Month: January 2009

Mutual Intelligibility in the Romance Family

It is often stated that speakers of the Romance languages can all understand each other. I’m not really a fluent speaker of Spanish, but I can speak it ok. I have known some Brazilian Portuguese speakers, and they definitely could not understand Spanish well. And the Latin American Spanish speakers I knew insisted that they could not understand Portuguese. I’ve known some Italian speakers too. I tried speaking Spanish to them in order to communicate with them, but that was a pretty useless exercise. The Italian speaker I know right now admits he can’t understand Spanish. I find this whole theory to be ridiculous. It’s been shown that even Asturian has only 80 Even Galician, as close to Portuguese as you can get, has only 85 The “dialects” of Italian are so distant that many of them are separate languages altogether. Why? Because they are unintelligible. And that’s right there within Italic itself. Franco-Provencal has only partial intelligibility with French, and that’s quite close to French as you get. Bottom line is the whole notion of “Romance speakers can all understand each other” can be put to rest. On the net recently, I found these excellent comments on the debate.

The supposed mutual intelligibility of Spanish and Portuguese is greatly exaggerated. Spanish/Portuguese speakers can mutually STRUGGLE through very basic conversations (and usually while speaking very slowly, changing their normal speaking accent, and utilizing lots of hand motions to aid communication), but not much more than that without study. The phonology of both languages is dramatically different. And Spanish and Italian are almost not at all mutually intelligible. Too many words, and constructions are TOTALLY different. People need to stop repeating this lie of Spanish/Italian mutual intelligibility… …I live in an Area (Newark NJ), that has a lot of Portuguese immigrants, and local Hispanics are perplexed by the language they speak, and do not even recognize it at all, and much less understand it. You’ll hear Puerto Ricans and Dominicans say things like: “What language was that? Was that Russian?” Portuguese often gets mistaken for some kind of obscure Slavic language by Spanish speakers who have never been exposed to it… …Most people who have never had contact with Portuguese won’t have the slightest inclination of what a Portuguese speaker is saying, and if so, very little… …Italian and Spanish are not that closely related, and as a general rule are NOT mutually intelligible at all.

Indeed, I would say that that about sums it up. I can understand a fair amount of Spanish on a video, but I recently watched a video of Wally Gator dubbed into Brazilian Portuguese (the old Hanna Barbera cartoons are insanely popular to this day down in Brazil) and I could barely make out a damned word. One thing that I noticed is that if you know one Romance tongue, you can pick up another pretty fast. I dated a Brazilian woman once and I used to speak to her in Spanish while she spoke to me in Portuguese. Within mere days, I was picking up the Portuguese, with the help of a dictionary of course. I’m now learning some Italian through interacting with an Italian translator of my work. It’s so much easier since I know Spanish. I suspect that the other much-daunted “intelligibility chains” between the great languages are pretty much like the above with Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. Note that in the same linked web discussion, there are some individual speakers of Spanish or Portuguese who claim that they can easily understand the other language. This is why linguistic evaluation of mutual intelligibility is such a minefield. Different informants give you all sorts of different responses. One of the big problems with mutual intelligibility testing is that when dealing with closely related dialects or languages, speakers can pretty quickly start to understand the other tongue after listening to it for a while. I’m not really sure what to do in cases like this. You would have to ask the experts like the folks at Ethnologue who run around doing intelligibility testing of speakers all over the world. If you think this website is valuable to you, please consider a contribution to support the continuation of the site. Donations are the only thing that keep the site operating.

