One of the things that the fans of the theory of Democratic Peace, the theory that democracies tend to be at peace with each other, tend to forget is that Gaza and Israel are both democracies.
If you are a Muslim, you demonstrate superior holiness by voting in favor of wars with infidels that may well result in your death, just as if you are white, you demonstrate superior holiness by voting for your country to become non white.
If Gaza was ruled by a King, then if that King was to decide for war, that decision would make him holier, but might well get him killed.
But if a voter in Gaza votes for war, his vote makes him holier, but makes absolutely no difference to his chance of being killed, since it is only one vote of millions. From the point of view of the voter, the ideal outcome is that he votes for war, but is, alas, outvoted, by all those inferior people less holy than himself, much as from the point of view of a white voter, the ideal outcome is that he votes for his country to become brown, but gets outvoted by all those ignorant racist hateful stupid whites.
Thus we get Californication, as Californian whites flee California to whiter and more conservative places, and then vote for those places to become progressive and nonwhite.
To stop a democratic Gaza from making war, need to kill a large proportion of the population. Very possibly all of them.
If you get competition for superior holiness, the holy people get ever holier until eventually the most holy position becomes suicidal. And in a democracy, the holiest position, despite being suicidal, will win the election.
[…] Holiness, Gaza, and suicide. Related: On the Israel conflict. Related: Did Jews start the riots in France? […]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIEeiDjdUuU&feature=youtu.be
Klavan’s One State Solution
Obviously impractical unless Israel stops being a democracy and stops giving women equal rights.
At the moment, your theories notwithstanding, the secular Jewish women in Israel have a fertility of 2.6 Their own mothers had a fertility of 2.1.
So much the worse for the truth if it contradicts our theories!
Jewish women in Israel are just as Jewish as Jewish women outside of Israel, but have reasonable fertility, while Jewish fertility outside of Israel is extremely low. One difference is nationalism, but their mothers were even more nationalist. Another difference is that progressivism is trying to kill them, which may make them somewhat more resistant to progressivism.
This is really very Hegelian dialectic. If you think like this, sooner or later it will drive you crazy. A better explanation is that Progressivism is just the latest update of Hellinism, and Torah Jews have been successfully dealing with Hellinism since the original firmware release. The secular Jewish women in Israel are not completely secular, and getting less so-just by being here, you are making a choice to keep a bunch of commandments by default, and it takes a big active effort to violate them. Since the commandments exist in the context of a Torah one of the explicit purposes of which is that we may live as a people, it is unsurprising that following them is leading to positive results.
Or, from a more religious perspective, we know that a Jew outside Israel is not a complete Jew, and that Israel is integral to observance of the Torah in a more complete way, so that being in Israel alone gives you better results, all else being equal.
Or, from a less religious perspective, almost every secular woman in Israel has religious relatives, and she can see them happy in their big families, which creates a reference point for her aspirations.
When I think about something from disparate perspectives and they all point me in the same direction, I tend to go in that direction.
Jewish birthrate in Israel is actually 3.04 http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/The-Human-Spirit-Israeli-Jewish-women-and-demography-360700 (and increasing – up from 2.98 in 2011 http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4332386,00.html – and it’s actually higher among Israeli-born Jews, as opposed to Jews who immigrated to Israel).
What may be a more important figure is the chart on p.7 here http://www.izs.org.il/papers/demographijuly13.pdf – it shows the share of births for each demographic sector out of 100% of the births. Since 2001, Jewish births are an increasingly larger percentage of all Israeli births. (red-Jews, green-Muslims, blue-Christians, orange-Druze, yellow-unaffiliated).
I don’t think the 3.04 figure is different than mine, I was quoting a figure for purely secular Jews and the 3.04 is going to average in Haredi.
However your first link above talks anecdotally about a surge in artificially inseminated births for single women and gay couples. This is interesting for two reasons if it could be further substantiated. First, this phenomenon contradicts Jim’s theory of fertility– this would be a rise in female fertility in spite of significantly less male control. Second, I presume these women are selecting a mate from a library indexed by IQ and other such desirable traits, which may be eugenic (or not, if they normally do a better selection job in person).
