The misinformation and censorship regarding the lab theory is quite the scandal. Facebook went so far as to ban any discussion of the theory on its platform, ironically to protect the public from misinformation. And these measures were all based on poor science. One has to wonder what sort of information and evidence has been lost during that time. — NOS4A2

Yes, there was (is) this narrative going on that to utter the Lab-leak hypothesis, you were racist pizzagate-level conspiracist Trump-supporter and only now thanks to "new" information is this is a respectful hypothesis. This is a way for some parts of the media to start looking at the possibility (and forget how they wrote about it in the past). That the hypothesis has always been plausible, just like and others remarks, is denied. Just as talking about the possibility didn't make you a Trump supporter in the first place.

The unfortunate issue is that this isn't going away. Misinformation and disinformation are far too easy to use in this time of age and they are very effective. In fact, a clever actor can quite discreetly gain his objectives without being noticed. My concern is that the whole discourse will simply be smudged over to such level that any person, especially medical professional or academic, won't touch it with a ten foot pole. In order to make an issue simply undebatable, you will have to create the so-called "alternative-facts" and an alternative universe where the opposing narratives simply don't meet. That confuses people. Deny everything and make counteraccusations. That's the way the Chinese likely will respond, because it's an effective response.

The problem stems from the Independence War of '47-'48 when David Ben-Gurion expelled some of the Arab communities in the area, but not others. — BitconnectCarlos

It's called now days ethnic cleansing. The Jews didn't perpetrate large massacres, but enough to start the Palestinian exodus. Yet I don't know how biased the history is here.

Not a solution like the Turks had to the "Armenian problem".

And likely will float counter conspiracy theories, which will sink into people as a knife to soft butter. The objective is smudge everything over and confuse people.

As I said, a positive outcome would be that historians later are in agreement what happened in 2019 in Wuhan.

And I have not yet rejected the possibility that it isn't a lab leak.

I can change my views if new information comes to light.

The argument seems to be that the possibility can't be excluded, therefore it happened. — Banno

Absolutely wrong.

A possibility is a possibility. You are the one making the argument that a person in one article says that it's extremely unlikely, so other people here have no logic.

I genuinely don't understand such rejection of a possibility when the pandemic started from a city with a lab that not only researches coronaviruses, but genetically engineers coronaviruses to attack human cells...and then when we have not found the trace from the market to an animal (as the natural cause).

Bit of a coincidence. And actually gave a great article back from 2012 when Trump wasn't yet in politics etc. Here's a quote about the probabilities of lab leaks happening:

Simple mathematical analysis gives real reason for concern about the handling of these dangerous viruses. Consider the probability for escape from a single lab in a single year to be 0.003 (i.e., 0.3 percent), an estimate that is conservative in light of a variety of government risk assessments for biolabs and actual experience at laboratories studying dangerous pathogens. Calculating from this probability, it would take 536 years for there to be an 80 percent chance of at least one escape from a single lab. But with 42 labs carrying out live PPP research, this basic 0.3 percent probability translates to an 80 percent likelihood of escape from at least one of the 42 labs every 12.8 years, a time interval smaller than those that have separated influenza pandemics in the 20th century. This level of risk is clearly unacceptable. (A detailed analysis, additional arguments, documentation, and mathematical justification for these conclusions can be found in the research report written by one of us, “Sharpening Our Intuition on Man-made Pandemics.”)

Awful as a pandemic brought on by the escape of a variant H5N1 virus might be, it is SARS that now presents the greatest risk. The worry is less about recurrence of a natural SARS outbreak than of yet another escape from a laboratory researching it to help protect against a natural outbreak. SARS already has escaped from laboratories three times since 2003, and one escape resulted in several secondary infections and one death.

What is the likelihood that the virus’s escape could lead to a pandemic? Too high, given the lessons taught by the natural SARS outbreak a decade ago.

But somehow Dominic Dwyer saying that the risk is extremely low, then people ridicule others that say that it still is a possibility.

I don't think you got my point: If you fear that your own citizens will turn your back on you and go with the enemy, then you obviously have done something wrong: you have failed in creating social cohesion, you have not integrated your citizens or have successfully instilled the idea of your own country to the people living there. Usually these fears what you are talking have been the racist fears in the population and when politicians start pandering to these fears, the outcome is ugly. People who have believed they are full citizens suddenly have to notice that they are viewed as the enemy by their own country. Many times in history these "unreliable" segments of the citizenry, be they a minority or supporters of political movement have been very loyal.

(Arvid Janhunen fought with the Reds during the Finnish Civil War and later he excelled in battle during WW2 getting the highest war medal in Finland (the Mannerheim-cross) fighting in the army he had 21 years earlier fought against. Many former members of the Red Guard also fought in WW2 in the ranks of the Finnish Army and their commitment in the Winter War showed the unity of the country and that the wounds of the civil war had healed. If Finland would have feared a "fifth column", likely national unity wouldn't have been achieved.)


Yes, I do notice that Arab Israelis can go voluntarily to serve. That they don't do so in large numbers does tell something. And this was just one area where these differences by law appear. And the problem is that Israel is for the Jews. Others come later. Any country that treats a part of it's citizenry as a possible "fifth column" has a serious problem.

I think people here are talking about a hypothesis.

So It's pretty odd replying to @Apollodorus that there is "no logic" in the schema and that the article you linked (see ) has all the answers.

It doesn't.

The simple problem here is that China has already jailed doctors for raising alarm in the pandemic and IS a totalitarian country. mentions more statements that not everything was given. Hence it could be a possibility that the Chinese officials erased or kept any kind of data on the Wuhan lab people having had Covid-symptoms etc. In a country like in the US, similar secrecy likely would backfire. So great, no traces indicated to the WHO team (that had as it's members people who had links to the Wuhan lab and a motivation for not finding a leak). What I find from the article that you linked is only that the author says it's extremely unlikely been a lab-leak (even if they sometime happen). And I guess that is it for you. Yet, even the WHO Director didn't rule out the hypothesis and admits that not everything was given, which does make me think it's a genuine possibility. If it really would be so extremely unlikely, why would he mention it?

So I don't understand your logic here, actually.

What I think is that likely we won't know either ever or for a very long time. Likely the whole discussion will be tried to be tarnished just as propaganda. Smoke and mirrors and accusations... Likely it's only historians a hundred years from now, who might come into agreement on what happened. Not it's too much of a political hot potato.

You cite 10 different detailed claims which is just too much for me to respond to. — BitconnectCarlos

That's just to show that the issues aren't fabricated, propaganda and actually everything is just fine with the Arab Israelis.

Yes, Israel exempts Arab citizens from conscription because Israel does not believe it civil to force Arab Israelis to fight against their own brethren as Israel is often at war. — BitconnectCarlos

You said it very well: there is no objective to make the Arab citizens to be part of the nation as "their brethren" are the enemy.

Here lies the fundamental problem: Israel views itself as the homeland for jews, and that one group of people have conscription while others have not tells of a problem.

Actually military can be used to integrate people into the nation. It also tells that all citizens are treated equally.

This is how apartheid begins to end. — StreetlightX

Nice that you can be an optimist.

I remember a same kind of front made by Time magazine about those killed in the US by firearms:



And what happened to the gun laws?

I've just read in the news that many scientists are doubting China's official view of events but prefer to remain silent for fear of being associated with "conspiracy theories". — Apollodorus

I think the reason is that one of the leading medical journals, The Lancet, published a condemnation of all "conspiracy theories" of possibility of a lab leak. Of course, the those totally rejecting one hypothesis at that moment when we don't know much, likely have something to hide. From the article Origin of Covid — Following the Clues by Nicholas Wade in New York Times :

From early on, public and media perceptions were shaped in favor of the natural emergence scenario by strong statements from two scientific groups. These statements were not at first examined as critically as they should have been.

“We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin,” a group of virologists and others wrote in the Lancet on February 19, 2020, when it was really far too soon for anyone to be sure what had happened. Scientists “overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife,” they said, with a stirring rallying call for readers to stand with Chinese colleagues on the frontline of fighting the disease.

Contrary to the letter writers’ assertion, the idea that the virus might have escaped from a lab invoked accident, not conspiracy. It surely needed to be explored, not rejected out of hand. A defining mark of good scientists is that they go to great pains to distinguish between what they know and what they don’t know. By this criterion, the signatories of the Lancet letter were behaving as poor scientists: they were assuring the public of facts they could not know for sure were true.

It later turned out that the Lancet letter had been organized and drafted by Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance of New York. Dr. Daszak’s organization funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. If the SARS2 virus had indeed escaped from research he funded, Dr. Daszak would be potentially culpable. This acute conflict of interest was not declared to the Lancet’s readers. To the contrary, the letter concluded, “We declare no competing interests.”

Virologists like Dr. Daszak had much at stake in the assigning of blame for the pandemic. For 20 years, mostly beneath the public’s attention, they had been playing a dangerous game. In their laboratories they routinely created viruses more dangerous than those that exist in nature. They argued they could do so safely, and that by getting ahead of nature they could predict and prevent natural “spillovers,” the cross-over of viruses from an animal host to people. If SARS2 had indeed escaped from such a laboratory experiment, a savage blowback could be expected, and the storm of public indignation would affect virologists everywhere, not just in China. “It would shatter the scientific edifice top to bottom,” an MIT Technology Review editor, Antonio Regalado, said in March 2020.

It's been established the virus is not engineered and I was under the impression the lab was for animal testing? — Benkei

Yes, there is the letter published in 17 March 2020 in the journal Nature Medicine led by Kristian G. Andersen, that said it's natural. Basically the argument was that because there aren't tell tale signs of cutting and pasting, it had to be natural. Unfortunately newer technologies don't leave those traces. So the article is wrong in ruling out the hypothesis.

I was under the impression the lab was for animal testing? — Benkei

Yep, putting corona-virus into humanized mice. Thanks to the Chinese asking for money from the US, they had to say just what exactly they were going to do. Hence I believe what Nicholas Wade writes in the article is true:

Dr. Baric had developed, and taught Dr. Shi, a general method for engineering bat coronaviruses to attack other species. The specific targets were human cells grown in cultures and humanized mice. These laboratory mice, a cheap and ethical stand-in for human subjects, are genetically engineered to carry the human version of a protein called ACE2 that studs the surface of cells that line the airways.

Dr. Shi returned to her lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and resumed the work she had started on genetically engineering coronaviruses to attack human cells. - Dr. Shi set out to create novel coronaviruses with the highest possible infectivity for human cells. Her plan was to take genes that coded for spike proteins possessing a variety of measured affinities for human cells, ranging from high to low. She would insert these spike genes one by one into the backbone of a number of viral genomes (“reverse genetics” and “infectious clone technology”), creating a series of chimeric viruses. These chimeric viruses would then be tested for their ability to attack human cell cultures (“in vitro”) and humanized mice (“in vivo”). And this information would help predict the likelihood of “spillover,” the jump of a coronavirus from bats to people.

Possible, I suspect the biological weapon hypothesis. Something like flu as a weapon is simply stupid. The Japanese that actually used biological weapons against the Chinese had quite a few of their own soldiers killed by their own "weapons".

(Unit 731: These Japanese were really up to no good during WW2)


More likely alternative is that this is just gain-of-function research, as corona-virus was studied at the Wuhan lab and China has had it share of corona outbreaks before, so it's obvious to prepare for corona outbreaks:

The Wuhan Institute of Virology has studied bat coronaviruses for years and their potential to ultimately infect humans, under the direction of scientist Shi Zhengli, as the Scientific American explained in a June 2020 story. Such zoonotic transfer — meaning transmission of a virus from an animal to a human — of coronaviruses occurred with the SARS and MERS coronaviruses, which led to global outbreaks in 2003 and 2012. Both viruses are thought to have started in bats, and then transferred into humans through intermediate animals — civets and racoon dogs, in the case of SARS, and camels in the case of MERS.

And with a twist that got the US politics involved:

In 2014, the NIH awarded a grant to the U.S.-based EcoHealth Alliance to study the risk of the future emergence of coronaviruses from bats. In 2019, the project was renewed for another five years, but it was canceled in April 2020 — three months after the first case of the coronavirus was confirmed in the U.S.

EcoHealth ultimately received $3.7 million over six years from the NIH and distributed nearly $600,000 of that total to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, a collaborator on the project, pre-approved by NIH.

The grant cancellation came at a time when then-President Donald Trump and others questioned the U.S. funding to a lab in Wuhan, while exaggerating the amount of federal money involved.

See article here

If we just remember that the lab-leak is only a hypothesis, but a very credible one, the most likely issue is totally accidental outbreak, which may even have gone unnoticed. Corona-virus isn't like the bubonic plague: that might too start with a fever, but when those swollen lymph nodes, you know it isn't "just a flew" and for any doctor will observe that. Remember how long lasted period when there was a "strange flew" going on?

Let's say you are a lab worker that has children in the daycare or school and you get a cold and it's flu season, do you first suspect a lab leak? Only when people are dead sure they have gotten infected, will the immediate exclusion start. How would the case number 1. know, if he or she didn't even have symptoms or very mild ones?

And of course there is the Wall Street article:

A Wall Street Journal report on Monday claimed that three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology were hospitalised after they were rendered sick in November 2019 “with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illness.” The report quoted US intelligence sources.

Seems that the Lab-leak hypothesis is finally getting some interest in the correct circles:

(BBC) US President Joe Biden has ordered intelligence officials to "redouble" efforts to investigate the origins of Covid-19, including the theory that it came from a laboratory in China.

He said the US intelligence community was split on whether it came from a lab accident or emerged from human contact with an infected animal. Mr Biden asked the groups to report back to him within 90 days.

China has rejected the laboratory theory.

See Covid: Biden orders investigation into virus origin as lab leak theory debated

I think a lot of people in the media dismissed too easily the lab leak hypothesis because Trump had floated the idea. Now some media outlets are backpedalling for the hypothesis to be a "genuine possibility". Interesting to see what happens. What is sure is that it won't be an easy case to solve China will deny it in any case. Likely it will end up as a myth and historians perhaps 100 years from now will be in agreement about the issue.

(Perhaps a country like Norway might be so honest that if it would have been their laboratory where the virus broke out, they would would say: "Ooops, sorry about that." And, oh boy, the demands and the trials for compensation from the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth funds!)

You are also relying on it being vague and expansive. — fdrake

I think the counterargument to anything here is:

"Israel has the right to defend itself and Hamas wishes to destroy Israel."

And that basically covers everything. Nothing else needed.

Israeli terrorism is more humane. — Xtrix

Yeah, let's root for more humane terrorism. :cheer:

What sort of discrimination and who is it coming from? — BitconnectCarlos

Ok, where do we start?

How about the systemic discrimination based upon legislation:

The definition of the State of Israel as a Jewish state, as enshrined in law, allows inequalities to persist and enables state-sanctioned discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel. Increasingly, since the election of the right-wing Netanyahu-led government in 2009, coalition members have also introduced a raft of discriminatory legislation. Much of this legislation focuses on “loyalty oaths” to Israel as a Jewish, Zionist and democratic state; the criminalization of speech that challenges the Jewish and/or Zionist nature of the state; the imposition of more restrictions on political participation and even citizenship rights for “breach of loyalty” to the state. Over the last three years, several new laws have been enacted that discriminate against Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel, including legislation in the field of economic, social and cultural rights:

• The Israel Land Administration Law (2009): This law institutes broad land privatization (much of the land owned by the Palestinian refugees and internally displaced persons would be subject to privatization under the law.

• Amendment (2010) to The Land (Acquisition for Public Purposes) Ordinance (1943): This Mandate-era law authorizes the Finance Minster to confiscate land for “public purposes”. The amendment confirms state ownership of a massive amount of Palestinian land confiscated under this law, even where it has not been used to serve the original purpose of its confiscation.

• Absorption of Discharged Soldiers Law (1994) Amendment No. 7: Benefits for Discharged Soldiers (2008): Allows the use of military/national service as a criterion for the allocation of benefits in higher education. The vast majority of Palestinian citizens of Israel are exempted from military service and do not serve in the Israeli army for political and historical reasons.

• The Economic Efficiency Law (Legislative Amendments for Implementing the Economic Plan for 2009-2010) (2009).
a. A section of this law concerns “National Priority Areas” (NPAs). It grants the government sweeping discretion to classify towns, villages and areas as NPAs and to allocate enormous state resources without criteria, in contradiction to the Israeli Supreme Court’s 2006 decision in HCJ 2773/98 and HCJ 11163/03, The High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens in Israel v. Prime Minister of Israel.

b. A further section of this law concerns the distribution of “child allowances.” Under the new law, children who do not receive the vaccinations mandated by the Health Ministry will no longer be provided with financial support. This provision mainly affects Arab Bedouin children living in the Naqab (Negev).

Then of course the downgrade of Arabic being an official language to only have "special status". (Something that would cause a total outrage in a bi-lingual country as mine)

Then there are things like education:

According to a 2001 report by Human Rights Watch, Israel's school systems for Arab and Jewish children are separate and have unequal conditions to the disadvantage of the Arab children who make up one quarter of all students. - Government-run Arab schools are a world apart from government-run Jewish schools. In virtually every respect, Palestinian Arab children get an education inferior to that of Jewish children, and their relatively poor performance in school reflects this.

Then there is the political reality of Arab Israeli political organizations in Israel:

While Israel has several political parties that have historically represented Arab citizens’ interests, none have ever been asked to join a governing coalition.

And then there are the feelings toward Palestinians by the Jewish population:

ACRI poll: "Over two-thirds Israeli teens believe Arabs to be less intelligent, uncultured and violent. Over a third of Israeli teens fear Arabs all together ... The report becomes even grimmer, citing the ACRI's racism poll, taken in March 2007, in which 50% of Israelis taking part said they would not live in the same building as Arabs, will not befriend, or let their children befriend Arabs and would not let Arabs into their homes."

Various polls, including the Israel Democracy Institute's poll, revealed that 62 percent of the Jewish public expects the State to take action to encourage Arab migration from Israel, at the same time, over 90 percent expect the State to encourage Jewish immigration.

And the list continues...on and on.

Perhaps people who discuss institutional racism in the US ought to compare things to Israel. And we are not even talking about the people that lived on the land that Israel annexed later...the "Palestinians", as if these Palestinians were not Palestinians, but just Arabs living in Israel. The idea is simply crazy: the idea that the same people only subjugated in two different wars that were separated only by 19 years creates different people. It's only divide et impera-move and an attempt to apply smoke and mirrors.

From a legal standpoint, one is an Israeli citizen entitled to Israeli legal rights and the other is not. — BitconnectCarlos

And of course the real issue is that these Palestinians, who officially aren't even called Palestinians but Arab israelis, do face discrimination in the country even if being citizens.

Israel's strategy is baffling except as an attempt to maintain the conflict for as long as possible as cover for expansions of settlements, expulsions, and further encroachments. — Baden

That's one good way how to think of it.

And other thing is that they focus their message on two special audiences: the US and the religious zealots. Perhaps just in the same way that the Arab side focuses their rhetoric on the Arab street, not to other countries and officials. And this makes the discourse in the Middle East so bellicose and utterly aggressive. Also do notice that if anywhere else we discuss security policy, we see sides building deterrences, making moves and countermoves while in the Middle East the other side is portrayed as utterly mad crazies capable of doing anything. End of story: trying to even understand the other side is deplorable, it simply can't because it's evil. Hence if in Europe some developments are found "troubling" or "deeply troubling", equivalent developments in the Middle East are "an existential threat" and "give rise to an imminent war".

And then there are all the armed groups and proxies. Having proxies to fight your wars and / or bombing a proxy of your opponent is totally normal.

What is the actual difference between Palestinians and Israeli Arabs than a passport?

Haste try to divide et impera?

We can cut through all the distractions. Is it ok to bomb civilian populations in which so-called terrorist operatives are embedded when these operatives present a threat (though a relatively low-level one compared to said bombings) to civilian lives on the opposing side? If it is, it should be OK in the case of both the IRA and HAMAS and their respective communites of origin. If it's not, it shouldn't, right? — Baden

I think war is morally dubious and those that only look at the moral justifications typically are the culprits for the war in the first place. Bombing civilians isn't an OK thing and counterproductive...if your objective is to find a solution to the conflict, that is. Sometimes that isn't the objective.

IF you want to win a counter-insurgency, you first HAVE TO UNDERSTAND that no matter how successful you are in military operations, to win YOU NEED A POLITICAL SOLUTION in a counter-insurgency. Or then just wish that the other side utterly dismantles itself by alienating it's supporters from the cause. (Or then there's the Algerian example) Sounds simple, but some people really, really, don't get it. They just assume that talking about a political settlement is just political window dressing for liberals or so. They believe the war propaganda. Yet counter-insurgency is totally different from a conventional war where one side might choose a diplomatic settlement if it is clearly loosing. Insurgencies typically don't go that way.

These people who favour a military solution only, usually the so-called "hawks", become fixated on simply the warfare aspect, getting the "murderous" terrorists, creating lists of targets and military sounding objectives. The "no-nonsense" approach in their minds. Largely this is to uphold the "hawk" image typically for domestic reasons. Yet they really think that killing or jailing every member or supporter of the movement will solve the problem. Well, that might succeed if the "terrorists" or the so-called "insurgency" is a small alienated cabal of 17 members of a death cult that is so mental that people cannot understand why the 16 follow the leader. Yet that doesn't apply to an insurgencies we are talking about. Especially when you create the reasons for the insurgency by an apartheid system in the case of Israel. You might kill and jail every leader and activist, but then that leads just to a new generation coming after that.

The reason why this is so difficult to understand is a) people don't think it through or b) they either support one side or are so morally outraged of some action that they cannot fathom a political solution. Hence they think they that the other side can be and ought to be bombed into submission. By dehumanization, you can get people to think like this.

And of course then there are c) those politicians who have as their objective not to stop conflict, but gain power and political success personally by perpetrating the conflict. Their objective is to make any enemy equivalent to the "alienated death cult cabal" or, at worst, to create one, if the insurgency otherwise could find international and domestic support and understanding.

Still in the end, you need a political solution.

The cruelty of Palestinian terror far outweighs that used by the IRA. The more research I do into the types of attacks conducted by the IRA vs. Palestinian terror the more these organizations become drastically different. I'm not really into an argument here: The two aren't remotely close. Just look into the 2nd Intifata. — BitconnectCarlos

On the other hand, the actions of the British Army during "Operation Banner" and the actions of the Israeli Armed Forces toward the Palestinians are also different, one should remember.

The British have rare examples of successes in counterinsurgency warfare (Oman, Malaya) and perhaps understand these things better. And it shows in how they dealt with North Ireland.

(British troops in their "Vietnam", during the Malayan emergency. Notice the difference between the whole narrative between the war in Vietnam and the war in Malaysia.)


The failure of Israel to understand this is a political one. It can be seen at best from the failed Lebanon occupation. As one military study puts it aptly:

Israel, a country that had achieved four spectacular military victories
in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973, invaded Lebanon out of its belief in the
singular efficacy of military force, a belief borne of its previous experiences
with war. However, Israel’s strategic concept behind the Lebanese debacle
was wrong-headed. Israel believed that in the Palestinians and later in the
Shiite resistance, it faced a military problem that could be resolved through
resort to conventional war. It did not understand, as its opponents did, that
the strategic problems it sought to address could not be resolved without
settling the fundamental underlying political issues that had caused war in
the first place. Neither Palestinians nor Shiite militants ever tried seriously
to mount a conventional military attack against Israeli forces; they never
had the capability even if they had desired to take such action. Both groups
acted to preserve their military forces to the greatest extent possible,
eschewing high-risk attacks to ensure that Israel could never destroy all of
their fighters. And because they were supported, fed, and nurtured by their
peoples, the Palestinian and Shiite fighters created an impossible situation
for Israel.

Look at the bright side: they keep tabs on everybody. Pro-choice and Pro-life groups, right-wing militias, left-wing anarchists. After all, domestic terrorism is a heightened threat!

Just look at how they categorize Domestic Violent Extremists (DVEs):

- Racial hate groups
- Animal rights & Environmental Violent extremists
- Abortion related violent extremists
- Anti-government / anti-authority extremists
- others

(see: https://www.odni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/UnclassSummaryofDVEAssessment-17MAR21.pdf )


And as the saying goes, the most bellicose member urging people to take drastic action and being the most paranoid is likely the FBI informer (or plant) in any activist group.

So, the point remains unanswered, why is it inconceivable to us that white western civilians be subject to heavy military artillery bombardments as part of defensive actions against so-called terrorists while perfectly natural that brown non-westerners should be? — Baden

Once when just the riot police seems not to have the situation under control, then there is the next step. And this isn't limited to "other races". It genuinely can happen. We are just so hypocrite, self-righteous and full of ourselves when we say that "it could not happen here". But where is that "there" compared to "here"?

Are (or were) the Yugoslavs, like Slovenes, Croats or Serbs etc. white western civilians or not?

(The civil war started in Slovenia. Tanks & were used)


How about the Greeks? They had their Civil War after WW2. And had a hideous military junta afterwards.

(Artillery used in the Greek Civil War)


Or Ukrainians?


Russians? (Yeltsin using tanks in Moscow against the Parliament...and protesters)


Basically if any government feels so much under distress that it rolls out armour on to it's own streets, then there is a possibility of those vehicles using their firepower. That's why it's usually the last thing to do as nothing provokes a crowd more than a tracked armoured artillery pillbox. The possibility that things get out of control is there. Hence it isn't inconceivable that these kinds of tragedies could happen.

(French tanks guarding the Assemblee Nationale during the Algiers Putsch. in Paris, 1961.)


Even in Catalonia in 2017 military units were deployed to assist the riot police, hence the slippery slope was there. It's even more dangerous when the armed forces haven't trained to operate in a state of political upheaval. In an anti-EU protest the Danish military had to resort to live rounds as they didn't have any rubber bullets or other equipment etc. Luckily only few were injured (and good luck trying to find that in a Google search, as nobody wants to remember that an anti-EU demonstration in Denmark got live bullets fired at it!) We have now seen from the developments in Ukraine and Georgia that a Yugoslav-style civil war breakup of the Soviet Union was totally possible. So this isn't something only limited to the Middle East.

The IRA does not strike me as morally comparable to Hamas with both the methods and general hatred coming from Hamas running much deeper. — BitconnectCarlos

You think the Palestinian conflict is only about Israel and Hamas?

You drew an example from the Lebanon conflict earlier, but Lebanon was an actual war as opposed to dealing with the Palestinians. — BitconnectCarlos

BC, do you know what the objective was of the "Peace for Galilee" operation? What was the main objective of that war and who were the Israelis going after? Let me quote Prime minister Menachem Begin's speech about the reasons why Israel opted to attack it's neighbor with the operation "Peace for Galilee":

As for Operation Peace for Galilee, it does not really belong to the category of wars of no alternative. We could have gone on seeing our civilians injured in Metulla or Qiryat Shimona or Nahariya. We could have gone on counting those killed by explosive charges left in a Jerusalem supermarket, or a Petah Tikvah bus stop. All the orders to carry out these acts of murder and sabotage came from Beirut. Should we have reconciled ourselves to the ceaseless killing of civilians, even after the agreement ending hostilities reached last summer, which the terrorists interpreted as an agreement permitting them to strike at us from every side, besides southern Lebanon? 'Not One Month of Quiet'

There are slanderers who say that a full year of quiet has passed between us and the terrorists. Nonsense. There was not even one month of quiet. The newspapers and communications media, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, did not publish even one line about our capturing the gang of murderers that crossed the Jordan in order to commandeer a bus and murder its passengers.

True, such actions were not a threat to the existence of the state. But they did threaten the lives of civilians whose number we cannot estimate, day after day, week after week, month after month.

During the past nine weeks, we have, in effect, destroyed the combat potential of 20,000 terrorists. We hold 9,000 in a prison camp. Between 2,000 and 3,000 were killed and between 7,000 and 9,000 have been captured and cut off in Beirut. They have decided to leave there only because they have no possiblity of remaining there. The problem will be solved.

I - we - can already look beyond the fighting. It will soon be over, we hope, and then I believe, indeed I know, we will have a long period of peace. There is no other country around us that is capable of attacking us.

He is not referring to the Syrians as being the terrorists, but the PLO. It was all about the Palestinian conflict.

And for the facts about how much "peace" this invasion got? The the massacres at Shabra and Shatila refugee camps didn't help (even if perpetrated by Israeli allies, the IDF ordering them to clear the refugee camps of PLO fighters was not a great move). Israel withdrew from Southern Lebanon only in the year 2000 and basically fought a low intensity war all that time there, for 18 years. The so-called "Southern Lebanese Army", the Israeli proxy, collapsed immediately and the area wasn't taken over by the Lebanese Army, but by Hezbollah, which had fought a long time the Israeli occupiers. And after six years Israel fought another war in Lebanon in 2006, which didn't go so well, actually.

So "Peace for Galilee" indeed, as the Likud Prime minister foresaw and "knew".

But anyway, it's a perpetual war and those in power in Israel totally fine with it. Why seek peace when this off and on -conflict isn't threatening the state?

The opposing sides in the troubles hated each other but there wasn't the same level of dehumanization. It would have been absolutely inconceivable for the British to have sent warplanes in and bombed Catholic neighbourhoods due to them harboring IRA suspects while the US and other western nations blithely pontificated, over the bodies of dismembered children, about Britain's right to defend itself. No, the Western world would have been in uproar because white Catholics are considered human whereas the Palestinians have yet to reach that level, as demonstrated aptly in this thread. Conclusion: racism is the primary driver behind the defenders of the recent civilian massacres in Gaza. — Baden

Baden, we in Europe were just fine with Yugoslav's killing well over 100 000 of each other. And in that conflict there were catholics, orthodox and yes, also muslims. When it comes to the Middle East, we simply just tell ourselves that that part of the World is a violent place and these people have been killing each other for ages. Period. If the Swiss would be having an ethnic conflict, we'd have "specialists" giving a multitude of reasons just why the Swiss cannot live in peace with each other and just why it has come to a civil war. And we'd be fine with that: It's just the Swiss, they are so bellicose to each other. And they have so many languages and ethnicities...

Yet I would make an emphasis on the crucial point you made: Basically the British government put it's soldiers and policemen into danger without heavy fire-support. It didn't minimize it's own losses and maximize losses of the other side. Every British government understood that tanks using their cannons, artillery firing shells or the Royal Air Force giving air support to the troops by bombs or rocket fire would mean that everything WOULD BE OVER. The British government could not then deny that there is a war going on. The television pictures would show it. The British government would get criticism and condemnation from European countries (and naturally the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc). It would have the British pop scene making groovy anti-war pop songs and the voters being fed up of the whole mess. Likely the British administration in power would have fallen. It would be just a part in the British malaise would have ended up in something more humiliating than the Suez crisis. Yet the PIRA laid down it's arms and some kind of peace has prevailed in Northern Ireland.

Just to understand how different this was from the present, here's a weekly documentary from 1972. What is telling is how different the interview with a higher ranking officer by the TV journalists is compared to these times. Now we live in an age of classic propaganda where such honest answers wouldn't be given and such questions wouldn't be even asked.



And this is not something only related to the UK. If the Spanish government would have sent the Spanish military into Catalonia with tanks and bombed Barcelona from the air, I think there would be a lot of support for Catalan Independence and widespread condemnation of the Spanish government. But if it would have come to that (or will come to that), in the end after the condemnations we'll just remark "There the Spanish go again...with another civil war of theirs".

So I don't think it's much about racism. We just adapt to people being crazy. Anywhere.

. I do remember a ton of bombings on Palestinian side and assassination of Rabin on the Israeli side the closer the two sides got to a real agreement. I remember this. Do you? — schopenhauer1

Don't forget President Anwar Sadat of Egypt. He was killed after making a peace agreement with Israel (and getting back the Sinai) in an military victory parade in 1981. By the usual suspects (religious terrorists, who else?)

I certainly agree that Israel should take steps to make its operational procedures more humanitarian, but I refuse a moral equivalence between the standard operating procedures of the IDF and those of Hamas and other terrorist groups. — BitconnectCarlos

Yet those standard operational procedures (SOPs in general) do matter a lot. It starts from things like is fighting a terrorist group a police matter or a military matter? Do you mimic the Wehrmachts approach fighting partizans in Russia during WW2 or the approach of the Bundespolizei "fighting" the Red Army Fraction terrorists? Operational procedures or what kind of war you fight does matter. One of the most striking differences can be seen when you look at how the Soviet Union fought the Mujaddehin and the US has fought basically the same people for far longer. During the Soviet invasion at least half a million and up to two million civilians died. Now during the twenty years the US has fought in the same country about 40 000 civilians have died. That's the difference between SOPs.

You seem to concentrate on the Hamas, yet conflict is far larger than one group among the Palestinians and Israel's actions towards it. One real issue is that now the more protesters have been the Palestinian citizens of Israel, the so-called "Arab Israelis" who aren't living either in the West Bank or the Gaza concentration camp. To say that every nation has the right to defend itself from attacks is true, but that doesn't give a carte blanche.

I haven't studied the IRA conflict in detail, but have IRA members ever ran through London stabbing other people indiscriminately until they were eventually shot? — BitconnectCarlos

Why would they? That they nearly killed Prime minister Thatcher in Brighton in 1984 tells about the capability of the PIRA besides the "positive" kill ratio and the ability to survive to a political agreement, whereas similar knife attacks have even happened even here (and not by Hamas, but your local islamist terrorist wannabe ...and he was put down, not shot dead).

