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Is there a way to determine the strike origin? I wouldn’t put it past Israel to false-flag themselves to enhance support for intervention in Lebanon. This attack helps Israel at zero expense (Druze were killed, not Jews), at the crucial time that Netanyahu is in DC looking for support, while covering up the story of the school in Gaza that was targeted.
I certainly wouldn't put it past Hezbollah to fire rockets into Israel, on account of them doing that on and off since October.
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Its relatively trivial for a national-level or properly equipped private entity to determine where a missile or artillery shell was launched from. The trickier part is figuring out who it came from, but given that Hezbollah has been lobbing missiles and shells into Northern Isreal and the Golan Hieghts on a near weekly basis for years now, and Arab militants' reputation for scrupulus fire-discipline, I think woke claims about this being some sort of Israeli false flag can be safely dismissed barring further evidence.
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Maybe it's a manufactured event, but there's already ongoing conflict in the North of Israel. An official second front opening has been a possibility since day one of the conflict. Israeli and Hezbollah have been in a state of active, firing weapons at each other, not-war this entire year. If Bibi felt he needed additional pretext to open another front all he had to do was wait for one that looked nice and use it. How much does the Israeli government care about dead Druze children in Golan on an average day?
Perhaps we have diverging understandings over the state of relations. Do you believe Hezbollah has been attempting to deescalate and avoid conflict? That could be evidence Israeli would have a need to manufacture a crisis in whole. Have you seen them posture in a war avoidant way after October 7th? Appear ready and waiting to me. The Israeli drums for more picked up in Spring. Reports, articles, and think pieces describing a proper campaign against Hezbollah got going proper in June. It may be a false flag since everything is a gay psyop, but a chosen narrative more likely.
Unless there was some back channel diplomacy and understandings we don't know, it seems like Hezbollah committed to the solidarity for our brothers bit. Doing enough pain in the ass things to satisfy their patrons, without committing to the cost of major offensive actions. Victory they can attain is won in a defensive war, anyway. They have maintained tensions, as Israel has, have initiated aggression, and answered it. They did a strategic job of being a distraction for when it mattered. The distraction to stretch the IDF isn't important anymore, but the decision was already made. So here we are. Based on Israeli actions after October 7th, a Hezbollah strategist would have to be a great dullard to think they are doing something like deterring Israeli action rather than justifying it.
Might also true that Israel, or Hezbollah, or both considered/decided a '06 repeat was inevitable by the late date of October 8th. The early question for Israeli was to what degree Hezbollah would complicate things. If I'm an Israeli war hawk then I see a Hezbollah that has politely waited their turn whilst providing plenty of reasons to engage.
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As opposed to covering up the context of an ongoing indirect fire conflict that had already seen hundreds of thousands displaced?
Blood libel credibility aside, northern Israel has been subject to a bombardment campaign for nearly 8 months now as part of Hezbollah and Iran's attempts to open a second front, and the Israeli-Jews and others evacuated a long time ago. Something like 80k Israelis were evacuated by March, not including those on the Lebanese side, and while reliable numbers on rockets fired are hard, we are talking in the relative ballpark of ten thousand, and part of the reason Israel withdrew its people is to reduce the cost of trying to intercept all those rockets by, well, not needing to. And thus letting them land.
When you are willing to launch thousands and thousands of rockets, even low probability events will keep happening. The low odds of a Hamas rocketing it's own hospital in Gaza didn't make it an Israeli strike, and it's not like Israel is timing its diplomatic engagements to the US with Hezbollah attack planning, or Hezbollah/Iran changing their attack plans during Israeli state visits to the US.
What is “blood libel credibility”?
The credibility you granted to a currently unfounded conspiracy theory of Jews secretly arranging the murder of children for their nefarious ends.
I am all for recognizing the potential of false-flag operations, but setting up one in the format of a cliche is, well, a cliche. Hence setting it aside after recognizing it.
Was the Lavon Affair blood libel? When Israeli intelligence told us that Iraq was responsible for the anthrax attack, was that blood libel as well? When the NYT came out and declared that Israel attacked a hospital, was this also blood libel? Do you think Israel should be given the unique privilege of never being analyzed because of (checks notes) a medieval trope? Really trying to understand what you mean by blood libel here.
