Comments

  • Ukraine Crisis
    When have I ever mentioned accepting Russian demands? — Tzeentch
    Five months ago here. It's the typical idea that Russia would have (somehow) accepted a negotiated peace... but it was the West that fumbled it by "standing firm".

    But let's just look at the text of the Istanbul Communiqué:

    We didn't get a Russian proposal, but the proposal had this line:

    Proposal 2: These international security guarantees for Ukraine would not extend to Crimea, Sevastopol, or certain areas in the Donbas. The parties to the treaty would have to define the boundaries of these areas or agree that each party understands these boundaries differently.

    That leaves the territories quite open. And this is the proposal for the Russians. And lastly, what is there for Russia to wait a few years and then continue the annexations? There already were the Minsk agreements. Just think for a moment about this...

    First there was the Minsk Protocol...

    ...and that ended when Russian forces took Donetsk INTL.

    Then there was Minsk II in 2015...

    ...but that didn't end the fighting. The frozen conflict continued, until 2022 it was "Denazification time"!

    In your eyes, proposing to negotiate for a diplomatic solution is "accepting Russian demands", "appeasement", etc. — Tzeentch
    Real peace or armstice happens only when both parties are incapable of military victory and understand it. Now Russia doesn't see it this way. It simply hopes that the US gets bored and that it can still get a military victory. So there really is no incentive for Russia to seek a negotiated peace.

    Both times Finland was negotiating with Russia, notice what was on stake for Russia. In the Winter War in 1940, there was the genuine possibility that Soviet Union might face both French and British troops. Soviet Union didn't want this to happen. During the Continuation War in 1944 the assault on Finland had stalled, Finns had even made counterattacks and putting more troops to the Finnish front would be away from the major theater and hinder the effort in taking Berlin. And Finland still had behind the frontline it's Salpa defensive line. Stalin was worried that the Western allies might get there first if he continued the fight with Finland.

    In both cases the option for a negotiated settlement was better for the Russian side.

    You fight to win until you make a settlement if/when you can't. You don't do it like the Americans in Afghanistan: fight, but declare simultaneously a deadline for your departure.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    Exactly. You believe the Russians were lying about their security concerns. That's precisely my point. — Tzeentch
    Again no. They are not lying!

    Does the US lie when it talks about democracy and humanitarian rights? No. The simple fact is that sometimes realpolitik goes over these issues, like when it comes to certain allies, yet it doesn't mean that the US would be lying about democracy and humanitarians rights. So I don't know where you get this strange idea to assume there lying. Besides, Russian imperialism has always been defined by defense of the realm, just as Catherine the Great said:

    I have no way to defend my borders but to extend them.
    .

    Similarly situation with Russia and NATO expansion. Even in the Russian military doctrine published years ago before 2014 NATO expansion was defined as threat number 1. So surely they are not lying what they see as their security concerns. Yet what I commented to @jorndoe, is that to think that NATO expansion this is the only objective, even the prime objective, is wrong. If NATO wouldn't have expanded, then taking Ukraine would have been far more easy to Russia.

    The nonchalance with which you speak about turning your own country into a nuclear wasteland to deny it to the Russians, one would think you were a Ukrainian rather than a Finn. It's downright uncanny how eager you already appear to be for war. — Tzeentch
    Well, seems you don't have any idea what deterrence is about. Deterrence has to be credible and deterrence is to keep the peace. And luckily that deterrence was reinforced by joining NATO. And also Sweden joining NATO.

    The nonchalance with which you speak of accepting Russian demands as a solution to get "peace" shows how naive your thinking is.

    You understand this is exactly the type of sentiment an actor like the US will use to put you infront of its wagon? — Tzeentch
    You understand that Finland not being in NATO would put Finland in a far more precarious situation than now? Obviously not. And as I've said many times, it's unlikely that Russia will use military action against Finland, but there are 1001 other ways to pressure our country. It would be far more worse if a) we wouldn't be in the EU and b) we wouldn't be in NATO.

    27422.jpeg

    And I think Finns have a far more realpolitik view of allies. The last so-called ally was Hitler's Germany, which we had to fight immediately once we made armstice with Russia. Proper Dolchstoss, I would say.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    Except that none of this is actually part of my argument.


    I'm not making any arguments about whether Russia's security concerns are justified, which is what you are doing.     — Tzeentch
    It's not about the justification, it's about what the real objectives here are. Does Russia have the right to annex territories is the justification part. But it has done so, hence this isn't about NATO enlargement.

    I'm making the argument that when Russia speaks about existential security concerns and red lines for a decade-and-a-half, one should take it seriously. — Tzeentch
    And Ukraine wouldn't have been a NATO member. Naturally NATO cannot go against it's own charter and basically add to it "countries hoping to be members have to have the permission from Russia to join". Hence Ukraine wasn't joining NATO. Period. Hence the motive for the invasion lies somewhere else.

    Well, we have seen what comes of that: the destruction of Ukraine.

    That's why I have asked you whether you would be similarly careless if it were Finland paying the price of war. You have yet to answer that question.     — Tzeentch
    Wrong. I've answered it. My grandfathers fought the Russians and so would I, even if I'm quite old. Their generation lost a lot more killed than the this Ukrainian generation has seen. Finland lost in WW2 2,5% of the total population. 96 000 soldiers died from 3,8 million people. Civilian losses were surprisingly small.

    Now ask yourself: has yet 2,5% from the Ukrainian people (or basically 5% of the men) yet been killed?

    And I think you don't understand Finnish mentality on the subject. They have made consistently polls about the attitudes towards the defense of the country by asking the same question again and again for decades: "Would you defend your country in war, even if the outcome would be questionable". Hence the question is if would you defend your country, even if there's a real possibility of losing the war. The vast majority of Finns have said yes, they would. Still do. I would also.

    And if Russia nukes all the cities in Finland and ethnically cleanses out the rest surviving Finns, then take as many of them out with you and good luck with that barren nuclear wasteland then. And when likely it wouldn't come to that, defend your country to get then a better deal... like staying independent. But you get that only when the other side sees a negotiated settlement better that the continuation of the war.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Yet, to distinguish Palestinians as a specific nation within the wider Arab ethnic group, Palestinians should also be able to see themselves as distinct from other Arabs, not simply as Arabs living in Palestine fighting against the Jews. — neomac
    I still think that their history makes them quite different from Jordanians, Egyptians or the Lebanese. As I said, Swedes and Finns are both Europeans. Both are majority Christians and share a common past. Yet for example the Swedish speaking Finns do not consider themselves Swedes, but Finns who just happen to talk Swedish. (And btw. this has been a huge reason why there isn't any rift between these two ethnic groups in Finland)

    And let's remember that Pan-Arabism was tried and it crashed. Just ask the Syrians how well did that experiment go with the Egyptians having a one-Pan Arab state. And the relations between the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) member states who all are also members of the Arab League show how brittle these relationships are.

    This is a poor analogy. Independent Ukraine is 33 years old, Ukrainian nationalism and sentiment has definitely a longer history, much longer than the Palestinian nationalism. — neomac
    And how was it shown in 1945-1991? Yes, there is a history of Ukraine, but so has Palestine even a longer history. And Ukrainian nationalism emerged only in the 19th Century. And do notice that Palestinians had the Arab revolt in 1936-1939 against the British, where actually the Jewish fought alongside the British and gained military experience and competence (the Haganah just didn't sporadically emerge from refugees from Europe). And prior to that they were part of the Ottoman Empire, just as everybody else.

    I simply get to the plausible roots of Israelis’ skepticism about Palestinian nationalism. — neomac
    There is an understandable motive for the Israeli skepticism about Palestinian nationalism. It's quite similar to the skepticism of Ukrainian nationalism by the Russians.Ordinary you don't give credence to the enemy you are fighting and his objectives. Actually it's quite natural. And this goes vice versa: the talk of Israel as an "colonial enterprise" is a way to diss Israel.

    Yet as you mentioned about the state of Israel and Zionism, it's actually the Israeli's themselves that give credence to having a very young state. Yet I think the Israelis have the right for their country just as the Japanese or the French have for their own. It isn't about how long your nation has existed.

    That’s not my argument, though. My argument is that Palestinians and Israelis have to fight for their right to the land if their demands are incompatible, because there is no way to consistently ground both demands on the same justifying narrative. — neomac
    This is well said. Actually it reminds me of what Noah Hariri said: Israelis and Palestinians could easily live together, but not with the narratives they tell themselves. For a one state solution the problem is basically Zionism and democracy. If the state of Israel has more non-Jews than Jews, what kind of homeland for the Jews is it?

    What I care to focus on is to what extent Palestinians can see themselves as a distinct nation from the larger Arab community. I think the way they have been treated by other Arab governments and people may have contributed to a reciprocal estrangement which reinforced Palestinian Nationalism. — neomac
    In 1948 yes, the neighbors didn't care a shit about Palestinians. But now I think it's different: nobody wants to be responsible of 7 million Palestinians. So OK for them to have their own country...as it's Israeli territory, anyway.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    Lessons learned? Not learned? — jorndoe

    The lesson that should be learnt is that Russia isn't a state that basically is happy with it's borders and has severe problems to be a nation state... because it isn't one. And the West cannot do anything about this.

    Even if the Soviet Empire collapsed, Russia is still not a nation state. It's only 71% Russian and the 29% other minority groups. Russia has nearly two hundred minorities and 270 languages and dialects are spoken in the country. And these people aren't immigrants, but varies people that the Russian Empire subjugated, many surprisingly late in the 19th Century. Hence Russia truly fears "decolonization" and it breaking apart. This is the basis of Russian insecurity. The only reason we seem not to understand this is because it's a continuous landmass, not something separated by sea. Yet present day parts of Russia are as "normal" as would be a France with Algeria as it's intergral part (as we should remember that Algeria wasn't for the French a colony, but part of France).

    The basic problem is that many in the West have thought, just like @Tzeentch and others like him here think, that everything that Russia does is an reaction to what the West does. This leaves to flawed thinking that if left alone, Russia would be peaceful and coexist peacefully.

    This isn't the case, especially because of the leadership.

    One has to understand Putin's point about the collapse of the Soviet Union being the worst thing that happened in the 20th Century. The collapse happened because Russia itself, under Yeltsin, didn't want to be part of the Soviet Union after the Putsch. This made it all so startling. This would be similar if England and the English would demand independence from the UK and say fuck to everything British. In that case, hardly the Welsh, the Scots or the Northern Irelanders would choose either to live in hollow United Kingdom. They would simply find themselves being independent countries. And likely afterwards some English politicians would start thinking that being British wasn't such a bad idea and thus try to regain that UK in some form. And likely they would view Whales, Scotland and Northern Ireland as "special case" with a lot jealosy if other countries made close relations with the former members of the UK.

    This is the reason why Putin acts this way and how Russia sees it's "near abroad". This is also why for example the Baltic States and former Warsaw Pact members wanted right from the start to get under the cover of NATO. They had this brief "window of opportunity" to detach from Russia.

    Yet the actual NATO members of the Cold War didn't see it this way. They saw the Cold War ending with the collapse of the Soviet Union and didn't assume the inevitable Russian rebound and thought that a new era had begun. Hence the biggest problem for NATO was to find a new mission, because the OG Cold War NATO was antiquated. Or so it was thought.

    And afterwards many think, that it was the NATO enlargement that was the reason. But for Russia with it's imperial past, it's authoritarian system, it's fears of further collapse of "decolonization", it has other reasons to act as it has. And in Ukraine it really has shown it's true colors here.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    This is what you're proposing: that we assume Russia is lying about the security concerns it voiced for over 15 years, and that they can therefore safely be ignored and antagonized. — Tzeentch
    This is laughable.

    What security concerns made Russia to annex Crimea?

    What security concerns made Russia to annex later Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts?

    What security concerns made Russia to start Russification programs in the territories it occupies?

    What security concerns made Putin talk over and over again how important Ukraine is to Russia, how they are historically together and how artificial an independent Ukraine is?

    It would be totally similar if the US invaded Cuba because Cuba's close ties to Russia and then annexed the Island with the US president saying that Cuba is a natural part of the US as it had been earlier and the independence given to the Island in 1902 was a huge mistake from earlier administrations. And the US president would say again and again that Cuba was a natural part of the United States because of the historical ties. And not only Cubans would be given US citizenship, but also English would taught in schools in hope to replace Spanish. When all this would happen, a person with similar reasoning like you would blame Russia for this invasion, and say it's all because of Russian adventurism into the American continent and the US would have been forced to do so. The US had to react like this! Why didn't Russia listen???

    How ridiculous would for this person to totally disregard the annexation part, the rhetoric of Cuba being a part of US, the actions taken in Cuba and to deny this being an act of literally classic imperialism? But but but...security concerns of possible Russian troops and missiles like in the 1960's! Nothing else matters!!!

    And then when people would counter him and point out that the US annexed the Island, hence it's desires and objectives were far more than just keeping the Russians out, this guy would just insist that all this happened because of Russian policies and the US had to do what it did. And even if others would have nothing against the fact that Russian ties did play part here, it would naturally would look to be more of a fig leaf for the invasion than the primary cause, when you look at the actions taken.

    That's how crazy your argumentation is.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    In other words, when a former, nuclear-armed great power talks about existential security threats and red lines for fifteen years, ignore them and assume they are lying.

    Genius.     — Tzeentch
    Do you have reading comprehension problems? Just as the US speaks of humanitarian rights and democratic freedoms all the time, so does Russia about NATO expansion. Are both lying? No, of course they care about their pet issues. But you have to look twice at the reason for starting wars. But seems that you are not willing to even to consider this. Somehow the World has to have these unitary reason.

    And then just strawman about ignoring them and assume they are lying.

    Besides, please give us the reference where Putin has said himself before 2022 that Ukraine itself poses a threat to Russia.

    Genius.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    In other words, you're saying the Russians lied to us for 15 years and their warnings should have been ignored, as they were? — Tzeentch
    They might be unhappy of NATO enlargement, but as you should notice that the enlargement of Sweden and Finland didn't actually get much if ANY response. The whole thing was a non-event. Why? Because it's a minor point, just like humanitarian issues and democracy is a minor issue to the US, but it still talks a lot about those issues in it's foreign policy discourse.

    Hence to think that the reason to attack Ukraine was to avoid NATO enlargement is simply false. That (to deter Ukraine from becoming a NATO partner) was already done actually by the show of forces with large military exercises on the Ukrainian border. Besides, the whimsical idea here is to think that what countries the US Presidents says to become members would really become members de facto laughable. That it took two years for Sweden to get into NATO should tell that. No, the real reason to invade Ukraine was to gain territory, create that landbridge to Crimea, create that Novorossiya. This is not speculation, it's a fact: Russia has annexed more territories, some that it even doesn't have control. This, plus the russification efforts done in the occupied territories, should make this really clear.

    What is now becoming very clear that Putin was lead to think that the invasion would be quick and similar to what happened with Crimea. And the West wouldn't be a problem... just as earlier in 2014 it hadn't been

    Another question; suppose Finland is next on the chopping block. Would you also favor this strongman attitude of no negotiations or diplomacy with the Russians? Fight on till the last Finn, as it were? — Tzeentch
    If Russia makes territorial claims then yes, absolutely, my attitude would be the same of my grandparents generation. If it comes to fighting, fight like they did.

    It is absolutely delusional and outright deadly to go and accept the Russian demands and think that will give you peace. Just ask that from the Estonians, the Lithuanians or the Latvians how great it was to accept the Russian demands last time. What the Kremlin would want is would be the "Finlandized" Finland during Kekkonen's era. Or that at least for starters. Hence I'm glad that the social democrats took us to NATO, and we got Sweden there too!

    But I guess it's something you cannot fathom as you think that Russians are so 'reasonable' in their demands. (Just like the denazification of Ukraine) :roll:
  • Ukraine Crisis
    Oh... How odd then that the Russians insisted for over fifteen years that it was an existential security threat and marked it as a red line.

    And what a genius plan to ignore such warnings!

    How strange that Ukraine ended up in the position that it did.

    How very odd, indeed.     — Tzeentch
    What genius says things like the above.

    There's nothing odd with that. Russian imperialists see Ukraine as the existential part of the to make them a great Power. This isn't any new news. Even others agreed with this:

    quote-russia-can-be-either-an-empire-or-a-democracy-but-it-cannot-be-both-without-ukraine-zbigniew-brzezinski-91-50-43.jpg

    Ukraine's fault was to think that Russian leaders would stay as reasonable as the (ex)-Soviet leaders that peacefully dismantled the Soviet Union. Ukraine's second error was to trust that by giving away it's nuclear deterrence and to trust the written promises given to it by Russia. And the third error was that many thought foolishly that the aspirations for Ukraine were just about NATO expansion. Well, Putin's bizarre historical ideas should have obviously shown that this isn't just about not, but really about Russia itself. As if Crimea didn't already show that.

    (Many years earlier, far before the 2022 invasion, the objectives were there to be seen...)
    960x0.jpg?format=jpg&width=1440
  • Ukraine Crisis
    Second, your complaint can be easily retorted: my argument is not that we ought to look more favorably on the US's actions, but that we ought to look more critically at Russia. And if that is what makes me pro-US, then the opposite argument, namely the exact argument you just made makes you pro-Russian. You take Russia to be a lesser evil than the US. I take the US to be a lesser evil than Russia. To call mine a bias and yours not a bias, you have give compelling arguments, so far you offered questionable arguments. — neomac
    :100: :up:

    Everything has to be put into context and scale. Ukraine didn't threaten Russia, Russia has made crystal clear it's imperialistic territorial ambitions in Ukraine and is still delusional in wanting purge Ukraine from the "neo-nazis", who it says control Ukraine. Now perhaps 70 000 Ukrainian soldiers 11 000 Ukrainian civilians and over 100 000 Russian soldiers have been killed, hence this isn't a minor issue.

    What mistakes had been done by the West, it simply doesn't erase the fact that Putin decided to escalate a frozen conflict to a full scale conventional war with the objective of continuing the land grab it started over in 2014. Those are the facts and thus stating that somehow "Russia was forced to act" and the war is actually perpetrated by the US is simply false.

    And then if we focus on what mistakes the West has done, that's actually an interesting question which doesn't go on the biased line propagated by the Kremlin, where everything was manipulated by the US and Ukraine and Ukrainians aren't actors in their own country. (As they are so artificial, anyway)

    The real critique of the US could be the too little too late doctrine in supporting Ukraine, as the US didn't from the start think Ukraine would have a chance to defend itself so successfully. The assistance became a show in micromanagement of individual weapon system transfers...as if some units would be a silver bullet in a large scale war. The fear of (nuclear) escalation worked to cow the US from giving assistance when it could have been very effective, when Russia wasn't yet entrenched behind the Gerasimov line and was still claiming that this was only a "special military operation".

    Somehow the Cold War era wars in Korea and Vietnam didn't come to mind here: at least the Superpowers did understand that assisting someone who is fighting the other Superpower isn't a direct act of war. But this seems to have been forgotten and the nuclear talk from Putin and Medvedev cowed the West.
  • Information and Randomness
    I wrote an article on this a while back for 1,000 Word Philosophy, although they weren't interested in the topic. — Count Timothy von Icarus

    Interesting read. I think there's one absolutely fundamental issue here at play to this discussion: as you point out in Introducing the Scandal of Deduction, conclusions have to be implicit in the premises. It's all quite deductional and as you say, "no new information is generated by deduction".

    Randomness cannot be so. Something random creates that "information" all time when the random process/string is continued. In fact I'm coming to the conclusion that something random has to follow a certain rule that it achieves Kolmogorov-Chaitin randomness/algorithmic entropy. The rule/algorithm is also used in the Turing Machines example or other undecidability results: negative self-reference. This can be seen from the complexity strings.

    A rational number like 7/11 in decimal form is 0,3636363636... and it has a very low complexity. To write it the decimal form you have the rule "After zero and comma, write 36 and repeat it forever". Another rational number has also has low complexity, but isn't as easy to write as 7/11 has the rule for it's decimal representation "After zero and comma, write all the telephone numbers in the 1973 Seattle telephone book in the order they are listed and repeat it forever". Again a rational number with low complexity as that above rule wasn't long to write.

    For a random string there cannot be any algorithm that gives all the information of the number with less complexity. A random string can be presented only by itself in it's entirety to have all the information. So how can that be then done? Only a sequence that doesn't repeat itself can be random. Hence it has to self reference itself on the negative: if you start from an arbitrary point, then what came before cannot be repeated later or define what later comes. Hence the negative self reference.

    So basically the question is what are those Gödel numbers that are undecidable? At least part of them are all the numbers that are random and quite unique to themselves.

    This is my brainstorming and the above can be easily wrong or not easy to follow. I do hope some remarks, though.

    As you said in the piece "Likewise, our knowledge of mathematics comes from experience. Axioms are experimental truths; generalizations from observation.", this is the real question here. Are our axioms correct? Or are we mission some "self evident" things in mathematics. In my view we obviously are: there simply is a realm of mathematics that is uncomputable, where easy deductive proofs aren't possible. Would thus there be an axiom for this?

    I think there could be one.
  • Economics: Transformation Risk
    First question here is of course cui bono? Who is the Central Clearing Party and how much power the pension funds themselves have? Then what's at stake for the sovereign states now having basically their monetary policy in the Euro-system handled by the ECB. Basically we have learnt from past financial crisis is that the market is let to act as if free markets when things go up and in a crash those that have power and influence will have their asses saved as "too big to fail". And likely it will happen so the next time: the rules are one in good times, in crisis few people decide how to bail out "the system". And then anything goes, hell with the free markets or laws covering them.

    Hence it always irks me when someone tells something is "as good as money" as money in this current global monetary system isn't so great (except if you are a rich borrower investing it in something profitable).

    This works fine in normal markets but not in stressed markets. The risk that they cannot transform their bonds, is what is called the transformation risk. — Benkei
    So basically what your idea is that this ETF would work better in that situation?

    So, one solution I was now thinking of is the following and I wonder whether it will work:

    What if the CCP creates an actively managed ETF with a certain basket of high-quality bonds (that all pension funds have) and simultaneously forces its clearing members to accept ETF shares as variation margin?     — Benkei
    Who will manage this and what are their incentives in picking "high-quality bonds" or determines what "high-quality bonds" are in the first place? Especially if such as large investors as pension funds have to use the ETF? Would this be a way to dump some toxic Greek debt to the pension funds as just paint lipstick on it and call it high-quality bonds?

    And since @kazan dug this up after eight years, perhaps first question is if this is still current. What has happened in the last eight years?
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    To the extent nations are cultural phenomena, they ALL are artificial construct. — neomac
    One can say so, but the people aren't artificial.

    1. its ideological roots are in pan-arabism and pan-islamism, both of which are broader ideologies than the idea of a Palestinian nation-state — neomac
    I think that Palestines and Palestinians ideological roots have more to do with how the "Jewish Palestinians", the Israelis have gone with their own nation building.

    2. Palestinians didn’t branch out as a separate nation from within the Arab world, as the Ukrainians branched out from the Russian empire — neomac
    Independent Ukraine is only 33 years old. And many Russians are totally confident about the utter artificiality of the country as you are of the Palestinians...when compared to the Israelis.

    Yet it's very typical in a world made of nation states, people think that there must be something wrong with the people that don't have their own country. Either they are weak, incapable or not actually genuine. This silly argumentation on who has more moral right to the land where they now live and have lived for generations shows this.

    I think however that there are other factors that Israel can’t discount: 1. How the Arab states’ questionable attitude toward the Palestinians (and Palestinian refugees) may reinforce the Palestinians’ aspirations to a distinctive Palestinian nation-state. — neomac
    As I've said, Palestinian aspirations are reinforced how Isreal treats them, starting from the thing that Israel never was for them in any way.

    Yet is it questionable that Arabs now see Palestinians differently from them? Finns and Swedes are surely European, even Nordic, but two different countries and people still. Are Palestinians then Jordanians?

    Well, remember Black September 1970 in Jordan. Then actually when Israeli Israeli tanks entered Lebanon in 1982, Lebanese people were at first clapping their hands for Israelis to do away with PLO fighters (yet that was short lived as Israel showed how ruthless and violent they would be and hence you have now Hezbollah there, thanks to the Israeli occupation.)

    This article offers a critical reading of such comparison with the Americans fighting in Iraq and Syria: https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-devastation-of-gaza-was-inevitable-a-comparison-to-us-operations-in-iraq-and-syria/ On the other side, other Western articles share your concern about the post-war scenario: https://warontherocks.com/2024/01/remaking-mistakes-in-gaza/ — neomac
    Which is more pro-Israeli and which would be more neutral? Just asking.

    What is the present Europe is happy about? — neomac
    Hmm... prosperity, peace, integration. When compared to Middle East, which is the more happy story?

    What is so confusing in calling for “pivot to Asia” by American ‘pivot-people'? — neomac
    Because the US is already there in SE Asia. So continuously repeating about "turning to Asia" that focus isn't here but there. What is message you try to say here? That's the thing confusing.

    Well, Putin can hope the "Pivot people" get their way and the US pivots to Asia from I guess everywhere else (except North America). And from the astonishing success of the 20-year war in Afghanistan, Americans should learn what the impact to alliances, or fighting a war, if your Presidents keep on every possible opportunity declaring that they are going home, withdrawing from the war. Well, the Taleban listened to you and they got their Emirate back, now with full control of Afghanistan.

    Especially after Trump, Europeans really do think about the possibility that the US will just leave Europe, leave NATO and dismantle everything it's built and go to bilateral defense agreements. That is a potential, if still unlikely option now discussed seriously.

    And if Americans think that NATO is a burden, well, look at the South East Asia. SEATO didn't fly, it broke up and is now history. And your strongest allies there, South Korea and Japan, aren't as great friends as Germany and France. To put it short, unlike in Europe, there's no commitment for US allies to oppose together China because there is no NATO equivalent after SEATO. There are only bilateral defense agreements. There's just chatting organization and AUKUS, which has only ONE country, Australia, that is actually in the region. Hence the only thing AUKUS is basically bilateral defense agreement with Australia also with UK, which did naturally had already a defense pact with it's Commonwealth partner.

    It seems that the US simply has either lost it's capability or it's appetite to form actual alliances and coalitions. It's just acting on itself and looks if it get some to come with it.
  • Information and Randomness
    Pi contains the information about the ratio of diameter to circumference - I'm not convinced of the other type of information. — flannel jesus
    At least that pi is a transcendental number means you cannot square the circle as it otherwise could be possible, if it would be rational number (or Real Algebraic number). So there's that information (if I got it right).

    Here perhaps the separation of 'information' and simple raw 'data' might help.

    A random string might have by random (how else?) a string of data that looks similar to 'information'. Like the binary string “01000001" is the digital code for "A". And we might find in some random sequence
    “01000001" and say "Hey! This random sequence has "A" in it."
  • Information and Randomness
    The greatest degree of information is found in the most random or irrational sequences. — Benj96
    ?

    If you take pi or the golden ratio or eulers number for example, eventually it will detail your entire genetic sequence from start to finish. Statistically, given its randomness and infinity, it mist contain this information at some point in its course. — Benj96
    Ah, I think that this is the finding that infinite strings as being infinite also then do have the text of Tolstoi's "War and Peace" written in binary code...because there infinite.

    But this is a statistical probability. And notice when you have something infinite, then you have a problem with statistical probabilities.

    Yet this "information" on a random sequence is simply useless, because of the simple fact that you cannot handle infinite sequences. You can handle only finite parts of any random sequence. Thus finding your genetic sequence or Tolstoi's "War and Peace" in binary form or both from some finite part of a random sequence is, well, we can round that probability to 0, even if it's a very small positive number. Even if finite parts can be quite big. Now finding an exact sequence in very large finite strings is an interesting discussion itself...

    And can there be a random sequence that doesn't have your genetic sequence and Tolstoi's "War an Peace" in binary form? I guess so. Can I prove it? Absolutely not! With randomness you slip easily to the part of mathematics that is unprovable, uncountable, etc. Yet it's still math.

    Hence this is a bit of an illusion, I would say.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    The modern West is predicated on double standards. We can freely criticise certain groups without shame/stigma but not others. Only certain types of pride are allowed. — BitconnectCarlos
    I don't think that this is our biggest problem. Public discourse simply can be annoying some times.

    I can't help but shake the sense that the US is in decline. — BitconnectCarlos
    If it helps you, you have a way to go still in that fall. So just enjoy the decadence. The Titanic sailing for the iceberg is still just being built...
  • The Vulnerable World Hypothesis
    Main problem about this hypothesis is how to contain potential devastating effects caused by scientific progress. — SpaceDweller
    Again, just what are the devastating effects caused by scientific progress?

    Without scientific progress there sure would be devastating effects. Not just potential. Have you thought about this question from this viewpoint?

    So let's assume there wouldn't have been any Renaissance and further age of Enlightenment in the West, but the Church would have held power as in the Muslim World. Where would be now?

    I did agree that stopping research is not an option and so does the linked paper say it's unrealistic and costly, so this is not a solution, global governance and policing is a better solution but not popular, so we seek something better than that. — SpaceDweller
    Ok, but why isn't then this more of a problem of basically the abuse of technology?

    Many times these problems actually need very nuanced and specific solutions, not radical and dramatic solutions like "World government".
  • The Vulnerable World Hypothesis
    Fire was first invention to prepare meals followed by stoves and now wait until food replicator is discovered like the one in star trek series. — SpaceDweller
    Yet we won't get "food replicators", at least in the way in Star Trek, without new scientific insights.

    And there are ample amount of global problems where science and technology would help. And just implementing current technologies globally would help. For example, the second largest exporter of food after the US is actually tiny Netherlands. Hence if other countries had as advanced agricultural sector as Netherlands, then there would be ample space for wildlife and nature and still everybody would be fed. Still, for example famines have eased even with the current development.

    Famine-death-rate-since-1860s-revised_1350.png
  • The Vulnerable World Hypothesis
    The point is that scientific progress leads to potentially devastating technologies. — SpaceDweller
    So we agree that it's the potentially devastating technology, or the use of this tech, which is the real threat.

    Because otherwise it's a bit difficult to say "Stop Science! It may discover things that can potentially lead to devastating use of technology." Once when you stop science, then there's not even the harmless technologies to help us. Everything will be just engineers improving current machines and concepts. But once you have developed the pencil, the written book, the spoon etc. there's not much to improve there. Spoons and books have stayed the same for quite a while. No incentive or reason to improve a technology that works so well.

    Spoon from the Roman period, 4th or 5th Century. Looks quite the same as I have in my kitchen and likely used the same way as now:

    main-image

    When we don't have any new technologies, the problems that our current technology cannot be solved will mean that there likely won't be any solution for the problem. And that's why earlier societies collapsed as they didn't have the capability to deal with the changes that happened.
  • The Vulnerable World Hypothesis
    If science is just a means to technology, and science is funded almost entirely by a desire for technology (or other forms of power), then science is not about speculative knowledge in any real sense. We have seen science moving in this direction for hundreds of years now.

    You are right that in theory science should be this separate, autonomous thing. But in practice it turns out not to be.     — Leontiskos
    A lot of people do think that science is just one part of the process of how our technology will improve and that tech is just there to improve our lives. But talk to a scientist and you will notice that they are actually interested in science itself. That isn't something irrelevant.

    And then think about what science was hundreds of years ago: A tiny cabal of men that had the ability to think about science and not simply to work to feed themselves and their families. If they were aware of each other, likely they were writing to each other. Even at the start of the 20th Century the scientific circles were small.

    Just look at this picture from 1926 of the "Fifth Solvay International Conference on Electrons and Photons". That's what a "golden age" of science looks like: a tiny cabal of people that we now know from the names of the various theories and models that make Quantum Physics.

    https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F039e8c19-4b94-46c8-9204-5c31902ef50e_1746x956.png

    There are 28 men and one woman in that picture. Now you couldn't take a picture of all scientists that are working in the field, even of those that really are just doing the science part. At the time of Newton, if such a conference on Physics/Mathematics in general would have been held and there would have been 29 participants, I think there would be nearly all of the people at that time studying these issues.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    A country needs something that its citizens can sign onto. Some type of common value system. A sense of citizenship, a common purpose. What is it that unites us? A collective guilt in the sins of the West? — BitconnectCarlos
    Self criticism can be our strength, assuming that we also will respect the achievements that we have made. Totalitarian systems cannot be self critical, they cannot openly debate their flaws. It's something that democracies can do, which for some makes the look weak. Democracies always look to be weak, sometimes as they would be being broken apart.

    Common threats unite us. In my country even if the political parties keep up the normal fights over policy decision, the opposition and the ruling parties could immediately get together when the shit hit the fan. First when Covid pandemic started and then when Russia attacked Ukraine in a full scale assault and Finland had to seek NATO membership. On both occasions suddenly there wasn't the typical quarreling, but a quick consensus on what to do and rapid decisions taken.

    Same actually you can see with Israel. Israel was looking as it would become apart in a political crisis before October 7th, but it unified quickly to the threat. This isn't at all surprising: people can heatedly disagree about some issues in a democracy, yet come together when needed.

    The thing is that there is a common value system, but we don't talk about it. Those things that we agree upon are considered basically self evident. We talk about the differences we have an paint these caricatures of the others who don't think like us.
  • The Vulnerable World Hypothesis
    Yes, there are many benefits of scientific progress but the thing is that only one wrong technology can devastate all benefits. — SpaceDweller
    Must be really some awesome technology of the future, because the fact is that even an all-out nuclear war between US/Russia and China wouldn't devastate everything and kill everybody. It might be a well respected mantra to say to voice opposition to nuclear weapons, but destroying everything is a lot harder than we think.

    The Library of Congress and it's 173 million items might burn up in a nuclear fireball, yet the libraries in Argentina and Chile would likely stay intact. And those libraries have a lot more information stored than the great library of Alexandria had. Also many Argentinians and Chileans would survive, even if there would be a nuclear winter of some sort.

    I don't think science is inherently evil because of this, only that it has the potential of self-destruction if not controlled. — SpaceDweller
    My father was a professor of virology, and while he has now passed away, he did live to see the Covid pandemic. What he was really afraid back then was the possibility that the Covid-virus had indeed been created by research and then had spread out of the laboratory. He personally believed it was a real, worrisome possibility and feared what damage such a thing would do to medical research and in the trust in medicine in general. With seven million deaths, one million dead in the US, you can bet that it to be a laboratory "Oops!" isn't something people actually want to hear.

