in a retaliatory strike, but the missiles perform as poorly as the British Tridents (they fall back into the sea) with only a few getting through and only 1,5 million Russians are killed whereas 25 million Americans are killed. And they still would have a nuclear force to make an countervalue strike (basically bomb American to the stone age, as people put it). A marvellous victory!

But then what?

What if your amazing Russian victory has been so fantastically decisive, that all 18 people in the line of the Presidential succession have been killed alongside all the members of Congress. Yet obviously you have only a segment of the population, say killed 25 million, so I guess there are many Americans people in those smaller towns and cities that haven't been blown up or haven't gotten radiation poisoning.

Then obviously you would need to find someone representing the US, but if the only American officials you find respond with swearwords and the promise that they'll never surrender and commit every moment of their life to revenge this attack. What is your idea then? Try to occupy the 3rd largest country which is now partly a nuclear wasteland? Or give the Americans 50 years to make that retaliatory strike?

Hence history has shown, that you don't automatically get an unconditional surrender. Iraq and Afghanistan are perfect examples of this. And if you think that the only way is then to take the Mongol Horde attitude to the strategy "make a desert and call it peace" of killing literally everybody, then go away only to come two weeks later to check that you really have killed off everyone, you still haven't create real peace for yourself: the Mongol Empire collapsed quite quickly to smaller parts. And isn't remembered so fondly afterwards.

To me the case of Germany suggests that the problem for a durable peace is not necessarily the amount of devastation, civilian deaths, unconditional surrender, and loss of territorial integrity. But how oppressive the victorious foreign power is perceived to be in peace settlements, AFTER the war is ACKNOWLEDGED as lost. — neomac

Oppression creates resistance. Yet if you after the peace leave the people alone or even go so far that help them to get on their feet, then actually you can look forward to a longstanding peace.

I conceded as much: “it would have been easier to deal with secular zionism at the end of the British Mandate, then with non-secular zionism today, given the greater pragmatism of the former and a shorter list of historical grievances against Palestinians back the”. — neomac

Well, this is of course self evident: If you wouldn't have had 75-year conflict but a peace then that had prevailed until today, naturally there wouldn't be the grievances of a 75-year conflict!

I was talking about Palestinians. — neomac

And I was too.

Arafat failed the test badly and set a precedent which obviously biased Israelis toward Palestinian terrorist organizations. — neomac

And the Palestinian/Arab side can actually say the same things of Israel, which didn't accept the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 which was endorsed by the Arab League and immediately embraced by Jasser Arafat and later by Mahmoud Abbas. Polls have find that the Palestinians (then) were favourable towards it. Yet The Israelis simply rejected it as a "non-starter". So why is it only the fault of the Arab side?

To me it's obvious. There's no real will for a negotiated peace or a two-state solution.

The whole arena has been hijacked by religious extremists who have succeeded to burn every bridge towards peace. And those that accuse only one side about this aren't seeing the reality.

Japanese proved to be capable of that (and Hamas?) but evidently there were enough decision makers who rejected this logic (starting with the Emperor himself). — neomac

I think who ought to be congratulated are here the Americans in the way they handled both Germany and Japan after WW2. Because you can just compare at just how well the Treaty of Versailles served the French. Mr Hitler even got even the same railroad wagon for the French unconditional surrender.

Yet sometimes it seems that the US has forgotten in it's own hubris that the international order that Trump so much hates was made by the US for the US and it succeeded very well. Somehow now the US doesn't need it because it's so awesome. But the order only succeeded when other nations went along with it, not by use of force and threat (as the Soviet Union did), but by cooperation. Places where the US has used old imperial ways aren't so happy with the Americans.

Somehow that idea of peaceful coexistence and cooperation seems for many naive and wrong.

What sort of nuclear threat is Russia faced with?
Not a whole lot. Russia is already the world's largest country with the largest nuclear weapons stock around (and has long-range delivery). Mutual assured destruction seems a deterrence. If a country with nuclear arms is led by a paranoid/insane person, then the world already has a larger problem. No one is particularly interested in nuking Moscow (barring Ukrainian animosity due to their treatment of Ukraine), and no one is particularly interested in a nuclear world war. — jorndoe

Yes. But that's the way nuclear weapons bring peace, one might argue.