The Best thing that ever happened to the Palestine was the Roman Army in AD 70.
[…] This belongs here […]
The problem for the Jews now is getting over the creeping horror that they are no better than Nazis. If they kill enough (in reality all) the Palestinians they are damning themselves in the eyes of the West. Yet they live off the generosity of the West. Maintaining Israel is a lose-lose proposition for the Jews. Genocide the Palestinians or face an increasingly hostile and ever-multiplying minority.
Neither can live while the other survives.
Do not need to kill all the Arabs in Gaza.
Need to stop providing them with electricity and drinking water (for free.)
It is amazing how belligerent people can calm right down when they realize belligerence is unprofitable.
Successful efforts to quell Muslims have invariably used methods horrifying to moderns. No one has had success with mild mannered methods.
Let’s see the mild mannered methods attempted first.
This was tried when Heraclius told them “your inheritance is the desert, go home”. Surprisingly they didn’t accept this generous offer.
In Heraclius’ day, their population density was much lower and they were able to get by without desalinated water and electricity. If their population density dropped to those levels again, that would be a good start.
“Bread and Circuses” are a strategy to pacify potential rioters.
Tiananmen square is also a strategy to pacify potential rioters.
Pick one or both. Picking neither will create rioters.
Israel is picking a calculated version of bread and circuses. I don’t know if you noticed this, but riots often are driven by stuff like unemployment, a lack of food or water, poverty, and a lack of TV to watch.
In Gaza, which has a very high obesity rate, there are no riots. Hamas has been securely in power since they used the highest building in Gaza to chuck the local Fatah cadres off of.
There is a calculated, sustained policy of attacking Israel. The electricity Israel provides for free is used for welding equipment to make Kassam missiles, and to broadcast propaganda shows about Farfour the Hamas Mickey Mouse, “kill all the Jews,” etc.. The cement which Gaza is complaining about not getting enough of is being used to build reinforced tunnels 15 meters under the earth, ventilated with that free Israeli electricity, running into Israel, from which Hamas hit teams emerge attempting to capture hostages. The bread and circuses stuff doesn’t work; bribing aggressive barbarians makes them more aggressive.
These guys had the opportunity to make Gaza whatever they wanted. When Israel ethnically cleansed it of Jews, they left the Jews’ productive assets behind for the Arabs. They predicted that it would be like Singapore in no time. Since what the people of Gaza want is Hamas shooting rockets and kidnapping Jews, I would like the people of Gaza to be somewhere else. Maybe Egypt or Libya, which had sizeable Jewish populations until popular Arab rule broke out. A good way to make them see the wisdom of moving would be to turn off their water and electricity. Since the Israeli population is in the middle of a swing rightwards, I expect this to happen within the next decade, G-d willing.
Bad word choice. I meant “spontaneous violence” and “political radicalism”. Restless, unhappy people create nasty governments, and support terrorism.
The people building missiles could buy electricity. The average person may undergo financial stress when buying electricity, which is the reason Israel provides it.
You misunderstand the goal of bread and circuses. You want to make people satisfied, fat, lazy, zoned out, and preoccupied with various forms of entertainment. It’s not a bribe. It’s castration by sensation.
Though Israel would be well-served to take over Palestinian media. But I don’t think that would be permitted by the Department of State.
Or deportation. Harassing people until they leave is indirect, and not likely to be as successful. Plus it will cause chaos in the meantime.
There is no spontaneous violence in Gaza, and there is no spontaneous political radicalism, any more than in North Korea.
Buying electricity to build missiles while the average Gazan has no AC or lights would be an unpopular move and could lead to some actual spontaneous violence.
Gazans are not lazy or zoned out. They are constantly stimulated by participation in organized political violence. However, most of them want to leave the place and would rather live somewhere else according to surveys I’ve read. I suggest giving them the opportunity, along with additional stimulus.
Gaza is not North Korea. That is a myth made by advocates of democracy. Radical Islamists and Islamic Radicals continually compete each to be more radical and more Islamic than the other. Dissent is squashed the way “racism” is squashed in the US, but it is perfectly clear that anti war people would no more win an election in Gaza than pro slavery people would win an election in the US.
