It's not possible to defend yourself while taking over a territory which is not yours. That's not a definition of defense.

If some people come in and take your house including the living room, 2 bedrooms while you stay in the bathroom and they take your towels, the faucet and even the tiles, all while killing family members while they're doing this and you fight back, the other side is not "defending" itself by killing more family members.

That's aggression. Not defense.

It appears that war may be coming quite soon:

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/gaza-israel-diverts-flights-rocket-barrage-palestinians-death-67-1.9796891

It's because the US has by far the strongest military in the world. And is still the largest economy too. So they can get away with a lot.

NATO is basically the US and some European countries simply pay a fee, so they don't have to worry about military costs much. It was planned this way after WWII.

Sure. The list of US terrorist allies is long. It's well documented by William Blum in his book Killing Hope.

But again, normal imperial behavior. Other states in the US's positions would likely do the same. But it is very ugly. Israel is a part of that system.

Look at Bryan Magee's interviews on YouTube.

Then buy his books. You'll get it. :up:

Chomsky at 92, knows Israeli history and politics inside out, here are his views on the topic:

https://truthout.org/articles/chomsky-without-us-aid-israel-wouldnt-be-killing-palestinians-en-masse/?utm_campaign=Truthout%20Share%20Buttons&fbclid=IwAR3VcAljPM-Mccv4PiCYOLuw-JgpZfd1tolITiKrCR5vfgfHpi6SRoj4R08

Also Israel is destroying high rise buildings in Gaza:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/13/israel-bombs-high-rise-buildings-as-gaza-marks-deadly-eid-live

Yes, I agree. They started imperial conquest several decades after the great European Imperial Powers. Had this been done, say, in the 1800's or so, there would likely by now be little dispute. Perhaps plenty of racism, xenophobia and the like, but there would not be anywhere nearly as hated as they are now, simply because so much time has passed.

It's just that now the whole world can see just how ugly imperialism is. The PR they use is frankly disgusting and is no longer working, save for fierce Israeli tribalists. What makes this stand out is that, contrary to popular opinion, Israel is not at the center of the problem, it's the US. Without massive US aid and diplomatic support, Israel could not be doing what it is. They would not have the resources to steal so much land and kill so many civilians.

Like you say, Israel is not a special imperial power in this respect. But it's 2021. This should no longer be acceptable in any form.

It was just reported that 67 people died in Gaza, including 17 minors. This is unacceptable.

:100:

Yeah. He failed, damn media. :joke: Then we've had repeated massacres in Gaza: 2008, 2012, 2014 and now probably this one. Maybe the ugliest one yet, what with all the world having problems to deal with by way of pandemic and financial troubles.

It's just a massacre. In the Israeli military, they refer to "mowing the lawn" in Gaza. Every few years we gotta teach them whose boss and put them in place. Which just increases the odds of it happening again.

The links in the OP are quite reliable on the whole. Just click on the headline in Haaretz and you'll get hourly updates. Bad day today.

You don't even need to do this much. There is no mind body problem since Newton demolished the mechanical philosophy. Back then we did have an intelligible notion of "body". Now we don't.

With no intelligible notion of body, how can the problem arise? If it need arise, it needs to reformulated from a metaphysical question into an epistemic one.

What's the problem? Well, I have experience, this thing which is my subjectivity and window into the world. But then I see these objects around me, rocks, rivers, tables, etc. These objects don't seem to have experience. They show no hint of evidence suggesting they have experience. Someone might reply that this doesn't mean they don't have experience. True.

But all things being equal, I think a better case can be made that these objects have no experience than they do have it.

So we have experience and non-experience. The terms now become experiential and non experiential. The world is one: "body", "mind", "neutral", "natural", etc. and we study it's different properties.

But the problem of mind over and above body or body as opposed to mind, can not be formulated and should not be thought of, in these terms, I think.

Sure, music is better when stoned. Almost everything is. And yes, Baba O'Reilly is great.

Cool. Just testing you out in exchange. It's weird when you first don't "click" with a sound genre, but eventually, somehow, you do. Dunno why.

Hmmm. Interesting. The song is strange to me, but it has a certain feeling which is familiar...

