Israeli–Palestinian conflict

[David]

[David]

[What'sinaname]

[David]

[pietillidie]

^And in any case, no one knows 'what's going on in the world' except by way of self-delusion. There are 8 billion people, nearly 200 countries and thousands of languages. The throwaway admonition to 'know what's going on in the world' is absurd if taken literally.

That's why we encourage specialisation on the one hand, and general frameworks for approaching new topics on the other. The greatest skill by a country mile is the ability to know where to look for information, how to organise it, and how to rate its reliability, including who to listen to on what subjects.

I don't have much to say on South Korea, despite knowing more about the country than most people on the planet, because even one additional country beyond the Anglosphere is a challenge. Even sub-groups and diverse experiences in one's own country are impenetrable.

Duning-Kruger is so incredibly descriptive of just how much delusion sustains us.

The clearest mark of insight by miles is having a realistic sense of the vastness of everything one doesn’t know, or doesn't know well enough to have a strong opinion on. The best we can usually do is master good ways of taxonomising, comparing and contrasting, and engaging new information and experiences.

[stui magpie]

b) Israel and the US immediately supply massive humanitarian aid and rebuild all the infrastructure they have destroyed in Gaza, to allow the Palestinian population to return to their homes and live in decent quality accommodation with access to all essential social facilities. The rebuilding program will be so massive that in the immediate term there will be full employment in Gaza.

In a place that had over 40% unemployment in mid 2023? How many unskilled laborers do you reckon they'd need? And what happens when your rebuild is finished and they all get layed off? Back to being unemployed and living in (basically) a large public housing block raising bitter generations of future unemployed.

[What'sinaname]

^And in any case, no one knows 'what's going on in the world' except by way of self-delusion. There are 8 billion people, nearly 200 countries and thousands of languages. The throwaway admonition to 'know what's going on in the world' is absurd if taken literally.

That's why we encourage specialisation on the one hand, and general frameworks for approaching new topics on the other. The greatest skill by a country mile is the ability to know where to look for information, how to organise it, and how to rate its reliability, including who to listen to on what subjects.

I don't have much to say on South Korea, despite knowing more about the country than most people on the planet, because even one additional country beyond the Anglosphere is a challenge. Even sub-groups and diverse experiences in one's own country are impenetrable.

Duning-Kruger is so incredibly descriptive of just how much delusion sustains us.

The clearest mark of insight by miles is having a realistic sense of the vastness of everything one doesn’t know, or doesn't know well enough to have a strong opinion on. The best we can usually do is master good ways of taxonomising, comparing and contrasting, and engaging new information and experiences.

So why did you take it literally?

[pietillidie]

^Sorry, but you attempted to dismiss people's engagement with the topic with a ridiculous Facebook-level quip, not me. Take responsibility for your own nonsense.

[Magpietothemax]

Meanwhile, 15 Palestinian children have died from starvation/dehydration, and Israel has again attacked a crowd of starving Palestinians seeking aid, killing dozens.
Capitalist governments stand by and watch as Israel re-enacts the modus operandi of the Nazis.

[Magpietothemax]

Back to being unemployed and living in (basically) a large public housing block raising bitter generations of future unemployed.

Do you even know why Gaza has been poverty stricken for decades? First, when Israel was first created, it carried out ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian population native to the area, who fled to Gaza, dispossessed of everything they once owned.
Virtually ever since, Gaza has been under a draconian economic blockade by Israel, and an ongoing military seige.
Now and again, the IDF would make incursions. smaller and larger, into Gaza and randomly murder individuals. At other times, it was a full scale military onslaught. Gaza was impoverished because Israel has strangled it from the very start.
Now you think the most "humane" solution is to "encourage" the migration of Palestinians out of Gaza? Do you think that refugees from Palestine will be given a welcome, and a decent future, by any of the imperialist governments who have stood by and supported Israel's genocide? The EU has just legislated the most racist and savage anti-immigrant policies for decades; France has just legistlated the most brutal, islamophobic, and anti-immigtant legislation that Le Pen herself applauded. Egypt does not want any Palestinian presence anywhere within its borders, as it regards that as as security threat. Where will the Palestinians actually go?? Which country will spend millions on assisting them when governments everywhere are imposing drastic spending cuts?
The proposal for the people of Gaza to leave Gaza and "find a life elsewhere" is not humane - it is condemning them to a life of poverty, misery and no future whatsoever. It is part of the entire perspective of ethnic cleansing.

[stui magpie]

^

Yes dear Fly back to your coop.

[Magpietothemax]

I take that to mean you can't answer the argument. You didn't disappoint me, as usual.

[pietillidie]

^It's plainly not what he meant. Have some commonsense, FFS. Thinking out loud and brainstorming ideas are very different exercises to making an ideological pronouncement.

Something David and I have always agreed upon is the dialectic between the axiomatic and utilitarian. Your Marxian approach is over-bound to dubious axioms, from which you build an edifice of cliches and signals to which you cling. But all such axiomata are fragile, particularly when the space you're trying to grasp is ridiculously complicated. So, you have to doubt those axioms and explore utility because utilitarian gains always beat delusional axiomata. You can push and explore your edifice, but it's insane to keep banging your head needlessly against the wall once you recognise it's dissociation from the world as it is.

We pursue axiomata because simple logics make everything easier and more robust, so yes, hoping to find a simple logic is our first port of call. But you don't even have strong axiomata; and why would you when you're engaging the dynamic, remote, cross-border psychosocial information system in which you're embedded?

This is why I keep saying: go and finish the process by following through with the poststructuralist critique of Marxian theory. It grew out of and rejected Marxian structuralist thought for very good reason. Are you scared of offending the Marxian gods by questioning them?

If you did that, you'd take far more time to observe context, including the person speaking and what they're doing. Stui is not trying to disenfranchise Palestinians, and not even accidentally doing so as you absurdly claim. You're like the abusive religionist who tells people that even thinking about acts you deem sinful will see them burn in hell. Sorry, but that's textbook fundamentalism, with all it implies.

[David]

My problem with all that is that we’re in the process of an outrageous and horrifying mass crime, being committed with the aid of our government and allies, and it kind of seems like you’re scolding another poster for merely describing what’s happening in terms that reflect the event’s extreme qualities.

I’m not actually sure that now is the time for nuance or dispassionate observations or seeing shades of grey. We should be furious. Maybe there’s something badly wrong if we’re not. And I don’t believe we’re let off the hook by merely not being on the same side as the war’s cheerleaders, or by acknowledging that Netanyahu’s a murderous crook, or by feeling sad about the deaths of Palestinian children. That’s just fence-sitting.

This has all been a totally conscious decision from an entire political apparatus leading towards a preordained outcome. None of this is unfortunate or unexpected. None of this is collateral damage. The goal was to lay waste to Gaza, and to destroy the homes, livelihoods and hope for the future of two million people. That’s in the process of being achieved, and there’s a well-established term to describe what that’s called. Doesn’t that raise a pulse?

[pietillidie]

^I'm replying to his/her accusation against Stui, which has nothing to do with the consensus on Israel's egregious behaviour. Nothing at all whatsoever.

Be as angry as you like - I am to the point of feeling ill over it - but don't start misinterpeting every single thing you hear as support of ethnic cleansing, FFS. Like that's going to help anyone.

The bizarre thing here is you have a hopelessly low-resolution deterministic system theory (Marxianism) jumping lanes as if someone's local throwaway brainstorming is deterministic.

I don't even think Biden can do any more than he's doing given US political reality, hence explained in earlier posts that far from 'controlling' everything, the US is now actually snookered on all kinds of things.

It's a bit like Trump; he's deranged, but half the damned country supports him, and so he ploughs on. We try things and test ideas to persuade people, but we all know you can easily penetrate cults, and they inevitably end in a mess.

The assumption that you always control mass systems beyond each of us and in these case even single nations is idiotic. In fact, if you look at the history of Marxian thought, its own frustrations have led it to leap across the tracks into an oppressive paranoia at regular intervals, turning every 'impure' thought into a scapegoat to be set upon because it drives itself psychiatrically mad.

That's what happens in fundamentalism; the contradictions eventually cause people's heads to explode, which is ironic in this case for an ideology that keeps harping on about 'capitalism's contradictions'. It drives bat-eared fundamentalists mad that there's actually no one to blame when their entire raison d'etre is the need for control, hence demonisation is the actual next phase it awaits.

And another curious point. We all think Israel ought to have been doing the right thing well in advance of this, trying to ready for a productive solution. Well, I think the very same when it comes to social action. You can't regurgitate nonsense like vague Marxian generality; the time now is to resolve the poststructuralist critique, which while right on many things has left us flailing.