I really don't care about the ethnic make-up or the future of Israel as a country.
You should. If Israel fails, Israelis will flee and settle in your country. I presume you are not very fond of Jews and are not eager to welcome Jewish refugees.
Israel doesn't seem to mind taking American money from non-Jews
Some Israelis do mind a lot.
so why would the would-be settlers need to be converts?
Because it would nullify the whole point of Israel (national home and place of refuge for Jews)
No, I think limiting the offers to people within a certain measure of competence would do roughly the same job. There are also plenty of low-quality White people that they probably would not want on their side.
People with "measure of competence" (living in developed countries OFC) have more options and opportunities than ever before. What could Israel offer them? Why would competent person want to live in trailer in the desert among people who really do not want him there?
Anyway, Israel is not lacking people with guns, Israel is not afraid of being overrun by mighty Arab armies.
Israel is afraid of being declared racist, fascist and white supremacist country and sanctioned like old South Africa. To avoid this, Israel needs to gain hearts and minds of people (elite human capital OFC, the masses will follow) in the Western countries and needs advocates, propagandists and tiktok influencers.
edit: more links added
Eetan
1yr ago
Let these Israelis figure out a way to survive without begging, without running intense propaganda campaigns on Westerners. Get creative for once. Idk, offer some training, weapons and land to disillusioned Western youth similarly to ISIS?
It is happening. The dirty secret is that many West Bank settlers are people with minimal Jewish ancestry or just plain converts, often from unexpected places.
It is not official policy, but you want to make it one, you want Israeli government official outreach program to promote and evangelize Judaism and offer Israeli citizenship (with free sand and rock) to prospective converts?
Program racially limited to whites (I presume that by "Western" you mean White) to avoid recruits like this?
Well, if you want to make Middle Eastern situation more heated and volatile, this will work.
Eetan
1yr ago
What did you learn from leaked documents?
So many interesting topics here, let me start with this year's Teixeira leaks.
Yes, they are genuine, they are work of lone national air guardsman who just wanted to show off and boast to his anon friends on "Thug Shaker Central" discord channel. Not unique at all, many such cases when people posted classified documents on the net just for lulz.
Before summer, there was slight chance that Teixeira is sacrificial pawn/does not exist and the leaks are modern day Operation Mincemeat meant to disguise Ukrainian strength before mighty summer offensive smashes the front lines.
They show that Ukraine is black hole. Money, equipment and supplies come in, nothing comes out. Pentagon has no independent sources of informations from Ukraine and fully relies on Ukrainian official data (and Oryx).
Pentagon is aware of it, but could do nothing about it.
The document summarizes Russian and Ukrainian equipment and human losses, at what the intelligence community refers to with "moderate" confidence. "We have low confidence in Russian (RUS) and Ukrainian (UKR) attrition rates and inventories because of information gaps," the document says, not only questioning Russia's numbers but also "potential bias in UKR [Ukraine] information sharing."
TL;DR: Ukraine is not American puppet, Ukraine is not animal that you feed and it obeys you and performs tricks for you, it is animal that eats your food and in exchange it does what it wants.
Ukraine is not American dog, Ukraine is American cat.
Eetan
1yr ago
Utilitarianism in war : what are some under-explored tools of war that are effective but dismissed out of hand due to bad optics ?
Monetary incentives, as proposed both by rootless cosmopolitan Bryan Caplan and Tatar patriot Kamil Galeev.
Bribery as weapon of war - not secret offers to enemy generals as in Iraq but public offer of cash for enemy soldiers en masse is super weapon exactly tailored to strength of Western US+NATO bloc. US dollar is still the king, despite printing press going into overdrive, everyone knows what dollars are and everyone wants them. The printing press is American true superpower, why not use it?
Of course, paying enemies to surrender would be extremely unpopular among your own troops - this plan must be compounded with even more generous reward for bringing live POW's. The dirty secret of war is that most killing of POW's happens not because of sadism, hatred and revenge, but just because soldiers cannot/do not want to guard and care for the prisoners and have no incentive to keep them alive.
Had something like it been ever tried? Check Operation Moolah.
On March 20, 1953, the Joint Chiefs of Staff approved the plan. The approved operation was forwarded on April 1, 1953, to the Joint Psychological Committee at FEAF in Tokyo, Japan, where it was staffed, approved, and advanced to Clark. He dubbed the plan Operation Moolah. The plan offered $50,000 to any pilot who flew a fully mission capable MiG-15 to South Korea. The first pilot to defect would be awarded an additional $50,000. The plan also included complete political asylum, resettlement in a non-Communist country, and anonymity if desired.
What was the impact on enemy activity?
According to General Clark, immediately after the drop of the leaflets on April 26, UN aircraft did not make visual contact with any MiG aircraft for the following eight days. Though weather may have been a factor, he opines that the leaflets had a direct effect and believes that senior Communist military leaders began to screen for politically unreliable pilots.
But not everyone was happy.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower did not support Operation Moolah. He thought it unethical to offer money to a defector and was concerned about the North Korean reaction to the defection due to the uneasy armistice agreement.
As all professional ethicists will tell you, it is much more ethical to kill people than pay them.
This plan would never come to fruition, because it is as extremely dishonorable as it is extremely rational, utilitarian and effectively altruistic. No surprise - we do not live on dath-ilan, we live on planet of the apes. Conduct yourself accordingly.
Assuming a nonviolent event
It depends. Would painting rats in Palestine colors count as "violent"?
(if it was deep cover Mossad team in action, well done, mission accomplished)
edit: link
Eetan
1yr ago
It doesn't confirm materialism and rationalism are correct, only that the fact the Creator is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent. He can be two, but not all three.
Triple-omni God is construct of Greek philosophy and explicitly unbiblical idea.
No idea why Christians decided to adopt it as cornerstone of their theology.
Could be that the tide is turning in favor of russia.
We do not know.
We (for value of "we" consisting of open source users) can have good idea about Russian overall strength and losses, because Russia is decrepit gangster shithole open and free society that is incapable of keeping secrets and leakes info like sieve.
In contrast, Ukraine is black hole, fully proficient in OPSEC. Very little info comes out, as Teixeira leaks show, even Pentagon relies on official Ukrainian (and Oryx) data in their analysis.
Whatever you say about SBU, they know their work, they are true heirs of Cheka, NKVD and KGB, they deserve the Dzerzhinsky statue kept by Petrov and Boshirov clown team.
edit: link
Eetan
1yr ago
"Tide of public opinion" was creation of mass media that decided in Feb 2022 to play up this war as much as possible (instead of ignoring it like, for example, contemporary war in Ethiopia)
We can imagine alternate world where, on February 24, newspapers of record dedicated front pages to latest controversy about drag queens and somewhere on corner of page six was report:
KIEV: Today, Russian forces crossed border of Ukraine in territory disputed between Russia and Ukraine.
Situation is unclear, some local sources report about fights between Russian army and Ukrainian militias.
Russian government says it is involved in limited operation against Jewish Nazi Satanist homosexual terrorists based in disputed territory, and claims it holds no aggressive intent against Ukraine.
Ukrainian government denies presence of Jewish Nazi Satanist homosexual terrorists on Ukraine soil and denounces Russian actions as aggression against Ukraine.
World leaders call for cease-fire and negotiations between all involved parties.
In this world, only people who would be watching Ukraine would be people with relatives in the area and OSINT/war fans, "public opinion" would have different concerns.
Eetan
1yr ago
Edit: It literally happened again in Total War Warhammer 3. The creator is (justifiably) mad at the game dev, but they've decided to express that by halting work on their mods and even promising to take them down soon. At least they're letting others continue their work.
I stand corrected, it is possible that several major OSINT accounts just burned out and decided to shut it down at the same time.
Eetan
1yr ago
It's a legal phrase that means that the schools have broader authority and act in place of the parents since the parents aren't there.
This means no authority at all, students over 18 are adults and their parents have no longer any (legal) power over them.
Eetan
1yr ago
In another related dead bird news, Vivek goes into full Hindu Zionist mode.
2000's Onion satire again becomes 2020's reality.
Now is the moment for Israel to return to its founding premise: the Jewish State has an absolute right to exist. A Divine gift, gifted to a Divine nation, charged with a Divine purpose.
Very strange for professing Hindu to say.
Yes, technically, all life has a divine soul and divine essence, but we know Vivek does not wanted to say it, we know he wanted to say: "Hello my fellow Evangelicals, I am one of you! Vote for me!"
And, judging from bird site, it does not work. Every Vivek's tweet talking about God is followed by numerous Christians posting pics of many armed Hindu deities and asking "What God, Vivek? WHAT GOD?"
Eetan
1yr ago
One general observation, not directly connected to middle eastern affairs, but not entirely unconnected.
Big Twitter OSINT accounts watching Ukraine war are being deleted, one by one. Including the big one, the master of the lists, Oryx.
The reason given (if any is given) is that they are "too tired", that they are dirt poor and their work will not make them any money, that Pentagon and CIA keep profiting from their effort - and it is more threadbare than "dog ate my homework" excuse from your school days.
These people claimed to be hobbyists, observing wars in Syria and Ukraine just from pure interest and rejected with contempt any suspicions that they are something else, that they are somewhat connected to US/NATO military and three letter organization.
Not implausible in itself - bird watchers and train spotters dedicate their lives to their passion without being paid by Big Bird or Big Rail, and war can be nearly as interesting and fascinating.
Except that hobbyist will not destroy his life work in a fit of pique. You will not see rail fan threatening to smash his model trains and throw away his collections if railroad company does not pay him, and then following on his threat. But you will easily see paid employee closing down his office and shredding his archives when his rail branch is closed and he is reassigned to other work elsewhere.
So what to expect? If the dead bird site is true reality and material world just follows what happens there, we can expect that the whole Ukraine affair is going to wind down, all the way to (official or unofficial) cease fire, and all "happenings" will be once again happening in the Middle East.
Eetan
1yr ago
What's going on in the West Bank right now? I haven't seen much coverage of it.
Settlers going on rampage - destroying crops, burning houses, evicting whole Palestinian villages at gunpoint (yes, unlike Israelis in Israel proper, these hilltop guys are heavily armed and unlike Gaza, Palestinians in West Bank are thoroughly disarmed).
Lots of coverage, but you have to dig up into Arabic sources to find it.
Eetan
1yr ago
The more interesting question is why isn’t there a conservative Wikipedia?
There is! More precisely, there are two.
Normie boomer conservative Conservapedia that began as creationist intelligent design project during the noughties and Infogalactic, alt right flagship project by Vox Day.
Why you never heard about them, you are asking? Because they are not Wikipedia. Everyone uses Wikipedia because everyone uses Wikipedia, because Wikipedia link comes first in every search. Even if Elon started heavily shilling one of these sites, I cannot see how he could singlehandedly change it.
Eetan
1yr ago
Damn. Possibly the least interesting thing that could've come out of there, as far as I'm concerned.
Well, there is hope (or wishful thinking) that the scrolls were only small part of villa library, that they were special Epicurean collection most valued by the owner (the scrolls were not on shelves, they were packed in chests, ready to be carted away).
Alternatively, they were possessions of previous owner inherited by new owner, who was not interested in Epicureanism, put them off shelves into storage space and forgot about them.
Well off and cultured Romans would own more books. Villa owner was one of 1% of 1% of Roman Empire and definitely was a man of culture.
Its luxury is shown by its exquisite architecture and by the large number of outstanding works of art discovered, including frescoes, bronzes and marble sculpture which constitute the largest collection of Greek and Roman sculptures ever discovered in a single context.
Such house would be expected to have two large symmetrical libraries, one Greek and one Latin containing classical works of the respective literature.
More details and sources in Reddit thread
Eetan
1yr ago
The idea that Netanyahu doesn't prioritize his career above all things is as implausible
Is Bibi really in control, does he really have any power?
Everyone here knows gentile conspiracy theories claiming that everything and everyone are controlled by Freemasons, Illuminati and lizard people, who are in turn controlled by (((you know who))).
Let me now enlighten this thread a little bit and present here authentically Jewish Pizzagate tier conspiracy theory well known in Israel.
Netanyahu is controlled by ... his wife Sara.
Video alleges contract between PM, wife gives her veto over Mossad, IDF chiefs
A video making waves on social media in recent days claims that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara have a legal contract between them that gives her sweeping control over core aspects of Israel’s national affairs. This includes provisions for her to sit-in at top-secret meetings and to sign off on appointments of the heads of the Mossad intelligence agency, Shin Bet domestic security service, and the Israeli military.
According to Arzi, the contract also includes the prime minister promising that any trip with an overnight stay will include his wife.
“She can take part in all the most secret meetings, even though she does not have security clearance. That jumped out at me,” Arzi says in the video, part of an interview in Hebrew with journalist Dan Raviv.