The Ways of the Arab

In the comments section, Mort Goldman agrees with me that the behavior of Arabs in Iraq in the war there does not bode well for cooperation of Arabs and Jews in Palestine in a single state. Mort notes the cruelty with which the Iraqis have treated each other in this war. I will point out that my Arab friends tell me that they are horrified by the behavior of the Iraqis in this war, but that they are not surprised. “The Iraqis have always been complete animals,” they tell me. It’s true that recent history in Iraq has often been unspeakably brutal. The tendency of Arabs towards extreme cruelty and abandonment of all rules of war seems to be only true during wartime.Many Arab states have seen decades of peace since independence, and in addition to that seem to ahve a very low crime rate. Where I live here in the hood, the local Palestinians and Yemenis are vastly more civilized than many of the local anchor baby Hispanics or Blacks, many of whom are gangbangers or just uncivilized in other ways. The ways of the Arab can be cruel in terms of strict rules and harsh punishment for crimes, but it probably makes for a society that is quite civilized at least in terms of having little of the crime, dope, squalor and chaos that we call progress here in the cities of our West. It’s not really a free society, but in it’s own way, it works and creates a sort of a civilized society. In warfare in recent times, Arabs have been horribly cruel. The Yemeni civil war, the Iraq-Iran War and the Iraqi civil war with the Kurds saw poison gas used. The Algerian Civil War was unspeakably cruel on the part of the rebels. I pointed out in the comments section that the modern rules of war only arose with the Geneva Conventions post World War 2. Although most nations of the world have signed on, only the West seems to even try to follow them at all. The rest of the world seems to laugh at them. One must admit that following the rules of war does constrain a military intent on victory. I do agree with Mort about Palestinians and Jews probably not being able to get along with each other in a single state at least for the time being. Too much shit like this recent offensive in Gaza has created tons of bad blood that will wear off in many years, if at all. One problem is that both Arabs and Jews seem to be intent on dominating the other. Even the secular Arabs in the PFLP insist that the single state must be “Arab with a Jewish minority.” That’s probably a recipe for Arab domination. To expect Arabs to act like Americans or Italians is silly. They are what they are, a people bred in the cruel and harsh desert with a culture to match. I will say though that the Palestinians inside Israel seem to tolerate Jews pretty well considering how shitty they are treated. They are a few attacks here and there, but mostly the two sides more or less get along and coexist with each other. On the other hand, they are a minority. As soon as Muslim Palestinians got to be a majority in a new state, I do not think Jews would be treated very well. Muslims in general have an extremely poor record of treating minorities decently. Honestly, we probably treat minorities better here in the West than anywhere else in the world. That’s one of the things that makes the Cultural Left’s hatred of the West and embrace of Third Worldism so perverse and silly. Muslims do treat minorities OK in Lebanon, at least for now, but you only have to look back a couple decades to where both sides were massacring each other. The situation in Lebanon may be due to the very high numbers of non-Muslim Christians, who have a lot of political power and still more or less run the place despite all their whining. They also have lots of guns and a reputation for being badass fighters with a long reputation of fighting like animals against any attempts at Muslim domination. I refer here to the Maronites. The secular Alawites of Syria treat non-Muslims very well, but unfortunately they are not typical Muslims. Non-Muslims are treated well in Morocco and Tunisia, but that is only due to secular dictatorships forced on the people. As soon as those electorates get a chance to vote, I am sure they will vote in radical Islamists and then any toleration will be a memory.

Why Not New Englishes?

I sometimes wonder why Ebonics is not considered a separate language altogether. There are some varieties of it spoken around here by some Blacks that are entirely incomprehensible to me. These same Blacks can easily switch and speak Standard English if they wish. I also wonder why the Englishes spoken in West Africa (or at least many varieties of it) are not considered separate languages. These people pretty much grow up speaking English from an early age, so it can’t be just regional accent of an L2 effecting their English. West African English seems to be evolving into its very own type of English. A lot of East Indian English seems to be evolving in the same way. These people also speak English from an early age, so it’s not just L2 accent. East Indian English seems to be taking its own trajectory. I often can’t make heads or tails out of West African English, and East Indian English is also often very difficult to understand. Thickly accented L2 English from other regions is often much easier to understand than these two. Within both West African English and East Indian English there are varieties spoken by more educated speakers that are often quite easy to understand. James Schipper noted in the comments that in Canada, interviews of ordinary citizens from Scotland carried subtitles. This may be because they were speaking Scots. Scots is now, according to Ethnologue, a completely separate language related to English. Keep in mind that there are three languages here: Scottish Gaelic, the Gaelic tongue related to Irish; Scots, the new language related to English yet not a dialect of English; and Scottish English, which is in fact a dialect of English. Spoken Scottish English is probably comprehensible to most of us, but Scots clearly is not. Scots was the language spoken in Trainspotting. There was a reason why that movie had subtitles! Keep in mind that the Caribbean English creoles have long since been split off from English. Jamaicans are clearly NOT speaking English, and interviews with them and movies about Jamaica often need subtitles. The Caribbeans are all speaking English creoles, which are not the same as the English language. They are separate languages altogether. James Schipper notes in the comments that when Quebecois French movies are shown in France, they are shown with subtitles. If this is so, then it may be time to split off Quebecois French into a separate language. Needing subtitles to understand a speaker on video is a pretty sure sign that you are dealing with a separate language and not a dialect.

Tuna With Mustard and Tomatoes

This is another in my series of bachelor recipes for single guys, especially single guys who hate to cook, are broke and don’t have many ingredients lying around. Ingredients: 2 cups rice 2 cups water 2 cups stewed tomatoes 12 oz tuna steak or slab 1/4 cup Teriyaki sauce 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil 1 1/2 tbsp stoneground mustard 1 tbsp Basque fish sauce 2 chopped olives 1/4 tsp marjoram Pepper, lemon pepper, basil, herbs, etc, to taste Heat 2 cups water to boil, then pour in rice. Reduce heat to low and cover until done. Pour ingredients into large frying pan and stir fry until desired consistency is reached. Add marjoram, pepper, spices, etc at the very end. Put rice on plate and spoon the tuna tomato mixture over the rice. This actually ended up pretty good. You might think that’s a lot of teriyaki sauce but it worked out just fine. Teriyaki goes great with tuna and you can use lots of it and get away with it. If you don’t have Basque fish sauce, use any white wine. One might think that the olive oil was excessive too, but it worked out just fine too. Usually, you only need 1 tbsp olive oil, but sometimes you can go higher. The mustard was about right too – 1 tbsp seemed too little and 2 tbsp seemed too much. Marjoram goes well with any tomato dish. This is a good dish for guys who don’t like to cook, don’t have much money and don’t have much food lying around. You can buy tuna in little packets ready to cook and eat. Rice is really cheap. I got the tomatoes for free from some church surplus food giveaway. They had huge tins of them and they were begging people to take them so I grabbed one. I’m welcome to suggestions from any of the amateur chefs out there to how I might improve this recipe.