Yet once there here, the nuclear arsenals of Russia, US and in the future of China, which are at least theoretically capable of a first strike, you do need to think in terms with them. Military thinkers in Russia have to think about them. You can disregard things like the British nuclear deterrent, where the missiles in the four ballistic submarines seem not to be working (see Trident missile test fails for second time in a row).

Yet US / Russia balance is crucial for Russia. Just ask yourself: If Russia didn't have nuclear weapons and US/NATO would have, what is the probability of NATO having declared a no-fly zone over Ukraine at the start of the war? I think that that would have been high. The war happened because and only because Russia had nukes and Ukraine had given them away. As history has shown us again and again, nuclear weapon countries can go and invade countries without them. Just look at Israel. (The Falkland islands was so remote, that Argentina could easily understand that Thatcher wouldn't respond with it's few nukes)

If already nuclear weapons are absolutely crucial for Putin, I think Putin is really saying honestly what he is thinking and I think it's no surprise that he was talking so much about nukes. US Presidents hardly say anything about them, even if they have the extremely costly program to replace the age old Minuteman III missiles with a somewhat mediocre system (The Sentinel ICBM). Nuclear deterrence is the one thing that Russia has to cling on at all cost. If there was one thing even Yeltsin did hold on to, it was the nuclear deterrence. Russian/soviet soldiers could die of starvation on a remote radar site in Siberia because of the Soviet collapse and the state could have huge difficulties to get the last Kosmonaut back from space, yet nuclear weapons were improved even during the chaos of Yeltsin.

Here's a good 51 minute primer on what the US nuclear war plan looks like and what the nuclear triad is like. Assuming the old missiles work. The video also teaches the nuclear jargon and what is meant by counterforce and countervalue.


Nuclear weapons are this delusional realm that has little if any attachment to real life, yet it's real. They do exist. And obviously Putin and his close circle thinks a lot about them.

I hope you realize one needn’t agree with everything an author believes in order to agree on a few points. — NOS4A2

That's a very good point.

And though I find your point valid and agreeable, I’m not sure the debate is entirely settled.

Undoubtedly, the Swedish account you describe is more preferable, morally and economically. — NOS4A2

The Swedish account just shows how things like land reform have a lot more nuances as usually is portrayed. And so is with capitalism, and coming back to the topic of this thread, with the work place and workers movement (which is the historical viewpoint of the OP).

I don't know where exactly the quote was, but Marx himself has said that things might not go as he anticipated and the proletariat may end up simply ask for higher wages. So there's no revolution!

Well, that's basically what has happened in Germany and the UK and in Western Europe. In the end what the workers movement did succeed in was higher wages, better working conditions and more focus on worksafety. And of course even the paid time off from work. The age old question about income distribution was dealt and and indeed the workers and their families got more prosperous through hire wages. Capitalism didn't collapse as Marx anticipated.

Yet the debate will surely not be settled. There is an irresistible lure for the Marxist narrative or in more simple terms the populist narrative of where the evil selfish rich oppress the ordinary people. For any problems or grievances found in our society those simple narratives are so tempting that they will not die out however many times it's shown that the World isn't so black and white.

Though I still think the enclosures acts were an injustice, and the evicted peasantry were left off with not much else, it cannot be said these acts provided an army of laborers for the factory. — NOS4A2

As I thought you were a proponent of capitalism and individualism, I think it's strange that here you go with Marx.

Of course everything has to do with the question who exactly gets the common land. Marx definately gives one answer in his theories, but historically it hasn't always gone that way.

In Sweden there aristocracy was never dominant, they had to take into account the strong position of the peasants, who were independent. You can notice this from the fact that the Swedish peasantry have never revolted. The only occasion is when Sweden got it's independence from Denmark and when Finnish peasants sided with the wrong brother in a feud for the crown (hence not a traditional peasant revolt). Hence in Sweden those common lands were divided basically between the peasants. This in fact meant that a numerous size of landowners emerged in Sweden (and thus Finland). Hence there wasn't the kind of feudalism we see somewhere else with few ultrarich landowners and a poor majority.

This actually was even more important in the 19th Century when suddenly because of the paper industry, the forests became valuable, not just as places to get firewood. This made the countryside prosperous, because the ownership of the forests was so common and the peasants, still being subsistence farmers, started to earn money from selling wood. Even today out of 5,1 million Finns 600 000 own forests, so landownership is quite common with 50% to 60% of the forests being in ownership of private citizens.

