Cory1848

12 minutes ago, Hanaguma said:

Nah, those other countries you mentioned are all NATO members and covered by the NATO treaty. Ukraine is not. That is the biggest difference.  The "domino theory" does not apply.

That is a big difference, and I hope you're right, but I wouldn’t bet on it with the aggressor thinking he’s Peter the Great. Fresh off a victory in Ukraine after the US and EU grew tired of sending money, Putin might see some openings. The Suwałki Gap (a modern-day Danzig Corridor?) is 60 km wide; secure that and the Baltic States become vulnerable, and would the rest of NATO really come to their defense, with their civilian populations (read: voters) already tired of all this? Maybe this scenario sounds nuts, but it makes so much sense to just give the Ukrainians everything they need right now to end this thing.

22 minutes ago, Thorgal said:

There are many modified versions available on the internet. 

 

Original, limited genuine ones are still availably in some US en EU museums/libraries.

My post was actually dripping with sarcasm. In all seriousness, it *is* important to know a little bit about someone like Fredrick Töben and the Adelaide Institute, but I have no intention of rooting out his documentary.

16 minutes ago, Thorgal said:

Google : "Judea declares war on Germany" + demonstrations in the US and the forthcoming economic sanctions against Germany

OK, I was curious and Googled “Judea Declares War on Germany.” Turns out it’s a documentary film by a gentleman named Fredrick Töben, founder of the Adelaide Institute in Australia who has a Wikipedia page that tells you all you need to know.

Seriously, I had no idea, and I thank you very much for bringing this to my attention. It’s important to know these things.

14 minutes ago, Chomper Higgot said:

MojoRisin is diminishing antisemitism and he’s got you apologizing for challenging the absurdity of his arguments.

 

Go figure 

<sigh> I sometimes wonder why I fall into online arguments with complete strangers; at best, it’s useless. Cats are supposed to help reduce blood pressure, so at least I have a cat ...

42 minutes ago, ozimoron said:

How are illegal Israeli settlements not genocide? Do you want to defend that proposition?

If you want to call the Israeli settlements on the West Bank “genocide,” go for it. You wouldn’t be the first, the word has lost all real meaning anyway, and it’s a boring argument. What I object to is people using a word like “genocide” to equate what the Israelis are doing with what the Nazis did, in terms of actual magnitude of the crime. There’s another word for that.

1 hour ago, MrMojoRisin said:

Israel killed 44 kids in 40 weeks in 2018. These are obviously not holocaust numbers, but are they acceptable numbers? What standard should Israel be held to? Is anything under 6 million victims deemed acceptable? 

Don’t be absurd. “Not holocaust numbers” indeed. There are several magnitudes of evil between what Nazi Germany did and what the Israelis have been doing. Nazi Germany, as a matter of state policy, rounded up six million civilians in the entirety of the territory they controlled and murdered them, simply based on the perceived “race” of the victims.

I am in no way diminishing the crimes and excesses of the Israeli government in the occupied West Bank. What *you* are doing, however, is watering down the real meaning of words like “genocide” and “Nazi.”

29 minutes ago, placeholder said:

The problem with "particularly Netanyaho" is that it downplays Israel's grave violations of Palestinian human right before his accession to being PM.

One reason that critics might focus particular attention on Israel is that, despite its flagrant violation of human rights, it received the most foreign aid from the USA out of any nation on the planet. Not just in per capita terms but in absolute terms as well.

Oh c’mon, now you’re just throwing stuff at the wall. Netanyahu is an actual criminal who needs to stay in power to stay out of jail and has aligned himself with religious zealots to do so (sound familiar?). Some earlier Israeli PMs negotiated with the Palestinian leadership. And the Palestinian Authority have not always been the easiest negotiating partners, and the leadership of Hamas in Gaza has been atrocious. Neighboring Arab countries have treated Palestinian refugees like political pawns, not allowing them to assimilate into their own societies (for how many generations now?) based on unrealistic promises of a “right of return.” Sure, and when is the Jewish refugee in Israel going to get his flat in Basra back again? There’s plenty of bad behavior all around.

