valid claim — flannel jesus

When it comes to claims of national property, it seems like occupation counts for a great deal, whether the previous occupants agreed to it or not. Look at the Western Hemisphere.

Establishing Israel was as legitimate as establishing any other regime in the world.

The Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) may or may not have relevance to the situation, but it looms much larger in the narratives about the existence of Israel. The narratives have been around far longer than the current crisis.

Zionism came out of specific conditions in Europe. This article provides a history of Zionism. One of the influences here is that in Russia there was an emphasis on ethnic identities. In the liberal west, ethnicity was dissolved in individualism. Vicious antisemitism was another strong influence.

the most straight-off answer is that the Jews were behind it. — BitconnectCarlos

Of course. Jesus challenged the Jewish power elite, which outside of the Temple was subordinate to the Romans.

But the narrative of the Jewish elite's animosity towards Jesus wasn't, in my opinion, responsible for anti-semitism. I don't know of antisemitic attacks on Jews in the late Roman era, or in the immediate period after the collapse of the Western Empire (around 480). I don't think I've read about antisemitic attacks in Europe until the 10th - 15th centuries.

Religious attitudes were reflected in the economic, social, and political life of medieval Europe. In much of Europe during the Middle Ages, Jews were denied citizenship and its rights, barred from holding posts in government and the military, and excluded from membership in guilds and the professions. To be sure, some European rulers and societies, particularly during the early Middle Ages, afforded Jews a degree of tolerance and acceptance, and it would be an error to conceive of Jews as facing an unchanging and unceasing manifestation of anti-Jewish oppression throughout this period. In 1096, however, knights of the First Crusade unleashed a wave of anti-Semitic violence in France and the Holy Roman Empire, including massacres in Worms, Trier (both now in Germany), and Metz (now in France). Unfounded accusations of ritual murder and of host desecration and the blood libel—allegations of Jews’ sacrifice of Christian children at Passover to obtain blood for unleavened bread—appeared in the 12th century. — Encyclopedia Brittanica

The ghetto system began in Renaissance Italy in July 1555 with Pope Paul IV's issuing of the Cum nimis absurdum. This change in papal policy implemented a series of restrictions on Jewish life that dramatically reshaped their place in society.

on March 31, 1492, in the Alhambra's resplendent Hall of the Ambassadors, Ferdinand and Isabella signed an edict, the Alhambra Decree, expelling the Jews from Spain.

If there has been a thousand years of antisemitism in Europe, there were also a thousand years after Jesus when there wasn't much antisemitism. Something besides the Biblical Texts was at work. My guess is that the early slanders, i.e., using Christian children's blood to make passover bread, was authored by some sons of bitches in the church, or by some of their running dog lackeys. But for what reason did the bastards do it?

Antisemitism starts out as a Christian thing.

Prior to the Christian era, the Jews were one of several religious ethnicities that were periodically plundered / conquered by stronger neighbors. The Babylonias didn't conquer them because of religion or ethnic features. They were just inconveniently located on property the Nebuchadnezzar wanted.

The Christian Era began some time after the crucifixion (and alleged resurrection) of Jesus Christ by the Romans. Jesus was Jewish, of course, and if he was born to be the savior of Israel, it didn't work out very well.

The early church began informally and eventually became a capitalized group -- Christians. By this time, the Jews had revolted, and in reprisal the Romans totally profaned the Temple and scattered more Jews across the empire.

Somewhere along the line, Christians got the idea that the Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus = god = deicide. That worked well enough for Christians. Somebody needed to be blamed, and the Romans were no longer in business (as an empire in the West, at least). So, blame the Jews.

Enemies are handy because so many things -- plagues, wars, financial problems, bad harvests, etc. -- can be blamed on them. The Jews were numerous enough in total, but nowhere in particular. They didn't have a lot of power. They were duly blames for bad news.

Being on good terms with a group and at the same time viewing them as enemies is cognitively dissonance. As time went on, Jews became a caricature in the portrayals by Christians. The Church (Roman and Orthodox) was the vehicle for distributing antisemitism.

Antisemitism has been well established in Christian countries since... pick a century -- 13th? Maybe even before then, It has put down deep roots among Slavic, Germanic, Anglo-Saxon, and various other ethnic groups,

Then there's Islam,

White people in Europe and North America generally tend towards low rates of reproduction -- a trend associated with more education and higher incomes. As a consequence, the demographics forms a mushroom effect of more elderly people than younger people can financially support and care for. China and Japan either have or soon will have the same kind of demographic problem.

Immigration solves this particular demographic problem: more young workers paying into government coffers, more young workers available to provide care for elderly people. France and the United States have immigration patterns that will support growing economies and provide younger workers to care for older people.

A number of European countries, like Italy, are neither reproducing nor adding enough immigrants to counteract the mushroom demographic problem.

Demographics is one thing. Culture and politics is a different concern, the medium or long term outcomes being uncertain.

if you walk up to someone and slap them do they have to turn the other cheek?

I say yes. — FreeEmotion

Which is why it's the dirt the meek inherit, not the earth.

Can I really believe in nothing? — A Realist

No, you cannot. "Nothing" means nothing; zero; zilch; empty set; absence of anything. There is nothing about nothing to latch onto.

It sounds cool to say, "Oh, I don't believe in any of that crap. I BELIEVE IN NOTHING!" It's OK for an adolescent tantrum, but otherwise it's a meaningless statement. The good news is that one can articulate all of the crap one doesn't believe in, and that will piss off everyone more than throwing a tantrum.

Man, the 20th Century was a mess!

Britain and France were eager to carve up the rotting Ottoman Empire for the oil treasure under the territory. Fine, but the slices they made through the Middle East did not take account of all the various ethnic/religious divisions there. (Colonial powers did the same thing in Africa.). As if there wasn't enough turmoil already, the Zionist movement pleaded for a Jewish Homeland in Palestine, aka, Israel. Zionism, of course, wasn't hatched in a vacuum. Jews had been repeatedly subjected to pogroms across Europe. They wanted a refuge of safety. Than the Balfour Agreement.

Was Britain the greater or lesser villain for limiting Jewish Immigration to Palestine during the Holocaust in Germany?

After WWII, Britain washed its hands of the problem and in 1948 the State of Israel created itself -- what the Arabs call the Nakba. The state of Israel meant the dispossession of the Palestinians. Further bad acts have been carried out by all concerned in the last 75 years.

Europe's distaste for the "The wretched refuse of your teeming shores" landing on Lampadusa, the Azores, Greece, and various other places seems quite understandable to me. I don't have any enthusiasm for the millions of migrants heading toward our southern border. I'm a leftist quite out of step with a lot of leftists on this issue. My view is that sovereign nations have the right and responsibility to maintain their borders and follow a rational policy on admission. Just because x-millions of South Americans or Africans (and people from elsewhere) want to come to the US or EU doesn't mean they must be welcomed or admitted at all.

If they can't get in, too bad, but I readily recognize that many of these people are trying to get away from economic, political, and social adversity, some of which we can trace back to our own policies. I'm on Israel's side, but I also recognize that Palestinians got the royal shaft. Unfortunately, consistency is just not going to be possible in resolving all (any?) of the wrongs.

If the actions of Group A and Group B are morally indistinguishable and equivalent, how should everyone else (call it Group C) act with respect to the immoral acts of A and B?

Many people will identify with either A or B and assent to whatever their preferred group does. The choice of one's preferred group will be debatable. Some will call for a plague on both their houses. That approach is often a cop-out, as is dismissing both sides as crazy extremists. Quite a few people will not have been paying attention and will not have heard about it.

Can one identify with both A and B, and recognize that an equivalent tragedy is happening to both sides?

The immediate judgement about the "morality of war" vs the "morality of murder" is largely guided by whose ox is getting gored. "Group B" in your example will condemn the attack as savage brutality, murder, aggression, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and more. "Group B" will retaliate with what "Group A" characterizes as savage brutality, murder, aggression, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and more. Both groups will be more or less correct in their description of what happened to them.

The acts of A and B are morally indistinguishable and equivalent.

The difference between shooting "innocent civilians" and soldiers in war and shooting random targets in the United States (like the 18 people just killed in Maine) is that the latter is a matter of national policy and the former is a matter of severely disordered behavior.

We have rules of engagement, international laws about conducting wars, and various ideas about the morality of war. The trouble with these various guides is that in principle "war is hell" as Union General William Tecumseh Sherman said, as he burned Atlanta and marched through Georgia.

The hell of war, as it is generally conducted and experienced, renders finicky questioning about the morality of this or that tactic moot.

I know some abstemious people who really should get drunk more often, for their own and everybody else's sanity.

Why do humans want to escape their mind and avoid reality? — Skalidris

It's entertaining. The religious rites of the Eleusinian Mystery cult at Eleusis (Ancient Greece) involved drugs, alcohol, and vision seeing. People did go there for the mysteries, but they also went there because it was interesting, festive, and fun.

I've always found a couple of beers a necessary, reliable, and effective social lubricant. .

It was safer to drink than water from the Nile. — jgill

The idea that beer and wine were safer than the Nile, the Rhine, or the Thames is floated again and again. We know that that drinking water from the Danube, Tigris Euphrates, or Congo Rivers might be unsafe, but we have known that for less than 200 years. People certainly understood that some water tasted better than other water, but as for safety... not back then.

People drank beer in preference to river water because of those mind-altering features of alcohol.

It would be pretty nervy of me to review any of the psalms (#55 here). Apparently an old King David was lamenting political adversity.

Much closer to horror and terror is this Psalm verse: “Happy is the one who seizes your infants / and dashes them against the rocks.” Psalm 137:9. Whose children? The children of Israel's enemies, the Edomites and Babylonians. Who does the bashing? Presumably that would be ANCIENT Israel.

What's the point? The point is to make sure there are no future generations of one's enemies.

I absolutely am not drawing a parallel between ancient Israel and the modern world, but The Final Solution was also intended to root out future generations of the hated Jew.

Not really — universeness

Yes, really.

This is the asymmetry: Hamas does not have capacity to defend the Palestinian people in Gaza, or anywhere else. It is embedded in Gaza but funded by external sources -- Qatar and Iran for instance. It has a small armed force compared to Israel, and no tanks or airplanes. It does have rockets, guns, and explosives. While it can attack Israel, there is no chance of it defeating Israel (by itself). It can, as we have seen, stage an effective limited attack on civilians.

Israel, on the other hand, has the capacity to destroy Gaza and Hamas by bringing overwhelming force to bear. I suppose it could deploy nuclear bombs, if it was existentially threatened. In the meantime it has the iron dome, lots of bombs, enough airplanes, and so on. If Hamas has Qatar and Iran, Israel has the US and other western powers.

If Israel has overwhelming air power, Gaza's environment presents major difficulties for Israel. Urban warfare is a very difficult bloody business, especially with a 'dug in' adversary. The urban environment goes a long ways to reducing the asymmetry in terms of on-the-ground operations. My understanding of Hamas's tunnel system is that it would be difficult to destroy it by bombing alone.

Asymmetry would be further reduced if Hezbollah were to open a full attack on Israel.

3 recent victors in asymmetrical war: The Taliban managed to survive and win against the United States and Nato. The Islamic State was defeated with great difficulty. The Viet Cong won against overwhelming odds.

The stronger power in asymmetrical war is compelled to use brutal force because it has little alternative. Israel can neither lose nor leave Palestine,

by targeting only Hamas, and not respond to the massacre of its innocent civilians by mimicking such atrocity — universeness

This is the problem of asymmetric warfare: a surprise attack by a small force can wreak great damage. The more powerful side will counterattack with either technology (planes and bombs) or ground forces. Precisely identifying the agency behind the attack is extremely difficult, so... the innocent are slaughtered.

Russia vs. Ukraine is a more symmetrical style of war, as were WWI and WWII, and many other wars before those two. Asymmetric warfare isn't new, but given the mechanized, technologically enhanced armies of the "have" powers, it's the best option for "have nots".

There is no moral solution to the problem "in the world as it is" -- a world packed with injustices and grievances. Long standing (and grave) injustices would have to be unwound, which is a utopian goal. Nice, but highly unlikely.

What was it do you think that made Viking and Mongol warriors okay with being "horror-ible"? Was it that the horror inflicted terror — schopenhauer1

Thankfully we have all been spared the fury of the Norsemen and the scourge of the Mongols. Their various successors have proved worthy successors in the arts of horror and terror. Terror is an effective offensive approach. If it's bad enough, it paralyzes the victim with horror and fear, ties them up in knots,

Hamas' attack on Israel was clearly intended to be "terrible" -- not just for the immediate recipients, but for the entire nation. It was also well timed and well executed, apart from the terror they created. Hamas - 1, Israel - 0. Israel's response, the bombing and siege of Gaza, couldn't be a surprise, but it could be (and has been) very very bad for the civilian Palestinians. How bad has it been for Hamas fighters and militants? We don't know, yet, and we won't know -- until (IF and WHEN) the Hamas defenses have been invaded and cleared out.

Russia's attack on Ukraine, and seizure of its eastern lands and Crimea has not been a terror and horror operation--not that it has been a picnic, of course. As brazen as the Russian seizures have been, as costly in lives and infrastructure as the war has been for Ukraine, a relatively low level of terror and horror seem to have prevailed. There was no blitzkrieg; no gas, biological, or atomic weapons; no massive bombing; no massive invasion. Rather, a steady grinding up of Ukraine's resources. For Ukraine, it's been slow destruction. Why?

The Norsemen, Mongols, Hamas, and Israel are doing what they COULD do. So is Russia. Vlad P. might want to have done things differently, but he couldn't manage a lightning strike, a blitzkrieg, lots of shock and awe.

The victim of a big surprise attack (horror, terror) is always at a disadvantage. After 9/11, the US could not duplicate the horror, terror, and surprise of planes crashing into the WTC and Pentagon. A few people can pull off a surprise. After the surprise is over, the perps are all dead. Who is the victimized country going to kill? In our case, Iraqis and Afghanistanis. Did it produce satisfaction in America? No. We didn't seem able to duplicate the horror, terror, and surprise we experienced.

I suspect that Israel is not going to get satisfaction from pounding the shit out of Gaza, even if there is nobody left there.

Terror and horror can be distinguished as unrelated experiences, but I don't have a problem with people using them interchangeably when they report their experiences.

Terror is, in a sense, a "transitive" noun. Terror is something that can be imposed on someone else, or on many people. Israel and Hamas have imposed terror on each other. War, by its nature is terrifying. A city can not be bombed without producing terror, as the bombs crash into buildings, explode, collapse buildings, burn flesh, ignite fires, etc. People really DO hate it when that happens, and they find it terror-ible.

Horror is a more subjective experience. I find some circus rides horrifying, despite them being safe devices which many people find quite entertaining. I find spiders and their webs horrifying, especially when encountered in dim enclosed spaces. Many people are indifferent to spiders. I don't find bats disturbing (I'm talking about ordinary brown bats that eat insects).

One can learn and unlearn horror. I find spiders less horrifying than I used to, and this is owning to a deliberate effort on my part. I find heights horrifying. There is a glass observation deck built on the wall of the Grand Canyon that allows one to look straight down for about 3/4 of a mile. I could learn to not find this glass deck horrifying. Horror films key right into my horror potentials. This too could be unlearned (but then I wouldn't have the experience of horror in a theater).

Terror, on the other hand, is too overwhelming a condition to be unlearned. One can become desensitized to terror, but this is not a desirable goal.

Terror and horror can be similarly bad experiences, except that horror does not normally involve actual physical threat. Terror IS threat, both physical and psychological.

So again, if somebody reports they were terrified and horrified in a bombing attack -- I have no objection. The rest of us who are not getting bombed and shot at can afford to be fussier,

I agree 100%. Off with her head!

When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.' 'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.

Does anyone know of any example of human style 'vengeance,' being sought by any other species on Earth, other than humans? — universeness

A friend's cat which I had teased and annoyed a lot wreaked vengeance on my person whenever I visited. Quite justifiably.

Crows apparently sort out humans into "friendly" and "not-friendly" categories and take such vengeance as they can on not-friendly people.

Inanimate objects can be quite malicious and will take vengeance on the animal kingdom, especially our species, but others as well.

More seriously, though, what facilitates human vengeance are extensive cognitive resources to carry out the impulses of the emotions. Most animals lack the capacity. Animals are equipped for self-defense, territorial defense, off-spring defense, food defense, and so on. But when the defense is over, it's over. With humans, one never knows whether it's over or not. Years can pass before vengeance is taken.

Maybe NYC was the promised land all along?

Middle Eastern countries have been driving out Christians as well.

These ancient Christian ethnic groups were drastically reduced by genocide during and after World War I (see Armenian genocide, Assyrian genocide and Greek genocide) at the hands of the Ottoman Turkish army and their Kurdish allies. Population exchange between Greece and Turkey is another reason

.

The percentage of Christians in Turkey fell from 19 percent in 1914 or 3 million (thought to be an undercount by one-third omitting 600,000 Armenians, 500,000 Greeks and 400,000 Assyrians) to 2.5 percent in 1927 in a population of 14 million

We should have gone somewhere like Newfoundland". — EricH

Sure, but then they would have had to put up with bitter and resentful Canadians. Besides, God had already given Newfoundland and Labrador to four Indigenous Peoples: the Inuit, the Innu, the Mi'kmaq and the Southern Inuit of NunatuKavu).

It's helpful to remember that every place on earth worth having has been colonized and recolonized several times over (well, maybe not Tierra del Fuego).

But there are Christian groups who also think the end of the world has something to do with Israel. I don't know the details. — frank

Just don't get Gotterdamerung, Armageddon, and ragnarökkr mixed up. Armageddon is the final battle between good and evil before the Day of Judgment. The biblical hill of Megiddo on the plain of Esdraelon, south of present-day Haifa in Israel, has been reserved for the big event (no date yet). Not sure what will happen to the real estate market afterwards.



I got the picture from an article on Armageddon in Business Insider. Who knew that the end of the world is within the purview of the corporate news magazine.

You can read all about it in the Book of Revelation, at the end of the New Testament. Is the book inspired scripture or coded rant? It has some really great lines in it, but I think it more coded rant than inspired word of god. Just my opinion but memo to Pope Francis: Get rid of it,

The question is about whether the American attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was moral. — frank

Frank, I'm just not sure how much can be accomplished by a discussion of the morality of war in general, particular battles, specific weapons, and various policies. You've heard of "the fog of war" -- how facts and rumors mingle, how chaos prevents a clear view of what is happening, how propaganda becomes indistinguishable from reliable reports, and so on.

"The Japanese half of the Axis was better than the German half" someone may have said earlier. Well, maybe or maybe not, Japan's army still occupied vast stretches of territory at the end of the war. We were on their doorstep, but It wasn't as if they had been driven back to the home islands. Truman was a murderer, banno says. Atrocious things were done to innocent people on all sides under the leadership of all sorts of ranking politicians and generals.

No doubt it is an easier task to decide who and what were moral almost 80 years ago. I don't believe 'moral' and 'immoral' were so clear in the middle of the war.

Christ, we have barely begun a new war and there is already a wide divergence about the morality of Hamas's and Israel's actions. The fog of war is gathering amidst a great deal of pontificating and Monday morning quarterbacking. Hiram Johnson, a Republican Senator from California, said that truth is the first casualty of war; he was talking about WWI. Truth is still shot down as soon as it enters the crosshairs.

Do I know what the truth is here, what is moral and what is not? No more than anyone else, which is why I am doubtful about what we can accomplish here. That doesn't mean I don't have preferences; I'd rather live in Israel than in Iran or Saudi Arabia. I prefer that people not commit murder, wholesale slaughter, wanton destruction, and bring about general ruination. But... sooner or later, people do those things and think themselves quite moral.

the honorable thing to do would be to fight street by street without heavy weapons and avoid deaths and injuries. — FreeEmotion

I have neither served in a military nor been trained in military strategy and tactics, but it's clearly absurd to think that one can carry out urban warfare, fighting street by street, and avoid deaths and injuries. Hamas has dug in (fairly literally -- lots of tunnels). Even IF every civilian had decamped to Egypt, the fight to eliminate Hamas would be bloody for both sides.

I believe the human intellect is great enough to devise a plan, not only to circumvent high tech border devices, but to come up with a peace plan that all agree on. — FreeEmotion

It isn't that human intelligence is insufficient to come up with an agreeable peace plan. The problem (in many cases) is that people have interests which may be contrary to other people's interests, and those differences prevent agreement on peace plans. The state of Israel is a successful state. It's not going anywhere. Most likely the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are not going anywhere either. They can not both have exactly what they want.

In one way the answer has to be "Of course they contradict each other!" Received religions posit a creating God who is the first mover, the first cause. All things were made. Science posits a material universe whose material processes, over very long periods of time, formed everything that is."

In another way, the difference between religion and science is that a creator God employs material processes to create everything that is. Fiat Lux = the Big Bang. "DNA is the language of God" somebody said.

A believer, like all other people, can hold two contradictory ideas together in the same place. "God created the universe" on the one hand, and "Life is the result of the way chemicals and physics interact." So one can sing the beloved hymn that starts out...

Of the Father’s love begotten,
ere the worlds began to be,
He is Alpha and Omega,
He the Source, the Ending He,
of the things that are, that have been,
and that future years shall see
evermore and evermore!

but continue to believe that we live in a chilly deterministic universe governed by physical laws.

Some people will have no truck with religion and there is no reconciliation possible. Other people will have no truck with science, and there is no reconciliation possible with them either.

Of the two poles of opinion, the exclusively religious view which rejects science is clearly the most dangerous. When one throws out the bath water of science, one also throws out the baby of logic. The world ceases to be a place to which analytical thinking can be applied. Throwing out the bath water of science also shreds one's ability to think clearly about politics and society. Religion without grounding in the secular world (despite enjoining us to "judge not lest you be judged") tends to be pretty judgmental and is usually guided by a collection of reactionary ideas.

An element of the Hamas attack that supports the idea that it was home-grown in Gaza (and not cooked up in Tehran) is the use of motorized hang-gliders. This is the sort of ingenious idea that comes out of severely straitened means. A military with ready access to conventional weapons and vehicles just wouldn't consider using something as weird--as untried--as unheard of--as an armed man on a paraglider powered by a small engine and a large fan.

Granted, that wasn't the sum total of the means of attack. Most of the Hamas soldiers / gunmen arrived on foot. Out of fashion but still effective.

So now it's just a giant mess. — frank

Sort of like life itself!

You say that

Jewish guys beat up Palestinian guys and leave them for dead. None of that ever gets into the headlines and it's been like that for decades. — frank

I wonder if things would be better if the good Jewish people would take over the government. — frank

Who are the good Jewish people you would like to see running the country? That's not a rhetorical question -- really, who/how? I've no doubt that there are Israelis who could do a better job than Netanyahu, but I suppose the dominant coalition in power keeps that from happening.

One can be pro-Israel and still admit a difficult, maybe insoluble problem: the Zionist movement and the creation of Israel as a state displaced the people who had been living under the Ottomans for several hundred years, and under the British a while before 1948. Palestine has changed hands every few centuries over the last 2500 years, so the current transaction fits the long term pattern -- a pattern in which absolutely no one is going to find any comfort.

I anticipate that Israel will continue to prosper and will have powerful allies, but I'm not sure the Two-State solution will every come to pass, or if it does, that it will solve many problems.

Surely the months of social turmoil over Netanyahu's judicial deforms served as distraction and cognitive interference for pretty much everyone in Israel - civilian, military, and intelligence. Today's attack on Israel likely has been in preparation for much longer than the Judicial scheme has been stirring things up, but Jewish social unrest in Israel was certainly a help to Hamas.

But as long as the US keeps pouring in the foreign aid, why would they care about costs? — Manuel

Isn't that sort of the same relationship as Hamas has with Iran (probably involving less cash, however)?

Israel is just on another level, though I've read that, when it comes to the Iron Dome, most of it is PR. — Manuel

I don't have any information about how much is real and how much is PR, but apparently Iron Dome missiles (several models) cost between $20,000 and $100,000. Even averaged out, each rocket in the defense system -- effective or not -- costs a chunk of change.

Just how low-tech is the Qassam rocket?

The utility of the Qassam rocket design is assumed to be ease and speed of manufacture, using common tools and components. To this end, the rockets are propelled by a solid mixture of sugar and potassium nitrate, a common fertilizer. The warhead is filled with smuggled or scavenged TNT and urea nitrate, another common fertilizer. The warhead's explosive material is similar to the civilian explosive ammonite.