(Prime minister Thatcher with her husband and a personal aide being evacuated after the bomb attack. The facial expressions tell something.)


Yet the conflict in Ireland, not just in Northern Ireland but the whole history from the Irish revolt and the IRA, to Irish Independence and then "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland is quite comparable to the Palestinian conflict, if we separate from this the wars that Israel has fought with it's neighbors. In both in Ireland and in Palestine you actually have the British involved and in both occasions the fighting was a low intensity conflict. The fact is that Northern Ireland is rather peaceful now and the political agreement, the Good Friday agreement of 1998, has held should make people think what did the British do differently? Because in my view they did fight a low intensity conflict differently. Starting from the fact that nobody in the media called it a war or even an insurgency.

If it can be demonstrated that Israel's response is considerably worse or out of line then I would reconsider my position. — BitconnectCarlos

I doubt you would.

One impartial observing side have been the blue berets in the Middle East, especially in Lebanon. I know a few reservists here who have made a stint in Lebanon and seen how the Israelis operate. And usually they are quite cynical about both sides. Some of them have made memoirs that accurately depicted the low intensity conflict before Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon. Nobody questions the abilities of the Israeli army. But many notice the the heavy handedness how they approach the conflict. So how does the Israeli army operate?

A small example. One way to counter the threat of ambushes is to simply shoot while driving through places which are suitable for ambushes. So when there is an orchard directly next to the road and you don't have good visibility, then just fire blindly to the orchard with the mounted machine gun to pin down anybody that is there. Israeli patrols used this approach in Lebanon. If then a small 5-year old girl who just happens to be in her family's own orchard is killed by this random shooting, just announce it that a "Palestinian terrorist" was killed that day.

In West Bank and Gaza Israeli military has taken a more "humane" approach: just simply cut down every orchard or forest next to the road that could make an ambush spot. Solution to the problem.

You can compare to other armed forces that operate in an low-intensity environment. I think the British Armed Forces in Northern Ireland are the best example of taking another strategy. Even today Police Stations in Northern Ireland are like miniature military fortresses.

Since 1960 the British military has killed 307 people in Northern Ireland of whom half have been Provisional IRA terrorist. Yet it has lost over 700 soldiers in the conflict. Hence in fact the Provisional IRA has killed far more British soldiers and policemen than they have suffered losses. The perpetrators of the bloodiest attack against British forces were caught immediately, but released because there wasn't enough evidence to convict them. Once released, the other one of these was killed while making another bomb, but the other lived as a free man. That you do have PIRA members still living in the UK tells something about how the UK handled the conflict with it's Good Friday agreement etc.

There you can note the difference how a democratic country fights terrorism: with the laws implemented and treating the terrorists as other criminals. Above all, trying to treat the issue as a police matter.

Of course Israel can say that it follows it's own laws. And here's the basic problem: the Apartheid system starts from it's citizens being in different categories.

I wish to discuss science as an understanding of reality - relative to a religious, political and economic ideological understanding of reality. Do they describe different things? — counterpunch

The proponents of scientism define science to be so different from political or economic investigations. Yet one can be objective, trying to observe reality without any personal or ideological agenda and do this from the viewpoint of politics, economy, even looking at the religious aspects using the same methods as in scientific research.

Only for some.

I think you are all overlooking how much this is just a feeback loop of the extremes. Hamas and Netanyahu should thank each other, they hold everyone else hostage.. They keep each other in power. But yet the general populations are complicit as well, because they too can't get out of the "security/revenge" cycle and so vote the extremes back in because of the very thing they started and perpetuated. Go deeper than the usual blame/victim performance you are all doing. — schopenhauer1

Bibi can thank Hamas for getting a boost in the upcoming elections. And religious extremists hold hostage the whole conflict on both sides. Of course we can ask why it is so, but we will not like the answers.

Let's look at this from a different perspective: How do people calm down and genuinely put things past and want peace?

How did Europeans stop being bellicose at each other? How doesn't Elsas-Lothringen be anymore the hot issue between France and Germany? Where did the nationalistic fervour go?

The answer is obvious: Because millions have died in two World Wars. After two World Wars enough Europeans have died and enough Europeans have thought that killing has to stop. In the Middle East, the death toll has been far lower. Palestinian deaths have not been genocidal. In the 1948 war the estimates are between 3 000 to 13 000 dead. In the first and second Intifada about 7 000 were killed and in later conflicts the numbers seem to be below 10 000. In 73 years Israel has lost in conflicts something like 23 000 soldiers and civilians dead. That is less that my country (which is roughly the same size in population to Israel) lost in 105 days when it fought the Winter War. With our Continuation War the death toll was far more deadly (over 60 000). In the Yugoslav Civil Wars the death toll was 130 000 to 140 000. Somehow nobody isn't wanting a rematch there, so I guess well over hundred thousand dying does silence the warmongers and those who demand "justice" and think they have the "moral right" for the land. In Palestine, this hasn't happened. Who controls the Temple Mount is extremely important for many. And it will be so in the future too.

Their diet has been one critical of the scientific view, the emphasis on negative consequences of scientific work. It was interesting to see their faces change as they realised there was some hope. — Banno

That's the result when you teach only criticism. Before criticism, you have to learn what the actual idea is and how it explains issues. By only teaching criticism you make people negative and hopeless.

Science is just a tool.
— frank — counterpunch

No. It's not. And that's why Popper is wrong. — counterpunch

How about a method?

My feeling is that the tolerance towards posts and threads that aren't even close to having philosophical quality has increased. Which means the kind of evangelical religious stuff, racist apologist low-quality posts, ad hominems, and BS posts that destroys any quality focus on a specific topic just keeps going. When I first looked for a forum like this and found this forum, it felt like a place that got rid of the usual internet idiots and morons in favor of a better quality discussion for complex topics. But it feels like since my initial experience, the tolerance of idiots and morons has gone up and it's close to impossible to see a discussion that doesn't just let some rabid idiot go on a crusade.