I’ll repeat myself: Those who focus exclusively on the *very real* crimes of the Israeli state while ignoring the *very real* crimes of, for instance, Israel’s neighbors, may have a world view that’s less than objective.

37 minutes ago, placeholder said:

Whether or not there are tons of people is irrelevant. The fact is that Israel has massively violated the human rights of Palestinians and is continuing to do so, Villifying Israel's critics is just a way to evade addressing that issue.

These are two entirely different issues. (1) Israel is violating the human rights of Palestinians in the West Bank. (2) Antisemitism has existed in the world for two millennia. I am NOT vilifying critics of Israel; I myself am a critic of Israel, particularly under Netanyahu, as are most of my friends in the US and elsewhere, many of whom happen to be Jewish. I AM vilifying those critics of Israel who criticize Israel obsessively and don’t care a hoot about violations of human rights in other parts of the world, as this MIGHT be an indication that their concern about Palestine is rooted in something other than an objective awareness of current events.

This might sound a *little* complicated, but it’s really not if you think it through.

11 hours ago, placeholder said:

More vagueness from you. Who are these people who only criticize Israel.?

 

There are tons of people who are obsessively critical of Israel, who otherwise take little interest in world events and couldn’t find Tigray on a map. It may be “innocent” -- perhaps they have some personal connection in the region. It may be because they get their news from dubious sources and simply have a twisted, one-sided view of the world. Or it may be because they illogically hate Jewish people and obsess over crimes committed by the state of Israel as a way of justifying and reinforcing their hatred. I wouldn’t presume to judge a person, including people on this forum, without knowing where they’re coming from, but I do know several people personally who fall into the latter category above, and their obsessive focus on Israel clearly derives from antisemitism.

13 hours ago, connda said:

The current "Western democratic model" is becoming more dictatorial and authoritarian by the year as their citizens quality of life deteriorates rapidly, especially the middle-class which is being slowly decimated.  Nothing like a world war to facilitate a 'great reset,' so I would not be surprised if a major, non-Western Leader or Foreign Minister has a Archduke Franz Ferdinand moment and it's "Game On" for WWIII.   Pity to be a Millennial or GenZ as they will be the new draft-aged conscription pool for Western militaries.
As well, at the dawning of WWIII which so many of you seem to want, most of you living here who are vehemently pro-West/anti-East will be beating on their embassies doors to get a flight out of Thailand.
I admit, I'm an anti-war veteran, and I really don't understand what evil drives some of you to call for the assassinations of heads-of-states and promote the global war that will follow in the aftermath.  It really is insane!  Even George Walker Bush referred to those who held views like this as "The Crazies In The Basement." 

You may be overreacting with regard to the “downfall of the West”; there is indeed a widening wealth gap in the US and probably in other Western democracies as well (and I use the word “democracy” loosely), but calling out the “decimation” of the middle class might be a bit much.

There’s some stress for sure, at least on the lower middle classes -- e.g., people working at big box stores in the US who are limited to part-time hours, meaning the corporation doesn’t need to provide worker benefits. Perversely, it’s these very same workers who continue to vote into office those politicians who are most likely to continue to provide favors to their corporate donors. But this doesn’t require blowing up the system; it requires much stricter regulation of capitalism, getting money out of politics, and other major tweaks.

What else did you have in mind -- and remember what Churchill said: “Democracy is the worst form of government -- except for all the others that have been tried.”

Assassinating a head of state of course is insane, no matter how much better the world might be without a Vladimir Putin in it, and nobody in a position of power in their right mind would consider it. I’m also not too concerned about “WWIII” (presumably, between Russia and NATO); neither side is about to attack the other directly. Then again, I never imagined that Putin would actually invade Ukraine, so what do I know ...

8 hours ago, ericthai said:

so you want a one world government? 