“She authorizes the following appointments, the head of the Mossad, the head of the Shin Bet and the IDF chief of staff. And that is in writing, she has to give the authorization in writing, if not, it is a violation of the contract,” he said, adding that “violation would mean he forfeits all their property to her.”
The alleged contract further makes various stipulations that give Sara major control over the couple’s finances.
Notice that Sara is not looking very Jewish.
Trust the plan.
Eetan
1yr ago
No good news are coming from anywhere, whether from culture wars or the real ones. As fitting for Friday the 13th.
Except one thing that is large, and good.
First word discovered in unopened Herculaneum scroll by 21yo computer science student
For ancient history nerds, this is big, really big. Imagine how will space nerds feel if/when Elon delivers what he promised and gets his Starship to the orbit. This big.
So what is the hype about?
Ancient books were in form of scrolls made of papyrus that had to be constantly rolled and unrolled in order to be read. This was hard on the material, and ancient books had limited shelf time(pun intended).
Ancient libraries needed constant recopying of books to stay functional, and this was laborious and expensive (no need to blame Christians or Muslims for destruction of ancient literature, ordinary daily wear and tear would be sufficient). No surprise that new revolutionary technology of bound book took the world by storm.
All ancient libraries are long gone - except one, found in Herculaneum under 100 feet of volcanic ash. And not ordinary library, but library of wealthy Roman, owner of one of most luxurious villas known from the Roman Empire.
You can visit modern replica in California.
Nearly two thousands of ancient scrolls, unfortunately they now looked like this.
For 250 years, ancient history nerds didn't gave up and tried to find ways to read the scrolls. Mostly destructive ways
Since their discovery, previous attempts used rose water, liquid mercury, vegetable gas, sulfuric compounds, papyrus juice, or a mixture of ethanol, glycerin, and warm water, in hopes to make scrolls readable.
but they sometimes worked.
By the middle of the 20th century, only 585 rolls or fragments had been completely unrolled, and 209 unrolled in part. Of the unrolled papyri, about 200 had been deciphered and published, and about 150 only deciphered.
Now we can finally do better. So what can we hope for?
Do not expect lost masterpieces of classical literature.
Owner of the library was single mindedly dedicated to philosophy, particularly Epicurean philosophy. Expect more writings by Philodemus of Gadara, Zeno of Sidon and Epicurus himself.
Epicureans, these pig ignorant fedora atheists whose teachings can appeal only to the worst degenerates, as Stoics, Jews and Christians said (and as their major competitors, they had to know best)?
(after 2000 years, "epicurean" is still insult used for secular Jews by their observant brothers)
Or Epicureans, founders of science and inventors of modern enlightened values?
The revival of Epicureanism in the 17th century coincided with the growth of scientific rationalism and classical liberalism. There can be no doubt these facts are connected. It may, indeed, be argued that the first was a leading cause of the second two, and that we are now living in a world shaped, in every worthwhile sense, by the ideas of Epicurus.
We could finally find out, we could read Epicurus' and Epicureans own words instead of fragments and more or less hostile refutations. For true ancient history nerd, this would be as exciting as finding new poem by Sappho or new play by Euripides.
Diaspora Jews are neither monolithic enough nor centrally coordinated enough to make this feasible.
Except it looks that they are, the storm of doxxing, deplatforming and cancelling everyone showing the slightest sympathy to Hamas is impressive, not even non-binary persons of color are spared this time.
Palestinians have a nontrivial amount of support in the West
Not any more. Peak Palestine moment was probably the Second Intifada, around the time of "Battle of Jenin", this objectively rather minor affair was at the time headline news worldwide and treated like new Stalingrad battle.
Since then, Palestine cause was downgraded and now the gloves are coming off. France bans pro-Palestinian protests and Germany promises crackdown on burning Israeli flag.
The Palestine moment is over, expect Palestinian symbols and sympathizers to be treated like Nazi ones (no, this does not mean being celebrated by Canadian parliament).
edit: links
Eetan
1yr ago
I think that’s what I’m getting at. He wants the civilization that grew up around the church but doesn’t mention the actual church.
This ship sailed long ago, civilization that "grew up around the church", civilization based on feudalism, "noble blood" and "divine right" is as dead as Egypt of Pharaohs. Love it or hate it, but it is not coming back.
Eetan
1yr ago
The faith is the gospel and the sacraments.
Traditions are a cultural aspect of it but not the core.
The Orthodox Jews would also say that Jewishness is about following the law, but the secular Jews disagree and keep proudly calling themselves Jewish while munching on pork and never visiting a synagogue.
