Could you explain why you thought my previous post proposed a false dichotomy? It seems sound to me, even after looking at it a second time.

I don't disagree with your analyses of the underlying causes for the current version of the Palestinian conflict. History has shat on them and they're still stuck in it. Although I will nitpick that the tactic of suicide bombing is probably employed on account of specific Islamic beliefs, as relatively few such attacks are carried out by non-Muslims.

The IRA comparison is an interesting one with some meat on it, and I may meander a bit here as I explore my thoughts on it. The Northern Irish conflict, at its core, was not about religion, it was about sovereignty and independence. I don't doubt that both sides attempted to use the bible as a weapon. The very fact that the attempt was unable to create a sect that spread like wildfire across Christendom is a form of evidence that is it less applicable as a weapon. Certainly not proof, but I would count it a point in my favour, not yours.

Note that I'm not saying that there's nothing awful in the Bible, only that it is acknowledged that we don't take most of those parts of it seriously. Any attempt to do so would generate a chorus of condemnation throughout Christian majority countries the world over. Just look at how the we view the Westboro Baptists; they're a farce. Until the Muslim world is willing and able to do the same thing to it's fundamentals and fundamentalists it is not only fair to criticize it, it is important to do so. And when I say criticize 'it' I mean those beliefs that lead to bad shit.

If every terrorist act is predicated on worldly concerns, how do you rationalize the perpetrators of the Charlie hebdo massacre? How do you rationalize the absurd reactions to the shitty anti-Muslim movie that was made? How about the Danish cartoonist incident? The list goes on and on. These are acts that didn't significantly affect the 'injured' parties in any but a religious way. Their responses are explicitly and overtly for religious reasons, while being completely in line with a straightforward and insufficiently fringe interpretation of their religion.

Funny. When you are an idiot and support Palestinian you deserve to be black listed.

Just now need to black list the colleges that also support this crap. Would be a step in the right direction.

That's pretty disgusting....but sadly not at all unexpected. Various factions have seemingly taken control of the bastions of higher learning and systematically destroyed what I always saw as their fundamental function, fostering an ability to logically think for one's self. Anyone not on the 'right' side must be on the 'wrong' side and not worth listening to...or worthy of allowing others to listen to, I guess. That ain't learnin'...that's just mutual mental masturbation.
It's pretty funny/sad/telling that supporters of Palestine are called anti-Semitic, since Palestinians are also Semites, aren't they? The word doesn't mean 'Jewish', it's an ethnicity that includes 'Arabs'.

I would say that example is a false dichotomy. You're never going to find a case in Palestine or elsewhere in the world that someone blows themselves up purely for the religious reasons. There are clearly political and social motivations at play in every terrorist attack.

This relates directly to my main point though. Some some pundits want to use a suicide bombing in the West Bank as proof that Islam is "evil" or "dangerous" without addressing the elephant in the room--that the Palestinians are living in the world's "largest open-air prison" (to use Chomsky's words) and are resisting what they see as occupation of their lands in any way they can. It is no where near as simplistic as the "Muslims good/infidels bad cuz Koran says so" argument that some people seem to want to make.

And let's be clear, I'm not saying there aren't passages in the Koran that are being interpreted by Hamas and others as justification for the use of terrorism as an acceptable form of resistance. I'm saying this isn't unique to Islam. During the height of fighting in Northern Ireland both sides were using the Bible to justify the car bombs, assassinations, and other violence that occurred during The Troubles (another complex conflict where religious, political, and social issues intertwined). Yet I think you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who would claim that Christianity is "evil" or "dangerous" based on what went down in Northern Ireland. It is a great example, though, of how any organized religion can be mobilized to support evil acts.

And then there was this one - http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/16/angela-merkel-comforts-teenage-palestinian-asylum-seeker-germany

Really there was no way to come out of that one looking good... although I do give her points for at least showing up and talking to the girl. Our own local version of the CDU would have locked her up in the Gulags of Nauru or Manus Island, and prevented any interviews or reporting punishable by 2 years gaol http://gu.com/p/4abgf/stw

Something else from Australian politics, the speaker of the house has come under fire for her travel expenses - http://gu.com/p/4akdp/stw - strangely not so much for the $A90,000 on a trip to Europe, but instead for the $5,000 for a helicopter trip to Geelong for a party fundraiser... go figure.

This one was just funny - our chief lizard trying to stay on message seems to have suggested that a grocery code would have prevented the Greek financial crisis - http://gu.com/p/4ae24/stw

"People choose to be polygamous" means people what polygamy? A-they are born that way? B-it just happens? Or C-Hrm, lets see...they must LEARN it. You specifically compared it with being born gay versus choosing (ie., learning something and then choosing it.) Whether this was intentional or not is...irrelevant...

Second, most of the stuff was meant to be irrelevant to the content but also explaining why I hate moral connotations from judgmental assholes. You twist that as though I related it to the video or used it directly against your argument--which I did not. If you didn't understand this, I am not sure how to spell out something so obvious, especially to someone as well-learned as you Chaos. Even if you didn't twist it, your constant poking at it was irrelevant to the argument, and makes your argument seem very petty.

Furthermore, the definition of monogamy is crafted in the best possible light for those "practicing it." They can sugar coat the shit all they want, but it's still shit. Basically they took the most convenient definition they could find and applied it. Remember, I said, "You could argue that boning, fucking, sucking, dating people until you decide it is convenient to settle down is monogamy, and that's fine." Keyword, "that's fine." So yeah, I agreed in a way that the common definition accepted by others is as you said--don't correct bullshit that didn't need correcting.

Lastly, Rome was an example of how history affects perception. Nothing paranoid about that. I think its bullshit, but it happens. It would be like saying that people hate persecution of Jews because of Nazis. In fact Israel can abuse Palestinians these days exactly because of the past. @newtboy was damn right about child rape and didn't need to use sarcasm. Yeah, Rome/Greece had some good and bad, absolutely. But all in all they were hated as a greedy, mass-murdering peoples who brought hell to their vanquished.

The sacredness of life is subjective, which makes it a useless measure.

A Palestinian mother thinks her son's life is priceless, an Israeli mortar team don't even consider it. An American husband thinks his wife's life is sacred, the terrorist that blows up the plane she is on does not.

Think about the dispassionate way we regard yearly statistics on road fatalities or death due to chronic disease. Do we weep our hearts out for every one of those deaths? Of course not, those lives have no worth to us beyond the abstract "fellow human being". They don't really bother us emotionally because we have almost no care for them.

If life is only subjectively sacred, then it's not really sacred at all...

The people that picket abortion clinics are the same ones that vote down social support mechanisms to promote and enhance people's lives. Life is so sacred that they oppose things that would make the live far more worthwhile living...

I'd say "ironic" but it's not surprising in the least.

Can I mix a track about Palestinian Civil Rights? Or do you think Israel would claim it as its own property and remix it to suit its own needs?

Who owned it before it was inhabited?

Nobody.

It belongs to whomever can hold it...same as any country. The land doesn't have 'property of...' signs anywhere, does it? If the Israelis wanted Gaza, they could get it.

The palestinians seem to be an example of how not to do anything right, hence the destruction of their area. Their leaders just sock away foreign aid or fire rockets at Israel, which brings back the destruction 10 fold. They need to smarten up.

LOL!!!
So you believe the Israel sponsored site is feeding you the whole truth, huh? They simply don't show you the non-Jewish flag the original inhabitants used and pretend the area was essentially uninhabited before they came along. The entire area was under dispute and barely held together by British might, but inhabited by the people now called Palestinians who had been promised autonomy for fighting the Turks in WW1 (Before WW1 it was held by the Turks). The Jews were nearly 100% immigrants, not natives.

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/palestine_1918_to_1948.htm

this link shows the original Palestinian flag

http://www.factualisrael.com/1939-palestinian-flag-look-like-surprised/

It should be illuminating for the uninformed.

I never said weak nations 'should' be invaded, but instead that they would, it's a distinct difference. I very much disagree with what human nature leads to more often than not, but I won't deny it is as it is. If a nation has anything valuable and isn't willing and able to fight to keep it, any nation that is willing and able to fight to take it will take it the moment they judge that the taking will gain them more than they lose fighting for it.

I think it is important also to note that the original fighting in 1948 was not Israel vs. Palestinians, but instead a civil war between Jewish Palestinians and Arab Palestinians. It was a war over land and rights. It was a war both sides thought they could win. When the UN proposed a two state solution, the Jewish side declared it's independence and accepted the borders. The Arab side though gained the backing of every neighboring Arab state who all jointly committed to driving the Jews into the sea. This was in 1948, just after the holocaust, and each Arab country badly outnumbered the newly declared state of Israel. Israel none the less triumphed in the war. Some of it through straight up fighting, but most of it was simply agreement with the neighbouring states of Syria, Jordan and Egypt to simply not try and fight to protect large portions of Palestinian territory along their borders. As in, Syria, Jordan and Egypt happily seized and picked up portions of land for themselves at the expense of the Arab Palestinians too.

The relationship between Israel and it's neighbours is layered beyond belief. I still stand by the observation that they absolutely do face a life/death decision in maintaining military superiority. They must walk the line of having enough ability and will to fight to make it simply not worthwhile for it's enemies and neighbours to try and attack it. To suggest or claim otherwise is simply absurd and in contradiction to all of human history.

If Israeli attacks weren't fully funded proxy attacks from larger nations like the USA, you might have a point.
If Iran and Syria had not 'supported' Hezbollah, there would be no Palestinian area today, only Israel.
The reality is that if "Palestine" could defend itself like any other nation, Israel would be 1/2 it's size and not constantly expanding, and there would be hundreds of thousands more Palestinians who had not been killed by Israel and the isolation/starvation they caused.

It seems you're saying that any nation not busy expanding into it's neighbors is 'weak' and should be invaded? Maybe I read wrong?

If the Palestinian attacks weren't fully funded proxy attacks from larger nations like Iran And Syria you'd be dead right. As it is though, groups like HeZbollah are just an arm of the Iranian state launching attacks on Israel and testing it's resolve. It's horrible, but the reality is that if Hezbollahs attacks do more damage than is done in return, the attacks from them will continue to escalate as Iran throws more resources behind it. Regrettably we live in a world were restraint and being the better man are just signs of weakness encouraging the militaristic parties to push even harder to take advantage.

If black americans really do have any kind of tendency towards being poorly educated or poorly civilised, is it because they have only very recently been allowed to have any education or any part in civilisation. And i'm not necessarily willing to accept that premise, because there similarly plenty of white americans who are also extremely poorly educated and poorly civilised. I know that because i caught honey boo-boo on TV once. It doesn't help that your legal system is inherently racist as evidenced by the shocking prison statistics for black americans; whitey made sure that 'black people' crime is highly punishable and 'white people' crime isn't. Just listen to what this man has to tell you.

Your advice to someone who lives in bad area is "Buy a house in a nice area?" OMFG I NEVER THOUGHT OF THIS!!! Why don't starving people in third world countries just move house? Why don't people who live in warzones move? Why don't the Palestinians just move? Why don't isolated, terrified old ladies move out of dangerous apartment blocks and council estates? Why don't abused women just leave their husbands? Why don't abused children just run away and tell a policeman? Why don't .... you just shut the fuck up? Honestly, better to keep silent and have people think you're stupid and racist than to share your blindingly idiotic comments and remove all doubt.

They are born there, they can't afford to move, they are supporting family who live there (and can't afford to move), they can't get a job anywhere else, they can't go to school anywhere else, there's no one particularly educated amongst them to help them out? Any of the above and millions more reasons (that i don't know because i never experienced it, nor did you)?

Black people were treated like sub-humans, murdered in the street without comment and for no particular reason, beaten, tortured, forced to work, forced to fight, bred for strength and most of all.... kept in the fucking dark about everything, because stupid slaves are easier to control.

Generation after generation of being bred for work traits; intelligence systematically discouraged. So anyone who's around now was raised by people who were raised by people with no education, property or hope through no fault of their own. Add to that inherent racism as explained CLEARLY to you by this video. So the black people today are a product of their environment. And in a way, that excuses you for being a disgusting, poorly-educated, ignorant racist because the apple never falls far from the tree... and you're not worth any more of my time.