    So yes, you do have a point.

    And just like the scientists that cloned the first animal, Dolly the sheep, in 1996 who insisted that governments should look at the ethics and have regulations on the subject, there is a large acceptance from the scientific community that regulation and limitations should be enacted to the possible dangers. Yet those who would prosper from even dangerous research can have other incentives.

    Yet I think this isn't a problem of science itself. It's a problem of when technological research isn't given any limits. It's more of a problem of lax regulation of industry, I would say.

    There can be limits to scientific knowledge and you can indeed keep technology at bay. The perfect example of this is just how ancient is now the technology to make nuclear weapons. Yet there's a great incentive for scientists not to make the technology public: they'll face long jail sentences or simply will be killed. That's a great incentive (to stay alive) not to openly market nuclear technology to someone just with the money wishing to buy it.

    Hence technology can indeed be regulated and you don't need a global government. You need just common sense.
  • The Vulnerable World Hypothesis
    ↪Leontiskos
    Yet we don't call engineers scientists, but engineers.

    There really is a difference between science and technology. Your simply not using the definition of technology and just putting it together with everything being 'science'. However there's a reason why the standard definitions are different. Let's define first what they mean:

    Science is the study of the natural world by collecting data through a systematic process called the scientific method. (Human sciences then study the world that we have created ourselves)

    Technology is when we apply that science to create devices that can solves problems and do tasks.

    There's a fundamental difference between the two. The power that you are talking about comes really from technology, all those devices starting from steam engines to microchips to nuclear weapons.

    And I wouldn't say that modern science has shifted away from speculative knowledge. Science has become a huge field with academia and research institutes where a lot of that new study has gone to applied sciences and hence basically to technological research. How you describe it would mean that scientific study has somehow diminished when it hasn't done so. There's still going on that original science stuff, no matter how much studies are directed by grants.

    Hence what you refer to is more the situation when people first have a problem, want to solve the problem with new technology and then the engineers ask scientist if the technology would be even possible. Well, the scientists cannot just invent new scientific realities to give the engineers new ways to make technology work.
  • The Vulnerable World Hypothesis
    ↪Leontiskos
    Sorry, if I relate 'science' to using the scientific method, not a tool for gaining power.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    Now I get it, you view US empire as good and Russian empire as bad. Therefore, the US is justified in moving its military hardware and system closer to Russia. My view is more complicated than this dichotomy. — boethius
    There's a lot to be critical about of US actions, but when it comes to Europe, here fortunately the US hasn't made it's biggest blunders. On the contrary, I would say.

    And let's think about this.

    Ask yourself, how many NATO countries have been invaded by the US or other NATO countries, when the US has thought the countries were out of line?

    With the Warsaw Pact, it did this action basically twice. In Hungary and in Czechoslovakia. And at least general Jaruzelski insisted that he declared martial law in order to prevent a Russian invasion in 1981. This shows what the actual objective was for the Warsaw Pact for the Soviet Union.

    So has now Russia changed so much from those times with it's Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO)?

    How well did the alliance with Russia protect Armenia from Azeris? How much did Russia come to the help of Armenia?

    But yes, it did come to help of the government of Kazakhstan to quell riots. And that actually fits quite well the previous Warsaw Pact mentality.
  • The Vulnerable World Hypothesis
    Why use scientific progress and not simply technological progress?

    Our weapons have become more deadly because of technological advances. Science is a bit different. Quantum physics tells us something about how the world works. Yet that Science itself didn't give us nuclear weapons, they are applications of science. Hence use of technology gave us nuclear weapons. So why be against science and think scientific progress makes us vulnerable?

    There's a lot of examples that show that we aren't as vulnerable as earlier: we don't die as early as before. If there are bad harvests, we don't in the industrialized World die of famine. Actually famines have become more rare. We don't just have to raise our hands up and hope that the God's wouldn't be angry at us, we have an idea just how we changing (destroying?) our environment.

    Therefore global government and policing supported by global government is it appears the most effective solution to prevent self-destruction caused by scientific progress. — SpaceDweller
    I don't think so.

    Besides, global government would lead to excessive centralization and yes, a lot lof people all around the World might come together... to oppose this singular government.

    Sovereign states working not as an union, but a confederacy, would in my view work far more better. The concept of nation state has been proven quite effective. Also when there are multiple different countries trying different things, we aren't all then destined to make the same mistakes.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    When was the last time you saw a crowd of angry Jews surrounding and protesting in front of a mosque and disrupting their services? — BitconnectCarlos
    There's few mosques here and very few Jews where I live. And people are quite well behaved.

    It's a bit different in "Holy Land", where religious zealots have a field day:




    Or dancing inside the Ibrahim Mosque?


    Same mosque btw where Baruch Goldstein shot 39 Muslims and wounded 150 others before being killed by the crowd (and hence is a hero for the Zionist extremists).

    And of course you have the religious zealots on the other side also, naturally, which people here don't support even if they are critical about Israel's actions...

    GettyImages-1233087143-1536x1016.jpg

    Christianity is weak in the West. We believe in nothing. Western birth rates are low. — BitconnectCarlos
    So you assume fundamentalists make a country strong? I beg to differ. In fact, I find the whole narrative of "the West being weak", especially "weaker than it's enemies" to be a load of bullshit.

    And to discuss the demographic transition, it's also something that it isn't either so straight forward as people might think:

    6a00e54ecbb69a883301b8d0cd3013970c-pi
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    American controversial policies are also what Europeans must swallow to keep the front united, otherwise they have to struggle for greater decision power on the coalition, but what are the odds to succeed, really? — neomac
    Actually here NATO works (...or doesn't work as a tool of US policy): only few American endeavors have been so that all NATO participates in them. And many times allies can opt out or simply give no actual support. Hence when an American President comes up with a too controversial policy of striking someone, it can be so that nobody shows up. This happened humiliatingly to Obama with Syria, if you remember. Not even the UK showed up and Obama had to backtrack away from his line drawn on the sand.

    Besides, it has been more of the US simply changing it's mind without consulting to it's allies. Here Afghanistan is a great example: the US withdrawal came as a surprise to the other alliance members and they had to react to the whims of the US policy. Something that can be seen now in the support of Ukraine too.

    On the other side, the more the European strategic interest diverges from the US national interest and the European partnership turns unexploitable by the US, the more the US may be compelled to make Europe unexploitable to its hegemonic competitors too. — neomac
    To me this sounds a bit confusing. I think Europe is quite happy with the present, but it's the US who has these 'pivot-people' calling for 'pivot to Asia' all the time. Which is confusing.
  • Does Tarski Undefinability apply to HOL ?
    You're off to the races into transfinite-order logics. If I understand the question of the title, it is equivalent to asking if Godel's incompleteness (theorem) is entirely resolved at some higher level of logic. My guess is not. — tim wood

    I cannot give a rigorous answer, but I agree with this. If Tarski's undefinability theorem is basically that "arithmetical truth cannot be defined in arithmetic", or that true Gödel numbers are not definable arithmetically, meaning there’s no first-order formula for this, I think it does go for higher order logics. For those higher order logics there is their own true but unprovable Gödel number.