Eetan
1yr ago
Ireland is the example that comes to mind, although I can't speak to church attendance among the parties in the Troubles.
It depends.
The Unionists took their religion seriously, with leaders like Ian Paisley.
The Republicans (IRA and various splinter groups of splinter groups) were "catholic" only in the sense that "I never go to church, and the church I do not go to is Catholic church).
It is no accident that the Irish Republicans gained sympathy and support worldwide while the Unionists had no allies, even in mainland Britain few were sympathetic to their struggle, most Brits saw Northern Ireland as nothing than millstone on their neck they should be better off without.
Eetan
1yr ago
Exactly NO. NO. NO.
Secular Jewish identity is not Baal teshuva movement, it is not run by Orthodox rabbis.
You need Catholic identity for people who do not ever want to obey any Catholic laws, who do not care about any priests, who cannot return to church because they had never been there, and do not want to go there for the first time under any circumstances, but still want to identify and feel as proud Catholics.
Eetan
1yr ago
And by the way: good for them. I, a Catholic American, am jealous (although jealous is the wrong word since that sortof implies an animosity, which I have none of) of the power that the Jewish people have.
For this, you would need to invent some "secular Catholic" identity and community, where someone who never went to Church, who does not obey and does not care about any of Catholic religious laws, someone who does not know transubstantiation from transmission, someone whose only connection to Catholicism is that some of his ancestors were sprinkled with water by priest hundreds years ago, would still identify as proud Catholic.
Eetan
1yr ago
I am surprised that no one yet opened the most inflammatory aspect of the latest events in Israel. So I am going to do it.
Who if not me, when if not now?
So why it happened? It happened as it happened because, in words of our friends in US Dept of Justice: Israel Has a Successful Gun Control Policy.
Yes, it is from 1992, but things changed little since then. Israel has strict gun laws and they work as intended. Israel has 6,7 guns per 100 inhabitants, very good 108th place in the world. Just 2.1 more than David Hogg heaven land England and Wales, considered to be gun control movement dream and aspiration.
It is easy to understand why we do not hear about Israeli gun laws.
People who do not like guns usually do not like Israel either and would loathe to praise anything coming from there. The same reason why we never heard about Israeli health care or Israeli abortion laws despite that they would make excellent talking point for Blues against Israel loving Reds.
And people who like guns usually like Israel too (while knowing about it only from dank memes that show it as tough nation armed to the teeth).
So, you want to ask, you are blaming the victims? How dare you?
The Israelis were told by their government: "Millions of people who want to kill you live near your homes separated by wire fence. Do not panic and do not prepare to defend yourselves. Your government and your army will protect you, nothing can happen. Fear that they will cross the fence and slaughter you in your own homes is absurd and delusional. Do not be conspiracy theorist, do not be extremist, trust the plan". And, being normal human beings, they trusted because the government was right so far, because nothing happened so far. This is normal human nature, no one to blame.
Now, when something happened, and if nothing changes and Israelis will continue trusting their government as previously, yes I will blame them, and you shall too.
Are there signs that something is changing?
Looks like it.
https://thereload.com/israeli-loosens-gun-carry-rules-after-unprecedented-terror-attack/
Any citizen who meets the detailed tests for carrying a private firearm due to self-defense and serving the security forces and is without a criminal or medical record will be required to undergo a telephone interview instead of a physical interview
What are the tests?
Residence in an eligible settlement, rifle veterans 07 and above, officers in the rank of lieutenant and above and combatants in the rank of major and above in the IDF and the security forces, service in special units, firefighters, policemen, and workers and volunteers in the rescue forces
So very generous. And, in addition, citizens will be able to purchase, instead of previous fifty, whole ONE HUNDRED rounds of ammo! Yay!
Exactly. He wants 19th century (at minimum) LGBTQ+ rights, women rights, religious freedom, race relations and, last but not least, worker rights. HP0 is, among other things, radical capitalism uber alles libertarian (except with no liberty except liberty for capitalist bosses).
As OP pointed, no one wants such society, least of all actual capitalists (who are safer and more prosperous than ever before and feel no need to downgrade modern rainbow capitalism to earlier model).
Nevertheless, HP0 feels about it strongly and when you remind him of actual Lovecraft's economic and social positions, when you remind him that Lovecraft was, by his standards, communist, he will instantly block you while shrieking in rage.
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