Supah_Schmendrick
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User ID: 618
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
Except our version of the Amazon - the Mississippi basin - has incredible natural soil quality while as I understand it the actual Amazon does not.
TBH a Mega!Israel with most/all of pre-WWII European Jewry transplanted there* would probably have colonized out to the historic borders of the old Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem at this point just through population pressure, let alone the Jabotinsky's of the world.
*in 1948 the new nation of Israel had about 650k Jews in it, give or take. If we add in appx. 50% of the 1933 Jewish populations of France, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Poland, and Romania (an estimate attempting to allow for for stay-behinds, pogrom-victims, or emigres to other places like the US), we turbocharge that to 3,700,000. For context, Jordan had appx. 500k people in 1948. Syria had about 3.25 million. Lebanon had about 1.3 million. Arabs would have been absolutely swamped all across the Levant, and if it had come to war as it did historically, God alone knows what would have happened. And if we assume the same rate of population growth as historically, in this alternate Mega!Israel, that would mean 50 million Jews running around the holy land today.
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
I disagree; the diplomatic and political maneuvering in the weeks and months leading up to the initial declarations of war - let alone the actual first acts of armed hostility - are much more complex. I recommend Christopher Clark's The Sleepwalkers and Sean McMeekin's July 1914: Countdown to War. They reach different conclusions, but are both magisterial overviews of the subject.
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
Napoleon has all of these. It's arguable which one tops the other on either point but they are compared often for a reason.
Napoleon is one of the most noteworthy figures in history.
The scale of the industrial killing is also very comparable to Stalin's.
Yes, the forced resettlement of millions and the complete subjugation and remaking of the USSR under Stalin is also one of the most notable and interesting (though macabre and sinister) phases in modern history.
Hitler was not Franco, or Mussolini, or Vargas, or any of the other tin-pot dictators of the period. He was, no matter how you slice it, one of the Great Horrors. Perhaps, with the passage of enough centuries, he, Stalin, and Mao will be remembered like we remember Tamerlane or Ghengis Khan, the bloodiness of their deeds overshadowed by the alien, bygone nature of their world. But they will be remembered as Great Horrors all the same.
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
I've heard historians argue that the british government's legal counsel had advised that the 1839 treaty could be worked around. And in any event the UK went in before the invasion of Belgium - Grey's famous speech to parliament is all based upon assumptions and diplomatic insinuations, not any concrete actions by the Germans. Once the Brits were in, there was no incentive for the Germans not to go through Belgium.
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
Are you trying to argue that the invasion and occupation of Belgium in 1914 was somehow accidental?
I'm trying to argue that it shouldn't have come to a general war in the first place.
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
unremarkable despotism
It's plenty remarkable for a lot of reasons. First, the soap-opera drama of the Nazi rise is just incredible. If it weren't so horrifying, you could make a dozen comic soap operas out of it. Second, the remarkable run of wild success that Hitler's early-career gambles met with is fascinating. There were generals locking themselves in their offices with nervous breakdowns over the Anschluss, the handling of the Sudenten crisis, the invasion of the rump Czechoslovak state, Fall Weiss, and Fall Gelb...and somehow each one worked out fantastically in Hitler's favor. Even the amazing success of the Wehrmacht at the beginning of Barbarossa was down to ridiculously good timing (catching the Soviets forward-deployed for an invasion to the West...but not yet on a war footing) and a shocking case of the normally-wily Stalin suddenly grabbing onto the idiot-ball of world-history with both hands. Third, the speed at which things broke down for the Nazis is just as vertiginous, and makes an equally-interesting story. And of course fourth, the sheer industrial scale of the killing achieved through bureaucracy is itself a modern marvel, and a sobering reminder to western, advanced, industrialized nations that we are not exempt from the blood-lust we might otherwise be tempted to put down to the savagery of less-enlightened souls (the Khmer Rouge, the Rwandan Hutu, the Young Turks, etc.)
From the british perspective WWI starts with the invasion of Belgium.
Well, it actually started with the Franco-British staff talks, the 1904 Franco-British agreement on naval responsibilities in the Mediterranean and North Sea vis. the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy, and the fear of the Liberal cabinet in 1914 that failing to take a hard line on Germany would result in the fall of the cabinet (the PM and FM were both implicated in secret back-channel negotiations with the French which, had the UK not supported France against Germany, would have been immensely personally and politically damaging to them and probably required resignation) and the likely installation of the Tories, who would be bellicose anyway and (in the view of the liberals) also likely spark civil war over the Irish question. The Belgium question was just the tripwire.