In the Third World, things aren't so... and teachings of Marx are quite popular!

First, let's look at what you said:

When the factory system came into being in England, an army of workers were readily available because the State had expropriated them from their land.

First, look at the graph above with the population of England.

Now, do you really think that the army of workers readily available happened a) because of the State had expropriated them from their land or b) because of population growth.

I think option b) is far more valid and shouldn't be dismissed.

And as I stated, in Sweden they did the land reform of dividing common lands far earlier than industrialization happened in one act. Unlike in the UK. And BEFORE the population boom of the 19th Century. It didn't result in an "army of workers". The population growth in the 19th Century created the situation that many had to go to the cities to look for jobs.

Is it your opinion that the enclosures movement had no effect? — NOS4A2

The enclosure movement started when? In the middle Ages? What I remember is that this took a HUGE time in England, whereas the division of common lands for example here (when we were part of the Kingdom of Sweden) it all was done once in the Great Partition in the middle of the 18th Century. Whereas in the UK this was done it bits and small parcels individually extended through a long time, continuing to the 19th Century. (Or I don't know, is it still done somewhere?)

Had this a link to industrialization and the emergence of industry workers? In Sweden's case no. Industrialization happened basically hundred years later. A larger reason is that with modern medicine and global trade the population both here and in the UK started to grow. Babies lived to be adults and the advances in agriculture and global trade meant that there wouldn't come epic famines. Actually the last one's in poor places of Europe like Ireland and Finland.



For Marx to put this issue at the front, the enclosures movement, as a huge reason promotes his ideological views of the emergence of the proletariat as an act of the government.

The obvious has already happened: a lot of ships are going around Africa now.

And the US is totally clueless here. When it has failed even creating a large unified front to protect the global shipping lanes, I wonder just what kind of capabilities it has to form any alliances anymore. Bombing Houthis won't have that effect. They have been OK with Saudi-Arabia bombing them for years, their country falling back 50 years in their economic prosperity with malnutrition in the country.

I think this all will end a decade from now or so in simply the US leaving the Middle East, with perhaps with Israel as it's outpost. If you extrapolate how things have gone, that's the end result.

The Tractatus is not post-modern. But Wittgenstein’s later work, which turns its back on the logical grounding of mathematics put forth in the Tractatus, had a strong influence on many postmodern thinkers, including Rorty and Foucault. — Joshs

Well, where did Bertrand Russell end up? I think the reason for the "linguistic turn" is obvious: if you find things that are problematic and you cannot find an answer one way, you try to think about it differently.

Yet I think here you come to the real problem of the postmodernists. While Wittgenstein, Husserl and Heidegger (and actually even Foucault) knew what they were criticizing, the older philosophical views, the postmodernist just refer to these guys.

That's the basic problem: if you know only the critique of something, but not study the itself actually, you position is weak.

That's why if you criticize Marxism (or Marxism-Leninism), then you really have to have at least a basic understanding of Marx and Lenin. And obviously it can be frustrating, but it's important. For example I'm very glad that in the economic department in the university, they did go through the ideas of Marx and Marxian economics.

What Amnesty International says about how famine is used now in the Gaza strip:

(Feb 26th, 2024) One month after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered “immediate and effective measures” to protect Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip from the risk of genocide by ensuring sufficient humanitarian assistance and enabling basic services, Israel has failed to take even the bare minimum steps to comply, Amnesty International said today.

The scale and gravity of the humanitarian catastrophe caused by Israel’s relentless bombardment, destruction and suffocating siege puts more than two million Palestinians of Gaza at risk of irreparable harm.”

The supplies entering Gaza before the ICJ order have been a drop in the ocean compared to the needs for the last 16 years. Yet, in the three weeks following the ICJ order, the number of trucks entering Gaza decreased by about a third, from an average of 146 a day in the three weeks prior, to an average of 105 a day over the subsequent three weeks. Before 7 October, on average, about 500 trucks entered Gaza every day, carrying aid and commercial goods, including things like food, water, animal fodder, medical supplies and fuel. Even that quantity fell far short of meeting people’s needs. In the three weeks after the ICJ ruling, smaller quantities of fuel, which Israel tightly controls, made it into Gaza. The only crossings that Israel has allowed to open were also opened on fewer days, further demonstrating Israel’s disregard for the provisional measures. Aid workers reported multiple challenges, but said that Israel was refusing to take obvious steps to improve the situation.