Hamas was put into power by an election. They didn’t win in a vacuum, and they don’t stay in power in a vacuum. And the more radical Gaza citizens become, the less they care about the consequences of taking on Israel.
These things are not binary, they come in degrees.
In the scheme of things, Hamas has killed very few Israelis. But if Hamas were willing to let tens of thousands of Palestinians die a year, it could do a lot more damage.
If you want to minimize radicalism, and aren’t willing to engage in political repression, TV and a welfare state are your two primary tools.
Yeah, after Israel cuts their power, that’s what they’ll focus on. Somebody is using electricity for welding! Lets get him!
Violence that ends in virtually no Israeli deaths.
Israel’s long-term position is in danger if international circumstances force it to capitulate to Palestinian demands (i.e. a one-state solution). The occasional rocket (with only about 40 killed so far, I recall) is not very important.
Long-term, Israel’s best strategy is de-radicalizing Palestinians, and reducing the Palestinian population.
>Hamas was put into power by an election.
Naturally. But all the radicalism only goes in one direction. There are no radical animal rights activists in Gaza, and no environmentalists or feminists.
>And the more radical Gaza citizens become, the less they care about the consequences of taking on Israel.
I’d like to see that hypothesis tested with some serious consequences.
>In the scheme of things, Hamas has killed very few Israelis. But if Hamas were willing to let tens of thousands of Palestinians die a year, it could do a lot more damage.
Hamas has done everything it possibly could to kill Jews. If they could do more, they would. They can’t do any more damage, or they would be doing it.
>If you want to minimize radicalism, and aren’t willing to engage in political repression, TV and a welfare state are your two primary tools.
A welfare state distributing bennies to the biggest terrorists and tv teaching kids that the most admirable thing to be is a suicide bomber are not the most…intuitive methods to minimize radicalism.
>Yeah, after Israel cuts their power, that’s what they’ll focus on. Somebody is using electricity for welding! Lets get him!
They will focus on how miserable they are and how to go somewhere they are less miserable. They will also start fighting over access to remaining power (assuming Israel will sell it to anyone, and why should we?) I mean, they already fight about everything. When I lived next to Hevron, I heard shootouts between them regularly.
>Violence that ends in virtually no Israeli deaths.
When I was in the military, if someone would try to shoot you, you wouldn’t say, “aw, they know we’re wearing armor, their aim is terrible, the medevac system is great, and the odds of them killing one of us are very low. They’re harmless-let ’em go, guys.” I know, weird, right?
>Long-term, Israel’s best strategy is de-radicalizing Palestinians, and reducing the Palestinian population.
Best strategy is fast and immediate population transfer.
For the past thousand years, Christians have been testing that hypothesis, and they keep forgetting what the result was last time and testing it again.
You will need to credibly threaten to kill everyone who does not transfer, and you will probably need to make a good start on carrying out the threat.
But, if you dispossess someone and do not kill him, you have a problem. If you kill someone and dispossess him, less of a problem.
That’s a silly idea. They have plenty of people. How many Palestinians do they need to sacrifice to kill an Israeli? It looks like it’s about 50 to 1. They’ve still got about 1.8 million people, and have only lost 0.1% in this conflict. Their dead isn’t even as large a fraction of the population as Northern Ireland lost during the Troubles.
Nope. But you aren’t allowed to structure the welfare state however you like, since you don’t run Gaza. And you can’t control the TV. All you can do is pay for a few goodies.
Without Israeli help, the Gaza poor would begin to starve. You have to feed them, or all hell will break lose (imagine starving Palestinians trying to flee into Israel in front of Western cameras). You also need to give them electricity, because electricity gives them a bunch of other activities to do, other than terrorism and political radicalism. TV being most prominent.
Yes. And once you’re done with Gaza, start on the West Bank.
>It looks like it’s about 50 to 1. They’ve still got about 1.8 million people, and have only lost 0.1% in this conflict. Their dead isn’t even as large a fraction of the population as Northern Ireland lost during the Troubles.