Israeli Invasion Update

The IDF claims that it is in control of Beit Layiha and and Beit Hanoun, and it has cut Gaza in half. A column of APC’s and tanks now goes from the eastern border of Gaza to the Mediterranean Sea. The IDF have taken positions on top of many roofs in the area. Right now, it is encircling Gaza City, just what I expected them to do. Pretty damn good for a mere eight hours or so into a ground invasion. Israel is dropping leaflets all over Gaza telling people to turn in the Hamas guys around them and then everything will be cool. So Gazans are going to spy for Israel. Well, obviously, some of them already are, but I don’t think this is going to be a popular thing to do. Hamas claims that they have already seized two wounded Israeli soldiers, but I doubt it. Israel will not confirm that. Hamas is going to make all kinds of blustery comments in the next few days, and most of them can be safely ignored. Israel really fucked up and hit a mosque full of 200 people praying inside, killing 11 civilians. The IDF claims that the mosque was used to store weapons, but it was full of people when they bombed it. Major fuckup. There are 2,777 Palestinian casualties in Gaza so far, for a population of 1.5 million. That is about one out of every 500 people. I now live in a city of 50,000. That would mean 100 casualties in my city. Surely you would know one of the wounded or killed. There would also be 16 killed in my city. Just to give you an idea of what it looks like on the ground. Israel has blown up the oil supply for Gaza, which was the only thing running the generators for the hospital. There are people waiting in line outside the hospital to be treated. However, it looks like Hamas has a tunnel network all over Gaza, and they can probably hide pretty well. 437 Gazans have been killed so far, and at least 109 of those were civilians. The death toll on the Israeli side is 4! This is the sort of thing that Israel and its supporters just don’t get. When there’s 100-1 deaths on their side versus your side, it just looks like a massacre. While Israel engages in a war with 100-1 casualties in its favor, its Jewish casualties continuously scream at the top of their lungs that the other side, which is frankly being massacred, is about to wipe all 5 million Jews in Israel off the face of the Earth. Then when they get done, they are going to kill the other 13 million Jews on the planet. This is why no one listens to Israel and its supporters anymore. It’s like the bully on the playground pummeling the designated and professional victims, all the while claiming that the Supervictims are serial killers ready to wipe the bully and his bully-buddies off the face of the Earth. This is not just the voice of the Israeli bully – this is the voice of all bullies everywhere, in all places and at all times. Think about it. The professional victim picked on by the bully is always someone who seems weak, submissive and is completely harmless (doesn’t quite work in Hamas’ case, but consider the 100-1 odds). The bully always claims he is defending himself! Gangs of bullies are always defending themselves! This is how aggression works, folks. Think about it! Real hard! I am serious, this Israeli-Palestinian War will tell you a lot about human nature. The bully always claims that the Supervictim started it. The Supervictim got out of control, and the bully had to put him in his place. The bully bullies the Supervictim day in and day out and when the Supervictim finally rises up to fight back, that is when the shit really, really, really hits the fan. Slave rebellions will not be tolerated! The price for fighting back against bullies is dear, precious and bloody indeed. You may think I am going on and on here, but please think about what I am writing. This is human nature. Humans are just animals and underneath it all, too many times, is just dominance and submission. The BD/SM folks justify their so-called perversions by saying that they are merely mimicking life and its ugly and inescapable reality. Indeed it is true, is it not? In any male-female relationship, one party wears the pants, right? If the man won’t put them, damned if the woman won’t slip into the jeans herself. Over and out. Just some thoughts for the day.

Debka Downed By Arab Cyberattack

Debka appears to be down right now. This happens often during major offensives when the site gets flooded with hits. However, in this case, Debka has apparently gone down under a concerted cyberattack by Arab hackers. Some Jerusalem Post pages are also not loading. Debka sent out a message to its subscribers saying that both the English and Hebrew sites had been under heavy cyberattack since 7 PM local time. As its 11 hours later now, it looks like this is a serious attack. I don’t dig it when either side does this shit. I want my news, dammit. If Debka ever comes back up, maybe we can write something about this ground invasion. The hackers also took down the Israeli news site Ynetnews.com in addition to discountbank.com and redirecting them to a webpage with an anti-Israel message. They did this by hacking into a domain name registration server.

