Freedom Flotilla hijacked

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Actually, we thought we had done it for bed bugs in the US at least (the limit of the US's influence in the matter, but then Germany's limited influence didn't change that that was genocide). It supposedly worked wit smallpox, except that we kept it in labs. The local government goes on a mosquito eradication campaign every summer. Of course it's not permanent, but it's genocide nonetheless. There was a federal program to eradicate ticks, too. Again, it didn't work, but we tried it. And, of course, in the past there have been concerted efforts to eradicate many large predators, like wolves. Nowadays we realize the follys of out ways, but we still tried.

Ok, so it's a relative value assessment. Let me ask you this, then. How many more or less plants do you think would grow if we didn't prop up livestock populations. As you've already noted, we've managed to artificially increase animal populations for our own needs. Do you think we've done the same with plants for the same needs?

 

It is not 'genocide'. Genocide has a very specific meaning. This is an abuse of the term.

The greek word genos (γένος) (plural gene (γένη), "clan") originally stands for groups of humans - small kinship groups which identified themselves as a unit. Genocide is the intentional liking of such a group of people.

To state the very obvious: What viruses, bacteria, animals and plants have in common is that they are not groups of humans.

It is at best intellectually lazy, confusing and misleading (and IMO quite silly) to call the attempt or success at the eradication of viruses, bacteria, animals and plants genocide. I suggest something like ... eradication or termination of a species, or, if a ...-cide has to be in it, specicide.

 

That question is either rhetorical or very naive. Do you really think that people are treated in the same way regardless of their origins, beliefs or simply the colour of their skin? It happens in Western Europe but it's even worse in some countries. I've been denied entrance to night clubs and harassed by the police because of the way I look (although the law is clearly on my side).

What we're referring to here with the term "second class citizen" is much worse. It is a consistent and widespread discrimination that is condoned and even enforced by authorities.

By the way, the definition of species is based on the capacity of interbreeding. Applying Darwinism in such a context is so wrong that I wouldn't know where to start. You do yourself a great disservice by bandying this term around (I'm just pointing this out, this is not a personal attack and I've never given bad rep points to anyone).

If I were you I'd be wary about using this term if you don't want to be labelled as a proponent of Eugenism either. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948 to make it clear after the atrocities of WW2 that these rights had to be precisely defined (including the right for any human being to have a family).

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) was founded in 1949 to provide aid and relief to Palestinian refugees who have to register to be taken into account.

Definitely. Could we stick to the topic or at least not stray too much into animal rights (unless this is relevant in any way to the issue at hand).

It's absurd to liken "mosquito eradication" to GENOCIDE in a thread dealing with Israel and Palestine...

Do I really have to remind you of the Holocaust to stress how silly (and shameful) the comparison is?

 

Yes, talking about "mosquito eradication" in a thread dealing with Israel and Palestine is quite bad enough.

 

Yes, I'm having hard time understanding this as well.

Shoshino - None of links you posted prove that overpopulation is an immediate problem. The concensus is, despite previous predictions, the population will more than likely stablize at some point, and perhaps even begin to decline. But nobody knows for sure. Most of Europe and Japan are concerned with actual population declines. Your link even comments that food supply is current with demand. What will happen in forty or fifty years is still open debate.

 

Exactly. And countries can take steps to insure a stop to population growthn (or at least lessen it). Take a look at China. The population was going through the roof. They imposed a one child limit and the population stabilized. Of course, and correct me if I'm wrong, that method was not perfect as a big portion of China was rural and the parents wanted boys to work at the farms. If they got a girl, they would kill the baby or abandon it on the side of the road. There will be all kinds of problems in the future with the lack of women and all. However, it just shows you population growth is managable.

 

On the subject of population growth, the only problem in the foreseeable future is that we will have to radically change our lifestyle and stop wasting resources (especially water). If everyone in the third world starts living like we currently do in the Western world then water supply will become a major concern. Water in the Middle East has always been a major issue (and the Israeli occupation of Lebanon was probably linked to that problem).

The current situation in the Gaza Strip has far reaching consequences not only for Gaza but for Israel and Egypt as well: Gaza’s water supply in danger of collapse, warns UN report.

 

While this is true, I don't see how it will help. It's not like if I didn't water my lawn that the water saved would go to Palestinian refugees. This is what I meant when we qualify the statement of overpopulation in regard to available resources. In most of the developed world, it isn't an issue.

That was exactly what I was talking about. It is true that many European countries have declining populations. Fertility levels are already below 2 NOW, nevermind in another 40 years.