    But I'm the amateur here, so don't quote me.

    (PS, why two threads?)
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    People are more complex than Pavlov’s dogs. Look at the Taliban, the IRA, and Viet cong. Did the wars waged end them? — ENOAH
    With two example, yes, they were victorious, militarily. And if you refer to the original IRA, 1916-1922, that was victorious too, they did get their independent Ireland! But what's the point here?

    Also, Hamas. Did their horrendous attack end the plight of their people? No, if anything, it threatens the end of their people, period. — ENOAH
    You really think Israel will ethnically cleanse or kill seven million Palestinians? I don't think so.

    Realpolitik, far from suggesting war, actually ought to be more pragmatic, face the facts, and sit down for some immediate, open minded, bite the bullet, willing to compromise, negotiations. Both sides. — ENOAH
    Yet for that you should have leadership that would actually show true leadership, think forward and restrain from the emotional response for revenge. And that's difficult, to restrain people from the worst of their emotions yet to show that you do feel with them.

    Start from obvious things: yes, try to destroy Hamas, but don't create a famine. I've again and again said one simple example: fight like the Americans.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    If you're point is Russia, being an empire, will seek dominate where it can (where it does being its "sphere of influence") its expand when it can: sure, obviously, but that's exactly my point that given Russia's propensity to expand — boethius
    ? ? ?

    So if Russia you accept that Russia has this propensity to expand, how then view NATO enlargement is this US plot against Russia. More of a ploy of the neighboring countries to get under NATO security umbrella before they have a conflict with Russia.

    Actual historians very much disagree with your view. — boethius
    Well I've studied history in my own country and I think I know the history, so please say just to whom you refer this idea.

    Had Ukraine accepted the peace deal on offer at the start of the war, — boethius
    Stop right here.

    There was an attempt to make peace talks. I don't recall a written peace offer on the table from Putin. Perhaps unconditional surrender is for you a "peace offer".

    Besides, this is irrelevant as Russia has formally annexed more territories (partly one that it doesn't even fully control) and hence this is quite meaningless.

    I can also continue saying "If Putin had only had large exercises on the border and never attacked Ukraine!". Yeah, but that didn't happen, he did invade.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    ↪Moses
    There's a plethora of violence, vandalism and a lot of emotions. Yet it's still politics.

    The problem is really that people think their emotional response, usually revenge, would work. It doesn't. Basically with retaliation they simply reaffirm to the other side how evil they are and how right the other side is in not seeking a peaceful settlement.

    Israel not allowing food to the civilians won't cower the Palestinians to give up an seek a settlement, but will harden their resolve. If not now, then the future generations will remember. The current leadership of Hamas were kids during the first Intifada. And terrorist attacks from the Palestinian side won't cower the Israelis, but reinforce their attitudes that you cannot negotiate with the Palestinians. The policy that the Likud party has cherished from it's birth.

    The only thing that matters in their minds is the absolute righteousness of the cause. — Moses
    I think on both sides there's ample amounts of this around. Especially when religion is involved, it's always extremely ugly. People are doing God's work, on both sides.

    They are zealots who never cared about much larger amounts of muslim suffering elsewhere. — Moses
    American protesters usually protest about what their own country does. Some can protest at a third country (like China) if their country continues to have ties with such a country. But if you have a somewhere a civil war where one or the both sides have come to the conclusion that genocide is the only way out, then you have huge amounts of suffering. And not much emotional outbursts of anger. But it's not done in their name, when neither side is supported by their government (by weapons etc.). Actually in these cases, the US is against these states of actions. Like in Syria or in Sudan with Darfur.
  • It's Amazing That These People Are Still With Us
    If you were in a coma starting in 1967, and woke up today 56 years later, much of the following list would make you feel right at home. — Mikie
    And just how many persons from 1967 would know many from that list? Somebody not from Georgia surely will have difficulties to know the Georgia State Senate member Jimmy Carter, who had then only lost a Georgia gubernatorial election. You also have to be quite a Space fan to know Buz Aldrin in 1967, even if he then had I guess two space missions on his record (and the longest space walk). Then it was the Mercury Astronauts that were famous. Not the Gemini and the Apollo missions were just going on...

    Makes me think how many will be around when it is 2080. Yep, there surely will be those that are now for example 10-29 years and we have no idea of them how powerful and well known they will be in the 2080's. However, there are those who we might know.

    Justin Bieber, 86 years.
    Jennifer Lawrence, 90 years.
    Taylor Swift, 91 years.
    Cristiano Ronaldo, 95 years.
    Madonna, 122 years.

    Now, when they estimate that people born now will likely to reach an average age of 100, I'm sure the list will be long.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Yes, I would argue that. However, differently from the British empire, Israel is fighting for its own nation state in Palestine, not to preserve an empire. — neomac
    And Palestinians are continuing to fight for independence. But yes, this ought to be obvious that Israel isn't a colonial venture where "the Europeans" can just go home. Algeria had roughly 1,6 million ethnic French many of whom had been born in Algeria, the Pied-Noirs. Yet it wasn't only them fighting the Algerian war. The example of Algeria might have been an example that Palestinians hoped to repeat, but they are not fighting the US.

    But naturally this goes both ways: Palestinians haven't either a place to go back. But if some Palestinians have illusions or fantasies that the Israelis would migrate back to Europe (or likely to the US), there are many people who have similar illusions about the Palestinians. You have even in this thread many examples of people believing the Palestinians being something "artificial" construct, and that Palestinians simply should move to somewhere else in the Arab world.

    You are making it all about Netanyahu. To me it isn’t. Even though Netanyahu is politically hawkish, and willing to exploit the current conflict for political convenience, STILL he has the support of the Israelis. — neomac
    The obvious thing here is that there's not just one way to fight a war. There are many ways. Starting from the way you approach the civilian population. I've made the point right from the start in October last year that Israel should approach the fighting just like the US approached it's fight against Al Qaeda and ISIS in Iraq: to take into consideration the civilian population. But it didn't. It went with no political goals, hopes of "voluntary transfer" of Palestinians somewhere else and the creating a famine. This has been a strategic mistake in the long run, but this government isn't thinking in the long run. It's thinking about the next day and it's popularity among the voters.

    So my conclusion is that the US may STILL be compelled to support Israel against Hamas because Israel is a strategic ally either for power balance in the Middle East and/or for domestic power balance. — neomac
    As long as the Arab side seems to be so vulnerable to simply collapse, this is true. Prior it was the influence of Soviet Union that was the reason why the US fervently supported Israel. And when the Cold War ended, Israel thought for a while that they had to go with the peace process because the US was losing interest. Not so, as there are plenty of Christians in the US for whom Israel isn't just a country, but part of their religion and who hence are adamant supporters of Israel. As one PF member who has only prior discussed religious matters in the forum, declared that Israel was dong God's work. So it's not AIPAC and the American jews (who many oppose Netanyahu's administration), it the Bible belt Evangelicals.