What is this magical ratio? Is there a black magic ritual, where you take the souls of 50 Arabs and a Jew magically dies? Hamas has two ways of killing Jews right now-rockets and infiltrating terrorist teams into Israel. Neither work very well, but they are trying as hard as they can.
>But you aren’t allowed to structure the welfare state however you like, since you don’t run Gaza. And you can’t control the TV. All you can do is pay for a few goodies.
Or turn everything off.
>(imagine starving Palestinians trying to flee into Israel in front of Western cameras).
They’d try for a day, then go the other way, to Egypt, which would accept them. What’s America going to do, shut off flights to us?
>And once you’re done with Gaza, start on the West Bank.
I’d actually prefer they make the Israeli Arabs a higher priority than my neighbors in the Shomron, but they’ve all got to go.
The west supports the genocide of the Tutsi, and made no big deal about the genocide of the Armenians.
When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse.
Wasn’t Malcolm X the strong horse, and MLK the weaker horse? I’ve never heard of Malcolm X day.
And the South keeps naming stuff after Confederate Generals.
People admire a heroic cause. The CSA was one, despite being the weaker horse. Malcolm X’s actions looked more nigger-ish than heroic, while MLK can look like an eternally-suffering victim of Bull Connor’s oppression.
MLK was the mascot of a bunch of orange haired Jews who were the strong horse.
But people didn’t usually see the orange haired Jews, nor were most of them aware of their power. All they saw was MLK, who kept getting thrown in jail by Bull Connor.
MLK looked weak, and Malcolm X looked dangerous.
I don’t think so. Looked like power to me. When Anthony Cumia gets assaulted by a black female, and everyone condemns him for offending the female, that looks like the strong horse to me.
Looks to me that no one was afraid of Malcolm X, and everyone was pissing in their pants in fear of Martin Luther King.
MLK quite visibly had the bulk of the Establishment/Cathedral behind him, while Malcolm X was on the left fringe of what was acceptable.
Feminism, abortion and birth control, right?
Drop Palestinian fertility down to 1.0 children per woman, and the long-term problem is solved, without Western anger. I’m not quite sure why Israel doesn’t do that.
Because any lefty do-gooder who tried to promote feminism and contraception in the Muslim world would end up reducing the world’s population by exactly one.
Iran has a lower birth-rate than the US, because of contraception and feminism.
Jamal: this conversation has been had in NRx.
Iran realised in the 1980s that it had run out of arable land and that it couldn’t invade anyplace more fertile (although Dubya may have changed this). So the government – it went as far as the mullahs – went about encouraging low fertility. Read this: http://www.prb.org/pdf/iransfamplanprog_eng.pdf
Progressives are disturbingly successful at assimilating Muslims. If there was a Muslim equivalent of B commenting on this blog, I would nag him the same way I nag B.
No, Muslims are disturbingly successful at assimilating Progressives. Progs can only give the illusion of assimilation, once Muslims have reached critical mass they actively subvert the dominant Prog culture and they do it very well. We see this in England, we see this in France, we see this in Germany.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2587215/Sharia-Law-enshrined-British-legal-lawyers-guidelines-drawing-documents-according-Islamic-rules.html
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28402882
http://www.d-intl.com/2013/06/20/german-court-passed-verdict-based-on-shariah-law/?lang=en
Exactly.
As ruler, I would announce that any country that attacks mine is ipso facto overpopulated, and that I will proceed to correct this problem for them. If leftists argue for gentler ways of reducing overpopulation, I will dispatch them to said country with container-loads of contraceptives and translated feminist literature.
You generally want your enemies to be the anti-feminist and racists. So the West won’t mind if you attack them.
[…] https://blog.reaction.la/war/need-to-kill-a-lot-more-civilians-in-gaza.html/comment-page-1#comment-727186 […]
There is no need to kill anyone. Just look at Egypt where the Islamic Brotherhood (the Egyptian Hamas party) was voted democratically nto power. A bloodless coup by the Army restored peace and order in a few days. That is the only way to stop the selfdestruction of Third World countries. A handful of patriotic coronels is all that is needed to save Gaza and pacify the region.
That is what I implied by calling for a King in Gaza.
