This Jersey Shore thing could be something of a pan American-Mediterranean culture where female behaves as the dominant figure of the household and social scenes while the male acts as the 'trophy husband' who has to keep his figure and mostly be concerned about his status around his peers. I tend to see similar mannerisms from most New York City's Outer borough minority families.

>> ^HugeJerk:

I love the guy at the end. Christians know how to make people who were one color into another, they turned Jesus white thru propaganda!


Please don't generalize all Christians like this. Jesus was Jewish (Israelites). That is one of the biggest qualifications of the Messiah, i.e. to be of the line of David. Therefore he had a Mediterranean pigmentation. He was not black, nor was he white.

In regards to race...

There has been two major dispensations from God. In one he dealt with the Israelites, and everyone else was referred to as Gentiles (Asians, Africans, Whites, Hispanics, Canadians :-) , etc.). The gentiles during the time of the old testament were regarded somewhat (a generalization) as heathens. Then after Jesus came and went everyone (Jews and Gentiles) are dealt pretty much the same. This is an over-generalization but it is generally close enough. During the tribulation period God will once again work only through the Israelites.

And for the white supremists out there... Acts 8 is a passage in the Bible where God specifically cares for a black person. You can read a commentary about it here:

http://www.biblegateway.com/resources/commentaries/IVP-NT/Acts/Philip-Ethiopian-Eunuch

To summarize... Philip is in the middle of a great revival. Many people were being saved. Yet God calls him away so he can go to a desert and witness to a black man, an Ethiopian. Is this not convincing enough to show how God cares for everyone of the world? There is also the passage about the good-samaritan. This passage also refers to race since Samaritans were considered half-breeds (half Jewish and half gentile).

So there is enough Biblical evidence to show that God cares for all people of the world.


This video is about white trash. Don't lump all Christians with them.

@Pprt Well, that's an easy one - sympathy. If they said "we're going there to provide weapons" or something similar, the boat would have been leveled and no one would be taking their side - or far fewer at least. It is conspicuous that we got all that video from the one boat, when it was an entire flotilla (I think people have been playing too much Mass Effect, why not just call it a fleet?). I'm am also suspicious of the video black-out on the Israeli side, of course, they would do far better by playing with open cards, but then so would the US and that's just not gonna happen.

@theali Illegal? What law covers that? "International law" only covers the people who have agreed to it or those who wish to make friends with those who follow it. If I make a "law" that you can't smoke in my house and you still do, I can throw you out - but if I make a law that no smoking can be done anywhere, no one is going to follow it - and they shouldn't, unless they want to be on good terms with me.

Attacking in international waters was indeed a bad move and it's already cost Israel bucket loads of goodwill, although technically the Mediterranean is not "International Waters" (only the Barcelona Convention covers it and that's only for environmental issues.), since the borders are right up to each other - I don't know who has jurisdiction where the attack happened, though.

An illegal act of war - well, depending on who's laws and really, the war was there already. They've been fighting since Israel was made and before.

My point is still, the people on the flotilla should, and likely did, see it coming and they went ahead anyway. If they want to run into the wall, the wall does not carry the sole responsibility when they get hurt.

Anyway, great big mess. It's not going to end until people stop thinking the land is holy - as always, religion is to blame.

Those troublesome Jews

Charles Krauthammer

Friday, June 4, 2010

The world is outraged at Israel's blockade of Gaza. Turkey denounces its illegality, inhumanity, barbarity, etc. The usual U.N. suspects, Third World and European, join in. The Obama administration dithers.
This Story

But as Leslie Gelb, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, writes, the blockade is not just perfectly rational, it is perfectly legal. Gaza under Hamas is a self-declared enemy of Israel -- a declaration backed up by more than 4,000 rockets fired at Israeli civilian territory. Yet having pledged itself to unceasing belligerency, Hamas claims victimhood when Israel imposes a blockade to prevent Hamas from arming itself with still more rockets.