“One world government” sounds scary and dystopian, and one needs a system that accommodates human nature. (Communism might have sounded good on paper, but it fell apart when actual people tried to apply it.) Still, we need to move in some sort of collective direction, as more and more broad issues require global cooperation and response -- climate change, pandemics, international crime and terrorism, resource allocation, an integrating global economy. Without such cooperation, we will not survive as a species.

Someone mentioned the EU, that it had effectively stopped warmaking among Europeans, and I think that’s a good model; why shouldn’t the EU (plus NATO, or some military alliance) grow, not only farther east but to North Africa, Latin America, East Asia? Maintaining a system of nation-states for local administration while developing a shared set of values, and a framework for global action? Not going to happen in our lifetimes, but it seems important to start thinking a little further ahead than next month ...

5 minutes ago, Berkshire said:

That's funny.  Russia hasn't had a free and fair election in decades.  Even if Putin was eliminated (by external forces, i.e., US), those in power will want to stay in power.  Now if Putin was taken out by internal forces (i.e., Russians), whole different ballgame.

Quite right, and if Putin were taken out by an external force, he would be replaced by even worse hardliners, which would be a nightmare. It needs to come from inside (even if Russia’s experience with revolutions has not always led to the best results!).

6 minutes ago, Jingthing said:

Nah.

It's going to take Russia generations to normalize if ever.

You’re probably right. And there are all those people in the Russian hinterland who want Stalin to come back. There was a period of optimism under Gorbachev and Yeltsin, but the US itself may have botched that with “disaster capitalism” (see Naomi Klein).

49 minutes ago, MrMojoRisin said:

You run in circles to avoid commenting on the reality that Israeli crimes against Palestinian’s increase the amount of antisemitism in the world.

Not necessarily; as has been stated repeatedly, antisemitism existed long before the Israeli state, and crimes committed by the Israeli government do not lead one to hate Jewish people any more than crimes committed by the current Russian government lead one to hate Russian people. Antisemitism is simply hatred of Jewish people, whether driven by the need for a scapegoat, twisted religious notions, prodding by demagogues for political purposes, or just pure racism. When the Israeli government persecutes Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank, that doesn’t help matters, but it doesn’t drive people to suddenly become antisemitic.

17 minutes ago, NorthernRyland said:

I think the lesson to be learned from WWII and the dozens of expulsions over the centuries is that if you're a minority ethnic group and you wield disproportionate power over the majority, you may find you earn their ire.

 

If you're on the forum enough in fact you will hear people mention Thai-Chinese elites in Thailand and often it's about how they're not fair to the Thai's. If society started to fall apart in Thailand I wonder if there would be any mass movements against their own ethnic minority elites....

When you reduce yourself to counting the number of Jews in the room (as in Biden’s cabinet), that in and of itself demonstrates your hatred of Jewish people, as your assumption is that they must be acting in concert somehow to subvert the will of the “majority” (the majority of what?), and that if they’re destroyed as a result (by “earning the ire” of others), well, they were asking for it.

Bernie Sanders and Jared Kushner are both Jewish. I wonder what on earth they might have to talk about. Their respective bar mitzvahs? Then what?

I really do hope that this discussion is “painful” for you, as you said, because rather than seeking the common humanity in all of us, you prefer to take an entirely racist view of the world. I hope you find your way out.

20 hours ago, placeholder said:

By itself, this usage might seem perfectly innocent. But you're not taking into account the virulent Hindu nationalist policies of the current Indian government.

Right: nationalist branding. Even if the current ultra-nationalist Indian government manages to regularize the use of “Bharat” as the international (English-language) moniker for their country, it may become forever associated with that government and get ditched when more progressive leadership again takes charge in India. Like the name “Zaire,” adopted by a corrupt dictator, was discarded right after his death, or like “Myanmar” might get discarded as the English-language name for that country should the military ever be removed from power there. (Aung San Suu Kyi, when she’s speaking English, continues to use “Burma.”)