You missed an important part of Californication…
California was a fairly libertarian/conservative state. As such, they had a small government with little economic regulation, a booming market economy with strong incentives and protections for business, a very efficient higher education system, direct democracy with regards to constitutional amendments, and strenuously protected individual rights.
Of course, the strong individual rights protections and the higher education system, combined with a booming economy in need of more employees, attracted all kinds of hippies and progressive intellectuals who went on to form the cadre of the Democratic Party.
After three decades, they had seized control of most of California’s government, big business, and the educational institutions. And now California is falling apart, so these same individuals, too selfish to understand that their own policies are the cause of all of their discontent, are now moving to libertarian/conservative states that are just like the way California used to be.
And soon they will destroy them, too, and will once again move, ignoring the trail of destruction that follows them everywhere they go.
Libertarian/conservative government thus sow the seeds of their undoing.
That is the standard libertarian account, and it is entirely true as far as it goes.
But we are all postlibertarians here, and you are ignoring the elephant in the room: the racial element.
Mestizos and Indios in California are now a privileged class, superior to white people. For example, a drunken Indio with no drivers license, neither Mexican license nor Californian license, runs a white man off the road. No hay problema, he will not be charged.
Regulations in California are oppressive, intrusive, and aggressive. Google cannot build a footbridge over a small stream on its own land. But if a Mestizo builds a footbridge, No hay problema. (An Indio of course would not build a footbridge) Because the majority are not affected by intrusive regulation, there is no democratic force opposing aggressive regulation.
Speak for yourself. I’m a post-fascist, or post-conservative. Definitely authoritarian, not libertarian.
I’m not ignoring the racial element at all. Unfortunately, I think that part followed the libertarian/conservative reforms. Now that the liberals/socialists run the show, it’s full blown anarcho-tyranny.
The only reason the big tech companies stay is because the state and local governments give them massive tax incentives. So the big tech companies can have their cake and eat it, too… they can support the Democrats and all of their social policies while not having to deal with the same economic consequences as smaller businesses have to, and the Democrats look the other way when it comes to racial diversity. Some of them are wising up, and this is where the neo-reactionaries are coming in. But, overall, they are still in close alliance with the Democrats, but the Democrats are now slowly turning on them.
It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out.
Hint: California goes bankrupt.
[…] Source: Jim […]
Excellent vivid picture pointing out the dysfunction of democracy. Thanks, “Jim”.
Feels like this might be calling the concept of the Patchwork into question.
I don’t think anyone favors a patchwork of democracies, and still less do advocates of patchwork favor democracy for middle easterners.
Gaza is run by the Department of State. If it were an actual democracy, it would be radically different.
Nobody ever advocates actual democracy, because that would mean the abolition of anti-democratic institutions. Like courts, stable law, constitutions, et cetera, which all get in the way of the whims of the people.
Casey Anthony would be the first person executed in a real democracy. Then the child molesters. Then Bernie Madoff. Eventually, we’d get around to a group which, when some of their members are executed, retaliates with terrorism. And so the now-scared members of the democracy escalates against them, which creates more terrorism … and eventually half the country is dead.
In an actual democracy, demagogues would immediately seize power. The first people executed would be the ones posing a threat to the demagogues, actually or potentially. The next ones would be the ones with something to expropriate, i.e., the Jews and Speculators (tm.) Then the demagogues would start falling out among themselves.
The existence of demagogues indicates an imperfect democracy. I’m talking about actually executing the will of the people.
Rousseau talks at length about “what is the will of the people.” Long story short, no such animal, it is whatever the demagogues decide at any particular moment.
On second thought, Rousseau wrote before there was an internet. Now, we can get a feel for the “will of the people.” It’s 4chan.
Majority of orthodox Jews voted for Obama. I am pretty sure that he would get considerably fewer votes on 4chan. Orthodox Jews are one of the few groups to resist feminism, but none dare openly oppose feminism. 4chan does openly oppose feminism.
4chan is pure, unrestrained, democracy. Sounds about right.
I suspect that in 4Chan democracy, Casey Anthony and the child molesters would be the ones doing the executing.
