SpankyMcFarland
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Posts posted by SpankyMcFarland
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1 hour ago, TreeBeard said:
The bible says a man whose testicles are crushed can’t go to church.
Do you believe a man who had his testicles and/or penis crushed is barred from church?
Deuteronomy 23:1 KJV
He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD.
Most Christians and moderate Muslims don’t follow what their holy books tell them to do.
Like the Pirate’s Code, the instructions in holy books should be seen more as guidelines than literal to-do lists:
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On 10/9/2023 at 11:43 PM, blackbird said:
No, they have no historic claim to any part of Germany. But they do have a historic claim to the land of Israel. Big difference.
Ashkenazi Jews are of mixed ancestry, both European and Western Asian.
And any Canadian of European ancestry talking about ‘historic claims’ would be well-advised not to put too much store in them for obvious reasons.
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7 hours ago, reason10 said:
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"From the river to the sea" simply means all Jews will be exterminated.Seig Heil.
And what does it mean when Israelis say something similar, given that they have done it already? It’s not an aspiration for them.
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1 hour ago, WestCanMan said:
Congrats to these Dems for their ability to act in the best interests of Americans, in a non-partisan manner.
Tlaib's commitment to bigotry and disinformation should be automatically disqualifying, but if there needs to be an election, then at least the correct info will be out there now.
Actually, nobody can say for sure where all the funding for these ads is coming from although some of it is identifiable. I would say it is highly unlikely that much of it arises from Democrats within her electoral district. What we are seeing here is an attempt by outsiders to buy an election.
More trouble for the Dems on the Israel/Palestine front:
Some Democrats joined the Republicans here.
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Here is the Tlaib link. Could not post it above for some reason.
https://www.newsweek.com/democrat-attack-ad-against-rashida-tlaib-sparks-fury-dangerous-1840568
Six figure sums already being spent a year in advance to unseat a sitting Democratic Congresswoman. Has that ever happened before?
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12 hours ago, Hodad said:
Tlaib carried 71% of her district last year, after they already tried to tar her at anti-semitic. I don't think she's sweating this round.
She’s in the strongest position, of course, which is why they didn’t challenge her last time out. Still, an AIPAC-affiliated group is spending large amounts of money against her already.
Others are much more vulnerable and their opponents’ campaigns will be given millions to beat them. At some point the party may have to put rules on this. Attitudes to a single foreign policy issue should not be a litmus test to determine who can represent the party.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/11/aipac-israel-gaza-netanyahu-mark-pocan.html
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I presume we’ll hear more about what is alleged. Clicking on that link I came across another video of Mr. Eby looking miserable.
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1 hour ago, CdnFox said:
The guy who brought in lightspeed and delivered the vaccine?
You think they won't?
No they won’t. Trump deserves some credit for the Warp Speed program but can you look me in the eye and tell me he spoke about the pandemic in a responsible fashion from the beginning, avoided discussing ineffective treatments and promoted vaccination as vigorously as he possibly could? The message from the Biden administration was much more coherent.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/20/trump-vaccines-ex-aides-483387
Also bear in mind that the US has the leading biotech industry in the world. It would be deeply weird if they didn’t produce vaccines rapidly.
Here’s a review of the Trump administration’s response to Covid:
QuoteIn the final analysis, when it comes to assessing responsibility for the avoidable failures of the federal government's COVID‐19 performance, the evidence examined here indicates that, while not responsible for everything that went wrong, President Trump was a decisive factor behind the tragically sub‐optimal US pandemic response.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9115435/
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2 minutes ago, WestCanMan said:
The Dems have basically made their only platform into "We're with everyone who hates whitey" and "We're fighting covid and climate change", and eventually the groups they side with always cross the Rubicon.
People concerned about Covid (and pandemics in general) or climate change are going to vote for Trump?
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I think the Democrats do have a serious problem over Israel/Palestine. The energy in the party is with young left-wing candidates like the Squad but they are being targeted by a massively funded campaign involving AIPAC and other Israel-affiliated organizations that aims to defeat them in the Democratic primaries. Last time out several critics of Israel like Donna Edwards and Andy Levin were defeated but this time they are aiming at high profile targets like Tlaib, the only Palestinian in Congress. If money brings these candidates down there will be hell to pay in the party.
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Most people don’t know PP yet. They’ll really decide whether they like him if and when he becomes PM and has to make unpopular decisions.
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Eby isn’t the sunniest of politicians, is he? He seems to be constantly unhappy or disturbed about something, at least in the tiny snippets about him that come my way. I hope he’s really more cheerful than that. Politicians are also salesmen. Sunnyways are part of what they need to project.
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I fear the very last people denying climate change will be found on this forum.
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I suspect things will carry on as they are but worse. The oligarchs will be far richer and more powerful but they’ll still want a handful of workers around:
1. Police, judges, prison officers. That will continue for quite a while.
2. Artisans. It will still be fun to see handmade stuff.
3. Celebs. They’ll be the whole world to most of us.
4. Politicians. People to make things seem like they were.
I was listening to The Man Who Sold The World and I wondered will such a person eventually exist? Somebody who sells the world. Given the way wealth is being concentrated, it could happen.
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3 hours ago, WestCanMan said:
If the Gazans lay down their weapons, they can build a Mediterranean paradise in complete safety. They're literally on the east coast of the Med sea, yet their country is a complete shithole of their own making.
They get billions of dollars in aid every year. They get free water and electricity from Israel. Making that place beautiful should be easy. It actually took a lot of hard work to make Gaza into the ugliest place on earth.
Hamas is a death cult. End of story.
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3 hours ago, WestCanMan said:
One child was burned to death because a man was raised from birth to hate other people, and he finally fulfilled his lifelong dream of murdering people because of their religion.
One child died when a rocket struck the building he was in. Why?
1) His people have spent their lives fomenting hatred against other people, instead of trying to coexist
2) His people intentionally burned other people's children to death
3) His own soldiers are hiding in bomb shelters deep underground, and forcing civilians to stay in the line of fire. They are blocking their own children from fleeing to safety. They saw the death of their own child as a positive development in the struggle to commit genocide against others. So when the IDF targets a terrorist outpost, it's inevitable that civilians are killed, and Hamas rejoices the photo op.
^That's^ ugly. I know it's almost unfathomable for you to comprehend. Your instinct is to utterly reject it, and blame me for saying it.
Just go online and you can see video of muslim leaders shouting with full Hitlerian passion that "Our people love death and martyrdom as much as their people like life."
https://nationalpost.com/holy-post/we-love-death-more-than-you-love-life
https://palwatch.org/page/4286
When you see a video of them saying that, you will understand.
No one even disputes the fact that the IDF has told Gazans where they're attacking, or that they're messaging people on their emergency broadcast system to evacuate specific buildings.
If the Gazans lay down their weapons, they can build a Mediterranean paradise in complete safety. They're literally on the east coast of the Med sea, yet their country is a complete shithole of their own making.
They get billions of dollars in aid every year. They get free water and electricity from Israel. Making that place beautiful should be easy. It actually took a lot of hard work to make Gaza into the ugliest place on earth.
If the Israelis lay down their weapons, they will be slaughtered. No one disputes that.
I am not a supporter of Hamas in any way, shape or form. As a secular social democrat, I believe all religion should be a private matter and has no place beyond the home and places of worship. Having lived in a virtual theocracy I know that clerics make terrible rulers. Of course, I’m fully aware of the recent history in this region and of the horrific Oct 7th attack as I have repeated on multiple occasions here.
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An junior Israeli minister got a little out of line here:
An Israeli minister has said Palestinians should ‘go to Ireland or the deserts’ and that dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza is an option, as the Israel-Hamas war enters its fifth week.https://
He had to later say that his remarks were ‘metaphorical’ -
On the off chance that any harmless third party is reading these ramblings, let me be quite clear yet again. There is no doubt that Hamas targeted civilians in its 7th October attack.
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The anti-Semitism issue is interesting. It’s an example of the right using the tactics of the left. The whole notion of racism being widespread and bad arose on the left. Now the accusation of anti-Semitism is used by people on the right to defame and intimidate critics of Israel. Sometimes it is warranted but it is deployed so indiscriminately that it has lost much of its value.
Marcus Gee write a piece about it in the Globe where he started with the Dreyfus Affair. Can he not see the problem with that? The difference between, say, French officers looking for a scapegoat in their ranks and an Arab farmer being driven off his land?
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7 hours ago, CdnFox said:
Not really. It's as simple as "don't aim for them, aim for the military target". Whoever happens to get hit is collateral damage.
It's a simple principle. Attack the enemy target as if there were no people there. If there happens to be people there then that's unfortunate. But it's very easy to say if someone's got a legit reason to think something was a target or not, and if the way they attacked it is what someone might expect.
This is VERY FREAKIN' Simple.
The israelis just shot an ambulence. The world authorities went to them and said "why?" And they said 'they were transporting soldiers here's the evidence.
Pretty straight forward. They believed they were using it to transport combatants, they shot one missile at the ambulance, they didn't carpet bomb the place or anything .
Contrast that with the attack on the 7th from Gaza.
You're taking something very simple and trying to complicate it and it isn't.
The numbers proved you wrong chuckle
I don’t think its as simple as that. There are hundreds of targets each day. There have been incidents in the past where the Israelis have given false information initially until they were forced to concede their culpability. usually this sort of backtracking doesn’t happen because we don’t have the sort of information to combat their claim.
I think one can say that, in general, the Israelis seem to be making an effort to reduce civilian casualties. We can’t know that they don’t target civilians, eg journalists, on occasion and we don’t know how many civilians they might be prepared to kill to kill one Hamas operative.
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17 minutes ago, CdnFox said:
Ahhh yes - the common left wing tactic - when you have no intelligent response and you've been called out, instead try to downplay what was said and pretend they're "worked up" over nothing.
Kid - I'm sure that kid of cheezy trick just slays them on the elementary school recess playground. Not so much here.
You obviously did not.
But hey - don't get so worked u up about it.
I do.
It's pretty easy. Determine if they had plausable reason to believe they were attacking a military target regardless of the presence of humans, determine if the means of the attack was reasonable given the assets they have on hand at that moment and the nature of the target, and determine if they stopped attacking once the target appeared neutralized.
That's all actually fairly easy to do.
Pretty much.
There is always going to be evidence. "Show me why you thought an enemy general might have been in that hospital". If they can't, then there's a problem. If they had a reason there must be recon, photos, satellite, SOMETHING to say "this is the info we got, this is where it came from and this is why we came to our conclusion.
Wrong question. "what is necessary to take out the target? How many died as a result of doing what was necessary?" - That much.
I think it’s fair to say that minimizing collateral damage is more an art than a science.
What about the simple question on collateral deaths: what is the maximum number for one target? I have no idea.
In terms of evidence, I think we are getting to a point with AI where it will be very difficult to assess the veracity of same. -
25 minutes ago, CdnFox said:
So you support them attacking our women and children?
Actually that was the frog lake massacre i suppose. Riel was a hero to you I take it? Are you going to say "no, BUT..."
No. Let’s go up, way up and look at the globe through time. What do we see since hom sap appeared? Constant wars. Constant fear and loathing. IMO it’s part of our condition, how we are wired. I know Poles who, fifty years after WWII, would panic when they’d hear German. That’s a reasonable fear to have given what they went through. Unfirtunately, tribalism is part of our birthright. All we can do in each generation is recognize it and try to control it.
I would say that racism is irrational hatred of other groups. We shouldn’t be too PC on this. After all, I’m supposed to be the lefty here. Those who have suffered at the hands of other groups may have a reasonable dislike of them.
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15 minutes ago, CdnFox said:
You completely obscure the 'clarity' the moment you say 'but'.
I think they're guilty... BUUUUT,,,,,
In english "but" is the word used in that situation to mitigate or nullify what came before.
For example - I want to go exercise 'but' it's raining, Vs "it's raining BUT i want to go exercise. Same words - but the first means you're not going becuase and the second means you are going anyway.
So saying it and following with a 'but' is meaingless. Period. It's what people do to PRETEND they're condemning something.
So yes - you CAN be MUCH more clear - Condemn them, period. Don't condemn them and add a 'but'.
If that's all you spent your career doing, you wasted your life and your opinion here is worthless
You SHOULD have been looking at them and saying 'how did this happen. What lead to this. Who is responsible and how do we stop it happening again".
It's a same that's not how you spent your career.
I spent my career looking at exactly that kind of thing for all kinds of situations. The cause here is easy to identify. A terrorist gov't group that refuses any discussion of peace and a population that backs them.
Don't like dead bodies? Then that's the two things you need to permanently sort out.
What a silly post. Why do you get yourself so worked up? You’re going to burst something at this rate. Of course I did all that. Let’s talk about something less abstruse - intent. I don’t know the answers to these questions BTW. How do we determine that the intent of a party in a war is to keep civilian casualties to an absolute minimum? Is there a rigorous mathematical model we can apply to test this hypothesis or do we end up having to take a country’s word for it? And what is the maximum ‘collateral damage’ (what a grotesque euphemism, ie civilian injuries and deaths) that is justified to kill one ‘legitimate target’?
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33 minutes ago, CdnFox said:
First off - you can't say "but" and still mean the first part of the sentance. Either you condemn what they did or you don't, there's no "but".' There's no excuse and there's no mitigation.
As to the second part -it's not a question of how they look. It's a question of why they look that way.
For the israeli babies they look that way because Hamas decided to launch an unprovoked attack on civilians specifically with the intent of killing them and making them look that way.
In the case of the palestinian babies THEY look that way because Hamas decided to launch an unprovoked attack on israel knowing israel would have to declare war and then surrounded themselves with those babies as human meat shields.
Do you see the common factor here?
ALL of the deaths are a direct result of hamas's actions. Hamas who to this very minute is firing rockets at israel trying to kill civilians.
And there's no butts about it
I have condemned Hamas for starting this war. I don’t think I can be clearer on that aspect.
As somebody who spent a career looking at dead bodies, I am merely struck by their broadly similar appearance after massive trauma. Dismemberment has a common look.
Another question is the assessment of intent: how does one do it? If a govt says it seeks to minimize collateral casualties, can we really test that hypothesis? In other words is it a scientific, falsifiable statement or something less than that? It’s a complex retrospective business and I’m not sure it can be done.
Should Hamas support rallies in Canada be stopped?
in Federal Politics in Canada
Posted · Edited by SpankyMcFarland
Together, Palestinians and Israelis constitute 0.2% of the world’s population but have taken up a lot more global attention than that over the last 70 years. It’s high time they got serious about sorting out their problems and agreeing how to divide up the land they share.