    Hence even if Egypt is an ally of the US, Saudi-Arabia is the ally of US (and Iraq was occupied and should have a Pro-US government), the US does feel cautious about how strong this relationship is. Iran and the fall of the Shah and the present relations with the country tells a lot. So could it happen in Saudi-Arabia? Or Egypt?

    If the Arab states could integrate more and speak more like the EU, then that could change. But that would also change Israel's position too.

    We have seen how Hamas and Houthis managed to upgrade their military threats against Israel and the West, and how they want to have a role in the international arena, so we can’t underestimate how their threat can evolve in future scenarios. — neomac
    Iran has here learnt the hard way to use proxies. They learnt it from operation Praying Mantis. Hence the use of proxy forces. It should be noteworthy that to attack the supporter of a proxy is truly an escalation. Just think of it if Russia would act the same to countries that support Ukraine. Just to give weapons and training isn't enough to be a real belligerent in a war.

    The miniwar that the US fought with Iran during Operation Praying Mantis:
    img021.jpg?itok=FW-w5fqQ
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Got it. :ok: Brilliant, groundbreaking analysis once again. — Mikie
    Hey, Israel's doing Gods work! You should be rooting for Israel, or otherwise you want Israel’s destruction and radical Islam to prevail.

    That's says it all of this member and his contribution to this discussion.

    No wonder they changed this thread to the Lounge.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    ↪jorndoe
    It's really about influencing the American politicians that think the war can be negotiated to an end by not giving support to Ukraine. So basically Putin is pinning his hopes on people like Matt Gaetz and the like.

    And this of course resonates to an audience that simply sums up everything that the US supports as "forever wars" that are basically destined to fail and enthusiastically devours Russian propaganda.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Everyone, please restrict your criticism to the organizations involved and not the ethnic groups they happen to be members of. Negative generalizations from events in this conflict to chracteristics of Jews or Arabs etc will not be tolerated. — Baden
    :up:
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Has that been condemned yet? — Moses
    I think that everybody here has condemned it. I even made the point that even Hamas admitted to "excesses" happening during Al-Aqsa Flood (October 7th), which is quite hypocritical. Nobody has denied that Hamas has perpetuated warcrimes.

    Yet it seems that any critique of the way Netanyahu administration in dealing with the situation is viewed by some as "anti-semitic" and "pro-Hamas". As if the only thing in a philosophy forum is to rally around the flag and show your support to your side, thus repeat the mantra's given by your government. Well, that's not in the spirit of a discussion, especially from those who like philosophy.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    ↪ssu, don't forget the Sunni (85-90% worldwide) versus Shia (Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Bahrain) conflict. Internal to Islam, they're not seeing eye-to-eye, to the point of violence now and then. — jorndoe
    Indeed yes. This is basically the Saudi-Iranian conflict that was fought in Yemen, for example. But also in Syria.

    The Arab nations are no longer completely clueless when it comes to military matters, and recent history is filled with examples of how to counter the traditional western way of war (even carried out by the Arabs themselves). — Tzeentch
    The Arab nations haven't been ever completely clueless when it comes to military matters, actually. But that Israel's neighbors have been poor Third World countries is a fact. And Soviet equipment and tactics weren't up to par with the Israelis (shown by Israeli aircraft winning an air battle against Soviet pilots flying the Soviet equipment during the War of Attrition, see here). Saudi Arabia did actually send couple battalions to Syria and one brigade into Jordan (which wasn't fighting, but still) yet these forces came so late that they didn't see action.

    The Lebanon war of 2006 is indeed an example where Hezbollah had obviously improved it's fighting abilities from prior. The ability of lower leaders (and those usually referred as non-commisioned officers)
    to take the initiative had been improved. Yet the performance of the Saudi and allied forces in the Yemen war was still poor. Similar equipment used by US forces wasn't used like the US forces, and the Houthis (at first literally fighting in flip flops) showed just how a badly equipped but determined foe could defeat the Saudis. That the Saudi monarchy is more afraid of it's own armed forces themselves making a military coup is shown from the fact that the force is cut into two with the National Guard and the Army and that there isn't any conscription, which would be optional for a country that had less people than Egypt, Iraq or Iran.

    Saudi Abrams destroyed by the Houthis in 2018:
    1426244_800.jpg?w=800&ssl=1

    Syria is devastated by it's own civil war and is incapable of doing anything about the Israeli strikes in the country. Egypt has it's own potential domestic problems and still wouldn't opt to fight Israel, even if the population is extremely angry about Israel's actions against the Palestinians. And Turkey, well, it doesn't have borders with Israel. Overall what is lacking is the coordination among Arab states and Turkey. And as @jorndoe mentioned, we shouldn't forget the sunni/shia split.

    The only sides that actually have anticipated to face off with Israel is Iran and it's creation, Hezbollah. They have tried to encounter Israeli air superiority simply with long range missiles and rockets and have opted not to try to fight a conventional war against it.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    The West can "forget the issue", but the geopolitical shift with Arab nations aligning to BRICS and taking a bigger role cannot simply be ignored. Or rather one may ignore it at their own peril. — Tzeentch
    I was referring to the West and especially to the US. To the Middle East, well, it's quite laughable to talk about this being only a temporary setback in the warming of Saudi-Israeli relations.

    Yet I think those countries close to the US will simply to have ties both to the US and to the east.

    Israel is a small island in a sea of historical and potential enemies, and it is cultivating the seeds of a gigantic disaster within and without its own borders.

    I honestly think you don't fully understand what is at stake here.

    The only reason Israel still exists is because of its "special relationship" with the United States and basically the promise that the United States will come to Israel's rescue if it were ever in real trouble.     — Tzeentch
    I think the IDF and it's performance in the earlier wars is the reason, not only the just the assistance from the US. Also Syria and Egypt got quite a lot more assistance from a Superpower earlier than they could actually afford. And Egypt has now also gotten assistance from the US. Not so much as Israel, but still.

    And don't forget Israel's nuclear deterrence. And it's conventional deterrence and technological advantage. And also that the Arab states, Iran and Turkey aren't all in friendly relations together and aren't good at coordinating an unified response. Not so long ago Iran attacked the Saudi's through the Houthis. Not long ago Qatar was nearly attacked by it's neighbors. Turkey, Bahrain and Jordan have at least called home their embassador. I think Egypt has not. So the bunch has far more quarrels than the EU has with Hungary. Iran was called to participate in a meeting with the Arab states, but that didn't go much more forward.

    At least the situation was discussed last November with the Arab states, Iran and Turkey:
    67374953_1004.webp

    The military balance has not changed and also the US still there to aid Israel. What is changing is the perception in the West dramatically, and the real threat is a pariah status as Apartheid South Africa had.

    The next real step would be sanctions, that for the export oriented Israel is very toxic. But only in the long run. And a lot would still have to happen. Just like this discussion shows, there are those who do support Israel and the actions it has taken.
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