Germany went full "might makes right" and "no laws but man's"
No, they bungled what should have been a decent and defensible position in support of an ally who had been the subject of an organized assassination plot from a rogue state sponsor of terrorism. Frankly, the Russians and Austrians both bear at least as much guilt for the onset of general war as the Germans, and probably more.
thus they rendered their destruction necessary for the survival of the wider west.
Ironic, because at the time Germany was arguably the leading light of the west, at least in scientific and cultural matters.
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
While I think there's some validity to the claim that they'd just do it elsewhere without Israel, I think all those other laundering operations should be shut down as well - so the claim that it would be them if it wasn't Israel is just a non-starter.
I mean, I agree that it's not good, and we shouldn't do it. That kind of graft is really dumb - if we want to give an ally military gear, just give them the gear. If we want to give them money so they can buy the gear they want, give them money. I don't see how agreeing on a need for Foreign Aid and Pentagon Procurement reform does anything about the prevalence of current practices, though.
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
One can argue that the UK got WWI because they were too obsessed with trying to balance (or at least because Grey and French were). And after the horror that was WWI, it's completely understandable why the Brits would have a reflexive allergy against an assertive and powerful Germany, specifically. After all, what was the point of the millions and millions dead and maimed, including the best and brightest of a whole generation, if it only bought thirty years before the Boche came back, and this time in an even less couth guise than the Kaiser? It's the ultimate sunk cost.
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
From first principles, wouldn't you assume that if the US cabinet and White House was full of names like Chang, Zhang, Yuan and Dongfeng, the US would lean more pro-China than makes strategic sense?
Not necessarily. I could also paint a just-so story that diaspora emigres could be significantly more hawkish towards the governing regime of the land of their birth if it's out of step with their personal values - a cabinet full of Miami Cubans wouldn't be pro-Castro. And indeed, because U.S. Jews are overwhelmingly liberal, secularized, and assimilated, support for Netanyahu's nationalist government was a minority position in the U.S. before and after 10/7.
Certain items would never make it onto agendas, some policies would be carried out enthusiastically and others would be given up at the first sign of trouble. People could find reasons why military aid to China was a good thing - stabilizing the region, countering Russia, Vietnam and so on. They could find reasons why China causing problems for the US was acceptable, they have certain legitimate interests and mistakes happen. They could create framing where China is a traditional ally of America, we fought together in WW2 against those awful Japanese, it's a vital trading partner, predestined to be a superpower...
Yes, but people do this all the time for all sorts of reasons unrelated to ethnicity; allegedly FDR had a soft spot for the Chinese because his family had a longstanding history of involvement in the China trade and with yankee missionary efforts over there. Similarly the british foreign establishment has had a reputation of being fairly arabist without any significant muslim or arab component in british society; they just felt more comfortable with those relationships. Almost nothing works on hard strategic logic.
Alternately, if the US cabinet was full of Muhammeds and Husseins, I expect Israel would encounter lots of problems. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are amongst the least pro-Israel politicians in America.
Sure, but I don't know how to disentangle their ethnic and religious interests from contemporary American leftism, which is quite happily third world-ist and "anti-colonial" without any arab/muslim immigrant help.
People have natural sympathies for those of the same race and creed.
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
Except balance of power politics had been British strategy for centuries at this point
Everyone always says this, but I'm not so sure. The Brits had no problem with a post-Napoleonic Europe dominated by Russia and Austria in the Holy Alliance; France was prostrate and Prussia was small and reforming. Sure, Britain pushed back against Russia when it started pushing up against British interests in the middle east and India (e.g. the Crimean War), but other than that the Brits held themselves aloof.
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
The 2008 law merely codifies longstanding US policy. Said policy helped drive Israel's Arab neighbours towards the Soviet Union (who would sell them military equipment).
To my knowledge (though I'm not an expert) the first time the U.S. provided military aid to Israel was '73 under Nixon, and Nasser didn't need any push to be pro-Soviet; it fell right in line with his third-world-ist, anti-colonial rhetoric. Even then, we were the ones to step in and save him from the Brits, French, and Israelis. But for the U.S., there's an alternate world where the Suez Canal is still run by the Brits, with Israeli troops and settlements on the eastern side. Surely that's a world where the Jews have a lot more power than the current one - so why did we intervene? Why didn't the Jews win on that one?
Your own link says that $330 Billion went to Israel. The budget for 2023 was $6 trillion, so the real answer is 5% of the 2023 budget.
Thank you for the correction; I am sloppy with math. I have edited the post to reflect this.
$330 billion is a lot of money.
Over 40 years? On the brobdignagian scale the U.S. does military-industrial things with? Maybe it's the last couple administrations, but I have a hard time getting worked up about US overspending on things to make defense contractors (or, more recently, community activists) rich. It's just a cruddy fact of life.
Still more was lost as a result of the Arab Oil Embargo, stemming from Arabs angry with US aid to Israel.
Yeah, that one stung in the 70's, but it's 50 years old. OPEC doesn't have that kind of power any more, not since the shale revolution.
There is no reason to give foreign countries grants to buy equipment.
Sure there is; it funnels money to defense contractors, but it also ensures that the equipment is actually used in a conflict so we can get data back on how it performs.
Funnily enough the rivers of gold only opened up when Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel, in 1978
Yes, this is the "carrot" part of "carrot and stick" diplomacy. You reward friends for doing what you want, and punish enemies who do things you don't want.
Jordan has no supply routes worth caring about
Sure, because letting that country collapse and become the personal playground of the irredentist Palestinian national movement - a movement which even in the 70's showed a marked proclivity to actions harmful to western interests - wouldn't have any negative consequences for anyone except Israel.
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
The graft and bloat isn't good, just inevitable. If it wasn't getting laundered through Israel, it would be getting laundered through South Korea, Japan, Australia, the Saudis, etc.
The US has a policy of ensuring that Israel has a qualitative military advantage over any plausible combination of Middle East powers.
Since 2008. Extremely GWoT-pilled. What harm, exactly, is this doing to our policy in the region other than generating more $120,000/yr. paperwork compliance jobs for folks living in Falls Church? Were we on the cusp of selling F-35s to the Iranians? Is Egypt making a better case to advance our interests in the region?
This includes billions annually in military aid to Israel and refusing to export advanced weapons to other regional powers.
The sum-total of all U.S. aid to Israel since its founding 75 years ago is about 0.5% [Edit: /u/Randomranger is correct, this should be 5%; I make sloppy math mistakes] of the 2023 US budget spend. Also, that includes money for highly-productive joint research and development projects, and billions upon billions in laundered subsidies for U.S. military-industrial conglomerates (i.e. grants which can only be used to purchase equipment/services from U.S. firms), both of which we would want done anyway even if Israel wasn't the one doing it.
The US even gives aid to Israel's neighbours for maintaining good relations with Israel.
You're right, there couldn't possibly be any other rationale for paying regimes on top of major trade and international supply routes to not blow each other's major infrastructure up. Has to be the nefarious influence of da Joos.
There's no guarantee that a German-dominated Europe would have been hostile to Britain. German relations with Britain were actually significantly improving prior to the outbreak of war in 1914 - Germany had conclusively lost the battleship race and stopped even trying to keep up with the British by 1910. The Chancellor even offered to gift the entire German High Seas Fleet to the Brits in order to secure neutrality.
The Liberal government was fairly unified in favor of staying out if it could be reasonably done...except that particular Teutophobes (e.g. Eyre Crowe) and Francophiles (e.g. Edward Grey) at the Foreign Ministry had been running a private French policy with minimal supervision, and during the July Crisis advised the PM and cabinet that they had already committed the honor of Britain to keeping the Kriegsmarine out of the Channel without bothering to consult the Royal Navy (or really anyone else).
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
Sure.
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
Funny how the ADL and AIPAC have been pushing hard for the polar opposite of nationalism for us. Mass migration and open borders to Europe, an ethnostate for Israel.
Why, it's almost like diaspora populations have strange relationships with the host nation and the metropole. Of course, if you actually look at the people who are doing the on-the-ground work of the mass-migration you get a lot of Catholic groups, not Jews.
Yes, we need to get rid of the AIPAC and ADL influence
Ah yes, the gentiles who actually hold office are just helpless little mice before the terrifying might of...completely ordinary lobbying groups. And it just so happens to aaaaaaallllll be the Jews...couldn't be the Turkish lobby, or the UAE, or the Saudis, or the Iranians.
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
Israel is a state fundamentally opposed to western values that causes constant headache for the west.
I mean, yeah; a state organized around blood-and-soil nationalism premised on a mythic past and present-day military conquest is pretty opposed to the modern deracinated, pacifistic, cosmopolitan western ideal. A bit surprised that you're in favor of the latter over the former, but wonders never cease!
What about European women's right not to be raped by the migrants IsraAID is bringing into Europe?
Clearly the gentile governments of European nations don't care about protecting that right. Sounds like a problem with the Gentiles.
What about the christians in the middle east that are being destroyed by the hostile nation of Israel?
Sounds like another failing of world christendom. You should probably get on that.
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
This is all in response to the recovery of six dead hostages which were shot, presumably before they could be rescued.
Based on some other hostages' testimony it seems likely that these 6 hostages were shot because the IDF was about to rescue them.
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
It seems that the main difference between bikes and motorized vehicles is speed,
I am a novice to this debate, but why wouldn't two other relevant differences be stability (cars don't fall over or spill their driver/occupants onto the pavement nearly as easily as two-wheeled vehicles) and occupant safety features (seat belts, air bags, crumple zones, etc.)?
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
I strongly suspect the goal is to portray her dominance by both interrupting Trump and throw him off balance and theteby goading him into a nasty retort, and also to contemptuously scold him if he interrupts her. I'm sure the idea is to exploit female sympathy to the maximum extent possible. It didn't work that great for Clinton though, so I doubt it's worth the bad PR of reneging a fair agreement.
I'm not so sure - when some researchers put on a genderflipped 2016 presidential debate, female!Trump, with all Trump's mannerisms and lines ("WRONG!") turned out to be incredibly popular, and male!Hillary was reported as “'really punchable' because of all the smiling." If Hilarie had acted more like Kamala proposes to ("I'm Speaking!") it may well have gone much better for her.
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
Honestly that says more about the extraordinary weakness of the 2016 Republican field than it does about Trump's strength.
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
Well there's two ways you can take the line of objection you're pointing at to Liberal theory.
I should hope there's a lot more than just two! Humanity is very adaptable!
One is Fascism and related radical syndicalist ideas whereby individuals are actually not real and the true protagonists of history and real persons are groups and nations and corporations, etc.
Individuals are absolutely real. Group dynamics are also real. It's not an either-or proposition - humans are social individuals. As I originally said, trying to regulate groups but not individuals is ridiculous because the group is the individuals.
But I still believe it's ultimately disproven by qualia and individual consciousness. If God wanted us to be ants, he'd make us ants.
I don't know what you mean by "disproven" here, but this also just goes to show how trying to distinguish between "groups" or "organizations" and "individuals" is a lot harder than you'd think. Founder-effects and path-dependency are very real forces that impact individuals and their development and outlook! So is heritability, which gives rise to the subtle, yet substantial differences between populations that we observe all over the world! So is the Overton Window! Group dynamics affect everybody, even if they're not formally affiliated in an "organization," and likeminded people are going to find ways to cooperate and work together no matter how you try to prevent them.
The other is a less radical but no less incompatible with Liberalism form of Traditionalism. Either of the perrennial or integralist variety.
What? Which and whose traditionalism? I'm confused what this has to do with restricting organizational behavior but not individuals.
The Liberal concept of rights isn't quite as revocable as you're making it out to be because it's not pointing at something that always is instantiated and can't be violated.
Then they shouldn't have used the word "inalienable," which means "can't be taken or given away."
I don't have a neat post-liberal answer, but completely abandoning the liberal conception of rights doesn't seem wise to me
Who's abandoning rights? I'm not. I very much like the rights I have as an American, and am frequently rather obnoxiously patriotic about it with my friends. I just don't think that those "rights" are anything other than fragile current social consensuses that need to be handled with care - like beautiful Faberge eggs - in order to keep them around and pass them along, more-or-less-intact, to future generations.
As a lawyer, much of it is in need of torching, or at least disassembly and reconstruction.
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