Pasha
Defend Kebab
No bio...
User ID: 481
Pasha
Defend Kebab
3mo ago
As a very long-term but low profile mottizen, I feel like I have made a thread about quite a lot of important junctions in my life asking for advise. Here comes the next one:
I bought a house! Still not 100% official but will be soon. It is not in a perfectly pristine condition but did not seem too bad either. Needs some urgent renovations like a new floor and some semi urgent ones like a new kitchen.
I assume most people here are a bit older than me and have some experience with such things. So give me your best house owning tips please. Especially looking for websites/books/Youtube channels about DIY and house decoration and whatnot.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
3mo ago
Israel has changed an incredible amount demographically as a result of its mass immigration approach and birth rate imbalances. This is reflected in every aspect of its politics and society.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
3mo ago
The words occupied and apartheid don't mean what you seem to think they mean
When Israel was much more of a liberal western oriented country, its western supporters had an easy time wordcelling such arguments. It’s definitely not that country anymore and this is broadcasted very effectively to rest of the world thanks to online video sharing.
That's not the behavior of a country consistently struggling to take over land
Israel created massive refugee camps of the native population of its lands and then tried to dump the problem onto the neighbouring Arab states. I can’t gather a lot of sympathy for them for failing at this and having to deal with the consequences of its actions. Also it lost Sinai in a war (incidentally: a war that displayed how extremely vulnerable the country is if its enemies can act with even a tiny bit coordination. Israel’s short sighted and frantic actions are pushing its enemies into such coordination right now)
And your last paragraph is quite telling unfortunately. I mentioned “20th century example” on purpose, as you might be aware that since mid century a western taboo emerged against conquest and ethnic cleansing. Ironically this taboo is what sustains Israel ever since as many western states and peoples feel very bad about what happened to the Jews and thus give Israel massive amounts of material support and turn a blind eye to break the same rule within limits.
If the world started operating on pre-20th century assumptions of ethnic conflict again, Israel would have a free hand to exile or kill the Arab population of course. But then it could also not expect much sympathy or support from the West when the hundred fold more populous enemy surrounding it did the same to Israel. So be careful what you wish for.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
3mo ago
This is cope. Hezbollah losses were twice as high as Israel ones during 2006 according to wikipedia
This is cope. I applaud Israel's proficiency in killing Arabs. However in the real world wars are not won by kill/death ratios. Israel had to give up its military objectives and withdraw. They lost. Israel is not the kind of country that can stay mired in a 1/2 kd ratio war/occupation for long.
Israel has one of the most advanced defense sectors on the planet
Yes it is advanced, and also it is wildly not self sufficient and in parts very specialised. It functions as part of the American defense cinematic universe. They make very precise bombs to be thrown from F35s, with the assumption that the US will rapidly resupply them of artillery shells when IDF is running low. Many similar examples. Ultimately we are talking about a fairly small country.
This means Israel's actions are heavily constrained by Western public opinion and American grand strategy considerations.
This is concern trolling
No I have several Israeli friends who had been conscripted since October that I keep in touch with. I like those guys and this is genuine concern. And you seem to entirely misunderstand where my concern lies. The world is more dangerous than ever for Israel and they are acting more stupid than ever.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
3mo ago
Because it means the remaining Arabs will have to either be somehow deported, or live under a permanent apartheid/occupation regime.
No Iran doesn't want a 20% Jewish population I am sure. But then Iranians didn't settle in a land exclusively inhabited by Jews in the 20th century and then spent the last century in a struggle to take over the said land. So the comparison is really pointless and distracting.
In fact there are approximately zero comparable cases to Israel's ethnic problems in the last century which is the exact thing that makes it such a hot-button issue.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
3mo ago
Interesting fact. Then I revise my sentence to: Israel will never give citizenship to substantially more Maronites or Druze either.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
3mo ago
I didn’t say anything about dead Palestinians effecting Israeli moods. They are battle hardened enough to not care at this point. But endless war in Palestinian Territories and Lebanon very much does. A lot of people are conscripted and the economy is severely strained.
Modern IDF has not proven itself capable of fighting anything other than severely resource constrained urban insurgents. It failed badly the last time it tried to act against Hezbollah, which has much more in common with a proper army than an insurgent group. There is little indication that IDF’s ground forces have actually increased in quality since the last war.
Israeli military depends almost entirely on western supplies and cutting edge technology. Israeli diplomatic standing depends on Americans bribing the shit out of everyone in the region to be friendly towards it.
Mid 20th century Israel had an orders of magnitude level tech and competency advantage over its surrounding primitive Arab neighbours who were in immense political chaos and backwardness. It doesn’t have such an insurmountable advantage anymore so it has to be much more careful on allocating its resources.
The main problem with the Israeli political chaos is that Israel is making many suboptimal decisions, prioritising Netanyahu’s political survival and the populace’s thirst for vengeance over Hamas. It is possible that Israel is going towards a point where it cannot afford such decision making.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
3mo ago
The chilling in Qatar argument started to look really ridiculous. A massive portion of Hamas leadership has died in the last year. Even the tiny fraction that is personally safe in Qatar are witnessing their family members killed en masse.
I also used to think that Palestinian resistance was futile and only harmed them more without any hope of liberation but events since the Hamas attack is making me reconsider that view. Israeli politics and society has been destabilised to an incredibly dangerous degree. If Netanyahu really forces an invasion of Lebanon it’s possible that we see the IDF reach its breaking point fighting on so many fronts, or at least have to make serious concessions on some of its fronts. Hamas tactics clearly have some hope of succeeding
Pasha
Defend Kebab
3mo ago
Israel will never give citizenship to substantially more Arabs than its current ratio of around %20 Arab citizens. That would be totally suicidal, nobody in the country supports such a thing and it’s simply a fake solution made up by westerners (just like the “2-state solution”) to avoid thinking too hard about the unpleasant implications of the Israeli state.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
3mo ago
Recently got a Financial Times subscription through work. Any authors or sections definitely worth reading?
Pasha
Defend Kebab
4mo ago
Fair, I applied the European salary scale in my head and misjudged the class of people you are targeting. High 5 figure salary easily gets you into 2-3% income percentile or so in most of Western Europe and is only attainable in very expensive cities.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
4mo ago
I feel that there is a sense in large parts of the elite and elite adjacent people that Trump is actually serious this time and has gathered a large following of competent people who are quite black pilled by the accelerating absurd excesses of the liberal state apparatus in the last decade.
Also he can work around almost any judicial block this time thanks to his Supreme Court appointments.
It feels almost like in 2016 almost nobody including Trump, his biggest supporters and his biggest enemies didn’t quite understand the force pushing the man to presidency.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
4mo ago
High paying jobs are in high cost areas. If you want to participate in this narrow part of the economy (and not spend half your day in a ridiculous commute) you have to shoulder some serious burden.
On top of it, large swathes of these high cost areas are populated by the urban underclasses that decreases your quality of life massively. So avoiding them is another big cost increasing factor.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
4mo ago
This is why I firmly believe some degrees of low level corruption (ie just paying a little bit or invoking a relation to work around complex dysfunctional systems) is a massive public and political good.
Without this option, modern societies fall prey very easily to financial engineering or bureaucratic management types who are leeches and will run wild imposing low intelligence taxes on the society for their own benefit or satisfaction.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
4mo ago
I have no opinion whether Anatoly Karlin is correct or not, but what sort of problems are you imagining?
Pasha
Defend Kebab
4mo ago
While I find Patrick Mackenzie’s writing very insightful sometimes, he also really makes me question if I am as competent in English as I think so. Sometimes I just really can’t parse the guys sentences
Pasha
Defend Kebab
4mo ago
Are you sure you can get nothing? Last time an airline messed up my connection I got around 800 euros out of it
Pasha
Defend Kebab
4mo ago
A website that follows and shows you the chain of previous flights of your plane sounds like a pretty cool idea
Pasha
Defend Kebab
4mo ago
I actually gave some thought to this and literally the last person I remember who cared about poetry was an insufferably conceited gay man. So yeah
Pasha
Defend Kebab
4mo ago
Picked up a random short book meant for a teenage audience about the conquest of the Incas. Mainly for language learning purposes but also the subject is just so insane. The “plot” of capture of Atahualpa is so infeasible that it feels like reading a book about the last season of game of thrones.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
4mo ago
What makes you think they care about poetry? I can’t remember the last time I came across someone who actually cared about poetry
lol I didn’t expect that. It’s mostly electronic design though I think
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