Apparently not?
Do you have evidence to your claim, or do you not?
If not, why should your accusation not be analyzed in the context of unfounded anti-semitic conspiracy theories it shares notable parallels with?
You are not exactly countering that unfounded blood libel accusations exist or are invoked. Your own list of events to rebut the structural parallel... doesn't, on a trifacta of ignoring the structure (Isaeli claims on Iraqi actions is not structurally analogous to accusing jews of killing children), of invoking a demonstration as a counter-point (yes, the NYT and other global media parroting Hamas propaganda falsely accusing the Israelis of bombing a hospital and killing children is an example of spreading Jews-kill-children conspiracy theories), and a general composition fallacy (even were all your examples valid, it wouldn't mean anything on how others invoke anti-semetic conspiracy theory tropes and usages).
Nor are you countering that the context of this event is an ongoing conflict of such danger that over a hundred thousand displacements already occurred nearly half a year ago, or that such attacks are routinely ongoing without respect to Israeli foreign policy travel, or that the act of launching tens to hundreds of thousands of rockets into northern Israel will, over iterations, reasonably result in killing people on the ground in northern Israel.
Israel is routinely a target of conspiracy theories, so many that it ranges from the victim-blaming (accusations that the current government deliberately let the Hamas atrocity occur) to the comedic (the entire genre of local arab authorities arresting animals as jewish spies if tagged by Israeli universities). As such, charges that share the structure of conspiracy theories can be expected to provide supporting evidence, rather than just vaguely claim interests... not least because the demonstrated interests of large numbers of commentators in the topic also aligns with spreading and insinuated unfounded conspiracy theories.
We are discussing an event that just transpired, and my original comment is inquiring whether we can find evidence. It’s odd that you’re asking for evidence for my… question of whether we can find evidence and then mention of a possibility. If we can’t conclusively determine where the strike originated, and if Israel knows this, then a false flag attack is on the table. What’s my evidence that a false flag is on the table? The false flag attacks I have listed in my previous comments! That’s why false flags are done to begin with: they are useful for the party doing them. So to determine whether a false flag is a possibility, we may ask (1) how possible is it to determine the strike location, and (2) does the the attack benefit the attacked country. For (2), there are four unlikely benefits for the attacked country: no Jews were killed, and the ruling party is an explicitly Jewish party; Netanyahu is in DC as we speak; his party has recently attributed the Paris metro attack to Iran, a funder of Hezbollah; Israel recently struck a school in Gaza.
Maybe Israel has one of the sophisticated intelligence services in the world, perhaps they know that they can weaponize a “libel libel” attack on whoever criticizes Israel. Maybe this has been written about by academics, like Mearsheimer? If Israel knows that their supporters in the West will fanatically impugn the motive of her critics, then this increases the possibility of a false-flag, not decreases.
Because there is a more reasonable context to analyze current events. Because the idea that a medieval trope is influencing the modern day perspective on Israel is hilariously biased and unfounded. (Who is promoting this medieval trope? Is it the Jesuits? Of course — a europhobic and anti-Catholic canard). Because many normal people who are not tied to Israel are skeptical and critical of Israel, which you can see by typing “Israel” into Twitter search and sorting the tweets by those liked over 30,000 times (are these funded by Persians or Russians?).
Israel is fine with making up info that will lead to the death of hundreds of American soldiers. This rebuts the idea that the killing of Druze children (an outgroup with zero influence) is off the table. .
I would argue there are more involving Russia and America. And then probably Syria (gas attacks). The last Israel conspiracy theory that had mainstream appeal was in 2001. Whereas conspiracy theories involving American invention and Russian influence are mainstream and commonplace.
And I was quite willing to set aside the blood libel parallels, hence noting the credulence given but explicitly focusing on different elements that worked against the premise. You chose to ignore those and turn the topic to what was set aside, and then awkwardly doubled down on it.
Which you are doing so again, not only by further doubling-down on false flag parallels without evidence of a false flag, or attempting to deny the relevance of a common contemporary antisemtic conspiracy theory format, but even via further choice of expertise to reference. (Mearsheimer is definitely a poor choice of academic to cite for his IR views, given his history of commentary on both the regional subject and on international affairs beyond the theoretical in general.)
You don't seem particularly interested in addressing whether there were factors that would normalize the occurrence of a tragedy, you seem more interested in arguing the credibility of a conspiracy theory... including on the basis of a separate incident that was proven to be an unfounded conspiracy theory.
Which, itself, is a symmetrical counter-argument to the claim that past Isaeli naughtiness is itself evidence, as you also have narrative counter-evidence that others will falsely blame the Israelis for what Israeli opponents have done. Choosing which of these to dismiss and which to hold as evidence is little more than rhetorical gerrymandering to assume the conclusion.
I find that boring, and a common failure mode of unsubstantiated antisemetic conspiracies. So far, you're doing little to distinguish your theory from them.
Beginning your reply with “blood libel credibility aside” is not putting it aside, it is emphasizing it through the classical rhetorical technique of paralipsis.
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I would be shocked if there weren’t multiple countries, including America, with radar tracking over the area. Missiles aren’t hard to spot on radar and, unless they’re extremely fancy, once you’ve spotted them it’s pretty trivial to work out a point of origin.
But these sort of suspicions are usually unfalsifiable. Even if it could be proven that it was a missile in the Hezbollah arsenal, fired from Lebanon, and backed up by intercepted audio of Two Hezbollah fighters discussing the launch, there would still be people who would say, ‘yeah but so what? An Israeli black ops team could’ve acquired a Hezbollah style missile, smuggled it into a field in Lebanon, fired it off, and faked the audio.’
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We are talking about a nation with an intelligence agency that sexually trafficked children in order to gather dirt on western leaders and celebrities. Why wouldn’t they murder some goy kids to further their aims?
Welcome back! Let's see, you were last temp-banned for low-effort boo-outgroup posting a year ago... but instead of taking three days off, you disappeared for a year. It took you less than a week of posting to get my attention this time.
You're banned for a week, but you can expect that to escalate sharply if you continue posting like this.
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Other than the fact that intelligence agencies of all kinds were obviously aware of Epstein, the only actual ‘evidence’ that Mossad was involved is that Epstein himself bragged about being a Mossad secret agent. Given he was a notorious compulsive liar, I question the extent to which we can take that seriously.
Didn't he have a co-conspirator who had actually been part of the Mossad?
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There was also the accusation from another Ben Menashe worked for Israel's Military Intelligence Directorate from 1977 to 1987. accused directly of Epstein being Mossad. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12926465/jeffrey-epstein-list-friendship-israeli-prime-minister-ehud-barak.html Laura Goldman, Epstein's friend also thought that Ghislane father and her daughter were Mossad agents https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7761169/Jeffrey-Epstein-book-claims-Ghislaine-Maxwell-Mossad-spies.html
The suspicion of Robert Maxwell being Mossad includes plenty more of course. Here is a 2002 hebrew book from Amazon about Robert Maxwell, Israel's superspy. https://www.amazon.com/-/he/Martin-Dillon/dp/0786710780
There is also that "he was of intelligence", and the sweetheart deal.
One of the backers of Epstein was the Jewish billionaire Les Wexner of Victoria Secret who was also one of the two founders of the MEGA group, a group of wealthy Jews pushing "jewish" issues. Probably it self a Mossad front or related group. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Wexner
So it is just not true at all that the only reason to think Epstein is Mossad is because Epstein said so.
Like another thing you have argued in the past that Epstein just killed himself, which is convenient as it helps end the conversation and not look at who this network really is, which also doesn't make sense, since security cameras were off and all sorts of coincidences that don't just happen at the time Epstein was killed.
You are just blatantly wrong when making such strong claims about this not being Mossad. And it is plausible you are denying this because you want to help cover up for Mossad.
My experience when reading those among the Jews who I consider compulsive liars is that they are also braggarts to an extend. These aren't people who succeed by an ability to act in a manner that would never lead reasonable, moral, interested parties in uncovering the truth, but by using all the dark arts.
Obfuscate with bullshit and misdirecting, while friends up top help cover the issue up and censor inconvenient facts is part of the way to get away with crimes. Promote gratuitous insults and try to ridicule those those willing to think that 1 +1 = 2, and what smells and quacks like a Mossad or otherwise Jewish network operation, is in fact just that. Implicate enough people through blackmail as in the Epstein case. Try to make it a taboo to oppose blatantly criminal, and immoral acts and promote a mentality both within the Jewish community and outside of it, of people acting as collosal racist hypocritical extremists, that they side with the most depraved behavior, under a misplaced sympathy towards Jews. So moral corruption of nodes of society, and getting the corrupt to help cover such things and help the people behind Epstein get away with it by what they say, and what they don't say. Getting people to support whatever absurdity if it will be perceived as pro Jewish.
Criminals who rape children are not some sort of geniuses who wouldn't admit ever what they were doing. And it is also pretty fucking obvious that Epstein crew is a Mossad operation. Like Italian Mafia members sometimes reveal themselves, Jewish criminals are going to reveal information. As well of course, to be fair, we have people (like with other people involved with such activites) people involved with Israeli intelligence who have been willing to reveal some of what is behind the curtain and expose what Mossad is up to.
And you will of course claim that there is nothing to see here. There are people who both support such conspiracies and want people to not take them seriously and to ridicule those who do and have an interest in creating the perception of everything being imperceptible. In the real world however, we don't live in the darkness where such things can not be perceived at all and are unknowable.
The important thing to happen isn't just knowledge which itself is necessary but obviously we need to see shutting down such criminal networks down and to go after parties like Lauder and others involved, or credibly suspected to be such. Suspicions and acting on them, are a good thing and would have saved plenty of people from monsters like Epstein and his associates and handlers. Indeed, we do need both arrests and more investigations. One help bring the other, if implicated parties like mobsters, everyone involved is facing entire life in prison for being part of a criminal organization, or if groups like MEGA are themselves declared parts of a criminal organization, then you could have people singing to reduce the number of years they spent behind bar. More surveillance and putting in what should be suspected to be Mossad front, double agents working to bring them down (including in addition to non Jews, possibly some honorable Jews, who will try to take down the evil ones, in addition to those flipped due to not wanting to spend life in prison).
Blackmailing American politicians to change policy for example, could even expand to qualify the activities of groups throwing millions around to character assassinate politicians for not putting foreign interests above their own nation's , and furthermore it should be investigated if not only as we know ADL and AIPAC communicate and coordinate but whether such organizations are under communication and converge with agenda of people who blackmail politicians with criminal activity like the Epstein crew. These powerful Jewish NGOs have become a state within a state, at the same time Epstein types get away with blackmailing politicians, and the issue is stopped before going after the handlers. It is long time for this societal malaise to be shut down.
Alas, this mafia, is now more connected with the institutions that should be trying to stop them than the Italian mafia (which even tried its own version of the anti defamation league for Italians) was when it started getting destroyed in the 90s especially. Still there are things that could be done if one is interested in justice and isn't satisfied with the "nothing to see here and only an idiot would think otherwise!" routine.
I don't know that being accused of being a Mossad agent is insulting in itself, but paired with accusations that it's in service to covering up child abuse and blackmail and various other conspiracies, you need to bring some evidence for such inflammatory claims (and "it is plausible that" is clearly weasel-wording and not sufficient).
You can grind your axe against Jews, you can insist Epstein was a Mossad operation, whatever. But don't make it personal just because someone's not buying what you are selling.
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A notorious liar, fantasist and fraudster who runs a ‘private intelligence’ company predicated on ripping off wealthy foreigners by touting his connections to Israeli and US intelligence lying about hidden information only he, supposedly, has about Israeli and US intelligence? Say it ain’t so. Ben-Menashe’s entire continued existence depends on enough fake narrative-making to continue to persuade foreigners that he’s well-connected because of 10-year stint in Israeli intelligence almost 40 years ago, where his one claim to fame was being exposed to Iran-Contra not because he was an elite operative, but because he was a Persian speaker who translated the documents.
Epstein’s entire story about being a big-time arms trader and close to Mossad in the early 80s after being fired from Bear was a fantasy concocted to make his persona during the Towers Financial scheme era more interesting and to provide cover for the fact that he was essentially Wexner’s (whose alleged uh confirmed bachelor status is more evidenced than almost anything else in the Epstein narrative) rentboy during this era. Practically nobody involved in the London arms market during the Khashoggi era has any recollection of him, he certainly wasn’t a major player and certainly wasn’t well-connected.
Maxwell, of course, was close to Mossad. This fact was well-known and reported upon openly in the British and foreign press at the time, because he was considered a hero in Israel for having brokered weapons shipments during one of the early Arab-Israeli wars. It is unclear, however, that Maxwell ever even met Epstein, let alone that they were involved (interesting when countless people from that era of the business in London are still alive) beyond the faintest hearsay. Some people have claimed that they met in New York or London, or once, and yet nobody can ever actually attest to it, or produce a photograph of it, or recount one occasion where it happened.
And nobody in Mossad, which has tons of discontented leakers willing to speak to the press, has discussed intelligence Epstein’s blackmail operations supposedly produced. Given a substantial majority of those Epstein cavorted with were either powerless (like Prince Andrew) or Jewish, the objective of this supposed blackmail operation for Mossad is not even clear. Was this a dastardly scheme to blackmail Jewish billionaires into… supporting Israel? Certainly one can’t imagine them doing so otherwise.
Epstein conspiracies are mostly just people who are so trusting and naive that they can’t believe that “society”™️ would let someone get away with this. Unfortunately, it would, and it still does all the time for people much less wealthy and interesting than Epstein.
A nice tale. They are all just making these up. Not relevant that Maxwell was Israel superspy and his daughter is involved in the same business but somehow not for the same side. The Jewich chauvinists attracted to the whole project are just a coincidence. So are the constant visits of Ehud Barak, Israel ex prime minister with myriad of visits. https://www.timesofisrael.com/ehud-barak-met-with-jeffrey-epstein-dozens-of-times-flew-on-private-plane-report/
You are just so incurious about why exactly Epstein was collecting the evidence of politicians raping children.
Sorry, but neither your tale in diminishing the evidence is convincing, nor do I buy your intentions in telling it at face value. Especially since you previously pretended that those evidence didn't exist but now you are aware of Ben Menashe and ready to dismiss him. And as I now added the Ehud Barak issue, obviously this was far from exhaustive.
A Mossad blackmail operation, as part of a facet of this intlligence operation, is what fits the evidence and the testimonies.
And what was this very Jewish operation of people like Ghislane out to do then but obviously to collect blackmail. Or are you disputing the tapes now? Which somehow haven't been used to reveal the clients.
Other than the "nothing to see here" black hole, that is not naive, something worse, you really aren't serious here but engaging in desperatly trying to shut down this issue, this kind of naivety is not natural, rare can a person manage to combine an ability to not notice such important issues (like tapes) and make such strong claims.
Why were they including other Jews in the operation? Probably because like Epstein some of them were perverts, as a reward for loyalty, like the super jewish chauvinist and Epstein lawyer Alan Dershowitz, accused of rape by victims of this network. Some like Barak were probably there for the intelligence gathering and to coordinate it, and not to make direct use of Epstein's "products".
However, I don't see why they wouldn't implicate Jews too, to get them to also doubly work for such causes. Or to let them know that if they sing, they are going to get exposed. Not only blackmail but Jews like Maxwell or Epstein end up getting killed too by Mossad. Do you have an answer other than nothing to see here? Why were they apparently blackmailing Jews. Why so many Jews involved has an obvious answer of some of them willing to work along with it. Or do you deny that as is the tendency in such issue to deny facts as conspiracy theories? Because the blackmailing of Jews by Jews in the Epstein case is a fact. And the backing of Epstein by another pro Israel Jewich chauvinist in Wexner who created a group of Jewish billionaires in MEGA group was also a fact.
Other than obfuscation and throwing Fear Uncertainty and Doubt, are you interested like OJ about the real perpetrators and who is actually behind the Epstein (and Maxwell) issue? I guess we should stop asking questions and just end the discussion at "it just happens" and "not Mossad".
The real interesting question is whether state within a state Jewish NGOs in general are interconnected, and have any Mossad ties. There is a reason people like Epstein were allowed to operate and it isn't that "it is just normal in a society" where nothing can be done, but that broader network which is in operation, until it is brought down.
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I get that it's hard to have a productive conversation based on nothing but speculation, but I feel that the Rat / Internet Atheist habit of "where's the evidence, bro" needs to die, or take a severe beating at least. There are "boring" orgs, that are relatively accessible to the public, which do goofy clandestine stuff every once in a while, and when we find out, it's often by dumb luck. What kind of evidence do you expect the public to have regarding Mossad?
- "You have no evidence for that!", he said standing in front of a stack of burning papers...
The claims for evidence are always attempts to force the burden of proof onto the claimant, which is normally a good thing. However modern internet discourse allows for extensive poisoning of the wells, so by forcing a source to be provided it becomes an orthogonal attack: by providing a source you have activated my trap card of categorical deniability.
There is no source so pure that it will be above reproach, so by providing a source to be arbitrarily torn down the argument is in fact further advanced: I have proven you are a chud by the fact that your source is the right wing rag Time magazine.
Facts do not matter for debatebros intent on using 'SOURCE?!?!' as an argument. Memory holing, source poisoning or other means of denying reality are tools extensively employed to maintain ones moral position.
Right wingers will admit that they do not like trans people and are working on legislation to ban transgender ideologies, left wingers will scream endlessly that there is no such pushing of trans ideologies in schools and evade/attack if evidence is provided.
This breaks down when the source provided is ones ownself, so thats where Epsteins claims of being a mossad agent are as spurious as Logan Pauls claim that he was buildings a crypto project or Musks claims that he is a Real Man who can stand up to the jewish weenie Zuckerberg - the only proof of their claim is their own words, so the motivations for providing a source must itself be considered. Source poisoning is a tactic used by really bad actors and ignoring the poison is also a bad action.
(Disclaimer: this is not a counter-argument, or even a disagreement, though it may sound like one. Maybe a tangential diatribe. Ahem.)
I can sympathize with this perspective, but only to a degree, as I feel it ignores that sources can be evaluated on various factors for credibility to support a claim, and the basis of these are appropriate grounds of conversation/debate such that 'source, please' is a relevant and reasonable thing.
Source credibility matters, and it can come from many observable factors that don't need mind-reading. These can be their consistency over time (do they have an established bias), their willingness to issue retractions and corrections (i.e. how likely are they to stand behind a lie if challenged, versus correcting a mistake), their self-interests in taking a position (does a claim inflate or decrease their social standing at the time it is made), and so on.
(This is one of the reasons that Epstein's claims are weaker than they might otherwise be, because he had a history of lying in favor of himself, and the specific claim itself could be self-benefiting, both before and after he got into serious scrutiny. Beforehand it could buff his prestige and imply he had powerful friends to help him get away with things so best not challenge him, and afterwards it could be used to deflect blame and responsibility away from himself. Note that these interests are valid whether the connection is true or not.)
The issue with 'providing sources is a waste of time because it's a trap card' is that, well, many sources most commonly used are indeed bad, and their usage is often used also bad. Time Magazine is not immune from political bias or propaganda, and using a citation in the form of an appeal to authority is double-bad both because of the fallacious form of the argument, and that the argument ignores why the source could be doubted. Pointing out either of these can be true and relevant, and also dismissed as 'poisoning the source.' The accusation itself is a means to counter an accuasion that would undermine the argument if true, thus letting the argument remain stronger than if the challenge went unchallenged.
The solution here isn't to disclaim sources entirely, but to use- and expect them to be used- in a more measured faction. But that measured faction goes back to the credibility of the source, as how far a source can be taken is going to vary significantly depending on context.
(Which I don't think you'd disagree with in general, but I wanted to write down those thoughts.)
I am in broad agreement. My specific inciting reason for my disjointed rant was the last line of @ArjinFerman post, about the burning books. In reasoned debate and discussion source provision is indeed a standard we should all abide by, but source poisoning is a tactic so regularly yet inconsistently applied that the calls for a source are warning signs of bad-faith poisoners readying their needles instead of honest requests for verification.
Appeal to authority is indeed a logical fallacy, but explicating the objection to a source is never framed in that way. Instead the arguers aim to pull off a heads I win tails you lose, for no source means no proof and a source means proof of your right wing bias. In public forums, requests for sources are not attempts at furthering an argument or discussion, they are performative kayfabe to pretend at decorum while castigating the other side.
This can of course be said of most public facing forums and indeed institutions as a whole, with mindshare capture being the meta of discourse shaping. I wish we could find a way to arbitrate and give concrete value to facts and opinions shared, but the upvote is just inconsequential goodboypoints.
Btw pls updoot for visibility, thank
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Sure, I’m not saying the public is going to know. I’m saying that we do know that Epstein lied about a huge number of things, and that the source of the Mossad rumors (if you look into them) is typically people who were told by Epstein himself (who notoriously wanted to be an international man of mystery) that he was a secret agent and intelligence broker for Mossad.
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Surely you're not arguing that the alternative is to simply believe what we feel like believing? I don't consider myself a rationalist or an internet atheist but I regularly ask "where's the evidence?" and do not think I'm being particularly (overly) skeptical to do so. The comment by /u/Magusoflight was clearly an attempt at baiting, and I'd suggest we need far less of that regardless.
Of course not. In these situations I think it's important to make it clear what is being claimed with evidence, and what is being based on speculation, but I don't think speculative claims should be dismissable out of hand. In this case we're talking about Epstein, and no matter how many demands for evidence go unmet, that case stinks and glows from orbit. Maybe it's not Mossad, but someone was backing that guy.
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I'm curious where your put-past line is. Is Trump arranging for his own assassination attempt past it? What about Macron arranging the rail sabotage?
It is worth considering in cases where relatively few civilian deaths purchase a casus belli for an important conflict, and where the actor can’t be discerned. The rail sabotage would make sense for Macron if he were intent on blaming (say) Russia and also had a strong geopolitical interest in warring against Russia. Or consider the false flags used by Russia: https://it.usembassy.gov/how-russia-conducts-false-flag-operations/
Implying that there isn’t a way to determine who launched the projectiles, it seems like a seriously attractive move by Netanyahu, and only at the expense of some Druze lives which don’t really matter to that coalition.
Unless this cozy little site has been infiltrated by paid actors, I suppose I may have to recalibrate the skepticism/cynicism Overton window of the average poster here. Not in a million years would I think it rational for Israel to false flag an attack on Druze children in the year 2024. Russia isn't the right analogy because, well, it's Russia! It's a large nuclear state that will doubtlessly continue to exist even if the rest of the world is turned into those that see it as a thug state and those that see it as a thug state that one can do business with. Israel has no such existential luxury, and so any attractiveness of creating a casus belli must be weighed down by the mortal expense of the loss of America's nuclear umbrella. The math is impossible and can only work if not only Netanyahu is crazy enough to believe it, but also the entire chain of command required to execute the false flag operation. This isn't something you can execute with three fanatical spooks.
Are we pretending that Israel doesn't have its own nuclear capability?
I'd think Israel is severely limited in its second strike capability due to its small size, awful geographic location elative to adversaries, and its strategic ambiguity around its nukes (both in count and readiness). Much better to rely on Uncle Sam for nuclear deterrence.
I'm skeptical the US ever provided nuclear deterrence for Israel. Even without the current hard pivot away from Israel that the Democrats are performing I can't imagine there's any world where the US would have nuked Iran in return if they try to nuke Israel.
If Russia nuked Estonia, I think the odds are that the US doesn't nuke Russia back, at least not unless Russia escalates further. The response instead would be limited to substantive conventional strikes, with nuclear saber rattling. Point is, the nuclear umbrella is not some kind of 100% binding dead man's switch, but instead it raises the cost of nuclear aggression significantly. Do you think Iran is a rational actor? If so, then it must be deterred from nuking Israel.
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At the risk of linking this mind-killing topic to another one that turned out to be mind-killing even relative to the normal toxic sludge nature of what we discuss here, I remember hearing a very similar line of argument for why Ukraine could not have been behind the Nord Stream bombing. Yet, when mainstream papers all over countries like Germany ran articles asserting that shockingly it was in fact the Ukrainians, the needle of public opinion regarding support for Ukraine in Germany and other Western countries barely twitched.
Regardless of whether you believe the it-was-UA theory, this should tell you that we overestimate the likelihood that people would turn on an important tribal ally for a moral transgression, even if that transgression harms said people. Just like with NS, in the hypothetical case that Israel did it, there will never be a situation where a leader will stand before a camera and swear that they ordered the attack (except in situations where it is too late for UA/IL anyway). For any evidence short of that, those who support them will surely find a way to continue believing a cocktail of "our allies wouldn't do that, their enemies are known to make things up, it wouldn't make sense for them because if it came out they would lose the support of people like me" that allows the supporter to treat the allegation as evidence for nothing except for the deviousness of the enemy's slanderous schemes.
What made the Ukraine - Nord Stream bombing story funnier, and helps explain some of that needle-not-shifting, was that it was the anti-Ukrainians/pro-Russians who most pushed in the 'it couldn't have been Ukraine' angle before the story broke, arguing on grounds that it was clearly beyond their capability and must have been the US instead, hence the credulity given to the Seymour Hersh article, while it was relatively pro-Ukrainian posters noting that the Ukrainians were potential culprits with means and motive.
The revelations that it was (probably) the Ukrainians were awkward for most people you'd expect to trumpet it, because it undercut a number of the propaganda narratives of the people previously most invested in the Nord Stream topic who you'd expect to trumpet it. The anti-Americans didn't want to acknowledge that their previous year of accusations would have been unfounded all the while, the Russians didn't want to acknowledge that Ukraine could destroy their infrastructure and thus Russia didn't have a monopoly on sabotaging underseas infrastructure to pressure the Europeans with, and the European energy-import/pro-Russia-business lobbies didn't want to have to acknowledge that the investments were far more vulnerable than previously thought (and not just from American pressure). Not only did it make previous positions wrong, but it undercut the arguments for Russia as an alternative when any 'break with the West, build a pipeline to Russia for your own interest!' project could be destroyed.
For the pro-Ukrainian factions, in turn, few of them had any major reason to be vocal about it. Setting aside that it had been inactive at the time and thus limiting the actual effect, the Nord Stream pipeline had been a long-standing friction point between Germany and most of its regional neighbors. Not only did its destruction given the German government the political cover to drop what had long been a priority project of the merkel era, it suited the interests of a number of the parties Germany had been ignoring the protests of to leave unstated that if Ukraine could sabotage such a pipeline, so could anyone else. The conspiracy theory before may have been only the Americans could, but the security-planning reality after was that anyone else could. No one, to my knowledge, has made any direct threat, but post-Nordstream Germany entered a series of substantial (and costly) policy changes to re-align itself with its neighbors.
(This is not as ominous as it may sound, and is far from the only European realignment on security / implicit capability threat terms. Political history ties the Franco-British alliance of the 20th century to the rise of Germany, but said changed also coincided with the rise in technological capabilities for the French to contest the English channel without needing a Blue Water navy thanks to torpedo boats. British-French relations shifted without an explicit threat, but with a coinciding sharp rise in the implicit relative costs if Britain chose a more confrontational approach. Similarly, the Franco-German conventional rivalry died with the advent of the French nuclear deterrent: with the value of conquest removed, cooperation becomes far more palatable than alternative arrangements. This does not mean that the French made nuclear threats to compel the Germans into the proto-EU.)
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There are some posters here that frankly hate Israel. So they will grasp for any theory to blame Israel.
You know when you have been in any forum long enough that once you see a particularly unhinged spiel you have a good idea who is the perpetrator. It is one easy way to identify bad faith arguers at the outset, which is perhaps one of the ONLY goos things Reddit had: RES allowed tagging so if any response looked unhinged or memey you could know immediately based on your own personal preferences.
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I don't think I am cynical enough to think Israel would false-flag themselves, but I may be cynical enough to think they would false-flag some non-Jewish civilians in an occupied territory who refuse Israeli citizenship and still consider Syria their authority.
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