In World War II, with full international legality, the United States blockaded Germany and Japan. And during the October 1962 missile crisis, we blockaded ("quarantined") Cuba. Arms-bearing Russian ships headed to Cuba turned back because the Soviets knew that the U.S. Navy would either board them or sink them. Yet Israel is accused of international criminality for doing precisely what John Kennedy did: impose a naval blockade to prevent a hostile state from acquiring lethal weaponry.

Oh, but weren't the Gaza-bound ships on a mission of humanitarian relief? No. Otherwise they would have accepted Israel's offer to bring their supplies to an Israeli port, be inspected for military materiel and have the rest trucked by Israel into Gaza -- as every week 10,000 tons of food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies are sent by Israel to Gaza.

Why was the offer refused? Because, as organizer Greta Berlin admitted, the flotilla was not about humanitarian relief but about breaking the blockade, i.e., ending Israel's inspection regime, which would mean unlimited shipping into Gaza and thus the unlimited arming of Hamas.
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Israel has already twice intercepted ships laden with Iranian arms destined for Hezbollah and Gaza. What country would allow that?

But even more important, why did Israel even have to resort to blockade? Because, blockade is Israel's fallback as the world systematically de-legitimizes its traditional ways of defending itself -- forward and active defense.

(1) Forward defense: As a small, densely populated country surrounded by hostile states, Israel had, for its first half-century, adopted forward defense -- fighting wars on enemy territory (such as the Sinai and Golan Heights) rather than its own.

Where possible (Sinai, for example) Israel has traded territory for peace. But where peace offers were refused, Israel retained the territory as a protective buffer zone. Thus Israel retained a small strip of southern Lebanon to protect the villages of northern Israel. And it took many losses in Gaza, rather than expose Israeli border towns to Palestinian terror attacks. It is for the same reason America wages a grinding war in Afghanistan: You fight them there, so you don't have to fight them here.

But under overwhelming outside pressure, Israel gave it up. The Israelis were told the occupations were not just illegal but at the root of the anti-Israel insurgencies -- and therefore withdrawal, by removing the cause, would bring peace.

Land for peace. Remember? Well, during the past decade, Israel gave the land -- evacuating South Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005. What did it get? An intensification of belligerency, heavy militarization of the enemy side, multiple kidnappings, cross-border attacks and, from Gaza, years of unrelenting rocket attack.

(2) Active defense: Israel then had to switch to active defense -- military action to disrupt, dismantle and defeat (to borrow President Obama's description of our campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaeda) the newly armed terrorist mini-states established in southern Lebanon and Gaza after Israel withdrew.

The result? The Lebanon war of 2006 and Gaza operation of 2008-09. They were met with yet another avalanche of opprobrium and calumny by the same international community that had demanded the land-for-peace Israeli withdrawals in the first place. Worse, the U.N. Goldstone report, which essentially criminalized Israel's defensive operation in Gaza while whitewashing the casus belli -- the preceding and unprovoked Hamas rocket war -- effectively de-legitimized any active Israeli defense against its self-declared terror enemies.

(3) Passive defense: Without forward or active defense, Israel is left with but the most passive and benign of all defenses -- a blockade to simply prevent enemy rearmament. Yet, as we speak, this too is headed for international de-legitimation. Even the United States is now moving toward having it abolished.

But, if none of these is permissible, what's left?

Ah, but that's the point. It's the point understood by the blockade-busting flotilla of useful idiots and terror sympathizers, by the Turkish front organization that funded it, by the automatic anti-Israel Third World chorus at the United Nations, and by the supine Europeans who've had quite enough of the Jewish problem.

What's left? Nothing. The whole point of this relentless international campaign is to deprive Israel of any legitimate form of self-defense. Why, just last week, the Obama administration joined the jackals, and reversed four decades of U.S. practice, by signing onto a consensus document that singles out Israel's possession of nuclear weapons -- thus de-legitimizing Israel's very last line of defense: deterrence.

The world is tired of these troublesome Jews, 6 million -- that number again -- hard by the Mediterranean, refusing every invitation to national suicide. For which they are relentlessly demonized, ghettoized and constrained from defending themselves, even as the more committed anti-Zionists -- Iranian in particular -- openly prepare a more final solution.

Yeah stick to facts....

"But an Israeli Defense official said only marines were capable of the takeover 120 km (75 miles) in the choppy Mediterranean"

So, yeah. And yes, the pepper balls they used are a chemical weapon. So is CN gas. Would you like me to google "facts" for you. You keep taking basic concepts and disputing them.

First of all, I never said "international waters" because the Mediterranean is not.

Secondly if there is "paint ball" guns, then you are an idiot if you think the military carries paint ball guns used by children. These are military weapons used often in Iraq and other places because the "paint balls" contain chemical weapons. These are know as less lethal crowd control weapons.

These marines illegal boarded a vessel with many many fully automatic assault weapons and shot people. Anyone trying to point to a paint ball gun like it justifies piracy and murder is really pathetic and sadly trying to justify murder by these Israelis.

What if these people were afraid and were turning back? How would you know considering they were miles from the shoreline. The truth is that Israel should have waited until this ship was in THEIR waters and violating some law or justifiable reason to board a boat and kill people.

But they were cowards and wanted to do this at night instead of waiting until they were 22 or 11 miles or whatever and it was daylight and maybe even the media could see this.

Sure, these "activists" probably should have expected to be boarded. In fact, they knew about this boarding. For some reason some people on the boats tried to defend themselves. Does that justify shooting them?

How do you know the marines weren't going to murder everyone on the ship and steal the boat? How would anyone even think that wasn't a possibility? I mean what rational reasonable navy of a modern country can't just come alongside a ship during the daylight hours and say "turn back". They have a naval blockade.. Why not use it?

I didn't watch the video, but I literally spat my food out while reading this.>> ^Hawkinson:

from http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2008/01/brain_hydatid_
cyst_with_surgic.php (not verified by me)
"The cyst is a hydatid cyst, which is the result of a parasitic infection by tapeworm larvae(Echinococcus). Generally speaking, it does not occur in the USA, but rather occurs in Mediterranean countries, the Middle East, the southern part of South America, Iceland, Australia, New Zealand, and southern parts of Africa. The cysts, which are initiated by one larvae, eventually come to house thousands of tapeworm larvae. So it is very important not to rupture the cyst during its removal, else the host could easily die. The cysts can occur in any organ, in this case, the brain... "

>> ^Hawkinson:

from http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2008/01/brain_hydatid_
cyst_with_surgic.php (not verified by me)
"The cyst is a hydatid cyst, which is the result of a parasitic infection by tapeworm larvae(Echinococcus). Generally speaking, it does not occur in the USA, but rather occurs in Mediterranean countries, the Middle East, the southern part of South America, Iceland, Australia, New Zealand, and southern parts of Africa. The cysts, which are initiated by one larvae, eventually come to house thousands of tapeworm larvae. So it is very important not to rupture the cyst during its removal, else the host could easily die. The cysts can occur in any organ, in this case, the brain... "


Damn nature, you scary!

from http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2008/01/brain_hydatid_cyst_with_surgic.php (not verified by me)

"The cyst is a hydatid cyst, which is the result of a parasitic infection by tapeworm larvae(Echinococcus). Generally speaking, it does not occur in the USA, but rather occurs in Mediterranean countries, the Middle East, the southern part of South America, Iceland, Australia, New Zealand, and southern parts of Africa. The cysts, which are initiated by one larvae, eventually come to house thousands of tapeworm larvae. So it is very important not to rupture the cyst during its removal, else the host could easily die. The cysts can occur in any organ, in this case, the brain... "

Sorry to step in at the end of the discussion, but regarding the gospels that didnt make it and different bible versions, I used to wonder about that and did some research years ago.

Given that the early gospels were all being hand copied by people who usually werent all that literate and were doing so in secret under pain of death (often), given the different areas/congregations around the Mediterranean separated by what were great distances, differences were widespread, some were minor, spelling and punctuation changing meanings, others were major changes that suited one particular christian sects interpretation. When time came to put em all together, they had to choose what was agreed upon by most people.

Naturally this pissed some people off, made others happy, and ensured endless conspiracy theories, and careers for people like Dan Brown

Incidentally this also happened in Judaism (at least according to the History channel, I havent talked to any ancient scholars about that)and others religions. Guess you cant suit all of the people all of the time.

I would compare it to DVD boxsets, you've got your theatrical cut, your directors cut, extended version, unrated version etc. Pick the one you like best or don't.

Edit:
BTW I dont claim to be an expert on anything so I only paraphrase what I've read/heard from people who do know what they are on about

Idea of this note from personal experience in the following: when you consult concerning improvement by natural preparations in centre "health Recipes", always there is a conversation and on a food. All understand that a healthy food, the Mediterranean kitchen - are useful. But often useful - it is tasteless. COOKERY LESSONS
at restaurant Terassa (Terrace) is a way having a rest and having a good time to take one more step towards a healthy food.

The makings of a future Mediterranean Garbage Patch? Sad.

siaiaia (or whatever your name is), you are in dire need of an education in both religion and epistemology. Not all knowledge is scientific knowledge. One can have historical knowledge, knowledge of art theory, the knowledge of the human condition which has informed so many poets and novelists, musicology... The list goes on and on. Which is to say that there is no reason why one should expect that a religious truth (if such a beast exists) should be classified as scientific.

Furthermore, your understanding of religions as primarily sets of doctrines--systems beliefs--is profoundly inadequate. Let's ignore the Eastern religions, for all of which that's not clearly not true, and look at an example from Western history. In the first century BCE, Roman orator and philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero wrote a book entitled De Natura Deorum, or On the Nature of the Gods. In it, he portrays a fictional but plausible conversation between himself, a Stoic philosopher, and an Epicurean philosopher. Throughout the dialogue, it becomes starkly clear that, though all three follow the Roman religion, they can barely find a single belief about the gods that they hold in common. This detachment of doctrine and religion--of dogma and religious practice--was the norm throughout the ancient Mediterranean world.

Only with the rise of Christianity does anything like your criticism of religion become even coherent, let alone plausible.




With regards to the palestinian bomber - why did the IRA not do suicide bombing?? Eh? Because the palestinian bomber believes he is doing something in the name of God, and doing a righteous thing before he dies.

Or maybe because it's one of the few acts that a Palestinian can take with any effectiveness against Israeli oppression.

Suicide bombing was not invented by Muslims, but by Hindu Tamils. And not for religious reasons--both murder and suicide are strongly enjoined every Hindu tradition I'm familiar with. The problem was that one group--the native Sinhalese (primarily Buddhist--a pacifistic religion)--was oppressing the Tamil minority. They invented the suicide bomb as a technique by which a minority could strike at a militarily powerful oppressor.

There are strong parallels between the Palestinians and the Tamils. In both cases, the rulers speak a different language than the oppressed minority, having a different culture right down to religion. In both cases, the majority overwhelmingly outguns the minority. In both cases, oppression of the minority is acceptable to the populace of the majority group.

It is unsurprising, then, that the Palestinians should have adopted the suicide bomb--no matter what their religion. There was a complex set of circumstances replicated in both circumstances which produced the kind of attitude which gives rise to a suicide bomber.



This does not, of course, apply to the 9/11 hijackers, the Taliban, or a number of other groups. Nonetheless, I think my point is clear: fixating on a single aspect of a society, like religion, to explain complex social phenomena is a huge mistake.

I don't know what "shimp mammies" are, but ^JAPR, mantis shrimp are edible. They are popular in the Mediterranean, and if you like sushi, try "shako".
They taste like pre-buttered lobster.

White = white
Black = black
Mexican/Honduran/Ecuadoria/Spanish speaking brown guy = Hispanic
Olive skinned = Mediterranean
"Slanted" eyes = Asian
Brown = Arabic

Oh, I could go on. Just keep it simple. White, Black, Hispanic. And location dependent, Native (Native American).