How about this:

The End of it All - John Tejada

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0J72ImA38nE

:lol:

Damn man, I think statements such as those should be put in a novel, it's terrific. To be clear I'm laughing at what you are saying, not at you, I like the attitude.

I haven't heard nor know anything about New Order, but I'll be sure to check them out. I personally like a healthy range of musical genre's. Certain parts of rap, reggaetón and a good portion of modern pop music aren't to my tastes. But different strokes...

Criticizing art is problematic. You can certainly get highfalutin people thinking that anything after Mozart is crap. And sure, Mozart is very likely much more sophisticated than what I like, but a lot of it puts me to sleep. But then there's certain music that to me is like nails on a chalkboard.

Here's another, maybe you've heard of them:

Waterfall by Stones Roses:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuGuPZnqqlI

And straight up racist too.

It's instructive to see how "Israeli" and "Jewish" are used interchangeably here. But all Palestinians are just Arabs, who cares where they live? It's the same thing. All Arabs have states, what they want another one? :roll:

We haven't improved much on racism. Somewhat sure, but damn, we've got ways to go...

Chomsky's the world — StreetlightX

:100:

All nation states, to the extent they have power, use force. Israel is no exception. It's just that they got into colonialism a few years later than others.

And now everybody can see how brutal it is. What boggles the mind is the excuses they come up with! "Human shields", "They don't want peace", "Move to Jordan", etc. etc.

Sure. Perhaps someone reading these posts might get it, so it's always worth a shot.

Anyway, carrying on:

Satisfy My Soul - Bob Marley

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8GCc8OhTz8

Truth is no-one cared for the Jews out of the nation states. Even in full knowledge of the Holocaust, it wasn't a moral issue till like the 60's or 70's in terms of anyone caring much outside Jews.

It's tragic. Though it doesn't justify what they did in Palestine, but I understand it.

But by now, after much reparations from Germany, they have an advanced industrial country and a massive military. They could just stop stealing more land and killing people indiscriminately. Jeez.

Is the English that are known for understatement? Are you English? That's got to rank right up there at the tippy top old chap! — James Riley

Na. I'm Dominican/American/Spanish, but I love British humor. ;)

Sure. This issue does raise passions a bit, with good reason there's plenty of stuff in it.

So should I be concerned more with the victims of the fighting or with the reasons for the fighting? — Michael

There's no single rule.

Number of casualties and who is murdered probably are (probably) the priority.

The history is long, complex, ugly. But there's substantial scholarly evidence that time and time again it's been Israel who has rejected peace in favor of expansion. It happened in 67 when besides Gaza and the West Bank, they took the Golan Heights from Syria and the Sinai from Egypt.

Egypt offered a full peace treaty, not even recognizing Gaza and the West Bank in 1970. Israel considered the option, but rejected it in favor of incorporating the Sinai to Israel. They were building a city their, Yamit.

After the 73' war, they had to withdraw from the Sinai AND recognize Palestinian grievances this time around, which was worse from the Israeli perspective.

But they've continued building in the occupied territories. It does this because it has the power to do so. Israeli is acting like any other imperial state.

But this is what there is.

First of all stop stealing more land.

Then go back to resolution 242, create two states.

Then we can proceed.

And Jews can go to New York.

This is nuts.

It's a good PR tactic.

Does that justify killing civilians? — Michael

No.

But under occupation they can acquiesce or resist. Resistance need not imply violence at all.

They're under a blockade in Gaza in which the Israeli authorities count the calories each citizen eats. That's monstrous no matter what:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/15/1-million-face-hunger-in-gaza-after-us-cut-to-palestine-aid

They are continuing to build in territory which does not belong to them. They're stealing another people's home and you except these people to say "thank you"?

180 is correct. They're not in a position to choose peace while occupied. They only have resistance or they acquiesce.

That's an incredible statement.

That's like saying why do Jews need Israel if they already have New York.

People who defend Israeli actions now are not too different from those that defended Apartheid South Africa when it terrorized the population by claiming that they are "defending themselves".

Of course they are. What are they going to say? We're killing children?

And to those that think that the Arabs have not sought peace, just look at the "Palestine Papers" from just a few years ago. The PLO was willing to give up all of East Jerusalem just to be left alone. But this goes way back. It's been Israel, not the Arab states, that have repeatedly rejected peace in favor of power.

But Israeli loyalists will say that they are in an "existential threat" situation. They say this as they are actively destroying a nation. And see no irony in this.

But don't forget Israel created Hamas in order to divide the PLO, it just so happened that Hamas gained power in Gaza and manage to fight back to a limited extent...

Powerful images:

https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2021/5/12/in-pictures-9

Yes, no kidding. What "missiles" are those that you can throw 200 of them and kill 2 people?

And to be crystal clear: I do not wish to see any more deaths on any side. This is a tragedy, but those with least capacity to fight back are getting totally slaughtered.

Those "anti-missile" technologies are just for PR purposes, they barely work. Using state of the art technology against civilians is contemptible.

and Saudi Arabia still gets all the hardware they want, which recently has been a shit ton — Count Timothy von Icarus

Which contributes to the Yemen catastrophe.

Now we have this massacre. During a pandemic no less.

And then we still have people (a bit less so than before thankfully) asking "why are the Muslims so radical?"

Hah. As if many of us wouldn't be in Hamas or the Brotherhood or whoever is around to fight back to some degree, which compared to Israel or Saudi Arabia is like throwing a rock to a tank.

However why the US has quite a different approach to the conflict as in other cases was what I had in mind. This is very important in this case. We see that the whole peace process itself was started by Israel anticipating that once the Cold War was over, the US policy might change (as happened with South Africa). But that didn't happen, which is crucial here. — ssu

Sure. As far as I know, what brought the US in such close alliance was the 67' war, in which Israel defeated Nasser and with him secular Arab Nationalism. The US suddenly had an ally it could depend on in the Middle East. They also had Iran as an ally back then. Now they have less military allies, Saudi Arabia and Israel essentially, which is quite crazy if you think about it. Also Egypt, but they're not doing good.

Yes, the end of the Cold War did not bring forth a positive solution which could have been reached when the USSR collapsed. Now, very few (if any) powerful states support the Palestinians. Turkey a few years ago was agitating. Now I don't know. Maybe Russia could do something, but I don't know how it benefits them, which we sadly have to consider.

China is another potential player, but I don't see them getting too involved.

So the US is the main player here and Europe does almost nothing...

We could go back to The British Mandate of Palestine. We could then go to WWII and mention that a large portion of the Jewish elites did not care much about the Holocaust, as such an event provided an opportunity to demand a state.

We could also talk about how the original UN proposal would've divided the land of Israel something like 55%-45% in favor of the incoming European refugees. And it would've actually been less bad to the Palestinians to accept that UN resolution, because what they ended up getting was way worse for them.

Of course, I completely see why they would reject such an offer, it basically gave off land to settlers. But now they have almost nothing.

We could also talk about how Israel obtained the Gaza and the West Bank in the 67' war. All of this is legitimate and interesting and useful.

But for the narrow purposes of this "war" or massacre, I think talking about Jews and Arabs and religion complicates the scenario with not crucial info for the moment. What matters, I think, is that children and civilians are being killed indiscriminately. This shouldn't be accepted regardless of the history.

That's why I'm not talking much about the whole history of Israel. Which is very interesting.

Which is tragic. But even worse are the number of elder Palestinians and children being killed. So again, I don't see the point of talking about Jews here.

It takes away from the main problem now:

An occupying force is killing civilians in lands it is stealing. That's the point.

Hamas launches rockets from civilian areas. — BitconnectCarlos

You're just a propagandist.

:up:

Excellent. It's been long overdue, over 50 years of occupation and murder and massacre and theft. Really ugly stuff. The Israeli left is very small now, it needs to pick up members again to shift internal politics inside the country.

Yes, many Israeli's are honest about what they do, even if it's quite ugly. But as your post shows, it's now almost impossible to defend these acts. You just can't compare the land of Gaza which is now a garbage heap with one of the most advanced militaries in the world.

It's tragic that so many people have to get killed in such a senseless, brutal manner. But it's changing eyes and minds...

Didn't say the word "Jewish" once, if you actually saw my post. There are Israeli's which aren't Jewish and the religion here is irrelevant to the crimes.