And 4Chan isn’t the worst case scenario-you can also have World Star Hip Hop democracy. 4Chan at least presupposes some degree of literacy, sophistication and self-awareness.
Put Gaza back under Egyptian administration-then they [the Egyptians] would be responsible.
Israel offered, Egypt declined. Are you going to force it on them?
Yeah, we need to stop Hamas from using all its tanks and fighter jets on civilian populations…
Hamas does not have any very effective weapons for killing Jews in Israel, but it manages a few, and they are getting better at it. Why then is Israel obligated to leave one Gazan alive? What are people supposed to do when the weaker party just keeps on attacking the stronger party and will not stop?
But of course, your logic can be extended further.
In modern warfare all available pressures are used, political, economic, social and military. Israel is stronger than the Palestinians, but it is, in some ways, much weaker than the U.S. And yet it keeps on attacking the U.S. economically, socially and politically. And it will not stop.
What to do?
It seems to me that a small, vulnerable ethnic group / country that gains a reputation for genociding its neighbors might find itself in a precarious position and that a more cautious strategy might be more optimal, given the utterly laughable threat of Palestinian rockets.
As is, some of the more international left wing forums I read are starting to converge on the same opinion of Israel that Stormfront has. That can’t be a positive development in the long run.
How is Israel attacking the US? The disproportionately Jewish ruling elite, among them State Department Secretary John Kerry, is attacking the US. But he is also attacking Israel even more than he attacks the US.
If you want to find a bunch of Jewish conspirators attacking the US, the best place to find them is not Israel, it is the Southern Poverty Law Center, who tend to bleach their hair orange to disguise their ethnicity, and they hate Jews more than anyone.
Jews tend to favor ethnic cohesion for Jews, and oppose ethnic cohesion for everyone else. They tend to support Israel controlling its borders and preventing non Jews from entering Israel, and oppose any other group controlling their borders, let alone doing the unthinkable and applying an ethnic, racial, or cultural immigration policy. But Jews in power do not in fact have much ethnic cohesion – observe, for example, John Kerry. The Jewish portion of the ruling class are conversos. We should understand progressivism as a post Christian religion, and the Jewish elite as conversos from Judaism. The conflict now happening in the US is primarily a religious, rather than national, conflict.
An exclusionary, race limited religion, such as Judaism, cannot rule, cannot create big problems. A universalist religion, that seeks to convert everyone in the world, rule everyone in the world, is apt to create big problems.
Red hair is a widespread trait among us, so I’m not sure I understand your recurrent references to SPLC coloring their hair orange.
How does Israel attack the US?
Don’t ask stupid questions. Most obviously Israel attacks the US through political subversion, designed to manipulate our politics for their own ends. Soviets used to do the same thing, although less effectively.
If this was not abundantly clear already (think Iraq), it was made clear for all to see during the run up to the war with Syria. There was a moment in time when the goyim were united in saying “hey, this is a bad idea” and the ideological cover provided by the goy left fell away. Without this cover, the Chosen were exposed for a moment and it was apparent to anyone who was paying attention that they were pulling together, left and “right”, almost unanimously for another disastrous, trillion dollar war that would benefit only Israel.
This is a classic example of what scholars mean when they say that in warfare “all available pressures are used, political, economic, social and military”. Our failure to respond effectively does not change this.
You mean that among the mighty horde of lobbyists in Washington, some are Israeli lobbyists, and similarly in the media. That is significantly different from shooting rockets at Washington.
That’s the thing about Judaism. It’s easy to be Progressive and Jewish. Progressives favor open borders for everyone. Jews don’t care about 99% of the world’s borders, except for a single country called Israel. Judaism can be synthesized with Progressivism much easier than Christianity, since it is not universalist, and thus can believe whatever it wants about 99% of the world.
This leads to a bunch of Jewish-American liberal hypocrites (and neocons) who preach anti-racism, while simultaneously preaching ethnocentrism for Israel. It would be difficult for an American-Irish man to use the US to promote closed Irish borders (in Ireland), while simultaneously condemning South African Apartheid. But that’s because American-Irish people feel a need to be universalist. rather than adopt radical double standards.
