If you ever come across a book called ”The History of Money" by Jack Weatherford, I'd be interested in your assessment.

He says the invention of money altered human societies and even altered how we think. The invention of money lending amplified the effect because money, which is abstract to begin with, now became virtual. It means that we live, to some extent, off of virtual resources, or rather live beyond our means pervasively and perpetually. It produces booms and busts that wouldn't happen otherwise. It produces super wealthy and debt slaves.

But the world before debt was a stagnant world. We never ventured very far from a baseline.

So which do we want? A volatile story or a stagnant one?

Yes, the US is clearly complicit in creating the conditions that led fascism to prosper in Europe, and I'm glad you've mentioned that other European powers were far from blameless as well. We're on the same page here.

We have to remember that WWII really can't be separated from the Holocaust, so the factors that led to the Holocaust are also complicit in WWII: German religious/cultural traditions, the merger of science and race, historic anti-Semitism, and a host of other factors.

Jewish economic success in Europe is also complicit - if the Jews didn't succeed they wouldn't have made such good targets/enemies for the Nazis.

The key here is to distinguish between one being complicit and one being actually, directly responsible for something. If your boss fires you and you go home and kick your dog your boss may be complicit, but he's not responsible for your dog's injury.

We have to remember that WWII really can't be separated from the Holocaust, so the factors that led to the Holocaust are also complicit in WWII: German religious/cultural traditions, the merger of science and race, historic anti-Semitism, and a host of other factors. — K Turner

Indeed, in this connection it's worth mentioning that the Nazi's explicitly looked to America as a model of how to implement state racism:

When the Nazis set out to legally disenfranchise and discriminate against Jewish citizens, they weren’t just coming up with ideas out of thin air. They closely studied the laws of another country. According to James Q. Whitman, author of Hitler’s American Model, that country was the United States. “America in the early 20th century was the leading racist jurisdiction in the world,” says Whitman, who is a professor at Yale Law School. “Nazi lawyers, as a result, were interested in, looked very closely at, [and] were ultimately influenced by American race law.” In particular, Nazis admired the Jim Crow-era laws that discriminated against Black Americans and segregated them from white Americans, and they debated whether to introduce similar segregation in Germany.

...Yet they ultimately decided that it wouldn’t go far enough. ... Because of this, Nazis were more interested in how the U.S. had designated Native Americans, Filipinos and other groups as non-citizens even though they lived in the U.S. or its territories. These models influenced the citizenship portion of the Nuremberg Laws, which stripped Jewish Germans of their citizenship and classified them as “nationals.” ... But a component of the Jim Crow era that Nazis did think they could translate into Germany were anti-miscegenation laws, which prohibited interracial marriages in 30 of 48 states. ... The Nuremberg Laws, too, came up with a system of determining who belonged to what group, allowing the Nazis to criminalize marriage and sex between Jewish and Aryan people. Rather than adopting a “one-drop rule,” the Nazis decreed that a Jewish person was anyone who had three or more Jewish grandparents. Which means, as Whitman notes, “that American racial classification law was much harsher than anything the Nazis themselves were willing to introduce in Germany.”

https://www.history.com/news/how-the-nazis-were-inspired-by-jim-crow

The key here is to distinguish between one being complicit and one being actually, directly responsible for something. If your boss fires you and you go home and kick your dog your boss may be complicit, but he's not responsible for your dog's injury. — K Turner

I don't think this is a particularly apt metaphor. American indifference and financial callousness was the subject of a more than a decade of policy wrangling and vexed appeals from blocs of nations which fell on deaf ears. Certainly, the Nazis were ultimately responsible for the suffering they caused, but their rise to power was enabled at multiple, decade-spanning points by American blitheness. And again, the point is, anyone with the audacity to say something as stupid as 'but for the US....' ought to know exactly what this 'but for...' entails.

On topic, this legacy of state racism is nowhere more apparently today than the racial terrorism of the Israeli state, propped by by this self-same maleficent American government.

If you ever come across a book called ”The History of Money" by Jack Weatherford, I'd be interested in your assessment. — frank

Gosh I have a whole reading list on money backlogged under my bed. Maybe, maybe.