B'Tselem is excellent and is run by mostly Jews, I don't know why you raised that point. Unless you are purposefully mixing in the Israeli state as representing all Jews and then calling criticism of the state "anti-Jewish" hatred, which is getting very old by now.

It's more accurate to call it "aggression". If you think it's acceptable to kill people who's lands you are stealing, that's your problem.

Well Žižek is entertaining and sometimes says interesting things and he's a Lacanian. But learning about Lacan for me didn't help me with Žižek. I don't think it was a waste of time necessarily, one finds out what roads not to follow.

Agreed with what you say about not being able to read everything, it would be a total mess in terms of not being able to establish your own thinking because too many ideas are clashing in your head.

I had no clue. :sweat:

I don't get it. What about these bands?

Yes, I think so too. Plus the way Postmodernism uses science is embarrassing, just look at Sokal and Bricmont's Fashionable Nonsense and The Sokal Hoax and you'll see what actual scientists have to say about what many of these figures said. It's not even wrong as the phrase goes.

Psychoanalysis has many branches, some of which seem to depart quite a bit from Freud. You'll gain much more by reading any of these than reading Lacan, honestly. I studied him for almost two years and I would be embarrassed to present Lacan's "thoughts", as they are so arbitrary and treated like gospel.

Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and these types actually have interesting things to say. But there's only so much time and many people to read, so you'll have to decide what type of thought you are most attracted to eventually, I think. But it's always good to read different views irrespective of what you may be sympathetic with.

That's very interesting, Manuel. Can you tease this out? What appealed then and what do you think happened to that connection? — Tom Storm

It's a long story, so I'll have to compress what I say. I stumbled on Heidegger via Hubert Dreyfus' interpretation. I thought he was doing something original, kind of offering an in depth analysis of manifest reality in a manner than was thoroughly philosophical, without basing his thought on modern science. I liked the idea of collapsing the man-and-world distinction, or at least, closing the gap in many respects.

He has an amazing gift of presenting very ordinary situations in a very thoughtful manner. Heck what could be simpler than someone using a hammer? But he made it stand out.

Over time and trying to explain his thought plainly, I discovered that I was mostly saying obvious things in different ways. And I could not see a way how to add to his project without continuing in a path that leads to what I think is a wrong way to think about how people relate to the world. I find his emphasis to exaggerate those moments of "flow" or not thinking about what we do things when we do them.

I still think his was a good way to try a new kind of philosophy and some of what he says still sounds impactful, but I think a more rationalist take on such a philosophy would be more fruitful for what I'm interested in.



You did well. Saved yourself from a lot of nonsense. Not all, to be fair, but much of it is just bad.

Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXdNnw99-Ic&t=108s

So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from hell?
Blue skies from pain?
Can you tell a green field
From a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?

Did they get you to trade
Your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
Did you exchange
A walk-on part in the war
For a leading role in a cage?

How I wish, how I wish you were here
We're just two lost souls
Swimming in a fish bowl
Year after year
Running over the same old ground
What have we found?
The same old fears
Wish you were here

This song - like most of Pink Floyd's songs, has a fascinating if tragic background. It may seem on first glance that this song is generally about wishing someone we love was here, meaning usually that this person is dead and one is mourning a loss.

And while that is a perfectly fine interpretation, this song is literally about Syd Barrett, the man responsible for forming Pink Floyd and launching them to some degree of fame in England. Barrett was by all means a promising genius, but he had a delicate psyche. While living the dream of "sex, drugs and rock", he accidently consumed too much LSD one time and from that point onward, ceased to become the Syd Barrett that the band members knew.

He attempted to continue writing music, but his mind was too far gone and thus Syd retired to tranquility. Literally, this song is about a person who is alive, but gone meaning they're no longer at all the person they once knew, so not "here". This can be seen in the lyrics, with the question it asks. I take it to mean something like Syd traded his sanity for comforting delusion.

By a strange cosmic coincidence, when Pink Floyd was recording this album, Syd went to visit the band members for the first time in years. They were recording this song when they saw a strange man they did not recognize, it took them several minutes to discover who he was. Once they found out who it was, they cried.

They showed him some of the songs on this album. It's not clear he could take in what they were dedicating to him. The rest, as they say, is history.

A beautiful song that should be interpreted however one feels like. :heart: