BugBrother

It is documented that Hamas shot from civilian areas. If the return fire kills civilians, it isn't the Israelis that broke the war laws.

Also, note the sex distribution: 671 dead men, 218 women.

And among older people, not of front line age, the sex distribution was much more even.

The media are planned more than the weapons in those conflicts. Note that the Israeli side have an interest in few Palestinian civilian dead, Hamas has the opposite interest...

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28666562

Anyway, bye.

>The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank attributed the abductions to the Qawasameh clan [...]

AGAIN: See my link. Hamas already admitted their cell were responsible.

It was big news in international media. I got the link from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-29323163 (I noted this, since it wasn't mentioned much at all in my local Swedish media.)

Now, bye.

> I would have expected Israel to have reserved killing human shields for some later escalation.

More of your "facts". :-(

The Israelis talked a lot and made videos about "knocks on roofs", calling civilians and about not shooting where there were civilians.

If that is wrong, you need better references than your last ones...

But assume you are right -- maybe, possibly the Israeli side lowered themselves to the Hamas level in some cases.

Come on, tell me you don't have different standards. :-)

Never mind, bad fact errors in two comments.

Enough.

Please don't destroy HN. :-(

You really handpicked the references about the teenagers. Hamas has admitted it was their cell, it has been discussed in other comments. Sigh... At least be honest about well known facts. :-(

http://news.yahoo.com/hamas-leader--don-t-compare-us-to-isil...

About the examples:

- That airplane might have been different, if Russia didn't have nuclear weapons. Now the Russian economy will only be crushed, instead. (That France might get an exception through when they'd lose a lot of money is another thing. Which you probably know.)

- North Korea is being punished as much as is possible, since that seems to be the only way to get anywhere with evil juntas.

-------

On the subject...

So, you claim the rocket artillery and terror against Israel civilians would stop if the Israelis stopped trying to stop it? (How!? The last peace gestures from Israel were seen as weakness and resulted in many more attacks.)

Or do you think that it is OK to shoot artillery at Je... Israeli civilians... for a few decades?

Afaik, the borders were open and people commuted to work from the West Bank/Gaza and there were purchasing trips between the areas. That ended with the second Intifada, to protect Israeli civilians from organized attacks.

This closing of the borders created a minor depression in Israel. Not something you do for fun.

The point is, if you start murdering civilians in an organized fashion it is a bit strange to claim victim status from a much milder response. E.g. when Hamas fired (at civilians!) from civilian areas -- and then complain about the return fire killing civilians!

Please, no simplified propaganda on HN.

... and the Palestinian allies in the wars kicked almost all of their Jews out, in total more people than the Palestinians fleeing 1948, not in a burning civil war but in cold blood. Just because of their religion.

Those jews from the Arab world and their children compose the majority of the Israeli population now. And as a fun fact, among all the property stolen from those Jews now living in Israel are land areas larger than Israel...

We might go into how all other land losses from the 2nd world war time period are forgotten, except this one. And that it is kept alive by the refusal to integrate the refugee Palestinians by the Arab countries. The Palestinians got their lives destroyed, to keep the hate living. Arguably the Palestinians' allies did worse to them than anything the Israelis ever did to the Palestinians.

The point is, you write simplified propaganda. Please keep that off my HN. :-(

On this website it ought to be more Linux users than Windows users? Last time I went to the Ubuntu hardware compatibility chart.

(Or is OpenBSD the popular choice and I'm behind the times again? :-) )

> if you actually knew how to spell the name

The commenter spelled correctly in the GP of the comment where it was wrongly spelled. But you probably knew that...

I tried to not read the rest, so I would be tempted to discuss your claims.

(If Hamas organize quite independent cells, it is hard to not claim responsibility when those cells do what they usually do. Hamas really have a long history of making heroes out of people targeting civilians. You might also note that the ones that did a revenge murder will end up in jail. Then we might comment on the hypocrisy of first shooting (at civilians!) from civilian areas -- then blaming the other side when return fire kills civilians...)

As you know: In my references, most researchers seems to be between 15-20 millions.

My definition of slave:

Someone living with no rule of law. No human rights. E.g. their property and lives can be taken on a whim by their rulers. They are not allowed to leave, or there are violent repercussions.

A typical communist state. And slavery.

What is unique with those criteria?

Yet another misrepresentation of what I wrote.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8372340

Original link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_r...

>Your real research smells hoax

Discuss that on the wikipedia page, by presenting other research.

Oh wait, you don't know any.

Bye.

I was talking about the destinations "visited" in West Europe by vikings at the time. That was what the quote marks indicated. (It is a bit simplified, Ireland still had partly a tribal society of course.) Sorry I was unclear.

If I should say anything else on the subject, it is that the frustration about all this, like most history, is all the things we will never know.

I read ~ 10 years ago a fascinating theory about berserkers using self suggestion and being influenced by Roman warrior cults (the Roman empire had camps quite close to Denmark a few centuries before the viking age.) It was so frustrating that we almost certainly never will know.

Scandinavia at the time (and a few centuries after) was a violent clan society. War, raids etc were what people did instead of playing football and ice hockey. And business.