Yes, and Judaism fits more easily into Progressivism than Christianity does. A major reason even the Orthodox Jews vote Democrat.
Judaism is assimilated by Progressivism more easily than Chrisianity is. Progressive Jews, in due course, cease to be Jewish. Christians do also of course. Pope Francis thinks that Jesus came to teach us to care about the poor, rather than to reconcile man and God. But it is even more effective against Jews.
@B
I’m pretty sure it’s not what Jim is referring to, but
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Jews
The term “obligated” implies moral obligation, which is a can of worms. But the most profitable strategy is not to kill everyone in Gaza. They would be more useful as slaves than dead.
In reality, Orthodox Jews, including the Modern Orthodox, are the only Jewish demographic that votes reliably Republican.
http://people.opposingviews.com/orthodox-jews-politics-6405.html
Which suggests to me that Orthodox Jews will go feminist and infertile soon enough.
We’ve survived the Greeks, Romans and Persians-I suspect we’ll survive this as well.
You survived in the past because you had a religion that required people to bury their feces, and other people did not. The standard old testament miracle is that a Jewish army is fighting a non Jewish army, and the enemy army suffers a plague. Today, everyone, even most black Africans, understands proper hygiene, and religious hygiene is an inferior substitute.
In the current ebola outbreak in Africa, authorities are upset because the masses don’t trust them, but the reason the masses don’t trust them is because ebola in Africa, like antibiotic resistant flesh rot in the west, is a hospital spread disease. The masses are applying old testament methods of quarantine and fire to prevent the spread of ebola, and, unlike the ancient Hebrews, understand what they are doing.
>You survived in the past because you had a religion that required people to bury their feces, and other people did not. The standard old testament miracle is that a Jewish army is fighting a non Jewish army, and the enemy army suffers a plague.
That happened once in the Torah. And it involved rodents, so I suspect an outbreak of bubonic plague.
>Today, everyone, even most black Africans, understands proper hygiene, and religious hygiene is an inferior substitute.
So, just by sheer dumb luck, we figured out feces disposal, and it took the rest of the world 3000 years longer. You’d think that somebody else would have caught on sooner, aside from Muslims who took it from us, but, no. Uncle Jim’s Just So Stories.
Your feces theory doesn’t explain Jewish life expectancy and disease rates vs. their neighbors in crowded and unhygienic medieval cities, where raw sewage was omnipresent. Not to mention how we could have such improved survival rates vs. our neighbors who didn’t have to undergo circumcision on the 8th day of life, with medieval standards of sterility.
My interpretation-since we had no bacterial theory, there was no reasonable way that these commandments were logical in nature. If they gave us such an advantage, I assume they were divine in nature, as their source says they are. If their source foresaw the need for physical hygiene, I assume it foresaw the need for mental and spiritual hygiene. For instance, we have commandments against masturbation and pornography. How do you think that plays out, society-wide?
My understanding was that wealthier people had much longer life expectancies, and were less likely to die of disease. Given medieval Jewish trades, weren’t they wealthier than the average city-dweller?
>Given medieval Jewish trades, weren’t they wealthier than the average city-dweller?
No.
I am pretty sure they were. Apart, of course from the job of money lender the other typical Jewish job was estate manager. Jews had middle class jobs. Most city people had working class jobs.
Lower class people did not have freedom of religion. In fact no one had freedom of religion, but middle class people were better able to get away with stuff. So Jews that slid into the working class tended to be forcibly converted to Christianity.
Common misconception, but untrue. In fact, we see from medieval censuses from Ashkenaz and Spain that court Jews and money lenders were a minority, and the majority had occupations like bee keeping, smithing, etc. The vast majority lived in Jewish communities in cities and towns. Sources (Jewish and Christian) remarked on remarkable communal cohesion, and how the richer members of the community maintained the poor. Increased survival rates were remarkable in light of the fact that cities are generally population sinks.
To the contrary, Israel advised against the invasion of Iraq because it predictably strengthened Iran. Also, I doubt Israel spends more trying to influence US policy than the oil-rich Arab lobby. The Jews just have more persuasive propagandists.