Juan Cole On Gaza

By the way, Israel has just invaded Gaza several hours ago and are now occupying a small part of Northern Gaza. More on that later in the post. Juan Cole makes a number of interesting points about the Gaza operation and its coverage. Cole notes that American International School in Gaza sustained a direct hit from Israeli artillery. I assume that it was intentional. This school is working to promote good relations between the US and Palestinians. Hmmm. Cole questions, quoting Jonathan Freedman, one again, what the whole invasion was all about. If Israel could not crush Hamas when they controlled Gaza, how do they hope to do so now when they are only going to make a temporary incursion into a few parts of it? Most interesting of all was Cole’s account of watching CNN, or as a friend of mine calls it, ZNN (Zionist News Network). CNN was interviewing Saeb Erekat, the PLO spokesperson. Cole noted that this was the first time he had seen a Palestinian spokesman on TV all week – it was all  Israelis, all the time. They had just started an interview with Erekat when ZNN suddenly switched to Ben Weideman (sure, he’s Jewish) in Jerusalem detailing the “task Israel has before it now.” They never did get back to Erekat. Later, ZNN did an interview with Mustafa Bargouti, who complained that ZNN’s coverage of the war was completely one-sided. He has such a thick accent that it is hard to understand him. Cole pointed out how Israeli commenters always seem to be quite understandable. Cole wonders whether the media can’t find a Palestinian who speaks good enough English so he’s understandable to an American audience. Interesting the subtle and not so subtle ways that pro-Israeli bias works in the US media. What’s funny is that a lot of pro-Israeli Jews like to scream about how the US media is so lopsided in favor of the Palestinians. Yeah right! I do agree with them about the European media though. Just looking at the British media the other day, or at least the Independent and the Guardian, they are not pro-Israel at all. I would say that they are anti-Israel. From the Palestinian side, some really biased and pro-Pallie fire-breathing coverage is available from the PFLP English site. You can get some great coverage of the war there too, albeit from a wildly pro-Pallie perspective. According to the PFLP, the IDF has sustained casualties in the early hours of the offensive. They report that an IDF tank has been hit by a roadside bomb and that the IDF moved into Gaza in three different places. They are also claiming the use of cluster bombs and say that the IDF hit gas storage depots which is causing big fires. Hamas says that they have killed a group of Israeli forces in Eastern Gaza. This was reported on the Arab Al-Arabiya news channel. There is no confirmation of this yet. The Jerusalem Post agrees that there have been An-Nasser Salah al-din Brigades, affiliated with the Popular Resistance Committees, the National Resistance Brigades – the armed wing of the DFLP (Democratic Front for the Liberation of  Palestine), the Al-Mujahedin Brigades, an armed faction of Fatah, the Eagles of Palestine, a previously unknown group, in addition to the Izzadeen al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, are all participating in the fighting, so it’s not all just “Hamas”. It’s useful to note that the PFLP reports that they too are shooting rockets at Israeli towns, so when you hear about rockets being fired at Israel, it’s not all “Hamas”. According to Debka (about as wildly pro-IDF as the PFLP site is wildly pro-Pallie), the Palestinians plan to evacuate much of Gaza and collect inside Gaza City. No way is the IDF going to occupy Gaza City. Then they will move out of Gaza City at night to carry out attacks on the IDF. That instead of holding out and fighting to the last man in every part of Gaza. That’s probably a pretty smart way to fight the war. The rocket barrages have hit into areas of Israel that to my knowledge have not been hit before. They hit Netivot and Ofaqim in the Negev, and incredibly hit all the way to Beersheba. To the north, they hit Askelon and Lakhish to the east of Kiryat Gat. They hit Ashdod and Gan Yavne to the east of Ashdod. The furthest target of all to be hit was Gedera. In general, these rockets caused little damage or casualties. That is because they are inherently inaccurate. However, recently, rockets have made direct hits on buildings in Ashdod and other towns. In Ashdod, a six-floor building received a direct hit.

Expanding Definitions of Fascism

The Arabs are taking the war outside of Israel. 2 Israelis were wounded by Arabs in a Palestinian parents from Lebanon. Hizb-ut-Tahrir (global jihad) has a presence in Denmark. They recently held a rally where they reportedly announced that all Jews everywhere were legitimate targets and wished death to them all. In the cutting-edge debate on fascism carried out by Left theorists and mainstream political scientists, there is debate about whether or not the Al Qaeda types are fascists or not. David Neiwert of Orcinus says that they are in Author Robert LindsayPosted on Categories Fascism, Political Science1 Comment on Expanding Definitions of Fascism

The "Theory of Intelligence"