The trips to (e.g.) England were business, it is documented that boats were recruited from all over Scandinavia.

The "real" Europe at the time had [to a large part] gone on beyond that stage [of clan societies].

What to learn from this is not to be neighbour with violent clan societies. Think old Scandinavia or in the present day -- Afghanistan, Somalia and eastern Iraq.

(Incidentally, Sweden has the world's largest refugee immigration per capita from exactly those places... We will see how that ends up.)

Edit: I guess the down votes are my parallel with modern clan societies? Time will tell, I hope I'm wrong.

It is a new world after at least 1989 (probably decades older), the CIA almost only destabilize non-democratic juntas. Personally, I don't really care about the working situation for the juntas, they are generally criminal thieves that have stolen a country.

You were probably too Microsoft specific in your work environment. CVS is older than most(?) HN posters and had no locking problem. So your pain was not necessary. :-(

(The wikipedia says VSS was bought 1995, so the original product might be older?)

I believe it is painful in high security organizations, by definition. You can often e.g. only use tools which are vetted and stamped OK by a complex and expensive process -- so they are old.

Imho, security is really interesting theoretically, but probably not to work with outside of the academic world.

> Which countries can be left safely this way, in view of the border patrols? :)

You knowingly misrepresent my point. That is the only argument you have left. Sad.:-(

People couldn't leave East Europe freely, unlike the democratic world. (Hell, Romania charged Germany/Israel to let German speaking and Jewish Romanians leave.) And if they tried anyway, they were shot down.

Again -- I stopped reading after the first paragraph. If you hand wave at references with links to real research, you're just not serious.

>illegally crossing a border will get you detained or fired at in almost any place now and ever,

Leaving a border will generally not make soldiers shoot at you from the country you leave.

Being that locked in only happens to slaves and other prisoners.

And I think you know that.

>Regarding renowned Wikipedia researchers

(I already noted that you learn differently in your schools, like most all other countries with recent atrocities in their history.)

Sorry, if you argue against wikipedia without even looking at research references I can't take you seriously.

I didn't read the rest.

>That was no more slavery than what was happening in the West in the same time

Oh, please... Extraordinary claims need extraordinary support. Post a careful comparison.

We are back to the original point -- people had to be put in prison (with guards that shot people fleeing!) to keep them in. The borders and information were open in the West.

>have you seen Pussy Riot yourself?

I've seen that in civilized countries, we don't throw people in jail for being blasphemous. (And what in H-ll has artistic quality have to do with that?!)

> I'll claim that the sources listed on that page are BS w/o even looking

As I guessed: "Or go the popular way and claim that Wikipedia and/or all the academic research are in a conspiracy..."

Well, I have better things to do than argue with people claiming Wikipedia is a conspiracy which misrepresent the present state of research -- without knowing the subject enough to recognize the sources!!

That is a basic test for non serious debaters, sorry.

So bye.

Addendum to the last paragraph: I think the last researcher thought the ones killed through hunger were more random -- take most food from a population and you don't know exactly which ones will die. With murder, you are more specific. At least, I can't find any other way of reading that.

Again -- argue what your schools taught you (or whatever source you have for your claims) with the researchers on the subject, not with me. (Or go the popular way and claim that Wikipedia and/or all the academic research are in a conspiracy... :-) )

Edit: Anyway, as I wrote, the original point is that you can define living in the Eastern Bloc as slavery. The slave owners did whatever they felt like to anyone -- e.g. if individuals or groups complained about the situation or tried to leave. Torture, murder, genocide and throwing complainers into prison or a mental hospital. See Pussy Riot.

Bring your claims to the academic authors -- I quoted 8-61 million from the wikipedia page, which quoted the researchers.

The researchers seem to differ in, amongst other points, how much of the hunger was planned.

Quotes from the wikipedia page I referenced, with different researchers:

"Some historians attempt to make separate estimates for different periods of the Soviet history, with casualties for the Stalinist period varying from 8 to 61 million."

"Several scholars [...] put the death toll at about 20 million."

"no fewer than 15 million deaths"

"Wheatcroft excludes all famine deaths as "purposive deaths," and claims those that do qualify fit more closely the category of "execution" rather than "murder."[4] However, some of the actions of Stalin's regime, not only those during the Holodomor but also Dekulakization and targeted campaigns against particular ethnic groups, can be considered as genocide"

(About the last quote -- I don't get the difference of execution and murder, when it comes to farmers whose only crime were to have been born.)

Hardly a factor ten.

Holodomor, the great purge, the red terror, forced resettlements, Gulag... Values between 8 and 61 millions, depending on if the starving are part of that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_r...

Oh please, realize that almost directly it was clear that Soviet divisions wouldn't again "visit" as an answer to democratization in East Europe, the juntas were gone.

And Putin isn't brutal inside the borders, yet. The tendency seems clear. I really wish the best for the Russian people, they if anyone on the planet deserves better after the history. (It is not easy to go democratic for a country with big income from natural resources, see "the oil curse".)

(I didn't compare with the German nazis, I noted that citizens are generally not enlightened about atrocities done by their own country, but I'd guess Soviet did have them beaten in absolute numbers. Number of millions, that is.)

I am sorry, but your description of East Europe is complete bullshit.

I assume you're Russian? Only Germans seem to learn about their own country's atrocities in school/media. (I'll add Russia to the list of Turkey, Pakistan, Japan, ...)

A brutal dictatorship, as Putin seem to work towards, means that the controlling junta can treat the people as their own property.

As I wrote: If you have to lock people up to stop them from fleeing -- and the guards even shoot on sight! -- it shows the relationship; leaving is theft of valuable property, i.e. a slavery situation.

I have worked in Romania and have read/heard about how the spine of the people were broken and how they were controlled.

For example: There were some German speaking people since the Middle Ages in Transylvania. The adults were sent to Siberia. The broken survivors did get home, years later... Another example: Political prisoners (but at least not "criminals" which had just refused to sign over their land to the Party), were just not going to survive prison.

And so on.

(Pre-60s Africa, during colonialism? Well, that is at least different compared to the usual Soviet argument of blacks in USA. :-) )

I showed by examples of your double standards that you are a lying hate propagandist, which have no problem even with teaching children racial hatred.

If you could have shown that was wrong, you would have. Instead you just classify me...

>Organ harvesting for benefit of Jews

Organ harvesting was one doctor -- which took organs from Jews too (I think that is even against the religion). You again blame a whole country for an individuals action.

>As for antisemitism, everything is antisemitism (or self hating) in regards to criticism of Israel.

- First you complain about Israel because of an individuals' action.

- Second, you shrug off state sanctioned racial hate propaganda, partly copied from the Nazis and partly religious?!

Talk about double standards... this literally gave me vertigo.

Enough.

This was propaganda from a karma 9 account. I'll touch some points but I think that there are too many fanatics on this subject, it doesn't work on HN.

(I got a couple of comments first upvoted and then down voted a bunch of points, so I guess this will go the same way.)

>In Israel, only 7% of the land was owned by Jews when the state of Israel was created.

More Jews were thrown out of the Muslim countries than Palestinians fled. (And not in a burning civil war, but from cold blooded racism.)

The possessions stolen from those Jews included land area multiple times the size of Israel.

Most of those Jews fled to Israel. So how about a reasonable view -- do a swap and call it even? The Palestinians get some of the resources stolen by their allied Muslim countries?

Why is that bad?

>Jews, and Christians were not persecuted when that land was under Muslim rule.

This is in fact true now... Since most every Jew were thrown out of the Muslim world because of what some other Jews did, there are none to persecute..

Worth reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_Arab_world#...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_antisemitism#Mohammad...

It is easy to find more.

> IDF soldiers wear t-shirts with a picture of a pregnant woman in cross-hairs [...]

You demonise a country for what some individuals do.

What do you then say about about officially sanctioned racist hatred, copied from the Nazis?! Like the Arab countries... In state controlled media.

The previous Egyptian president spoke about the importance of teaching your children to hate Jews... And so on.

So how many hundreds of times worse is that? You're not a dishonest hypocrite with different standards for different sides, are you?

> [Latest Gaza war]

- Started by Hamas, which also gave murderers of three children a hero status. (Note that some Israelis did a revenge murder -- and will end up in jail.)

- Shooting from civilian areas -- at civilians. (There are empty areas in Gaza: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4580/gaza-population-densi... )

- http://www.thewire.com/global/2014/09/hamas-quietly-admits-i...

- Ah... No. Waste of time and damaging HN. :-(

(Also worth mentioning is how the Muslim world kept the Palestinians in camps and refused to integrate them for generations. Just to keep the hatred going. Smart, since most every other land loss from WWII is forgotten. Just a pity they destroyed so many lives to do it. Arguably, much worse than anything the Israelis ever did to the Palestinians, even in your description...)

Interesting link.

Since the cold war, the US involvement seems to be in non-democracies exclusively. (I thought Venezuela was a case, but the page claims that wasn't proven?) [Edit: Maybe the coup against Aristide in Haiti? I don't know enough.]

Frankly, I see a big difference between on one hand a country and its population -- and on the other, a junta that has stolen a country. If such a junta is ousted it is a good thing, as long as it isn't completely fubared as in Iraq 2003 (Libya might also end up even worse than under the last pack of murdering rapists).

My main problem with the US administration right now is Obama's unwillingness to do something about Syria. Assad is no lesser murderer and torturer than IS.

[Western world enslaved countries]

Ah, that is why USA had to build a wall to stop people fleeing to the freedom of East Europe? :-)

Edit: On the other subject -- I can't find much on Wikipedia at all about the construction of the sarcophagus.

I think that the borders with Gaza and the West Bank were very open, people commuted and travelled to buy stuff etc. After the second Intifada, the stops went up to hinder very common attacks on civilians. This stopped a quite integrated economy -- and caused problems on the Israeli side, too.

(I am no expert, I follow the subject just to find out how non-serious my native Swedish media are. So I'm probably pro-Israel, since I literally look for the stuff censored from Swedish media. You seem like you should learn Swedish? :-) )