Thanks. I just try to keep 'world affairs' in (a) historical perspective of the nation-state world system (vide Wallerstein, et al) created by European empires (re: Treaty of Westphalia (1648), Congress of Vienna (1815)) in order to, IIRC, regulate "The Great Game" (long before it was called that) on the continent as well as in Africa, Asia, Oceania & the Americas. The US has been no more "dispicable" (except at home) and "responsible for global misery", as a former European colony, than the other European empires themselves during the last few or more centuries. Complicity in world historical crimes and atrocities since 1492 distinguishes "Pax America" (realpolitik) mostly by the US coming out victoriously on top of "The Great Game" of European empires by 1919, then again, even more so, in 1945. The critical problem is the "dispicable" world system "responsible for global misery" and not merely, or even primarily, one of its most profligate (youngest) agents – your, or Hudson's, well-documented 'diagnosis', SLX, I suspect in the end, misses the imperialist forest for the nationalist trees. It's just too easy, comrade – very tempting, yeah – to solely blame, in a vacuum, the "triumphant" US-in-decline for the current state of this rapidly overheating, plague-ridden, global shithole. :shade:

Gosh I have a whole reading list on money backlogged under my bed. Maybe, maybe. — StreetlightX

It's probably under your bed, then. Weatherford would just be a simple overview: how money appeared in Lydia (as far as we know, it was invented only once), and how that immediately started changing the world. He goes through the whole history of Rome from the perspective of what was going on with the money.

Moral of the story: the US held Europe financially hostage because it is a shithole country, and WWII was the result of its gangsterism. — StreetlightX

So, how I really feel? Well since you asked - fuck everything about the US and anything it comes close to even remotely breathing beside. — StreetlightX

There's no arguing with this. And accordingly I award @StreetlightX The Ted Cruz a**hole - or sick man or both - of the year award, with special ribbon for infantile exhibition of his own poop as in, "Look everybody at my poop! Aren't I a good child? "

Argument, or discussion, at best leads to edification, or can or should. Exhibition of poop is not discussion. Nor when the rant you start with is the rant you end with.

:clap:

What's that? Got nothing apart from your cut n' paste 30s Google search propaganda? Yeah, thought so. Run along.

I think you're like that guy who wanted revenge on a whale. I'm sure at some level you realize it's just a whale.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/7/25/israel-halves-gaza-fishing-zone-over-incendiary-balloon-fires

More war crimes by the Israeli regime, just casually flying under the radar.

Happens very frequently, unfortunately. Just reading Haaretz once every few weeks, some killing takes place, as if expected to happen.

It's fascinating to me just how terrified Israel are of a boycott by an ice cream maker. They clearly see it as the tip of an possible iceberg (no pun intended) - that iceberg being the world treating Israel for the international pariah it is, in the mode of apartheid South Africa. Ben and Jerry's today, Nestle, Unilever, and Microsoft tomorrow, one hopes.

I think this thread is another good example of how important is to avoid religion in our purpose to develop philosophy and ethics.

We all already know that this war is just religious and ethnic issues. It does not matter at all which are the facts or arguments of both Israel and Palestinian. The only truth here is all dead citizens. Probably you would be angry at politicians thinking why they do not do anything at all. Well they are just masks and actors so we have to start in the point where we should not expect anything from them. But why they want to divide us afterwards? I think it is an act of negligence from a public representation.

Everything is wrong in this context because there are a lot of lives depending in some buffets or offices. Why the people with this amount of power do not spread empathy and ethics? Since the moment they would not do anything to us, it is time to reach our own path to developing a better educational system. Only in this way we will avoid difficult situations as the war between Israel and Palestinians.

IDF Jets Attack South Lebanon After Earlier Fire Exchanges

The Israeli army said it targeted launch sites from which three rockets were fired toward northern Israel earlier in the day.

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/rockets-siren-heard-on-israel-s-border-with-lebanon-1.10082602

Here we go again. Hopefully things don't continue to escalate...

@BitconnectCarlos @Joshs @Encharmion @tim wood

The apartheid colonialist State of Israel [...] — 180 Proof

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid/

...

And what exactly is the argument? Have Palestinians left off teaching their children that Jews murder Arab babies and drink their blood? Or have Palestinians left off their desire to drive the Israelis into the sea? Has Hezbollah or whatever the terror organization of the moment is left off their violence? Have Israel's neighbors decided they can welcome and live with them, instead of trying to annihilate them?

If I'm Israel and they insist on rocketing me and murdering mine - can you say Yassar Arafat, or Munich? I evict them all and give them sixty days to be gone! Maybe ninety, but gone. But maybe I'm behind the times. Have the Palestinians made any substantive efforts to live peacefully with the Israelis?

I do not question that Palestinians have a tough go at the hands of Israelis, but have they not earned it many times over? Or even can the Israelis afford to be less vigilant? It seems to me that the Palestinians have worked hard to ruin a generation of their own, and more, and it is hard to see it becoming truly peaceful until they and there Arab allies change their ways - and when will that happen!

Have the Palestinians made any substantive efforts to live peacefully with the Israelis? — tim wood

:shade:

C'mon, tim. Have, for example, American Indians (on the reservations) "made any substantive efforts to live peacefully with" dispossessing, "Old World" settler-colonists? :brow:

And what exactly is the argument? — tim wood

What do you mean by "argument"? I posted a link to a notification by the third international Human Rights organization – Amnesty International – claiming that contemporary Israel is an ethnic cleasing, apatheid state. I'm only corroborating my 'anti-post-1967 zionism' position that I've expressed on this old thread. This isn't a rhetorical question. :chin:

From the AI report, "This amounts to apartheid as prohibited by international law." And I have no argument against. But what does "amounts to" amount to? Maybe there are developments I am unaware of. Have the Palestinians opted for peace? If they have, it would be a crime or close to it to ignore that. On the other hand, there is the history - and not just a history - which you know as well and likely better than I. How many wars of attempted annihilation? How many attacks and suicide bombings? How many rocketings and violations of peace and truce? I remember in particular Yasser being interviewed about the PLO's latest atrocity and him agreeing, yes, an atrocity, but.... Always the but, and others of them as well with the but. And it always seemed to me that if they really believed it was all horrible, they wouldn't do it. But they kept at it, and have kept at it. What is the lesson to be drawn?

I'm sure you know well the fable of the frog agreeing to ferry the scorpion across the river. The Israelis, at least for now, have shown they can deal with scorpions. And indeed best if no scorpions, but can the Palestinians make that change?

Have, for example, American Indians (on the reservations) "made any substantive efforts to live peacefully with" dispossessing, "Old World" settler-colonists? :brow: — 180 Proof

I'm missing the point of this. Near as I can tell from my end of the continent, most Amerinds go to a lot of trouble and work uphill to live peacefully. Btw, I count on two fingers the number of American Indians I have met, which adds up to exactly two.

And what exactly is the argument? Have Palestinians left off teaching their children that Jews murder Arab babies and drink their blood? Or have Palestinians left off their desire to drive the Israelis into the sea? Has Hezbollah or whatever the terror organization of the moment is left off their violence? Have Israel's neighbors decided they can welcome and live with them, instead of trying to annihilate them?

If I'm Israel and they insist on rocketing me and murdering mine - can you say Yassar Arafat, or Munich? I evict them all and give them sixty days to be gone! Maybe ninety, but gone. But maybe I'm behind the times. Have the Palestinians made any substantive efforts to live peacefully with the Israelis?

I do not question that Palestinians have a tough go at the hands of Israelis, but have they not earned it many times over? Or even can the Israelis afford to be less vigilant? It seems to me that the Palestinians have worked hard to ruin a generation of their own, and more, and it is hard to see it becoming truly peaceful until they and there Arab allies change their ways - and when will that happen! — tim wood

One can be pro-Israel and still acknowledge that the Palestinians have gotten, are getting, and will probably continue to get a raw deal. They are in Israel's way. Israel is strong enough to push them around. Ugly, buy that's how it works. We Americans happily don't experience the effects of America throwing throwing its weight around elsewhere in the world. That's one of the nice parts of being on top.

How does one establish a new nation (even if it is claimed to have existed--and then vanished--a couple of thousand years previously) on already-occupied property? You displace the previous occupants, or you just sort of run over them, give them a good deal or a bad deal, but to a large extent engulf and subordinate them. People generally don't like this approach when they are on the receiving end, and they quite often resent and resist it.