Intelligence like spies, not intelligence like IQ. The fascinating blog Entitled To An Opinion reproduces an excellent document from an Israel intelligence scholar who has written several books on the theory of intelligence. In particular, he delves into the organization of guerrilla groups their cells. I love this stuff! The document makes some interesting points, considering the author is an Israeli. First of all, he points out that Hamas was operating completely outside of the hands of Arafat and the PLO and was in fact trying to crush Arafat’s attempts at negotiation. Hamas’ terrorism was not Arafat’s terrorism! Yes, yes, yes, a thousand times yes! Via Debka and the other idiot Israeli outlets, we always heard about how this guy called “Arafat” was behind all of the sui-bombers self-detonating all over Israel. Even surrounded by Israeli forces in a bombed-out headquarters with all contact with the outside world cut off, Arafat Mastermind was still coordinating every single attack against Israel. How did he do it? Telepathy, of course! Arafat was a master of ESP. After a few years, Israel poisoned him via his Palestinian chef (check out Ghada Karmi , no conspiracy buff, on this), and then he died. The rest of the PLO, including the Abbas faction, was apparently in on the operation, at least after the fact, in that an autopsy was prevented, and his body was quickly entombed for all time. I realize this is a conspiracy theory, but after months of investigation, I am convinced it is true. If only more knew about this. And Arafat did NOT die of AIDS (Zionist rumor-lie). Anyway, back to the point. The article is wrong in some places. It claimed that Sheik Yassin and then Rantissi were giving the orders for every single sui-bomb. I find this dubious. Hamas is split between military and political wings. The military wing seems to be relatively autonomous in terms of selecting targets and whatnot. Yassin and Rantissi were part of the political wing. There is lots of breathing space between the two wings for counterintelligence purposes – political wing members arrested cannot give much info on military wing members since they know little to nothing. I also think it should be pointed out that it should be obvious by now that Hamas is riddled with Israeli informers. There is no other way that Israel had such great intelligence on where to drop those bombs. Israeli intelligence on Hezbollah,on the other hand, is pretty abysmal though not a complete failure. Hezbollah has somehow managed to keep Israeli informers out of its system for a good 10 years now. How do they do it? Who knows? We get back to the “theory of intelligence” which this guy has written several books on. It’s a nasty world out there, and not so easily mastered, even by the best spy agencies or guerrilla formations on Earth. How to keep spies out of the insurgency? You tell me! One more thing becomes clear in this document – the policy of targeted assassinations so decried by the pro-Palestinian side clearly works from a military POV. Further, civilian casualties are probably kept to a minimum. The article deals with at what point does any system start to collapse. They are using guerrilla organizations as a system, but really we can plug any variable in there. It turns out that 25

More on Gaza

In the Finally, A Post On Gaza post, Lafayette Sennacherib points out that Hamas has limited ability to control the rocket shooters. This is not completely correct. Truth is that Hamas are hardliners. They really don’t want to arrest anyone for the “crime” of shooting at Israelis. Ideologically, that’s not a crime to them. That’s just resistance. So the last thing they want to do is arrest people for that. Fatah did a lot better job of this, even arresting the PFLP guys who killed the Israeli minister “Gandhi” (Gandhi – LOL!)* and keeping them in prison for years. Hamas would never do that. This is an important distinction to make. James Schipper says that an independent Gaza ought to be recognized and aided by the US. I do not think that an independent Gaza would quit shooting rockets. Further, they would arm themselves to the teeth and there would be no way to stop this. No way is Israel or the US going to put up with that. How are you going to keep arms shipments out of Gaza? You can’t. No go, no fly. Further, I suspect that the Gazans are so nuts that they would keep on shooting rockets at Israel no matter how much aid we flooded them with or how prosperous they become. James says that we propose to recognize and aid Gaza on the condition that they knock off the rockets, but they would probably say yes, and then as soon as we recognize them and start the aid flowing, they would start shooting the stupid rockets again. At which point, what? We get furious and cut off aid. Gazans get all pissed again, but they’re chronically angry anyway. We’re back to square one, and they’re shooting rockets again. James notes that the Arab birthrate is one reason why Gaza is so crowded. But that is not a good enough reason. Are the West Bank or Arab parts of Israel this crowded? Of course not. Go to the Palestineremembered site and see how Gaza got flooded with refugees from most of southwest Israel. Very enlightening. * By the way, I supported that very controversial PFLP operation. This blog does support the PFLP and the DFLP. I’m convinced that the secular Leftists in the PFLP and DFLP could actually coexist with Jews. The Hamas types – I doubt it.

