No, instead the perpetuate a state sponsored version of history that says the palestinians willingly left their homes when Israel was founded, ignoring the terror campaign instituted that made them want to leave their homes, ignoring the hundreds of thousands that were literally forced out at gun point. Instead they force their children to participate in a generations long campaign of ethnic cleansing. Instead they relocate their families to settlements, thereby implicating them in war crimes. No, they don't use suicide bombers, they just use bombers. That way they can go back over and over again.

I'm not saying the Palestinians make good neighbours. I am saying that Israel makes for a horrible neighbour.

Indeed, however with small exception I thought we were being fairly civil. That said, we all know what to expect from the 'little f*#king thing'. It's why the admins are constantly on his ass, and he may be banned again.

My point about veracity was that one has to trust the 'reporting' by others who may have an agenda to further. Without first hand knowledge, it's difficult for some (like me) to give full trust in ANY reports. I tried to read the first link you provided, but it started with a 'letter' to Saddam and I admit I didn't go farther.
As I recall, the numbers were more in the 1-300K dead from the ethnic cleansing (I have 175K in my head, but I don't know if that's right). I was old enough to watch the reports live when it happened in the 80's-90's and worry I might be drafted. I have not intended to imply Saddam wasn't terrible, only to imply he was not as bad as possible.

What I've seen so far from ISIS were hundreds if not thousands of 'prisoners' marched to their execution after surrender, even after swearing allegiance to ISIS, reports of mass rapes, village destruction, 'warnings' to all those not in line to leave or die, takeover of 1/2 the country in weeks (or less), all by 5000 people. Reports are that they are gaining members, allies, and massive amounts of money and arms. For their size, they appear to be worse than Saddam, who had hundreds of thousands, if not millions at his disposal. If you multiplied the videoed crimes of ISIS in just the last week by 200+, you would understand my point that they seem worse than most weeks of Saddam's rule....when you consider their respective sizes.
I'll hope you are correct, and ISIS is soon to be wiped out, but it's certainly not happening yet. No matter how it plays out, you are certainly right that ugly times are ahead for Iraq.

I agree with most of what your typed. But can't they have a little more of an open heart? maybe even sympathize with a bunch of people who have no home and are being 'ethnically cleansed'

>> ^obscenesimian:

Yes yes. Kurds, hmmmmmm let me think
oh yes they were abused by turks throughout history but most notably during the the 1890's 1920's 1930's and on up to the 70's and 80's. Ironically, Kurds also were one of the primary agents used by the Turks in the deportations and massacre Armenians before and during world war 1.
Those Kurds.
Who were also abused by Saddam. All part of a long chain of ethnic cleansing, genocide and nationalist violence caused in a large part by religion and creed as well as tribal identity throughout the balkans and the ottoman empire and what became the palestinian mandate.
Which Hitchens thought we should wade into because science and atheism will put right through warfare that which religion and warfare could not put right.
Hitchens got so much so wrong so many times, but he sounded soooo good doing it.
>> ^bcglorf:
>> ^spoco2:
>> ^kceaton1:
Goodbye Chris. Some of his most profound moments for me came when he actually screwed up and was wrong! It would often lead to other talks and dialogs between the people he had erred against and himself and in some occasions Christopher would merely present them and allow the other person to put the matter straight. He could be friends with these people and often was.
It showed me that he had within himself the ability to be very humble and that to him the truth WAS paramount! For that and much more I will remember him always.
He had it within himself to be the best of us all.

His about face on waterboarding after being waterboarded was the point that I started paying attention to him.

His about face on Saddam era Iraq stood out more in my mind. After being a champion of the anti-war movement in the first Gulf war he went and spent time with the Iraqi Kurds. He came back vehement in his conviction that America's worst crime in Iraq was in essence listening to him in the first place and not pushing into Baghdad and removing Saddam the first time.



Or more simply, Saddam was so horrific and brutal a monster that Iraqis and the region as a whole are better off for his removal.

Yes yes. Kurds, hmmmmmm let me think

oh yes they were abused by turks throughout history but most notably during the the 1890's 1920's 1930's and on up to the 70's and 80's. Ironically, Kurds also were one of the primary agents used by the Turks in the deportations and massacre Armenians before and during world war 1.

Those Kurds.

Who were also abused by Saddam. All part of a long chain of ethnic cleansing, genocide and nationalist violence caused in a large part by religion and creed as well as tribal identity throughout the balkans and the ottoman empire and what became the palestinian mandate.

Which Hitchens thought we should wade into because science and atheism will put right through warfare that which religion and warfare could not put right.