If I were to recommend moderators to improve on one thing, it would be to clean up the place. There are far better places for evangelical nuts, racist apologists, and people who don't even know what philosophy is. 4Chan-like forums and Reddit threads dedicated to that kind of stuff, instead of clogging up this place.
— Christoffer
:100: YYYYYYYYYYES. This entire post bears repeating (and can't be repeated enough as far as I'm concerned). — 180 Proof

OK man, I'll repeat it.

But I think that the vast majority of the people here are influenced by the current environment, be it social, political or economic. And it will show. Especially with the topics that make people mad and bring on the ad hominem attacks towards your fellow PF members.

The fact is that few topics that aren't directly philosophical won't get much debate if it isn't something that the public discourse is debating about. We are not so special, unfortunately.

If I were to take a step back and view Israel as just another state I could say that Israel is using Gaza and the WB as a bargaining chips. — BitconnectCarlos

Has Israel proclaimed exactly where it's borders are? I'm not so sure it has.

One basic problem is that Palestinians (and for that matter Lebanon) are so weak it's not sure they can uphold peace like the Jordanian and Egyptian army for the time being. Some one can of course argue that this is the intent of Israel.

I don't understand why so many westerners care so much about Israel and seemingly hold it to the highest moral benchmark. — BitconnectCarlos

Because it says to be a modern democratic country and hence should be treated with the same bar as other ones as let's say as the UK?

On the other hand, any forecast of price development of something like Bitcoin is on shaky grounds

You're standing in it. See this thread. — Banno

Lol. Of course. Got it.

It topped (unless it makes a miraculous recovery) just about at the most recent post there a month ago. — Baden

But notice the longer term discussion activity compared to Bitcoin price movement.

The thread was active three years ago in December 2017 - January 2018, where we got basically the first 9 pages. Then, uh, I waked the thread up a year later...which just brought few comments and didn't spark much interest. But then the thread started in earnest on page 9 again for the last three pages from six months ago until a month ago. Now compare how this "active interest time" of this thread compares to when bitcoin has had a vertical rise, then a sharp fall yet coming down to a lower level that luckily is higher than the "bubble started".

OK, I admit the statistics aren't there yet, but I'll say that the thread is a genuine "canary in the coal mine" -indicator as it didn't "sound the alarm" in the summer of 2019 when prices were going up. Now if the thread stays silent, will Bitcoin consolidate on a lower level (yet higher than before the last uptick)? :razz:

That property is a social convention does not obviously render it amoral. You'll need more argument here. — Banno

It has the word 'social' in it? :snicker:

As I was saying, I don't get the antinatalism threads...

Have you never noticed how the right represent peoples interests whereas the left assume, the people exist to represent their interests? — counterpunch

In a functioning democracy, those that only assume to represent the people's interests will have the disastrous surprise defeat in the elections. And those can be also on the right. One might think this might improve things, but many times it doesn't, especially if the winners are populists, again who can be either on the right or the left. Populists are great in portraying every problem of having emerged because of the evil corrupt rulers. And usually that's all they have, apart of being incapable of reaching any kind of consensus in the democratic process and not having actual solutions to the problems. If they are also authoritarians, what a great mess it will be.

But this is a bit off the subject.

I think this thread became current because of @Banno in another thread saying:

The tragedy of the commons is a capitalist myth. — Banno

I asked him why it's so. I might have not noticed his answer...

My perception is that the level of discourse on this site has declined. — hypericin

I think it has stayed the same with compared to the old Forum. And it hasn't died, that's for sure. (The old site had a strange death, you know. Odd story.)

The thing what I like is that when newbies ask the classical questions about math and logic, there are those who take the time to give good answers to them and try to educate people. And I really like the comments of people like @fishfry and @jorndoe and others in math & logic. One old member I think isn't around is Moeblee, who also commented in the math section of the old PF site. I've always been fascinated by the incompleteness results Gödel and Turing, and nice to see the topic has stayed popular. I think there's still something very important there for us to find out.

Of course then it's nice to discuss the current events with the gang. Usually what things are discussed, what especially create a heated debate, do actually tell something about how things in the World are going. Later some threads are nice to view in hindsight. A classic in these cases will be the coronavirus -thread, the long Donald Trump -thread, the brexit -thread and, one of my favorites, something you might not think to find in an Philosophy Forum, the cryptocurrency -thread. I'll definately buy bitcoin if that thread is not commented for six months. Active discussion on that thread means that bitcoin is topping (or at least, has been so).

What I don't get is the antinatalism threads...

Aside from the territories, do you consider Israel the aggressor in the '67 war? I don't mean the one who took the offensive, I mean the one who is in the wrong. — BitconnectCarlos

Aggressors are those who usually take territories.

I don't put so much emphasis on the moral rectitude or the moral justifications for wars. Those typically are just propaganda. And many warmongers talk about justice and to correct the wrongs of the past. The debate about if "a nation is morally just to take military action" is just one question. What kind of military strategy and tactics it uses is another topic, and so is what it's end objectives with the action are. All those are three different questions and even if to opt for a military solution can be understandable/acceptable, the strategy and tactics or the objectives can be quite unacceptable.

In fact, when the Arab neighbors attack the young state of Israel, nobody of them was at all interested in creating an independent Palestine, but to take as much of the former British mandate for themselves as possible. This lead to the fact that they were highly uncoordinated. Jordan annexed the West Bank and even if the annexation was granted by the UK, USA and Iraq, the Arab League for example only accepted that Jordan could annex the territory "until the Palestine case is fully solved in the interests of its inhabitants." Then of course this was annexed later by Israel in the Six Day war.