The most effective weapon Hamas has is its ability to manipulate world opinion. Hamas hides its bases and rocket launchers in heavily populated civilian areas and continually fires hundreds of rockets which are a nuisance but for the most part harmless at Israel because it wants Israel to attack, to crack down hard, and to kill large numbers of mostly non-combants, making herself look horrible in the process. Why give Hamas what it wants? If Israel were to wipe all of the Gazans out, that would be giving Hamas more than it bargained for, yes, but it would also be handing her enemies the most powerful weapon they could ever use against her, their own Holocaust. She would be completely and utterly foolish to do so.
I thought you had taken the red pill. All you need to stop democratic Gaza from making war is to get the Department of State, and the UN to strongly support Israel.
There are a number of ways. Convincing Egypt to stop giving weapons would work, convincing the US to permit Israel to do what is necessary would work, and so would Gaza having a (sane) king. So would convincing the US to send an imperial governor to force whatever solution the US wants, one state, two state whatever.
What is happening is that there is a holy war and we are observing it because it amuses us. Jerusalem is not a prize to be handed out lightly, they must demonstrate their dedication in the arena. Asymmetric battles are the most amusing. And then, once the lion and the convict have mauled each other, we can watch a woman get fucked by a giraffe.
p’mint: Egypt has rarely ever given weapons to the Gazans.
Egypt’s whole history from the moment they decided to throw Qutb in the dungeon has been to keep the Muslim Brotherhood out of power, and secondarily to avoid taking in more welfare cases. The *last* thing the Egyptian elite wants is armed Ikhwat a short drive from the Suez Canal.
Morsi was an interregnum, and one the Egyptian military will not repeat.
So how did all the rockets get into Gaza? They get unloaded and stored in Sudan, then driven up to Egypt, then moved underground into Gaza. If you tell me Egypt was unable to control this process, then that means that they control nothing in Sinai and are irrelevant.
I suspect that their military govt did cut off the flow of rockets, which is why there was a stock in the warehouse in Sudan that the IAF hit last week, and why Hamas is making its big push for open borders and ports, so that they can get resupplied by Iran by sea.
You accept neoconservative reasoning when applied to non Jews and religions other than your own. Obviously, on matters of faith, the Egyptian military government will be fairly rational, hence will prefer peace to war, while the Egyptian democratically elected government was insane.
I don’t know what “neoconservative reasoning” is. Is that left deviation from the Dark Enlightenment party line, or right deviation? Am I being a Trotskyite and wrecker?
Obviously, any democratically elected government in the Muslim world will be insane, and probably any democratically elected government in the Western world will tend towards insanity or stupidity.
Just as obviously, since the Israeli Navy controls the ships and Gaza is/was full of rockets they are incapable of manufacturing themselves, those rockets got in there by land. The only land borders Gaza has are with Egypt and Israel. Obviously, the rockets didn’t come from Israel.
Since there was a large explosion at a warehouse in Sudan last week, which the Sudanese government ascribed to “foreign planes,” and since Iranian ships stop in at Port Sudan periodically, it’s not too much of a logical leap to say that the rockets were coming from Iran via Sudan and then Egypt.
I do not know whether the flow of rockets ceased completely after Sisi’s government took over. I hope so, but am not sure they have control over their own country to a sufficient degree. If they do, then Hamas’ behavior is understandable as a gamble to open another route to resupply.
Where is the neoconservative reasoning?
Moldbug says that asymmetric warfare, being warfare between the strong and the weak, requires a third party (the state department) to protect the weak from annihilation.
But, supposing the state department gets out of the way, Israel then has to credibly threaten, or actually make a good start on, annihilation.
i think moldbug underestimates prog infiltration of Israeli elite itself. Their Supreme Court binding their army, rewriting where the wall was built, etc.
The Jews are not immune to the prog virus they helped spread throughout the Western World. Even if the US were to give carte blanche to Israel to do what it wants, it is not realistic to expect the Israelis to threaten genocide.
There seems to be a fair amount of Israeli support for mass deportation. Which would accomplish the same goal as genocide.
Or the state department could propagandize Gaza, and make them think it’s holy to love Israel, and evil to hate Israel. And Gaza will make peace with Israel.