Moonbox

There are numerous fighter manufacturers in the US. The US military makes them compete for the best design. Once the best design is determined and you start production, that's the end of the competition. We're not talking about bartering for goats or anything here. We're talking about aircraft that take 10+ years to develop and will be in service for 30+ years. Your suspicion is pretty dumb then. The manufacturers live and die on the goodwill of the US military and its administration and any move like that would be like biting the hand that feeds you. The F-35 itself largely based on F-22 design anyways. As for all the eggs in one basket, it's called economies of scale. If you can get one fighter to do the job of 4 different designs, you save ass tons of money. Why don't you leave that up to the science geniuses who designed the plane and the years of testing they do on it?

Agreed. As soon as I see 'Zionist' or anti-Semitic labels get tossed around, the strength of any argument the speaker makes erodes into nothing. I know we don't generally agree on anything related to Israel Myata, but there ya have it...

As I said, if you deny it's happened I'd be happy to provide CENTURIES of examples. You can continue to close your eyes, plug your ears and scream loudly, but that doesn't mean it's not true. It's not like anyone would be in a worse position than before is it?? So why not try? With a signed treaty in hand, the Arab League would be able to literally FLAY the Israelis on moral grounds if the Israelis broke it. Only their own stupidity thus far has prevented Israel's enemies from embarrassing it into a settlement. Negotiations are pretty much never done from an equal position. Perhaps a little extra time in the real world will reveal that to you. My god man. Think about it. If the negotiations are seeking assurances that the hostilities you list above are ended, how can ending them be PRE requisites of the negotiations???? It doesn't even make sense. You can't have the objectives of the negotiations be the pre-requisites for the negotiations. That's the most bizarre logic I've ever seen here. That's not even something I can argue with. You're operating an a completely different magical plane of thinking.... No I would simply insist that if the other side wants Israel to stop the landgrab and return occupied lands, they'd have to negotiate with Israel a set of conditions upon which Israel would agree to do exactly that. It's not rocket science here man. The fact that the Arab League is willing to offer a peace proposal (a bad one but whatever) WHILE Israel continues its landgrab should stand as proof that the process CAN happen during ongoing hostilities.

Yeah I can see that working. If the Arab League proposed (and could enforce) something like this (without all the other conditions they've previously discussed) I'd be disappointed if the Israelis didn't accept it.

Clearly your advice isn't worth anything then because, like I already said, it's been done for thousands of years successfully all over the world. Hostile negotiations occur under the assumption that a signed treaty would be respected and witnessed by the whole world. The best part is that, particularly on the Arab side, they'd be giving up nothing but words. If Israel broke any treaty, it would be witnessed by all and Arab militants could denounce any concessions they made on the grounds of treaty violations, and go right back to launching rockets and threats. Capitulation generally involves terms imposed on the losing side and is associated with a surrender. The Arab side isn't surrendering. Negotiating often means both sides don't get everything they want. I didn't have an earlier interpretation. You made a claim and still haven't been able to reference it. Show us where the international community has indicated the pre-reqs for negotiation.

Unless you didn't type properly it almost seems like you said both sides are in the wrong and both sides perpetrate hostilities, in which case you're right and also we may be making progress here. Absolutely. Especially when we're not merely talking about 'words', but rather threats of violence from people and groups who have loooong history of ACTING on them. A respectable court of law would also punish an offender for those 'words' the same way it would for deprivation of property, since you cling so hard to 'law' in your arguments. International law has been your crutch all throughout this argument, but we all know how impotent and largely irrelevant it is. Keep clinging to it if you like, but since it won't be applied or enforced (on either side), it's pretty pointless. Yes. You absolutely can negotiate amidst hostilities. Most conflicts throughout history have been resolved in such a way. We have hundreds of years of history to show it can work. A lot of these peace settlements, in fact, were largely inequitable. The whole point of a negotiation is that both sides get something they want and end up (hopefully) better off than when they started. Fair enough, but read the terms of the proposal carefully and hopefully you'll see why they're simply impossible. The fact that it's non-negotiable according to the Arab League leaves some serious questions as to the intention of the proposal and in what sort of faith it was made. Wrong. If I have to I could probably go over hundreds of years of history throughout which what you say is impossible happened on a regular basis. Oh? Let's go over this again... That's exactly what you said. I asked for a citation of that and you just gave me a list of hundreds of UN resolutions. I'll even let you go on the 'illegal practice' part but I need to see a reference from you still on what the conditions are for serious peace talks, because I really think you're out to lunch there.

The Israeli government dictates the policies of its military and it controls its militants. The Palestinians do not, nor do they control what its neighbours policies are. It's not a justification as much as it highlights how silly the other side's proclamations are. That's what groups like Hamas and Iran say they intend to do. Unfortunately they're unable to do it. Imagine if Israel actually had the same intentions. I'm simply saying that having your intentions thwarted at every turn does not give you the moral high ground as you seem to assume. What is anyone going to do about it? Aside from trying to mediate, nobody is going to do anything. Like most conflicts going on right now in the world, the UN etc will stand back and watch. Well there's an idea now. Yes. If both sides would come to the table and make concessions we'd be in a lot better shape. Unilateral demands and/or peace proposals, however, aren't going to work. Well I think the last option is best. All we can do is mediate, however, because arbitration and enforcement are not really options. The Arab League killed the proposal before it even had a chance. There have been plenty of responses from the Israeli side. Ehud Olmert (former Prime Minister) acknowledged it and invited the Arab League to discuss it further. Unfortunately, those 'contentious issues' we're talking about were non-negotiable. The Arab League has indicated that the proposal must be accepted before any further dialogue takes place. It wasn't a serious peace proposal. It was an ultimatum disguised as a peace proposal and was pure publicity. Okay. Let's list the facts: 1. Both sides are hostile to the other. Neither side is innocent. 2. Nobody is willing (or able) to take serious action to stop the conflict for all sorts of reasons Any discussion from there is going to have to take those two 'facts' into account and that both sides are going to have to NEGOTIATE. Otherwise they'll keep doing whatever they please and nobody is going to stop them. If one side refuses to negotiate, regardless of who it is, the whole thing is a non-starter. Oh no you don't champ. That's not the reference I was asking for. You specifically stated that the the majority of the world has indicated that prior to ANY negotiation taking place, Israel must withdraw from occupied lands. You said it. I want to see the reference for it. Otherwise you're talking out of your butt, making things up and flat out lying. Recognition of Israeli rights to occupy the land have NOTHING to do with the pre-reqs for negotiation.

It is morally bankrupt. It picks and chooses which conflicts to pay attention to and generally does nothing even when no veto is used. Fact is the VAST majority of humanitarian crises have seen the UN turn a blind eye with or without a veto.

What are you even talking about? Are you proposing that if the US wasn't there the other members of the UN would take action in Sudan? Would they intervene in Congo etc? Would they enforce peace in Sri Lanka and Indonesia? Simply put, they wouldn't bother/try. The UN is both toothless and spineless and it has proved it time and time again over decades. The same stands for international law. The truth is that Israel and Palestinian violations are small potatoes compared to many other parts of the world.

Jack demans and carries on about lots of things. Most of us learned to ignore everything he says a loooooong time ago.

Same goes for both sides. You can't promise and proclaim death and destruction against the other side for 50 years without letting up and appear interested in peace. Please stop dodging and hiding behind childish and irrelevant technicalities. What evidence do I need to provide of Israel's restraint other than the fact that Israel (being the overwhelmingly superior military power in the region) has not left Palestine, Syria, Jordan etc in a smoking ruin or annexed those regions into its territory and imposed Jewish (rather than Islamic) law on the whole region? That's what Israel's enemies have indicated they're going to eventually do to it. They've already tried several times in fact. You seem to really be having problems with this concept...so I'll explain it again for the 12th time. Arab attacks against Israel are responded to harshly. It's a 'fact' that every Arab attack against Israel results in the Arab side getting its ass handed back to it. The lack of violence by Arab militants is more due to an inability to effectively commit it, combined with a strong sense of fear, rather than any restraint on their part. Both Arab intentions made clear by they themselves, and about 50 years of factual history, support this assertion. I'm not claiming to defend the Israeli settlement expansion. Again, for the 12th time, I'll make it clear. The settlement expansion is not promoting peace. It's clearly doing the opposite. What I'm merely saying is that Israel probably sees little reason to stop it or make concessions to people who've over the last 50 years invaded their country, as well as promised and delivered violence against them. We're talking about two different things here. You poo-pooed the fact that Israelis live in fear and I asked if they should ignore threats made against them? Should they not take those threats seriously given that history supports the likelihood of their Arab neighbours to ACT on those threats? Should not the international community ALSO take those threats seriously? Stop bringing up the settlement expansion for god's sake. I've acknowledged it. I don't think it's right either. I simply can't think of a compelling reason for them to stop aside from it being the 'right' thing to do. If that's going to be the basis of our argument, however, and we're going to get into morality and the west taking meaningful action to uphold human rights etc, you'd also have to consider the fact that the majority of the Middle East is a cesspool of violations and taking action against Israel alone would be pretty blazen hypocrisy. The Arab peace proposal was poison-pilled from the beginning. As already mentioned, the unilateral demands from the Arab League in regards to refugee settlements dating back to 1949 were a joke. Read the entire proposal, and if you still think it was a proposal made in good faith I'd be happy to go over it with you point for point and shed some light on it. They knew from the beginning that it wouldn't be accepted and they offered it anyways for publicity's sake. Actually, no, I don't acknowledge the relevance of international law. Since it's enforced selectively and only when convenient, it's morally bankrupt. If, however, you insist on using it as a crutch for your argument, I'll happily show you how even legally you're arguing on pretty wobbly ground. To answer your question, however, uttering threats is a punishable offence with a sentence of up to 5 years in jail. So yes, the Law does address threats, and fairly harshly at that. Even more interesting, however, is the fact that the Law doesn't even care if the party uttering the threats is capable of acting on them. If, for example, a 90 pound girl was threatening to beat the crap out of a 250 pound man, she'd go to jail if she was prosecuted. God forbid she actually TRY to hurt (or kill) the man, howevever, and she ends up on the losing side. In this case the man would have to prove self defense to get off clean and the woman, providing she survives, would still go to jail. Now all of this legal balogna is pretty irrelevant because we've already established the impotence of international law. The principles the legal issues are similar, however. The implications of being surrounded by hostile neighbours calling for your death are real. They cause undo fear, stress, financial burdens and countless other problems, particularly when the threats are being uttered by people prone to act on them. I'm certainly not saying this 'justifies' settlement expansion on the Israeli side, but it clearly does constitute ongoing hostilities from the other side. There's decades of enmity between them and you're never ever going to resolve the conflict by playing the blame game. Nobody said anything about 'rightful' possession. You've just quoted a wikipedia page that lists 100+ UN resolutions and doesn't summarize the majority of them. The burden of proof is on you. Show me where, as you claim, the international community at large has proclaimed that Israel has to withdraw from occupied territories before peace talks can even BEGIN. That was your claim, so back it up.

What do you want to bet nothing comes out of this?

The F-18E is an upgrade, but not really a meaningful one for Canada. It will soon be outclassed by numerous other fighters coming to the market and by the time we replace our current fleet of F-18's it will be getting old itself. The F-35 is SIGNIFICANTLY better in almost all aspects. Also, 130 fighters will cost quite a bit more to service and maintain than 65 --- by billions. Food for thought. Coastal defenses??? We have about 75 years of history now to show that static defenses are pretty much useless. Unfortunately our military and its budget are not large enough for marginal and gradual equipment upgrades to our air force.

Writing books and articles has nothing to do with 'holding' principles. It's a matter of practising what you're preaching. You can preach all you want but unless you practise it's all irrelevant. Nobody's arguing that he's not intelligent. Intelligence, however, doesn't equate to political success. I would say the majority of full-time professors I had at university were social disasters or walking on clouds. Thus far, he's shown very little political skill. Canada's biggest deficits ever should have been a free ride to a majority, or at least a minority, such as what happened in the US and GB. In Canada, however, Ignatieff was able to use the recession to bury himself. Oh god. Please. Wake up. Was Trudeau fiscally responsible? No. He was the biggest spending PM we've ever had and the biggest actual contributor to our national debt. Was Martin? No, he spent and spent and spent as soon as the right united. So of our last 3 Liberal PMs, we had one that was fiscally responsible. The Liberal Party stands for nothing. None of the parties stand for anything really, except for the ones who have no chance of being elected.

Why would you ever want a levitating weapons platform?

The F-22 was too good to be feasible. It was too expensive, too hard to maintain and way ahead of its time.

One of the few instances where I agree with you

There aren't that many alternative options. The Eurofighter, Gripen, Rafale etc are all marginal upgrades and wouldn't provide nearly the same effectiveness nor longevity. The F-35 is the only plane out there that's going to provide a meaningful upgrade that we can use for the next 30+ years.

You're getting exhausted too eh? What about the land annexation and settlement? Really...what about it? It happened. Nobody is denying that. Nobody is saying it's a friendly gesture. The question is what reason do the Israelis have to leave? Please don't bring up international law. Like I said before it's impotent, grossly unfair and selectively enforced/respected. I already addressed this. The militant Arab side has made their intentions very clear. They're not holding back out of respect for peace or anything noble like that. They're prevented and deterred by the looming threat of violent Israeli retaliation. Any violence against Israel is magnified and returned against the militants and where they live. Is Israel to ignore the threats and inflammatory dialogue? Are they to pretend that Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas did NOT indicated they'd never accept peace? I think it's safe to suggest their intentions aren't exactly peaceful. The Arab world is not giving Israel any reason to stop. As far as they're telling Israel, regardless of whether they continue the occupation or withdraw, they're still going to be attacked and threatened. The plan put forth by the Arab League was more an ultimatum than anything. It was a take it or leave it affair. It did not negotiate with Israel on the offer and some of the conditions of it were ludicrous. The proposal itself, however, was at least a step forward in the sense that it entertained the possibility of long lasting peace. Let's look at a few of the problems with it: 1. It was proposed immediately following the Passover Massacre 2. It did not invite Israel to the discussion 3. It demanded settlement of the refugee crisis based on a UN Resolution passed in 1948 which was completely and totally unpalatable to Israel (and the Arab League knew that). 4. Important factions were not factored into account (neither Iran, Hezbollah nor Hamas endorsed it) The refugee issue is a non-starter. Personally I'd be in favour of the plan providing we could account for rogue states/militant groups and they dropped the refugee issue. Withdraw to the 1967 pre-war borders in exchange for formal recognition and official peace agreements. Couldn't we settle on that? Don't be stupid. First off, they're not scared of unarmed civilians. Their scared of suicide bombers, rockets and guerrila attacks. They've a history of enduring these things. Second, they're not being scared into occupying territories. They're doing it because in their eyes they have no reason not to. I'm glad you clarified that for me. Unfortunately for you the law would not respect the difference. In Canada, or anywhere with a legal system worth its name, a threat of violence is indeed a punishable offense. There's a reason for that. It's something to be taken seriously, especially from someone (the militant Arab world for example) that has a history of acting on those threats. No I would merely suggest that they're in control of these lands and that nobody is going to 'force' them to give them up on the laughable grounds of 'international law'. So yes, I would suggest that those lands are therefore theirs to 'give up'. Myata that's such an outrageous and untrue claim I can't believe someone like you would even say that. There need not be ANY conditions for dialogue pertaining to peace and most of the world has most CERTAINLY NOT stated as such. That's patently false and I'd almost suggest you're deliberately misrepresenting facts. Um...yes. Someone definetly can take something and claim it for their own. The validity of the claim can certainly be put to question, but the claim itself is pretty easy to make. If we're going to go down the path of useless and inept simplification, pretend Israel is a parent punishing children for misbehaving. Promise to behave and you can have your toys back. See? We can both dumb an argument down. I can't help it. Your claims of objectivity are something I'd expect from a clown...except clowns aren't even funny so...hmmm Threatening is an action in and of itself. The fact that the ones doing the threatening are impotent to fulfil them does not in any way mean the threats are meaningless. You've decided they are, but you're among the loonie in that department, because most courts of law certainly wouldn't turn a blind eye. Here's a final question I'll leave you with. What if Israel and the Islamic world came together and came up with an agreement where, if Israel withdrew to 1967 borders, and the Middle East agreed to recognize, coexist and declare permanent peace with them, we'd have a situation where both parties could reasonably benefit and be satisfied with? If Israel refused an offer such as this Myata, I'd jump on your bandwagon in an instant. It hasn't been offered yet, however, and as long as both sides refuse to acknowledge that they both need to make concessions nobody is going to get anywhere.

No the Gripen cannot be upgraded 'however a country likes'. It can be customized to some extent, but it can't be customized to avoid radar detection like the F-35, nor can it be customized to perform 4 times better than Canada's existing fighter fleet. The Gripen isn't even an option for us to 'upgrade' to. It would be like upgrading from a 2007 Toyota Corolla to a 2010 Honda Civic. It would be a pointless and expensive marginal upgrade that would leave us in the same situation as we're in now within the next 10-15 years.

Actually, I've read a fair bit about the Gripen. It's a good plane, by 4th generation fighter standards. In mock dogfights with Norwiegan F-16's, it was found to come out on top most of the time . I don't know how pumped I am about spending billions for a marginal upgrade Upgrading from the F-18 to the Gripen would be dumber than not upgrading at all in my opinion. The F-35 makes it look like garbage and is better suited to the role we're intending anyways.

Which may be the sad reality.

How about you read back on this thread and any other Myata has participated in regarding Israel. I don't need to link it. It's all here. He's been providing one side of the story only. He's also denying it. I'm not denying that I've been on the other side. Oh I get it. We're going to play grade 4 now. I'll argue with Myata. At least he'll try and make a point. With you it's a waste of time.

Yeah the Arab side never starts anything. Wait...there was the second Intifada wasn't there? What was that Israeli sergeants name that got bombed right after Arafat walked out on the talks at Camp David?

Myata's position has been no less objective than my own. He's focused purely and exclusively on the Israeli side of the conflict and ignored and discounted everything the other side has done to escalate and perpetuate the conflict. His parameters have LITERALLY been: Israel has to withdraw from all of its occupied territory and withdraw hundreds of thousands of settlers in an effort to appease hostiles who've indicated OFFICIALLY they will NEVER accept peace with the Israel. In return they should expect nothing, but HOPE that militant Arabs around the world will talk to them about peace..which again they've already made clear they won't. Hmmmm....