The rocket consists of a steel cylinder, containing a rectangular block of the propellant. A steel plate which forms and supports the nozzles is then spot-welded to the base of the cylinder. The warhead consists of a simple metal shell surrounding the explosives, and is triggered by a fuse constructed using a simple firearm cartridge, spring and a nail.[15]

The cost of the materials used for manufacturing each Qassam is up to $800 or €500 (in 2008–2009) per rocket.

The Qassam can be improved, but improvements require more engineering knowledge and complicated tools, like lathes instead of welding equipment.

There are 45,000 acres of land under cultivation in the Gaza Strip growing fruits and vegetables. I don't know how much fertilizer is smuggled in for growing food and how much is used for bomb making. Sugar too would have to be imported. Then there is the scavenged or smuggled TNT. Sheet steel is used for the body of the rocket. Nozzles are welded onto drilled holes in the bottom plate. The nozzles improve performance, but are not canted to cause the rocket to spin -- which would improve accuracy, but requires much more skill in manufacturing.

Should you know of some some group interested in launching a hostile takeover -- say an artists colony wants the land of a nearby feminist commune -- this should give you some idea where to start.

Thanks for the links. Very helpful.

Does anyone have any information on how much Hamas's unguided missiles cost to make, load, and fuel? (they are unguided, right?) How much do they weigh? How much explosive payload do they carry? About what percent of the rocket launches actually hit buildings and cause extensive damage? Granted, their rockets don't have to hit anything critical -- a rocket blowing up nearby dirt would be -- just guessing -- nerve racking enough.

The distance between a point in Gaza to a point in Jerusalem is 50 miles / 80 km. It's 44 / 70 km between Gaza and Tel Aviv. So, a pretty good range for a sort of home-made rockets. Gaza factories probably have to operate for a couple of years, or so, to produce enough rockets to make an "adequate showing".

But then they have more than one model -- some are better than others.

Presumably Iran is the source of the cash / material that goes into the rockets, and I assume the stuff is smuggled in through Egypt above or below ground -- no big ships in Gaza's ports with missiles stacked up on the decks.

I haven't heard (as of 1:00 p.m. Central time) how well the Iron Dome defense system performed. The rockets in that system are said to cost between $20,000 and $100,000.

I do not have an answer. — EricH

I don't either. But...

I don't look at European arrival in the western hemisphere as "an occupation", which sounds too much like a military program to me, as when Germany Occupied France and several other countries.

It just isn't a human trait (or custom) to discover a new continent richly supplied with all sorts of good things and just leave it alone because somebody else got there first, especially a somebody else that didn't seem to be exploiting it sufficiently. King Leopold was very happy to get his hands on the Congo because the natives had little interest in latex, and he knew there was a growing market for it among other good things. Japan was perfectly aware that China had been next door for thousands of years, but at the time they needed a lot of what China had, and they took it.

All that displays extraordinarily bad manners, but that's the way people are -- sometimes. We behave fairly well when we're reasonably happy and not too resentful about other people. That can change fairly quickly.

The rest of the world didn't let Germany and Japan get away with it. They were bombed into submission. The armies of the just (AKA the Allies) had long since claimed a lot of other people's territories and there wasn't anybody around strong enough to take it away from them or make them give it back, Lucky us! However, the Axis powers came fairly close.

Is there any legal / moral framework that can be used to resolve these issues in an impartial manner? Or put differently - what are the rules for determining the rightful owner of said property?

Having an enforcement mechanism is a related but separate issue. — EricH

There are LEGAL frameworks that establish a basis of ownership. Wherever colonists landed in North America (and everywhere else), they transferred the European system of land ownership. When Israel seizes Palestinian land, they lay LEGAL claim to the property, usurping the Palestinian LEGAL claim.

If colonialized natives had a system of property ownership, it was set aside (ignored). If they didn't have a system of property ownership (the case in North America) then the land was freely available in the European legal system.

A legal system means little if there are no courts and proceedings whose jurisdiction all parties accept. Under normal circumstances, the colonializer will provide the courts which will be heavily biased in their favor.

A MORAL framework might stay the hands of colonizers, but that's unlikely if the land in question is very valuable to the colonial power, and if the colonialized people are unable to enforce their moral framework.

