mindstalk | Entries tagged with israel

I'm tired and lazy. Here's some things I found interesting.

Nacreous clouds seen in UK.

Couple pieces on "Bernie bros" and sexist attacks on Hillary.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/evanmcsan/the-bernie-bros?utm_term=.ir8KRbEOo#.vl4DeMR27
http://www.vox.com/2016/2/4/10918710/berniebro-bernie-bro
And is Bernie ready for Republican attacks? For being asked unfair questions like why he wants to destroy the economy and turn us into Venezuela, or why he thought socialism was cool during the Cold War? http://www.vox.com/2016/2/3/10903404/gop-campaign-against-sanders
Speaking of Venezuela, the rationing is so bad even lines are being rationed. And the economy czar doesn't believe in inflation. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/29/venezuela-is-on-the-brink-of-a-complete-collapse/?tid=pm_business_pop_b
But to be positive: Bernie's Fed agenda http://www.vox.com/2016/1/26/10829888/bernie-sanders-federal-reserve

Harry Reid saved the renewable energy revolution.

How Houston improved bus ridership "for free": sparser network of higher frequency buses, in a grid rather than radial pattern. http://www.vox.com/2016/1/28/10852884/houston-bus-ridership

How Likud won the 2015 election in Israel. http://www.vox.com/2016/1/28/10861560/israel-election-amit-channel-2

From last April, one article on how taxi medallions prices have dropped due to Lyft and Uber. http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2015/04/07/as-uber-lyft-hire-more-drivers-taxicab-medallion-values-tank.html

A trippy 9 minute history of Japan. The Reddit comments linked to by Vox are good glosses. http://www.vox.com/2016/2/3/10905274/japan-history-video

Purported evolution of fairy tales. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-35358487

Memoization in Python https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1988804/what-is-memoization-and-how-can-i-use-it-in-python

Thread on previews of a new edition of the Blue Rose RPG http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?775100-Blue-Rose-previews

Obama's reform of federal solitary confinement http://www.vox.com/2016/1/26/10834770/obama-solitary-confinement-changes

Crossposts: http://mindstalk.livejournal.com/443268.html

Finance Minister Lapid, back in January, sounded sane, warning of the danger of a European boycott, and saying a Palestinian state would be economically beneficial to Israel. http://www.timesofisrael.com/lapid-israel-faces-economic-crisis-if-peace-talks-fail/

On the dehumanizing effects of the occupation, and the daily humiliation of Palestinians. A look at the racism of Hebron settlers. And, I'd missed that the three teens were kidnapped in the West Bank. So why waging war on Gaza, again? http://www.vox.com/2014/6/17/5816022/three-kidnapped-teens-explain-israel-palestine-conflict

The falling levels of empathy across the border. Again, a focus on the Israelis. http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014/08/04/337657171/is-there-any-empathy-left-in-the-israeli-palestinian-conflict

On Palestinian nationality, going back to rebellions against the Ottomans in 1824. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/31/yes-we-palestinians-are-human-beings.html

Not that it really matters how old nationality is. http://www.vox.com/cards/israel-palestine-misconceptions/the-conflict-is-too-complex-to-possibly-understand

Palestinians have tried non-violence; it failed. http://www.vox.com/cards/israel-palestine-misconceptions/there-is-no-palestinian-gandhi

Crossposts: http://mindstalk.livejournal.com/407181.html

"Asma al-Ghul (also Al Ghoul, Alghoul ) is a young secular Palestinian feminist journalist who writes for the Ramallah-based newspaper Al-Ayyam, chronicling what she calls “the corruption of Fatah and the terrorism of Hamas.”[1] Al-Ayyam is sometimes banned in Gaza by Hamas"

"My father’s brother, Ismail al-Ghoul, 60, was not a member of Hamas. His wife, Khadra, 62, was not a militant of Hamas. Their sons, Wael, 35, and Mohammed, 32, were not combatants for Hamas. Their daughters, Hanadi, 28, and Asmaa, 22, were not operatives for Hamas, nor were my cousin Wael’s children, Ismail, 11, Malak, 5, and baby Mustafa, only 24 days old, members of Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine or Fatah. Yet, they all died in the Israeli shelling that targeted their home at 6:20 a.m. on Sunday morning."

"The bodies of my cousin’s children were stored in an ice cream freezer. Rafah’s Abu Yousef al-Najjar Hospital was closed after being shelled by Israeli tanks"

"Never ask me about peace again."

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/08/rafah-gaza-war-hospitals-filled-bodies-palestinians.html

Crossposts: http://mindstalk.livejournal.com/406921.html

Solar zoning for cities, defining solar envelopes such that terraced buildings could be built to maximize solar access (for light and heating) while attaining high densities. High as in 100 1000-square foot apartments per acre in LA, which at 2 people per units maps to 128,000 people per square mile. Manhattan overall is 65,000/square mile. The idea of an even more environmentally friendly Manhattan justifies the icon.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/9074
Long, originally published as 3 articles on Lowtechmagazine.

Which also informed me of the Chinese wheelbarrow, a highly efficient device for transporting loads (vs. the European wheelbarrow, which is convenient on a construction site.) Europe didn't have it, though a comment suggests Europe had enough waterways to not need it.

A Mormon flow chart is amusing. Lemba African Jews are interesting.

On the topic of cities, Jane Jacobs's 1958 essay on city design and streets vs. blocks.

Article from last year on health care systems around the world. Actually several linked articles, but I think you can figure it out. "Communist" China has totally fallen down on the health care front and is trying to reinvent universal health care. Oddly for once it's better to be rural.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/healthcare-network/2011/may/11/european-healthcare-services-belgium-france-germany-sweden

But not all links are awesome. On Israel Independence Date (don't save the date, it's set by the Jewish calendar), I learn of hunger striking prisoners being punished for their protest of indefinite detention without charge and ill treatment. Also, water cannon being turned on peaceful protest villagers. Which is probably a good thing for the overall cause, getting away from failed terrorism to the moral high ground. (Of course, I've been told one of the intifadas started out peaceful, until soldiers shot them.)

Someone's been leaking about Catholic church corruption. The Pope's response? Send in Opus Dei to hunt down the whistleblowers.

BTW, Pinker says pretty much every terrorist movement has failed to achieve its goals; the few exceptions had military or government targets, not civilian. (And if you have military targets, are you really terrorist?) Though he doesn't mention bin Laden wanting US troops out of Saudi Arabia, and didn't we eventually oblige?

Crossposts: http://mindstalk.livejournal.com/322694.html

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* Corruption of the blockade; Israeli surpluses tend to get sold. This picture also hints at what's going on:

Note the arbitrariness (cinnamon, but not coriander), the unconnection to "preventing terror" (donkeys?) the illogic (no animals, but animal feed), the dependency (clothes, but not fabric to make clothes with), the censorship (no newspapers), the perversity (frozen meat and fruit into a land of intermittent electricity supply -- but not dried fruit!)
Or to quote a members-only post:

That's not a list designed to prevent terrorism; that's a list designed
to stop infrastructure developing and prevent the growth of a healthy
economy - in other words, a recipe for breeding terrorism in the future.

Related to this is that Palestine is a captive market, literally, for
Israeli goods. As I posted in the other thread, Richard ben Cramer's HOW
ISRAEL LOST is excellent on this. One particularly intriguing fact;
retired Israeli generals very frequently go on to sit on the boards of
companies who do much of their business selling to the Palestinian
market.

* Israeli criticism of the blockade. Eyewitness accounts of IDF violence, and rebuttals of the IDF story. The attack jammed cell phones BTW, and the IDF has confiscated phones and laptops of the flotilla members. So we can assume they don't want independent evidence getting out.
* BBC FAQ on it all
* Israel's lesson? It announces it will use more force against subsequent ships.

* Funny neighbor analogy a couple posts down.

Equal citizenship or independence. That's what the Palestinians deserve, plain and simple.

Israel has had the Gaza strip under blockade, preventing the provision of food, medicines, or cement except as Israel allows. An international aid flotilla was sent from Turkey to defy the blockade; last night it was stormed in international water, by Israeli troops, resulting in at least ten deaths. Assaulting foreign ships in international water is arguably an act of war; Turkey is a NATO member and Israel isn't. The flotilla was privately organized, but Turkey is talking about sending more aid fleets officially, this time under naval escort.

From the first article:
"We have to remember: These people are entering Israel illegally," said Maya Kadosh, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman. Here a government official claims Gaza as part of Israel -- a part full of people born there yet lacking Israeli citizenship or voice in Israeli politics. And this a few years after Israel "pulled out" of Gaza, forcing its own citizens to abandon settlements there.

Israeli officials have launched a public relations blitz ahead of the flotilla's arrival, detailing the tons of supplies of food, medicine and other staples it allows into Gaza, and inviting reporters to view the transfer operations at the border. The official Government Press Office went so far as to release a sarcastically worded statement for the press encouraging journalists to visit one of Gaza's few luxury restaurants. Wow, that's Marie Antoinette in a nutshell. They can't be starving, look, someone can buy foie gras!

Among the passengers are Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire, former U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney, a Holocaust survivor in her 80s, a retired U.S. army colonel and lawmakers from a dozen European countries. That should be diplomatically interesting.

The second article has an Israeli calling the aid flotilla "an armada of hate". You know, bringing food and medical equipment and building supplies. Real hateful.

Saner Israelis write We are no longer defending Israel. We are now defending the siege, which is itself becoming Israel's Vietnam.

On Sunday, when the army spokesman began speaking of a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in terms of an attack on Israel, MK Nahman Shai, the IDF chief spokesman during the 1991 Gulf war, spoke publicly of his worst nightmare, an operation in which Israeli troops, raiding the flotilla, might open fire on peace activists, aid workers and Nobel laureates. Prescient.

The whole blockade seems rather counterproductive: it's hurting the Palestinian people, making goods unavailable or more expensive, but strengthening Hamas, which naturally has control of the smuggling operations, both giving them more power and making them seem like the good guys vs. the Israeli oppressors.

( mercy cut )

http://rfmcdpei.livejournal.com/1484716.html

links to an Economist article on the conditions of the 10 million Palestinians in the world, plus some Wikipedia articles on the diaspora and its expulsion from Israel.