Hitchens got so much so wrong so many times, but he sounded soooo good doing it.

>> ^bcglorf:

>> ^spoco2:
>> ^kceaton1:
Goodbye Chris. Some of his most profound moments for me came when he actually screwed up and was wrong! It would often lead to other talks and dialogs between the people he had erred against and himself and in some occasions Christopher would merely present them and allow the other person to put the matter straight. He could be friends with these people and often was.
It showed me that he had within himself the ability to be very humble and that to him the truth WAS paramount! For that and much more I will remember him always.
He had it within himself to be the best of us all.

His about face on waterboarding after being waterboarded was the point that I started paying attention to him.

His about face on Saddam era Iraq stood out more in my mind. After being a champion of the anti-war movement in the first Gulf war he went and spent time with the Iraqi Kurds. He came back vehement in his conviction that America's worst crime in Iraq was in essence listening to him in the first place and not pushing into Baghdad and removing Saddam the first time.

Things are getting better for humans. Humans for the win! (as long as we don't fuck up all the other living things in the process) But we still rule!!!! YaY!!! >> ^EMPIRE:

Not only are his techniques to show data very interesting, they are also very uplifting, because the statistics don't really lie, and the world HAS improved a great deal over the last 200 years, even with horrible things in its path like WW1 and 2, and the influenza, and ethnic cleansing. So there is really no reason to think the evolution won't continue.
Yet, people still say stupid things like: "oh it's the end of days", and "oh... the world has changed for the worst", or "things were much better when I was younger".. That is all BULLSHIT, and product of lack of perspective, that most humans seem to suffer from.

Not only are his techniques to show data very interesting, they are also very uplifting, because the statistics don't really lie, and the world HAS improved a great deal over the last 200 years, even with horrible things in its path like WW1 and 2, and the influenza, and ethnic cleansing. So there is really no reason to think the evolution won't continue.

Yet, people still say stupid things like: "oh it's the end of days", and "oh... the world has changed for the worst", or "things were much better when I was younger".. That is all BULLSHIT, and product of lack of perspective, that most humans seem to suffer from.

Israel was a strange country. In the summer and fall of 1992 you'd have found me in either Tel Aviv or within the walls of the old city of Jerusalem. I often went for long walks in the evenings and it happened several times that on Allenby Street or maybe Dizengoff that an Israeli would strike up a conversation and then quickly jump to explain how "we are the same you and me, but the Arabs are animals." Or it was dogs. Or cockroaches. It always shocked me and I'd look at my watch and say something about being late.

I'd been having a wonderful time playing backgammon and chain-smoking Nelsons with the Palestinian and Egyptian friends I'd made at the open-sided cafes in Arab east Jerusalem.

Israeli racism is not unique. Franz Fanon wrote the definitive work on the racism of colonialism. (The Wretched of the Earth)

Gabriel Ash is an Israeli journalist, originally from Romania. Ash's article "Diagnosing Benny Morris: The Mind of a European Settler" is a lucid and powerful indictment.

http://dissidentvoice.org/Jan04/Ash0126.htm


*******

Israeli historian Benny Morris crossed a new line of shame when he put his academic credentials and respectability in the service of outlining the "moral" justification for a future genocide against Palestinians.

Benny Morris is the Israeli historian most responsible for the vindication of the Palestinian narrative of 1948. The lives of about 700,000 people were shattered as they were driven from their homes by the Jewish militia (and, later, the Israeli army) between December 1947 and early 1950. Morris went through Israeli archives and wrote the day by day account of this expulsion, documenting every "ethnically cleansed" village and every recorded act of violence, and placing each in the context of the military goals and perceptions of the cleansers.

Israel's apologists tried in vain to attack Morris' professional credibility. From the opposite direction, since he maintained that the expulsion was not "by design," he was also accused of drawing excessively narrow conclusions from the documents and of being too naive a reader of dissimulating statements. Despite these limitations, Morris' The Birth of the Palestinian Refugees Problem, 1947-1949 is an authoritative record of the expulsion.

*******

That's because the rumblers evidently are stupid. Making deaf people hear again is not a bad thing, making people smarter is not a bad thing, improving our bodies with technology is not a bad thing. Yay, future! Boo, hippies.

>> ^moodonia:

Very happy video that could warrant a controversy tag.
Seems there's a movement against these devices in the deaf community, some regard these devices as akin to eugenics or ethnic cleansing of deaf people and their culture. At least thats what I heard on signzone on BBC late one night.

I've heard rumblings of similar things, but wrote it all off as completely retarded.
>> ^moodonia:

Very happy video that could warrant a controversy tag.
Seems there's a movement against these devices in the deaf community, some regard these devices as akin to eugenics or ethnic cleansing of deaf people and their culture. At least thats what I heard on signzone on BBC late one night.

Very happy video that could warrant a controversy tag.

Seems there's a movement against these devices in the deaf community, some regard these devices as akin to eugenics or ethnic cleansing of deaf people and their culture. At least thats what I heard on signzone on BBC late one night.

Will Horowitz condemn the leadership of Israel? That should have been her counter-question.

If anyone in the region is attempting "ethnic cleansing" it's the Israelis.

If the Israelis really wanted to "cleanse" Palestine it would all have been over decades ago and we'd be here talking about the horror and tragedy of it. Condemning Israel as a whole is NOT the same as condemning Hamas as a whole.

-Israel's stated reason for existence is NOT the elimination of all Mulsims, Arabs or Palestinians.
-Hamas' founding charter includes the extermination of all Jewish people from the entire region.

Specific excesses of the Israeli people, government and military absolutely are deserving of condemnation. The entirety of the state itself is a different matter, and failing to see that is the equivalent of failing to see the difference between the Palestinian people and Hamas.

The ignorant drawing of moral equivalence between Hamas and the government of Israel has it's origins firmly in the racism of Arab superiority.

Yes Hamas is wrong but so is their opposition. Honestly I find less to blame in persecuted peoples who promote hate speech in an attempt to fight their persecutors

And yet Hamas has managed to kill more Palestinians than Israelis through their war against Fatah. They are no more freedom fighters for persecuted Palestinians than the Nazi's were freedom fighters for persecuted Germans.

Will Horowitz condemn the leadership of Israel? That should have been her counter-question.

If anyone in the region is attempting "ethnic cleansing" it's the Israelis.

Yes Hamas is wrong but so is their opposition. Honestly I find less to blame in persecuted peoples who promote hate speech in an attempt to fight their persecutors than I find with persecutors who promote hate speech in an effort to villainize an entire population to the point where it's "overlooked" by world governments when they simply "relocate" those people they don't like away from prosperous land and into tenements.

Both sides of the argument can be wrong and in this case they are. Horowitz is a nasty piece of work and I have no sympathy for racist douchebags like him.

@ Raaagh

This is exactly the bullshit double speak that the average no-brainer 'wow i just saw a video and it was bad, therefore the whole country is baaaad' crap that makes internet discussions of this type of thing as pointless as the pre-pubescent dick swinging between your legs. So you agree that 'sanctions were bad' k, but 'the UN acted on behalf of the US'. Do you have any clue about the UN at all? About the decades of antagonism with the US, its complete paralysis during the cold war, through massive ethnic cleansing in bosnia where UN peacekeepers sat and watched and pretty much for every conflict ever since? Do you even comprehend the furore that currently exists around the UK and US interpretation of the UN mandate which was by no means a clear signal for war? No you dont, you probably dont know what UN stands for.

As for it being irrelevant, youre right - in your little video world the UN was nowhere in that shot so you havent been told an opinion on it yet. I could talk about 2007 and how the rules of engagement developed to the point the americans wouldnt fire until they had double confirmation of weapons because of incidents like this, about the brits blown up by american friendly fire and what a terrible waste of life war is generally and about a thousand other things that make the off the hand bullshit comments about 'OMG arent the americans evil' from a single clip only worthwhile on places like digg and videosift, but youre right - im not at that level. You sit on your fat consumerist arse and dont give a toss about where that keyboard you type on comes from, where the packaging it was wrapped in is now poisoning entire villages in china who burn it for 5p a sack, nah you just chucked it away. Well this war was fought to keep you in that idiot lifestyle of waste we all live in here in the west and at least i can see it, whereas you call it irrelevant. In all fairness you didnt see it in that video so how would you be expected to use the resource that is the internet for more than just typing crap in your short attention span world.

If its any consolation know i dont give a toss about your opinion, because by this time next week the top sift will be a rabbit that can chew a carrot with its arse and youll be saying its the most amazing this youve ever seeeeennn!!111!!!!

Yeah the foreign media has it all wrong. They don't use camels and guns to blow up Palestinians, they use tanks bulldozers and airstrikes to destroy their homes! Completely different story! They're just aiming at the HOUSES (and occasionally the U.N.) not the PEOPLE.

Israelis deserve all the bad press they get in the Western media and more. Their country is more like Nazi Germany than they'd ever admit and it's painfully clear that they are on a mission of, 'ethnic cleansing'. But I guess the rules change when the jackboot is on your foot for a change huh?