Ideally, the Palestinians would just all disappear like morning fog. They won't / can't. Where would they go? North Dakota or New Mexico (somebody else's stolen land)? There aren't any great places in the world which aren't already occupied.

Next best for Israel would be for the Palestinians to "Shut up, go to your room, and stay there. Be quiet. Don't bother us. Don't call us--we'll call you if we need anything from you." I can understand the Israeli desire for the Palestinians to become obsequious peasants. Were I a Palestinian I would find that to be altogether impossible and outrageous to boot.

I don't know what the future holds. I'm pro-Israel, and the establishment of the State of Israel was "business as usual"--carried out by force against unwilling recipients of imperial policy. That's how these sorts of things get done, pretty much everywhere. Yes, the Jews were were in a dire situation, and one of the countries that could have taken in many Jews, had we not been kind of anti-semitic ourselves, was the United States. We did take in some Jews, but not nearly as many as we could have. The US was never going to be a Jewish homeland, but we could have helped more of them to survive than we did.

We can be pro-Israel without having to make a virtue out of stuffing one group down another group's throat. It will happen again, and it won't be nice. Nobody is going to like it. As global warming displaces more people, more "other people" will be unhappy that strangers are suddenly camped on their doorsteps. Imagine how enthusiastic India and Burma will be when millions of Moslem Bangladeshis are driven from their nation by rising sea water? They will end up somewhere, and nobody will be happy about it.

I am "pro-Israel" as well and, therefore, in solidarity with the Palestinian people (US/NATO client-state) that Israel oppresses, I'm also anti-post-1967 zionism (i.e. anti-ethnic cleansing, anti-apartheid).

Assuming it's all in the Israeli's court, what would you have them do? Or another way of putting it, what is it that you know that you know better than them?

And if the Palestinians and Israelis did find away to co-exist peacefully, would their neighbors let them? I buy the idea that peace will prevail, but it will require a new generation - not the old - to simply decide that it will be no longer "business as usual." In this case, in that part of the world, the new generation will somehow have to resolve not to be poisoned by the old.

There's probably a Palestinian restaurant near you. They're a good source for understanding the situation on the ground there.

And what exactly is the argument? Have Palestinians left off teaching their children that Jews murder Arab babies and drink their blood? Or have Palestinians left off their desire to drive the Israelis into the sea? Has Hezbollah or whatever the terror organization of the moment is left off their violence? Have Israel's neighbors decided they can welcome and live with them, instead of trying to annihilate them?

If I'm Israel and they insist on rocketing me and murdering mine - can you say Yassar Arafat, or Munich? I evict them all and give them sixty days to be gone! Maybe ninety, but gone. But maybe I'm behind the times. Have the Palestinians made any substantive efforts to live peacefully with the Israelis?

I do not question that Palestinians have a tough go at the hands of Israelis, but have they not earned it many times over? Or even can the Israelis afford to be less vigilant? It seems to me that the Palestinians have worked hard to ruin a generation of their own, and more, and it is hard to see it becoming truly peaceful until they and there Arab allies change their ways - and when will that happen! — tim wood

This is outright insane

This is outright insane — Maw

If insane, then easy to counter. Go ahead. What's insane?

The suggestion that Palestinian civilians have "earned many times over" their treatment at the hands of the Israeli security/military forces, treatment that includes murder, violence, apartheid/legal discrimination, and forcible removal from their homes.

If that's not insane, then nothing is. And I'd say that "insane" is putting it mildly; its positively disgusting.

That's twice and more than twice you've argued via invective. In a PM I challenged you, having called me me out, to demonstrate, show that there's some substance in your invective. And I have offered to provide categorical proof that I am not what you say that I am. I observe here that you ignore all of that. I also call attention to the fact that you lack the courage to "sign" your posts using the reply function. And so I have flagged your post. But to you, show a little class - or as much as you can manage - and either put up or withdraw.

As to Palestinians and Israelis, my view is that there is a pernicious history in play, even being added to as we speak, and any current righteousness, however good it feels or even justified, that does not account for that history, acknowledge and own it responsibility and all, is simply self-serving and nothing more.