@newtboy

I believe the quote you were looking for from me was:
What is more, upon the UN mandating a two state solution to the whole mess, the Jewish Palestinians immediately accepted. The Arab Palestinians though appealed to the Arab league, and many of the leaders within it that stood alongside the Nazi's pontificating solutions to 'the problem'.

The word stood being in the past tense. Guys like the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, leading the fight in Palestine in the 30's and coming back to fight during 1948.

You said:
The few actual refugees there that the axis created were absorbable by the Palestinians.

In which time frame did those few refugees arrive that you would count legitimate and absorbable? IMO it has to predate the Grand Mufti's uprising in the late 1930s, simply because tensions between Jewish and Arab Palestinians at this point were bad enough that Arab Palestinians already wanted negative immigration numbers for Jews.

Also maybe re-read you last paragraph. You come dangerously close to stating that the European Jews had the choice between living in camps and doing what the folks led by Haj Amin al-Husseini told them to do, or being considered invaders themselves. That's about the closest we've come to agreeing on something in fact, and I hardly blame the refugees for not choosing camps under the rule of a guy that stated:
Germany and Italy recognize the right of the Arab countries to solve the question of the Jewish elements, which exist in Palestine and in the other Arab countries, as required by the national and ethnic (völkisch) interests of the Arabs, and as the Jewish question was solved in Germany and Italy.

@newtboy,

Why do you insist on trying to contort things?

The stats I found showed 8% in mid 1930's....Before the war.
Provide a source then, I did and it's over 16% as of 1931.

You said the Palestinians stood alongside the Nazis....in 47?....so.....what Nazis?
I observed that the Arab revolt between 1936 and 1939 was led by the grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini. Who later found himself in Germany talking with Hitler and advocating a 'solution' for Palestine ala Italy and Germany. I didn't present an opinion for you to disagree with. I presented a statement of fact which stands regardless of whether you refuse to believe in it or not.

As for partition, stop trying to win points or something, it's inescapable that the partition agreement that the Jewish Palestinians accepted when they declared independence in 1948 was the 1947 UN Partition Plan, on account of the other partition agreements having not yet come into existence yet and all.

I didn't say the tensions didn't begin when Nazis existed, I said they were gone when the events you describe happened.
I think that was addressed earlier what with Arab uprising in the 30s, and the conflict between Arab and Jewish Palestinians continuing on from then all the way till it hit an all out civil war.

Nothing I'm saying here has to justify, forgive or declare Israel a saint and Arabs the sinners. I AM however pointing out some very basic facts that refute the argument that Jewish invaders just came in from Europe and seized Palestine from the Arabs as payback for the holocaust. That simply was not what happened.

Jews were unwelcome and persecuted in Europe long before WW2. Hitler wrote Mein Kampf in 1925, and he wasn't exactly putting pen to brand new ideas nobody had been circulating in Europe already. The Zionists for their part were also busy and in action long before WW2, in no small part for reasons above. The Zionists were absolutely looking to take back 'their' homeland and by invasion if need be. That doesn't mean every Jew in Palestine was a Zionist anymore than the above makes every European and Arab nazi sympathizers. The reality was a lot more muddled and complex.

In the end, the big events driving the Arab-Jewish civil war in Palestine was as you say, an inability of the immigrants to live together with the natives. So on that front we are well agreed. You seem content to place 100% of the blame on the immigrants(which I must insist we refer to as refugees given they are largely European Jews between 1940-1947). I disagree. I believe I've given adequate evidence to demonstrate that the inability to live together was as much to blame on the Arab Palestinians as it was on the Jewish. If we want to blame anyone in the whole mess, the strongest blame still lies with the Axis powers for creating the refugees in the first place.

The stats I found showed 8% in mid 1930's....Before the war.

You said the Palestinians stood alongside the Nazis....in 47?....so.....what Nazis?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-state_solution
There have been numerous two state solutions, starting with the British in 37.
The 48 U.N. plan was really a 3 state solution with Jerusalem under international control....so you're factually wrong, and clearly you can't have meant that when you say "2 state solution". The 2 state solution was proposed in 74. Also, the Nazis were gone in 47...so you're still wrong about 'standing with the Nazis' even if you meant the 3 state solution.

I didn't say the tensions didn't begin when Nazis existed, I said they were gone when the events you describe happened.