We know that agricultural yields increase by about 1% per year, and so we can handle about a 1% population growth per year. The 74 million new people are just slightly over 1% growth of the world's estimated 6.8 billion people.

That said, we also know that there are areas of the world where people are not getting enough food. Unfortunately, these areas are not among the developed countries cited in the report, and also are not countries with fertility levels below 2. Even if they are increase crop yeilds by 1% per year (which is doubtful), they are not keeping up with their population growth.

EDIT: Sorry BTA - you posted while I was typing.

 

Chandos, I think overpopulation diehards have been making a come back because much of the population in developing nations has forgotten the nonsense they were spouting in the 1970s and how their predictions utterly failed to match the following reality.

Thus there is the problem in that the few people talking about this issue are usually the overpopulation ideologues because everyone else has moved on.

Also some of the diehards have been trying to misrepresent their ideology as environmentalism and thus hide behind it when we have legitimate environmental problems to deal with.

Moreover I think it is foolish for a biologist to try to describe human society when it isn't their field of study. I think man counts as a mammal but human society is more complex and capable than the society of any other animal that we currently know of on this Earth.

Biologists that aren't acknowledging that are digging up ideology without the knowledge to accurately prove or disprove it.

But, I recommend we discuss the myth of overpopulation in a different thread.




About the topic at hand.

I didn't know who to blame for this incident because I think there are manipulative and dangerous (little respect for human life) people on each side of the issue.

In this case it looks increasingly like the people on the Turkish ship intended to cause trouble. 5 other ships boarded and not a single life lost?

Doesn't appear, right now, as if those going onto the ship were looking for a fight.

The unfair and unthoughtful way Israel has treated the people in the West Bank and Gaza created a general atmosphere where it is easy to blame Israel.

 

Human Rights activists are only dangerous to people who violate Human Rights and to the mindset that justifies the violation of Human Rights.

Those activists are in fact "dangerous" because they have the support of a Nobel Peace Prize recipient and a Holocaust survivor.

Manipulative? That's certainly true as it's no secret that the objective of the operation was to embarrass the Israeli government who had only two choices, either let them through or apprehend them.

The Human Rights activists most certainly didn't expect the military to shoot to kill though: Mavi Marmara British activists describe moment when ship was attacked.

If they had been looking for trouble why didn't they come fully armed? When you're actively looking to start a fight you don't use makeshift weapons.

As it's been stated before the people on that ship probably panicked (it seems pretty obvious that they didn't expect to be attacked in the middle of the night so far away from Israeli waters) and the situation escalated as the Israeli military went trigger happy.

 

Agreed, there may have been a few idiots on the Mavi-Marmara, but I definitely doubt that the activists (as in all, or the majority) were actually planning an armed confrontation.

BTW, does anyone know what has happened to the supplies on those ships?

 

According to some reports mentioned in the Sunday political shows I like to watch the soldiers boarding the ships had sidearms (pistols) with bullets but were holding (as their primary weapons) paintball guns.

The understanding being portrayed here is that there were more than Peace Activists (who I do not expect to be dangerous) on board. Rather that there was a mix of them and others who are less Peace interested.

While not killed several Israeli soldiers were injured and there are claims that at least some of them were shot with weapons that use bullets that do not match those of the sidearms carried-meaning that this was not friendly fire and that someone was already armed and onboard when the soldiers arrived.

My comment about people who were manipulative and had little regard for human life was aimed at both sides of the broader Israeli-(insert preferred group here) struggle. I think such individuals have shown a willingness to kill those on the other side and would likely jump on a propaganda coup if they thought they could arrange one.

And no, I don't discount the possibility that Israeli soldiers got trigger happy. That is very possible. But even in the report by the person on the ship that you referred to what I suspect are teargas and flash-bangs, both of which are intended to be non-lethal. Thus it appears the intent of the operation was one to stop the ships but not kill the people on them.

That doesn't make the overall situation that Israel has created over the years justified, it just means that I wonder if this particular incident is less Israel's fault.

@Shaman

The last I heard they were sitting in Israel somewhere. The Israeli government wanted to inspect all of them and hold some of the supplies and send the others to Gaza and Hamas said send all or none of them.

So nobody is getting the supplies because of what appears to be a harda*s response (by Hamas) and too much willing (maybe eagerness) to go along with it (and keep a few more things from the people in Gaza on the part of Israel).

 

If for the sake of argument we assume that there were armed people who had been preparing to fight trained soldiers, then it would have made sense if they had been armed with heavy weapons like automatic rifles, machineguns, rocket launchers or at the very least machine pistols (suited for cramped spaces and close ranged combat) not pea shooters.

Furthermore, if we agree that the goal of the protesters was to break though the blockade, do you think that their plan was to fight their way through Israeli lines? That is preposterous as the Israeli navy would have sunk them sooner or later.

I'm not an expert on that sort of procedures and I'm not saying that resisting the attack wasn't ill-advised (to say the least) especially considering the reputation of Israeli forces.

But I'd take T2Bruno's earlier post into consideration:

It seems to me that they used excessive force and created conditions that caused panic when they could have stopped the ships in broad daylight and given them a fair warning instead of launching a surprise attack at night.

 

The turkish ships were funded by the IHH, bit of background on the IHH:

after search and siezure most of the supplies were delivered to Gaza, Hamas refused to accept them.

and show the world you were looking for a fight? If Israel recovered GPMG's, grenades and assult rifles from the ships it would have only bolstered support for Israel.

you say that, but watch the footage of the attack on the troops as they landed, the brutal assult only ends when you can hear a shot fired.

a 9mm handgun hidden within a crowd can be very deadly.

no I agree, but they knew they would be boarded, and wanted to take some soldiers with them, suicide attacks are very common among these radicals.

hmm, I have a little experience here, boarding a ship which was suspected of carrying immigrants into the south of the UK, we did it at night... because a good number of those immigrants would be in bed, though we also did it quietly.

where was the attack? there were no shots fired until the soldiers were set upon, and it wasnt much of a surprise, the Isralies said they would intercept the flotilla the instant the ships left port, then add to that the preperation time the crews of the ships had while the Isralies were warning them to alter course.. not a great surprise.

It is, we were stronger - we won the war, so we live in a world of our views and opinions and not theirs

 

Yes, but that does not necessarily translate into "history." Our views and opinions still receive critical scrutiny, for what they are -- our opinions. For instance, Russia won the war as well, and their views were certainly different from ours during much of the post-war period, and both sides certainly received their share of scruntiny.

There are differing views of history among scholars. To think that they are all on the "government payroll" is quite a stretch. Now, certainly there are some historical events that are covered up. But half the job of history is to do the investigation, which is to uncover the evidence. However, if you believe that history is nothing more than post-war propaganda, then you have no basis for any reality of the past. Which means that your view of history is no more accurate or inaccurate than anyone else's. Unless you believe that your propaganda is better than everyone else's.

Edit: I did want to add that if you mean the winning government engages in propaganda at the expense of the loser, and that it has some powerful agents to assist it, then yes, I completely agree. That is why real independent research by both academics and the news media is vital. As someone once interestingly observed, "The differnce between America and Russia is that in Russia, people regard the govenment line as propaganda and mostly don't believe it, but Americans mostly believe their own propaganda to be true."

 

yes this is exactly what Im talking about, if you ask the average person "who won the war" theyll say the US (if theyre from the US) or us if theyre from the UK or another ally.

if you ask the average person, what is Auschwitz, theyll know, it was a concentration camp, where hundreds, maybe thousands lost their lives.
If you ask them, who were the mindless killers of WW2 theyll say the Nazi's

If you ask them "what were 'Churchill's firestorms'" they wont have a clue.
If you ask them "how many people died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki" they wont have a clue.
They know, what the politicians want them to know.

why? because we won, if it were reversed and the nazi's won, everyone would know about churchills firestorms and the A-bomb, but Auschwitz would be less known and to those who know, "necessary to win the war"

 

Well, you have certainly put your finger on a problem. But it is up to the individual to care enough about the "facts," or historical truth, to look deeper than just the national propaganda. I think many people are comfortable with the idea that the world is all black and white: Nazi = evil, Allies = good. But that aside, I will say this: I come from a family who was on the other side, and I'm only second generation, so I've heard the "German side" of the argument often enough. My Grandfather, who was born in Germany and supported Hitler personally, was a member of the American-Nazi Party, for which he won a free trip to the FBI headquaters during WWII.

I can only say that from the German, Nazi side, the historical truth is much more brutal and even uglier. I won't go into much personal detail but there is much more to the story. I will tell you that I was even less impressed with the "Nazi" side of the story coming directly from the other side. When you hear it with your own ears, it's quite a chilling, "soul shaking" experience. So you have to excuse me, Shoshino (and I mean no disrespect to you personally), if I find the "other side" of the historical record a complete and utter sham.

 

Reuters admits to cropping photos related to the incident:

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/06/08/reuters-fake-photos-ihh-gaza-blockade-commandos/

 

How very decent of them. Their explanation is laughable.