Finally, A Post On Gaza

Surely, you have been waiting with bated breath for my golden words on the Gaza Crisis? But of course. Let us begin with a history lesson. What is Gaza anyway, and why is it so crowded with people? Why is Gaza cram-packed with “Pallieniggers” as one Jewish Zionist put it? Is it because Palestinians like to live in Hellish conditions like a bunch of rats? There’s a reason why the place is so overcrowded. Because 80 Robert Fisk says that is what is ironic about rockets landing on Ashdod. By the way, the ethnic cleansing of the areas around Gaza did not end in 1948. They continued through 1949 (indeed, this is when most of the Southern expulsions occurred) and actually, they continued all through the 1950’s. Yep, all through the 1950’s, Palestinians living around Gaza in various ways were being forced out of Israel and into Gaza. Hence we end up with Gaza, which should hold 300,000 people, now holds 1.5 million. Check out The Jews of Iraq by Naeim Giladi, an Iraqi Jew, a great read! This book could not find a single US publisher and hence had to be self-published, amidst endless threats. Gee, who did that? Jews in Israel are KKK-Jews. They are the KKK Whites transmuted into a Jew-shaped form. If you oppose racism, if you think the KKK sucks, you really ought to look into opposing Zionism as it is currently constructed. Anti-Semites think that opposing KKK-Jews by being racists of their own variety is some kind of a moral position. Excuse me? Opposing racism with racism? In what multiverse does that add up? I’m not trying to say that the idiots in Gaza are angels. They are not, and I thought that this rocket campaign was moronic. But Israel, the US and the UK blockaded Gaza from the get-go for no good reason at all, resulting in chronic food and medicine shortages. In no world does making malnourished kids and depriving hospital patients of meds make sense. Yeah it’s a war crime. Just like shooting rockets at civilians for no reason. I don’t see the point. Clearly shipments of food and medicine could be policed to keep the arms out. By the way, it’s thoroughly criminal the way that Egypt is keeping food and medicine out of Gaza, and depriving Gazan civilians of the right to flee the opportunity of getting a bomb on the head. Egypt is in deep with the Israelis on this, and it’s all because they hate Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood by extension. Yes, Hamas is just the MB-Palestine. They don’t publicize this, because Pallies don’t like the MB, but it’s true. Just so you understand the motives of the actors. Does Israel have a right to defend themselves? Sure they do. Is this offensive all about Israeli elections, in which a Centrist Olmert-Livni Group is about to lose to the Far Right, represented by Netanyahu? Sure it is. Israeli elections always mandate lots of shooting and bombs. If you don’t carry out enough attacks, you’re a pussy and you lose the election to the Rightwing guy. Sabras are a macho bunch, dontcha know? No quivering Ghetto Jews marching passively to the chambers are they, no sir. Everyone is a product of their environment, Kropotkin observed. That’s one of my favorite rock songs, “I’m a Product of My Environment.” Listen and try to understand. We all are, Israelis, Gazans, all of us. Otherwise, I do not see the point of this crazy offensive. What is Israel’s endgame here? I just don’t get it. And as someone who does not dislike Jews, I see this whole mess as bad for the Jews. It just creates oodles of anti-Semitism and makes people want to kill Jews. Zionists respond by saying that Jews are either passive pussies allowing themselves to be mass murdered or killers slaughtering hundreds of humans a week. If you’re a Jew, you’re either a killer or a corpse. I don’t believe that, and there’s got to be a better way. Zionists call that position “The Suicide Left.” Fine, color me Left and suicidal please, but it’s not true anyway. By the way, it really looks like most of those “Hamas militia members” killed were just cops, not part of the Hamas armed forces at all. There’s the Hamas army, and then there’s the cops, you know, the guys who solve crimes and direct traffic. That’s who got massacred at the graduating ceremony – traffic cops. That’s why they showed their faces at the ceremony – they figured no sane person would drop a bomb on a traffic cop’s head. That’s why the police stations were full that day. Hamas is not stupid. There’s traffic cops and there’s the Hamas Army. Not the same thing. The Hamas Army numbers about 15,000, and the traffic cops are not part of it. They have not been too hard-hit by this, and now they are hitting Beersheba. I don’t have much more to say about this except the Arabs and Muslims are getting more and more pissed, and no way is this shit good for the Jews. As a Judeophile, this concerns me. Check out Johann Hari. Never realized he made so much sense. You are invited to toss your opinions into the ring.

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