Edit: By any theory, it was a unified (at least peacefully living together) nation fractured by massive illegal immigration and an inability of the immigrants to live together with the natives. What if illegal Mexican immigrants claimed south Texas-California as a separate country, using the same reasoning? Would you support that? I wouldn't....and I doubt many would. To me, they have a better case to make, but still not a reasonable one.

You are factually wrong.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palestine_(region)

What to you count as "before" the war? Jewish population in Palestine at set times looks as below:

1890 had 43,000 making your 8%
1922 had 94,000 making 13.6%
1931, still before WW2 broke out in 39 had 175,000 making almost 17%

As for the nazi's being long gone by 1948, most obviously Hitler was still alive 3 years earlier which is hardly most people's idea of a long time. I'm afraid that even that is but the gentlest error in your statement. Palestinian tensions and revolts were ongoing in the 1930s already. Those tensions broke out into a full blown civil war in 1947.

Th 1970s two state UN mandate is obviously NOT the mandate accepted by Jewish palestinians in 1948. I can not fathom how you honestly make such a mistake? Plainly the UN Partition Plan for Palestine from 29 November 1947 as a proposed resolution to the civil war there is the mandate I meant. Given that it was a proposed resolution to a conflict that was simmering on and off throughout WW2 it hardly seems a conflict in which the Nazi's were "long gone".

Read up on Haj Amin al-Husseini, he led the Arab revolt in 1930's Palestine. He later bounced his way to Nazi germany and in 1941 declared
Germany and Italy recognize the right of the Arab countries to solve the question of the Jewish elements, which exist in Palestine and in the other Arab countries, as required by the national and ethnic (völkisch) interests of the Arabs, and as the Jewish question was solved in Germany and Italy.

So no, I don't believe you can really honestly say that the Arab-Jewish tensions that led civil war in Palestine occurred in an environment were the Nazi's were a distant memory.

BTW, you can own Bombs/RPGs/Missiles/etc.

Just fill out a form4 to get one transferred to you from a current owner, or a form1 if you wish to make a new one.

If you get a class 7 firearms license, and make sure to make whatever you make available for sale to LEO/military, then you can also make new automatic weapons for yourself (usually by converting semi auto to auto).

You can also own tanks and fighter planes.
There are clubs where folks hang out and drive around in their tanks, and fly around in their fighters, and shoot heavy weapons, etc.

Granted, the expense and paperwork of all of these makes them something only wealthy/organized people can afford. And realistically, anyone who has the cash to play with these sorts of things has his ducks in a row to begin with. (eg. An automatic rifle runs around the 20'000 usd range.) With a median individual income of around 26k per year, practically everyone in the U.S. can't afford such items (or is unwilling to).

Things called NFA items (rockets/artillery/etc) are registered, but not denied. Since AFAIK the mid 1930's, only a dozen NFA item owners have been convicted of a serious crime, and none of those crimes involved any NFA item. Only one shooting involved an automatic weapon, and it was committed by a police officer that lost his mind.

Other than a periodic flashy event like Fla, practically every gun crime is committed by cheap pistols. Crime and lack of wealth go hand in hand. Poor people are less likely to be educated, less likely to be from a stable well adjusted home, more likely to grow up in a strife ridden neighborhood, and less likely to be able to afford more than a cheap pistol. This is why you never hear about rockets/tanks/etc regarding crime - if the typical criminal could afford them, he wouldn't have to be a criminal. Realistically speaking, the U.S. is wealthy as a nation, but as individuals, people are not that well off. Majority of the country lives hand to mouth. TBH, that's the real problem. That's not to do with exceptions/unicorns like Fla - only with the most common/likely case.

As a side note, Swiss civilians are more heavily armed than U.S. civilians. But as a people they have their heads on straighter, so gun attacks are rare.

-scheherazade

Your video, Orkestra Obsolete play Blue Monday using 1930s instruments, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

@newtboy
If it was about safety, they would have illegally immigrated to the multiple neighboring countries

Right, as if you don't know how well fleeing from Germany to neighbours like Poland or France or Italy would have worked out for them... Seriously?

If the Syrians all went to Belgium, installed their own laws and government supplanting the local Belgians', made the Belgians non-citizens, took their lands and properties, pushed them into one small corner ghetto, then complained about how bad the Belgians are...

Are you suggesting that Jews did all this prior to the outbreak of civil war in Palestine? That doesn't reflect reality in any way shape or form.

it was close to 5% before the invasion.

When do you count Jewish immigration to Palestine as becoming an invasion? Palestine was already 8% Jewish by demographics in 1890. That's enough time for almost a 3rd generation to be born by 1940. Slowest, invasion, ever.

The leap was from 1930-1940, with an additional 450k Jewish Palestinians. In that same time the Arab population grew by 420k, so I guess they were both invading???

The alliance of Arab nations that fought them was much SMALLER militarily, you know this.

Right, Israel's initial standing army was 10k, matching Egypt's 10k. But Egypt wasn't the only one in the alliance of course, Jordan had that many as well. Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the remaining alliance members represented another 10k together too. Sure, in hindsight we know they don't jointly commit their entire forces to the task an outnumber the Jewish military 3 to 1. I'm not quite sure how the Jewish people planning a defense were supposed to anticipate that and 'hold back' accordingly.

Honestly, I just can not comprehend what you expect Jewish people fleeing Europe to have done instead. Fleeing to other parts of Europe still left them in Nazi controlled territory and on a train back to Poland. Standing to fight in other European countries meant getting shot at, defeated, and then on a train to Poland. Crossing the ocean was a far sight harder than going to the middle east. Of all the middle east countries, Palestine was the most promising so I find it hard to fault the folks leaving Europe and setting up shop there. Once arrived there, I again find it hard to condemn them for demanding fair treatment and being willing to fight for it.

I said those illegally invading in the 30's had little to flee (unless you are saying they had a time machine and KNEW what was coming).

Mein Kampf was first published in 1925, it had sold nearly a quarter million copies by 1933 when Hitler took power. How could they ever have seen anything bad coming their way I wonder...

I can't figure out whether I hope you view the Middle Eastern(and most recently Syrian) refugees coming into Europe as 'invaders' too or not.

It really stretches the imagination to fail to at least give some degree of legitimacy to Jewish flight from Europe in the 30s and 40s. Immigration to anywhere was strictly illegal to them, including over here in Canada and America too.

You see Jewish invaders from Europe taking over Palestine where I see refugees fleeing a legitimate threat to their lives. The holocaust seems to have proven out the fears of European Jews that left in the 30s, no?

You also completely ignore the actual situation on the ground in Palestine between Jewish and Arab Palestinians. You make it sound like peace loving, tree hugging Arabs stepped back and watched as Jewish invaders stripped them of their land at gun point out of malice. Truth is, neither Jewish nor Arab Palestinian populations were treating each other particularly well by the 1930s. The Arab population was every bit as racist, unfair and violent to the Jewish Palestinians as the other way around.

Might be interesting to compare and contrast how we in the US have handled our laundry list of "bad things we've done in the past" compared to, say, Germany.

I know that the Nazi flag and other imagery are outright banned / censored in Germany. From what I understand, WW2 history taught in schools in Germany is handled very carefully, if not largely glossed over.

In the US, the only bit of history that gets treatment similar to that (in my experience/opinion) is the Vietnam war. I know my High School history classes definitely glossed over it and didn't want to get into any details about why, how, or whether or not we should have been in the war at all.

Compare that to WW2, which was covered in pretty great detail. Very much including actively encouraging students to consider their own thoughts on controversial things like dropping not just one but two atomic bombs on Japan.

The Civil War is also covered much more openly and honestly. I don't think I can recall anyone ever seriously suggesting that the single, most important root cause of the Civil War wasn't slavery. Other umbrella labels like "states rights" might be referred to as the impetus, but yes, any and all of those things really boil down to slavery.



One thing that scares me about the German approach (sweep under the rug and don't talk about it) is that it sort of all too conveniently ignores the reality that these terrible things were done by people who were (disturbingly) not very different from us. OK, Hitler himself might have been a 1 in a million or 1 in a billion combination of evil, crazy, and powerful. But Joe Average from today ... not so different from Hans Average from 1930s Germany.

Celebrating one's heritage and past is OK, sometimes even good. Especially when one can honestly own and try to understand the bad along with the good. I think it is OK to appreciate the Confederate flag, along with historical figures like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. It is possible to accept that their core motivations were done in support of a very bad and evil institution (slavery), but to still respect or even admire their accomplishments as human beings. Thomas Jefferson owned slaves too, but we are willing to look beyond that when considering his legacy.

Maybe the Confederate flag is tied too closely to the institution of slavery for it ever to be uncoupled from that. Maybe a government that prides itself on being democratic should consider that that connection creates a conflict with many of its constituents. But I hope we never sweep it under the rug and pretend it never happened.

Firstly, i don't remember seeing an american referendum on gay marriage, so i don't know what makes you think your "WE" decided anything.

But did i really just see this troglodyte compare consensual same-sex relationships to paedophilia - child rape - like there was no difference?

You are fucking sick in the head - genuinely disturbing and offensive homophobic point of view. This is not the 1930s.

Is this allowed on the sift? Imagine a gay person reading this... and being told they are morally equal to paedophiles? Being told that this community tolerates people who compares them so? Surely this is an offensive and inflammatory insult. I feel as though choggie has been banned for less in the past. I'm disgusted.

Again, I totally disagree. The 'road tax' is the same kind of social program as SS and Medicare. If you don't understand that not having hoards of indigent elderly, uneducated, and infirmed on those streets is a good thing, we'll never see eye to eye.

Per dollar per family? That makes no sense to me...it's either one or the other.

The law of Jante is a derogative term from the 1930's. If it applies today and most people dislike it, it's incredibly odd that a democratic country didn't change by now. What I read said the term now refers to people trying to 'climb the social ladder'. (a thing that would be impossible if the original 'law of Jante' was reality and everyone was the same status)

I'll await comment from someone who lives there, like @BicycleRepairMan, because I'm far more interested in what he thinks about this than what you or I think about it.

Steel erecting on the Empire State Building -1930s has been added as a related post - related requested by oritteropo.

The specified related post, Steel erecting on the Empire State Building -1930s, is already associated with this post - bypassing related request by oritteropo.

Prefabricated construction has a long history both in China and the west, and to some degree almost every modern building uses the technique. There is a video on here about the construction of the Empire State building for instance, and the WTC twin towers were quite prefabricated too. (*related: Steel erecting on the Empire State Building -1930s, Building the World Trade Center Towers 720p HD)

It was particularly popular in ancient Rome, and combined with the use of cranes and concrete their construction times weren't that different to the modern era (actually sometimes faster, I think the planning process must have been more streamlined).

The standardised look of ancient Chinese buildings is for the same reason, the parts were standardised to make prefabrication easier, certainly by the Ming dynasty if not earlier - see http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/705 for instance.

This particular building just does a particularly good job of it.

*promote women's suffrage in the 1930's.

How indeed.

Draghi's ECB has just made a move and I don't understand why. Come Feb 11th, they will no longer accept Greek bonds as collateral, effectively cutting off one of Greece's last two sources of credit. What remains is the Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA) provided to the Greek Central Bank, through which the entire banking system must now get most of its credit.

Why did they do it? Why now? I don't think it has something to do with the Advocate Generals opinion piece the other day, declaring the ECB's membership in the troika to be a conflict of interest and that fiscal policy is not to be used as a tool to influence poltical decision-making.

Could it be pure idiocy like the time they pulled to plug on Cyprus only to backpeddle shortly after? Or might they be trying to force a move on part of Germany and Greece? "Stop messing around and get your ducks in a row NOW." -- that sorta thing? Is it mere posturing of sorts, a shot across the bow of Greece?

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Edit #1

I really don't like this. It looks like disaster, smells like disaster and tastes like disaster. And it's entirely too close for comfort. Are they truly going to turn Greece into a failed-state over principle? The way they casually discuss the lives of nearly 11 million people, and the future of the European Union as well, is bone-chilling.
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In the meantime, Schäuble's meeting with Varoufakis went just as expected, reports indicate. Schäuble won't budge a bit. Negotiations with the troika are mandatory, and fiscal waterboarding must be resumed at once. There will be no compromise, not with him in charge. He'll push Greece off the cliff without blinking even once. Convictions worthy of a Templar, that one. Worth remembering that he admitted taking 100k in bribes from an arms dealer in '94 and still managed to become Minister of Finance. A living legend, just not the kind I'd prefer.

With regards to hyperinflation, most folks over here seem to have forgotten, or maybe they never learned, that Chancellor Brüning's austerity regime led to deflation in 1930-32, pushing unemployment to 23%. What followed was a massive influx in membership and infuence for parties at both ends of the political spectrum, similar to Greece. Except in our case, it wasn't the left (KPD) who won the elections in '32...