Across the Gaza Strip, the engineered humanitarian disaster grows more horrifying each day. On 19 February, humanitarian agencies reported that acute malnutrition was surging in Gaza and threatening children’s lives, with 15.6% of children under two years acutely malnourished in northern Gaza and 5% of children under two years in Rafah in the south. The speed and severity of the decline in the population’s nutritional status within just three months was “unprecedented globally”.

See Amnesty International website

It's a tricky issue who is justified to a piece of land. — BitconnectCarlos

I don't think it's tricky. Where you live and have been born and where your family has lived ought to give the right call that your home. The US has here shows an example here with everybody that is born on US territory has the right to be an US citizen. My best friends sister's first born boy is an American, the father is an Austrian and she is a Finn now living in Vienna.

But if you think that some people are more justified than others when both have been born and lived on the same territory, then the problem is you. The whole idea of seeking justification for this from some ancient history is wrong in my mind. It's the problem itself!

IMHO as long as Hamas, a totalitarian regime, controls Gaza -- Gaza will be a prison for the palestinians. — BitconnectCarlos

Gaza was a prison even before Hamas. People couldn't get in an out without the permission of Israelis. And Netanyahu supported Hamas, as it was perfect for him to show that you cannot negotiate with the Palestinians.

What is the protocol when 1200 are killed, 300 kidnapped, and many other raped? As an American, it is war. Anything else is out of the question. — BitconnectCarlos

And why on Earth you even seek a "protocol" for handling a terrorist attack? If there's a "protocol" I think it's quite obvious: raise security for it not to happen again, seek out the perpetrators. Then look at what the reason for the attack. If it isn't an estranged lunatic individual, for whom prison/mental asylum is the answer, but the attack is part of a political struggle, then seek a solution for the political problem.

But since you took up the numbers here, about 900 civilians killed and the rest being soldiers and security operators, you actually bring up something that is a problem here. At some point, it all just becomes this urge for reprisal, for retribution. Hell with anything else!!!

(And btw, how many of decapitated babies were there actually?)

And that's the thing that for example the US can easily be entangled in a war that the terrorists seek. You only need a successful attack, and then the answer is reprisals. And reprisals are the thing terrorists want.

Here the objectives of "Al Aqsa flood" were successfully met. It prevented the Israeli-Saudi peace-deal and it put the Palestinian issue at the forefront. That Hamas is destroyed is illogical? Well, for them every dead Hamas fighter is a martyr. In fact every killed Palestinian is a martyr. For them, Israel has just shown it's real face.

The thinking is just like the "Red Army Fraction" had in Germany: the members were convinced that West-Germany was still Nazi Germany, and they as the "fraction" of the true Red Army would have to attack the system for it to show it's true colors and thus create the mythical Rote Armee would rise up from the proletariat. Yet that didn't happen. And perhaps the simple reason is that they didn't kill enough Germans for Germans to stop thinking about is a police matter, but declare a war against them.

Do you think Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Husserl are postmodernists???

You think Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is postmodern thought? I beg to differ. I think that what Wittgeinstein says about mathematics there is quite true philosophy of mathematics.

I'm not familiar with Deleuze, but at least Heidegger and Husserl did have a broad understanding of philosophy before them and that of Francis Bacon, Descartes, Kant. That the 19th and 20th Century continental philosophy had the "linguistic turn" isn't at all postmodernism, but at least they had an understanding of what they were criticizing.

It’s out of Marx’s Das Kapital. — NOS4A2

:grin: :grin: :lol:

REALLY? YOU NOS4A2???

Let me get this straight. YOU take Karl Marx not as a political philosopher, one major political ideologue of 19th Century, but the most accurate economic historian in his most important ideological book, to represent the best what economic history can say about the industrialization? Who cares if he didn't have that historical hindsight we enjoy when looking at the age of industrialization.

Or is it a cynical remark or something? :razz:

Or has you account been cracked and occupied by someone and we're looking at identity theft?

I've never thought you were the tankist Marxist here, NOS4A2. :snicker: