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«12. . .2,1732,1742,1752,1762,1772,1782,179. . .2,5072,508»

Under ledzia wrote:The problem with both of those candidates is that I don't agree with any of them...

You’d do great voting in America, where no one has agreed with either major candidate for 70 years.

Culture of Life, United massachusetts, and First And Only Archive

Under ledzia

I still am anti-catholic and hate that synagogues and muslim praying homes are taken down...

Edit: Just to be clear. I do not hate people who are catholic, nor the clerigy of the catholic churches. My beliefs on christian dogma and church hierarchy are usually against the catholic church. It was always the case and to older region members it's obvious, but I wanted to explain in case some new members don't know.

Lagrodia wrote:You’d do great voting in America, where no one has agreed with either major candidate for 70 years.

In America I would always vote third party, since you don't have the policy of 2nd turn and all that...

I think it's ridiculous that nations in Europe have allowed Germany and France to practically run gangbuster with Europe. What Angela Merkel wants, she gets. Poland and many others used to despise the Germans now they've become dependent on them for survival. I like peace in Europe but I also like the cultures and independence that nations once had too. This is why I'm glad that the UK left the bureaucratic mess that is the EU.

Judah, Lagrodia, and Under ledzia

La france bonapartiste wrote:snip.

Sorry for the delay in replying. My internet went out this weekend. :P

I think the basic overview of how Israel practices apartheid is laid out quite well here: http://apartheidweek.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Table_-the-system-of-Israeli-apartheid-laws.pdf

For example, there are roads that only Jews can drive on, leaving Muslims and Christians excluded from basic infrastructure. Unfortunately, I would say that Israel would be best classified as an ethnocratic state, rather than a democratic state. If you think that's a biased view, I would direct you to an article by Shlomo Ben-Ami, the former Minister for Foreign Affairs. https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/the-paradigm-shift-on-palestine/

I believe you mentioned that the Haaretz article was under a paywall, but the Foreign Affairs article made much the same points w/o the paywall. Another source that doesn't have a paywall: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/03/israel-treatment-palestinians-apartheid-south-africa

The reason I gave the history and background to Israel's creation is to really set the stage for how the Palestinians became stateless. You mentioned that Israel really wasn't "their land" and it the idea that they're an oppressed minority isn't factual. The previous post was meant to rebut that argument, given the historical data we have. Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from the land (a crime against humanity), and since then they have been oppressed in West Bank and Gaza, not to mention Arab Israeli citizens that are second-class at best. Given the above links, I think it's crucial to see that Israel has made an apartheid state on the ground. I think therefore, that seeing the Palestinians as a stateless people is similar to the genocide against the Rohingya people.

Being a founder of a region is tiring... You don't even make the rules, but everyone is angry at you for enforcing them... Especially new people and when you prove to them that everyone in the administration is on your side they get angry at you, but don't care about the people who actually made the rules...

Culture of Life i started to understand your long breaks now...

Culture of Life and United massachusetts

United massachusetts

By the way, if you did vote in my poll over on the forums (and I appreciate you if you did) I would encourage you to withdraw the vote

United massachusetts wrote:Apologies for my having been away. My grandfather was sick and ultimately passed this morning. Caring for him has taken up most of my time. I will get going on RTL stuff, but first I must appoint a Senator to serve in my interim, as I am required to resign from the Senate. I appoint Stellonia to this end. I will also contact Court appointees tonight. Library Commission members (you know who you are), please respond to my older telegram and we can get going. As for the constitutional reforms, I believe they are drafted in the forums already. I will admit I have not checked them of late.

In the meantime, please keep my grandfather in your prayers.

I'm so sorry for your loss.

United massachusetts wrote:Apologies for my having been away. My grandfather was sick and ultimately passed this morning. Caring for him has taken up most of my time. I will get going on RTL stuff, but first I must appoint a Senator to serve in my interim, as I am required to resign from the Senate. I appoint Stellonia to this end. I will also contact Court appointees tonight. Library Commission members (you know who you are), please respond to my older telegram and we can get going. As for the constitutional reforms, I believe they are drafted in the forums already. I will admit I have not checked them of late.

In the meantime, please keep my grandfather in your prayers.

I am sorry for your loss, UM - zikhrono livrakha.

Culture of Life, Horatius Cocles, Phydios, United massachusetts, and 3 othersThe Catholic State of Eire, Lagrodia, and Under ledzia

Under ledzia

Judah wrote:I am sorry for your loss, UM - zikhrono livrakha.

Adonai Rophe - United massachusetts
I lost my mother in the end of December last year... I am still not completely over that, so I am not dishonest when I say that I know what you feel and I didn't answer your original post because I didn't want to send an emotional response, which usually get very negative. I hope you're getting some help from your family and that you're feeling better.

Lagrodia wrote:The Catholic Socialist Workers Party, yessir.

YES!

Lagrodia

United massachusetts wrote:Apologies for my having been away. My grandfather was sick and ultimately passed this morning. Caring for him has taken up most of my time. I will get going on RTL stuff, but first I must appoint a Senator to serve in my interim, as I am required to resign from the Senate. I appoint Stellonia to this end. I will also contact Court appointees tonight. Library Commission members (you know who you are), please respond to my older telegram and we can get going. As for the constitutional reforms, I believe they are drafted in the forums already. I will admit I have not checked them of late.

In the meantime, please keep my grandfather in your prayers.

I'm sorry to hear that, UM. I remember when my grandmother passed a couple years ago, it was difficult for me. You'll be in my prayers.

Slavic lechia

I did it... I dunvar did it!!!! I AM BACK BABY!!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txJw61z1ULk

It's time to purge Under ledzia and move all dispatches from it to my original nation...

Slavic lechia

Oh well... Slavic Lechia is a bad place to live in... Taxes are so high and contraception is banned... I changed so much since SL died...

I think I will keep it as a puppet, or make it my new main nation? Let's make a poll about it xD

Horatius Cocles and Under ledzia

Post self-deleted by Slavic lechia.

Slavic lechia wrote:It's time to purge Under ledzia and move all dispatches from it to my original nation...

Someone suppress that message before he does that xD
#arguingwithmyself

La france bonapartiste

Horatius Cocles wrote:I think the basic overview of how Israel practices apartheid is laid out quite well here: http://apartheidweek.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Table_-the-system-of-Israeli-apartheid-laws.pdf

Unfortunately, none of the laws mentioned in that chart support the claim that Israel is an apartheid state. You cannot conflate discrimination on the basis of nationality and foreigness with discrimination on the basis of ethnicity. I actually find it astoundingly tone deaf that one of the examples of "racist" laws listed therein is the law establishing the very principle of Israel's right to exist. It is heavily skewed and not credible in the least. I stand by what I said earlier that the claim that Israeli Arabs are an oppressed minority is counterfactual.

Horatius Cocles wrote:For example, there are roads that only Jews can drive on, leaving Muslims and Christians excluded from basic infrastructure.

Source?

Horatius Cocles wrote:The reason I gave the history and background to Israel's creation is to really set the stage for how the Palestinians became stateless. You mentioned that Israel really wasn't "their land" and it the idea that they're an oppressed minority isn't factual. The previous post was meant to rebut that argument, given the historical data we have. Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from the land (a crime against humanity), and since then they have been oppressed in West Bank and Gaza, not to mention Arab Israeli citizens that are second-class at best.

But none of that has to do with the basis of a "Palestinian" right to nationhood or the Israeli historical claim to the region. It's a deflection from the issues I actually contended with in your initial post.

And just as an aside, I have to once again bring up the international community's mixed record on "ethnic cleansing" (re: expelling Germans after the end of WWII) as an example of how "ethnic cleansing" has a rather inconsistent status under international law as a de jure crime against humanity. Crimes against humanity in general have a questionable status under customary law, given the lack of a broad international consensus on the definition and elements of those crimes. That has less to do with the factuality of your report on the history of Israel's establishment, and more to do with your framing of the events in question as a matter of international law. I consider it rhetorical at best.

Judah, Phydios, and United massachusetts

Horatius Cocles wrote:
Sorry for the delay in replying. My internet went out this weekend. :P

I think the basic overview of how Israel practices apartheid is laid out quite well here: http://apartheidweek.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Table_-the-system-of-Israeli-apartheid-laws.pdf

For example, there are roads that only Jews can drive on, leaving Muslims and Christians excluded from basic infrastructure. Unfortunately, I would say that Israel would be best classified as an ethnocratic state, rather than a democratic state. If you think that's a biased view, I would direct you to an article by Shlomo Ben-Ami, the former Minister for Foreign Affairs. https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/the-paradigm-shift-on-palestine/

I believe you mentioned that the Haaretz article was under a paywall, but the Foreign Affairs article made much the same points w/o the paywall. Another source that doesn't have a paywall: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/03/israel-treatment-palestinians-apartheid-south-africa

The reason I gave the history and background to Israel's creation is to really set the stage for how the Palestinians became stateless. You mentioned that Israel really wasn't "their land" and it the idea that they're an oppressed minority isn't factual. The previous post was meant to rebut that argument, given the historical data we have. Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from the land (a crime against humanity), and since then they have been oppressed in West Bank and Gaza, not to mention Arab Israeli citizens that are second-class at best. Given the above links, I think it's crucial to see that Israel has made an apartheid state on the ground. I think therefore, that seeing the Palestinians as a stateless people is similar to the genocide against the Rohingya people.

I hate to keep using wikipedia but it generally has an amalgamation of things I’ve read in the news. So, I’ll link this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_the_Palestinian_territories

Given that the Palestinians seem to want the Israeli’s dead. How should they handle the situation? I agree in that in theory freedom should reign. But when an entire population want your country and people dead, how should one handle it? I’m not saying everything happening is right, but the middle-east is anything but black and white good-guy vs. Bad-guy. Invader vs. Colonist.

I don’t know what I’d do if I was Israeli. Freedom brings potential death and pain, peace is impossible, and the lack of freedoms is undesirable. The only thing I know for certain is that the settlements aren’t helping and make any hope of peace or reconciliation harder if not impossible.

By the way, this is an aside to the discussion of apartheid or not, not saying Israel is or isn’t. Likewise, the question of how Israel should resolve matters is an open one to everyone.

Culture of Life, United massachusetts, and Under ledzia

Aawia wrote:I hate to keep using wikipedia but it generally has an amalgamation of things I’ve read in the news. So, I’ll link this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_the_Palestinian_territories

Given that the Palestinians seem to want the Israeli’s dead. How should they handle the situation? I agree in that in theory freedom should reign. But when an entire population want your country and people dead, how should one handle it? I’m not saying everything happening is right, but the middle-east is anything but black and white good-guy vs. Bad-guy. Invader vs. Colonist.

I don’t know what I’d do if I was Israeli. Freedom brings potential death and pain, peace is impossible, and the lack of freedoms is undesirable. The only thing I know for certain is that the settlements aren’t helping and make any hope of peace or reconciliation harder if not impossible.

By the way, this is an aside to the discussion of apartheid or not, not saying Israel is or isn’t. Likewise, the question of how Israel should resolve matters is an open one to everyone.

I had friends from both Israel and Palestine and I am conflicted... I would say the bad guy is Britain. They made the arbitrary line on the map and called it a border... Israelis and Palestinians are in war ever since...

La france bonapartiste

Under ledzia wrote:I had friends from both Israel and Palestine and I am conflicted... I would say the bad guy is Britain. They made the arbitrary line on the map and called it a border... Israelis and Palestinians are in war ever since...

I don't really think you can blame Britain: it has never been Israel's external borders with other countries that have been a source of tension, but its internal borders, and Israel's very existence--furthermore, Jewish immigration to the region predates the British Mandate and the Balfour Declaration by several decades. The borders set up after WWI in the ME have changed very little, and were centered on major centers of Arab power, which suggests to me that they are stable. Rather, it was Zionism generally, and its opposition from Pan-Arabist corners specifically, that has engendered the brutal feuding for the past 100 years.

But I think that as the Arab nations in the region mature, realize the desirability of détente with Israel, and cease their intermittent support of secessionist organizations, that peace in Israel will gradually solidify. Israel is a cornerstone of stability for the entire ME, and everyone stands to gain from recognizing it and cooperating with it. In fact, I would argue it is already happening; it began with Egypt in 1979, and as other Arab nations seek a strong economic and security relationship with the United States, they will accept Israel's establishment as a fait accompli.

Lagrodia

Aawia wrote:I hate to keep using wikipedia but it generally has an amalgamation of things I’ve read in the news. So, I’ll link this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_the_Palestinian_territories

Given that the Palestinians seem to want the Israeli’s dead. How should they handle the situation? I agree in that in theory freedom should reign. But when an entire population want your country and people dead, how should one handle it? I’m not saying everything happening is right, but the middle-east is anything but black and white good-guy vs. Bad-guy. Invader vs. Colonist.

I don’t know what I’d do if I was Israeli. Freedom brings potential death and pain, peace is impossible, and the lack of freedoms is undesirable. The only thing I know for certain is that the settlements aren’t helping and make any hope of peace or reconciliation harder if not impossible.

By the way, this is an aside to the discussion of apartheid or not, not saying Israel is or isn’t. Likewise, the question of how Israel should resolve matters is an open one to everyone.

My impression is that, well, Palestinians aren’t too happy with their government. Some of them see it as little more than an Israeli front to keep them down while pretending they have representation. Israel breaks treaties and spurs illegal expansion, and segregates itself. I would not go so far as to say they ought to turn the other cheek to Hamas, or something ridiculous like that - but Israel has certainly contributed to Palestinian anger, and not merely on the grounds of being Jews.

The state of Palestine has very little real authority.

Slavic lechia wrote:Oh well... Slavic Lechia is a bad place to live in... Taxes are so high and contraception is banned...

Wait, what’s wrong with either of those?

The Gallant Old Republic and Under ledzia

Just watched Just Mercy with my family. The ending was encouraging, but the rest was thoroughly depressing.

This post is meant as a reply to Aawia and La france bonapartiste.

When the creation of the State of Israel meant brutalizing, murdering, and evicting millions of Palestinians before, during, and after 1948, it stands to reason that some Palestinians wants to kill Israelis. And so you see armed resistance, you see Hamas, etc. Bear in mind that we are not dealing with two equal powers, not by any stretch of the imagination. The PLO/PA has no army, no navy, no military force to back their chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat. We were supposed to have a Palestinian state in 1999, long since passed. Fundamentally, the whole Zionist project (currently best manifested by Bibi Netanyahu himself) is inimical to the creation of a Palestinian state. The creation of Israel was the beginning of the end for Palestinians, it was the death knell for their freedom as human beings. The two state solution has been dead for sometime, mostly (but not all) thanks to Netanyahu, esp. with his continued efforts to kill the Oslo Accords, right down to practically inciting the murder of PM Yitzhak Rabin by a hard-right Israeli extremist.

As far the original Zionists were concerned, all the land of historic Palestine was their by divine decree and so they were never interested in peace with the Palestinians. Regardless of whichever party came to power in Israel, whether liberal Zionist with the Labor Party, or more extreme Zionism with Bibi's Likud, it's all the same fundamental ideology. And the ideology is this: That Israel is only the home of the Jews, that Israel alone has a valid historical claim to the land, that Israel has no need to concern itself with non-Jewish inhabitants, and that Israel must be a Jewish State and therefore at all costs preserve the Jewish majority. This is all laid out in the Nation-State Law of 2018, which was referenced in the table of racist/apartheid laws that I posted earlier. This is apartheid in action, and it's worse than what we saw in South Africa. It is apartheid even if no government is yet willing to say it out loud, even if they are not using pressure on Israel with economic sanctions to make them pay a price for their institutionalized racial dehumanization of Palestinians. And this would be in line with international law: UN resolution 3414 of 1975 requested "all States to desist from supplying Israel with any military or economic aid as long as it continues to occupy Arab territories and deny the inalienable national rights of the Palestinian people."

I'll copy a previous link here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/03/israel-treatment-palestinians-apartheid-south-africa

Relevant quote: The parallels with South Africa are many. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, recently said: “Israel is not a state of all its citizens … Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people – and them alone.” Similar racist utterances were common in apartheid South Africa.

This is without mentioning the separation/apartheid wall, the 650 military checkpoints, the 250 new illegal settlements, and the roads which only a Jew may drive on. Here's a source on the roads: https://www.972mag.com/israels-new-apartheid-road-is-about-more-than-segregation/

With the two state solution long since dead, the very best the Palestinians can hope to get is a single, democratic state, one that treats every citizen with equal rights and liberties, that is NOT the privileged domain of Jews alone (as the current segregationist Israel is). The current government in Israel, as represented by Netanyahu, has no desire for peace bc they fundamentally don't see Palestinians as having equal rights as human beings. It's worth noting the currently delayed annexation (supposed to have happened on July 1) of part of the West Bank would not have given those Palestinians Israeli citizenship. Netanyahu has spent his political career destroying Oslo, and now he's destroying any chance of peace. This he has done with full American support, billions of dollars of aid, and my tax dollars go to fund the oppression of the Palestinians.

La france bonapartiste wrote:I actually find it astoundingly tone deaf that one of the examples of "racist" laws listed therein is the law establishing the very principle of Israel's right to exist.

I’m always curious what this principle is supposed to even mean. What, for a country, is a “right to exist”, and what is so special about Israel that they have it and no one else does?

What sounds racist to me is the idea many have embraced that Israel has a right to exist but not Palestine. Both are inseparable from their ethnoreligious ties, in the end.

So yeah, I could definitely see how that one is racist.

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