Cap'n Refsmmat

Easy. Get more wives to feed the kids with.

And three weeks of membership. Some people post 25 posts per day...

See, you get distrustful when you don't know what other guys are thinking when they see your wife. You're not sure if they're doing hanky-panky or not. But once they've had her milk, well, you know exactly what they're thinking when they see her...

Just don't hit the Submit New Thread button more than once. I dunno what else causes duplicates. If something goes wrong, you can use the Report button () to let a moderator know that there's a duplicate thread and it can be deleted. They'll take care of it.

Don't worry about it. We can remove duplicates if necessary, and nobody's going to get suspended over an accident. Some people make a habit of posting multiple copies of threads all over the forum, and that's when it gets annoying.

This is getting ridiculous: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/06/201066132951286979.html Also, Egypt has excellent timing: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/africa/10247437.stm

Very true. Even the "best" sources covered it. But at least they didn't emphasize it on their front page ahead of other international stories. CNN.com, even the "international edition," features many trivial stories on its front page. Today's "Highlights" are about a tower in the UAE that leans farther than the Tower of Pisa, people swimming with whale sharks, a shipwreck, and gadgets. That's not the sort of news I'm interested in.

I just wanted to bump this to add that I'm also getting the 2-week free trial of The Independent, and I'm also tempted to see what the New York Times is like on the Kindle. Anyone else have any favorites? I'm really enjoying actually knowing what's going on in the world.

More eyewitness accounts, claiming the Israelis opened fire before landing on the ship: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-hijacking-of-the-truth-film-evidence-destroyed-1992517.html Another story, in which an eyewitness tells how the IDF mistreated the captured protesters: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/kidnapped-by-israel-and-abandoned-by-britain-1992518.html Screw-ups all around, it seems. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedI find myself wishing that Wikileaks would miraculously end up with all the video footage from the IDF and from the protester's cameras.

Hmm. Now I'm confused: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-seizes-second-aid-ship-as-protests-grow-1992671.html Someone got mixed up somewhere?

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/titan20100603.html The NASA press release is much more cautious, and notes that there can be non-biological explanations for the observations.

Indeed, and I'm happy with how it was handled. Also: http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=177570 Good to see they're willing to open things up a bit. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged I think both 1 and 3 are true. Gaza's economy is in the crapper, so its residents have to survive on below-poverty-line levels of food. And they don't let construction materials in. At least until they made the exception for the latest ship; that was nice of them.

Indeed. I believe I quoted earlier in this thread The Economist, which points out that Hamas hasn't fired any of the rockets launched this year. My argument is that as a means to protect against an immediate threat, it's pretty crappy. And when your civilians are shot by the IDF, you start shooting builders and delegates. (I'm not trying to blame Israel. I think the conflict has gone on for so long that there's no way to tell who's at fault for what, because the actions all tie back into previous actions, which were caused by other things, blah blah blah. Blame all around.) These two articles are not relevant, because they were written before the Gaza War, in which Israel destroyed much of Gaza's infrastructure and made a large percentage of people homeless. Yes, the blockade is indeed about stopping shipments. Construction materials are not allowed in. Some appliances were not allowed in. I believe I recall reading that chocolate was not allowed in. And the daily traffic in and out of Gaza is a tiny fraction of what it was before the blockade. Without imports and exports, Gaza cannot sustain an economy. They cannot, say, make a business manufacturing goods because they cannot export those goods. Part of the 2008 ceasefire agreement was to increase the number of trucks allowed in and out of Gaza, but Israel never really held up on that side of the agreement, partly because of continuing Palestinian attacks on border posts. Israel does inspect shipments, but it does also stop a large portion from ever getting in. Fortunately, most international humanitarian aid agencies would be less interested in making a political point and more interested in just getting the aid in. The flotillans want unfettered access directly to Gaza, but if that's not possible, some agreement that allows pre-blockade levels of shipment while still getting routine inspection would be great. But tricky. But nobody can rely on inspection to keep the weapons out of the hands of Hamas forever, and it will not solve the underlying problem. I think we can agree that restrictions and inspections should be a temporary measure until a peace agreement can be worked out. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedhttp://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/report-erdogan-considering-visiting-gaza-to-break-blockade-1.294326 Can't see how that could go badly...

Well, a ceasefire like the 2008 one would be great. Rocket attacks decreased by 98%. Sure, they continued, but Hamas was stamping down on them, and Israel committed its own share of truce violations as well. Negotiated peace can work, even if Hamas was quietly hoping Israel would vanish off the face of the Earth throughout. Hamas was democratically elected. And my point is that a blockade isn't a viable solution either. It is no more effective at stopping rockets than diplomatic means, especially considering the Egyptian tunnel system, and it has far more nasty side-effects. It merely entrenches Hamas in power, gives a new generation of Hamas leaders yet more reason to hate Israel (rather than coming to peace), and has made Gaza dependent on a smuggling economy conveniently controlled by Hamas. Of course we'd attack in response to military action. But we wouldn't attack by starving most of Iran. Americans cry out in outrage if we kill a few innocent civilians; if a reporter showed up in Afghanistan and showed that troops were starving innocent Afghanis, heads would roll. You don't have to drop the blockade and not check ships. One solution proposed by the Economist is to have the UN manage aid and shipping into Gaza, so that ships can be impartially inspected but shipments can make it in. But in the end, I think this article gives the reasons for the best solution: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/02/israel-force-impotent-hamas-idea

Fair enough. Again, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-other-side-of-the-gaza-blockade-1992076.html Incidentally, the IDF transfers something like 1300 tons of aid into Gaza daily. Given that the Strip has a population of 1.5 million, that's 800 grams of aid per person. Given that many Gazans are homeless and unemployed, they can't afford much more than the food aid that's handed out to them, and that aid isn't enough to live on daily. Also, a large percentage of Gazan buildings were destroyed in the Gaza War, and of course they have no building materials to rebuild them. And we would not respond with a blockade. The question isn't whether action is justified, it's whether this particular action is justified. Take Iran, for instance. They've test-fired long-range missiles, pursued a nuclear program, trained Taliban fighters who attack us in Afghanistan, and so on. Have we blockaded Iran to prevent these activities? No, nobody in the US would support that, because we do not want to punish the entire Iranian populace for the actions of a few. Instead, the Western world has pursued diplomatic means of forcing Iran to change its ways. Brazil and Turkey have negotiated nuclear deals. The UN imposed sanctions that try not to harm the populace. In short, we have responded to their antics not by escalating militarily but with diplomacy and restraint. Even when our troops are being shot by Iranian-trained fighters. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedThe Economist in its latest issue makes the argument that Israel's blockade only strengthens Hamas's political power, rather than weakening it: http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=16274281 (subscription required) (bold mine, since I thought that a particularly important point)

I think louis's point was that the consequences of rockets getting into Gaza aren't, in fact, very big, since the rocket attacks have had relatively few casualties compared to the number of rockets launched. Of course, forcing people to dodge into air-raid shelters daily isn't good, either, but retaliating by starving other people may seem disproportionate. It'd be different if the rocket attacks killed hundreds or thousands of Israelis.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-other-side-of-the-gaza-blockade-1992076.html Worth reading. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedAlso: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2010/jun/05/flotilla-raid-henning-mankell-diary Henning Mankell is a Swedish crime novelist who was on one of the ships. You can skip to "Monday 31 May, midnight" if you don't want to read it all.

http://area51.scienceforums.net Going along quite nicely. At the moment we just need to get blog integration working.

Well, if they say they'd accept a truce with Israel if they got a Palestinian state accepted by Israel, I guess compromise is an option for them. But in any case, we don't need our own Middle Eastern conflict opening up here with the snide remarks. We're talking about current events, not each other.

Another contradiction in news stories. http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/israel-navy-3-commandos-nearly-taken-hostage-in-gaza-flotilla-raid-1.294114 http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/report-autopsy-shows-gaza-activists-were-shot-30-times-1.294255 Who shot the 9mm bullets? The M4 carbine fires 5.56mm rounds, not 9mm rounds. Was it their sidearms? Why'd they go around shooting with their sidearms instead of with their M4s? There's something inconsistent here. First they say 9mm isn't used, then everyone's shot with 9mms, but the Israelis don't deny they did the shooting.

Waiiiit a minute. I just recalled something. Earlier accounts said that the first people to drop onto the deck were armed with paintball guns, not firearms. How did this work? Did "K." draw his sidearm and fire while jumping from the rope onto the deck, before the activist could fire? Did they have sidearms? Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged This is false, considering the six-month truce that occurred in 2008, with success.

I agree with most of your analysis, but I think I need to repeat a point I made earlier. And evidence would suggest that condition is not met: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/its-up-to-us-to-lift-the-blockade-1988693.html On the other hand, the casualties from the rockets the blockade is supposed to stop are surprisingly low: http://www.theisraelproject.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=hsJPK0PIJpH&b=883997&ct=3887857 (although that hasn't been updated for two years or so) I don't know if that figure is accurate, and of course there are injuries and property damage to take into account as well. But making 80% of 1.5m people impoverished to the point of dependence on food aid seems to me to be "excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated."

It's a good idea to point out that the San Remo manual is not international law. It's more of a guide to the law as it is understood by the experts who drafted the manual. But it should give us a good idea of what international law says about blockades and such.

Me too. I'm going to have to think about this; I'll be taking another philosophy course this fall so if I still think this argument is sound then, I might bring it up. Hmm. Let's try it: God is that than which a greater cannot be conceived. God could obey logical rules and be understandable through logic, or God could break logical rules and be inconceivable via logic. It is greater to be unbound by logic than to be bound by logic. Therefore, logical rules cannot bind God. The ontological argument is a logical argument to prove the existence of god. Because logic does not bind God, the ontological argument cannot apply to God. This could be formulated better; this is just my first attempt. I think by "unbound by logic", we agree this means that if I were to formulate a logical argument about God ("therefore, God must like cheese," or whatever), God would not necessarily obey the conclusion; the argument might be valid, but its conclusion may not apply to God anyway. But there's only one alternative to the conclusion of the ontological argument: God might not exist at all. And I don't see how God could break the logical rules by refusing to exist at all. Is there something wrong with this line of reasoning?

If we accept defying logic as a necessary property of the God proved to exist by the ontological argument (if you accept it, that is), doesn't this say that such a God could possibly not exist, despite necessarily existing, because He defies logic? Oh dear. This is a really good point, though. It's possible to define God to be impossible to conceive of logically, since that'd imply God is so much greater than we are that He cannot be understood by us. At which point the ontological argument necessarily implies that the ontological argument cannot work. Does that sound right?