The upshot is that forced acquisition of land ownership have been the routine and customary method of expansion for millennia. You know, your explorers find some nice land and they claim it on behalf of the sponsoring king. Later colonists will be sent in to exploit the value of the property, If the natives become restless under the new management, then heavies will be sent in to show the locals how the new system works: We are here and it all belongs to us now. If you object too much we will shoot you. Get used to it. Who you gonna call?

In our current enlightened era (the last few years) a few beneficiaries of the European colonization of the Americas have felt guilty enough to rename a few lakes using the native words. Extremely guilt-plagued individuals have donated a little land to a tribe, or given them some cash. These are nice but feckless gestures. Feckless, because the natives are not going to get back more than a symbolic portion of the land back that they once lived on (without title).

A morally sound solution would involve a substantial redistribution of land and wealth, but even if that happened, what natives lost is too profound to be 'fixed'.

Force is the essential ingredient when it comes to shifting ownership of national lands. Hitler took a lot of various national lands, and by force the national lands were taken back -- at great human cost, both ways. Britain claimed a huge amount of land occupied by others, as did several other nations. They didn't abandon those holdings for moral reasons. Force was applied, to the British and other colonizing nations.

President Ronald Reagan 1980-1988 had a hand in the USSR's failure some commentators say. He didn't introduce military competition between the US and the USSR, but he did spend very heavily on stuff like the Star Wars Initiative (The plan to send Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader in to destroy the Kremlin) and other military projects, which compelled the USSR to spend more than they could afford to spend. The 'guns' in the budget reduced the amount of 'butter' for the Soviet people. Of course we were spending far too much (in my opinion) and couldn't afford it either, but they didn't ask me.

There was a program on PBS in the early 90s on how Russians felt about the demise of the soviet state. The post-soviet quality of life took a dive for many Russians, which probably colored their reactions, but many cited good things that the soviet system delivered. One of the things that was discussed was that there was an accessible bureaucracy to handle the complaints the people had about housing, streets, transit, markets, and so forth. It was accessible and reasonably responsive,

Joseph Stalin, may his soul rot in hell, was malevolent despot a good share of the time. He imposed famine on Ukraine in order to crush resistance to collectivization. He ignored all sorts of intelligence about Germany's planned invasion, and almost lost the country to Hitler. He had wiped out the military leadership, which had to be rebuilt to mount an effective defense. We can thank the soviet system rather than Stalin for the victory.

Another socialist enterprise worth discussion is Yugoslavia under Tito. One of Tito's achievements was to keep a lid on the various bubbling ethnic resentments which boiled over after Tito's demise. Tito's regime may have been the most effective of Eurasian communist states. North Vietnam might also be mentioned -- they beat us at our game, after all, no small achievement. North Vietnam may not have been a paradise, but it beat North Korea all hollow.

'State capitalism', where the state is the largest (or only) company of which everyone is an employee describes both the USSR and China (plus NK and Cuba). There is nothing about that arrangement which is particularly socialist or communist (per Marx). As such, were (are) they successful? The USSR is kaput, but China is successful. The USSR was able to marshal its resources to turn back and defeat the Nazi invaders, no small accomplishment.

In addition to despotism (thinking of Stalin) the major problem in the USSR and China were episodes of very bad management. Bad management happens under every kind of economic / social / political system, and it is a major contributor to bad outcomes. The great weakness of state capitalism is the potential for bad policy without effective resistance.

Capitalism is no less plagued by bad management, but has a better chance of effectively dealing with failing companies. That said, comparing allegedly communist countries with capitalist examples like the USA reveals plenty of failures here, too. Lots of wealth by abysmal distribution. On the other hand, there's nothing utopian about capitalism. It's designed around accumulation of wealth.

Lots of good points here.

There is no such thing as pure capitalism, pure socialism, pure communism, or pure democracy. Social and political organization is generally a mix of various systems. The Scandinavian countries have elements of capitalism and socialism in a democratic political system. That might be as close as we get to socialism. Even the uber-captialist country, the U.S., has a large social welfare system, so we're not pure evil. (Jamison and Zizek said it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.)

I don't count the USSR or PRC as communist or socialist, despite their names. Cuba gave it a go but did so in a particularly disadvantageous environment (enforced by the US). Venezuela?

Is it worth succeeding at "socialism" or "communism" if the people are impoverished? Is capitalism a success if the people are impoverished? (Sure, because capitalists don't care if you are starving,)