Nicker on 27/9/2013 at 02:11

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Some might consider this to be supplemental to the discussion. (http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2013/09/26/lawrence-of-arabia-lasting-legacies-of-the-first-world-war/) Lawrence of Arabia: Lasting legacies of the First World War

In case you missed it there is (http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/popupaudio.html?clipIds=2408661953) an AUDIO link for the interview.

An interesting long view on the origins of the present conflicts and the Middle East and North Africa.

My high school social studies teacher said that if you want to find conflict in the world, look at the map for straight borders. Lots of those in the middle east.

faetal on 27/9/2013 at 09:02

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Sorry I'm done with this thread. If all people want to do is take The News as being synonymous with the whole story, then most of my keystrokes are going to be dedicated to filling in the gaps, which people will just refute anyway, because it doesn't align with what the news says. I already have one thesis to write, don't need another.

Suffice to say - the situation is Israel is nothing like the media portrays it.

DDL on 27/9/2013 at 09:44

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Thing I object to is the insinuation that...well, any of us here actually takes the news entirely at face value. Surely nobody still does that?

Take as many conflicting news sources as possible, afford them trustworthiness based on their usual bias respective to the story in question, pay attention to facts not opinions, apply general human nature principles (if it looks like people are being dickish, they're almost certainly being dickish) then integrate to get a general picture of something close to the truth.

Nobody as far as I can tell has been saying "I totally buy into israeli propaganda" or anything. Israeli policy wasn't even a topic being discussed. It all reads a bit like someone who's suddenly discovered that the world is a horrible place, assumes everyone else is still naive to this fact, and now is overcompensating with outrage.

The world is horrible. People are dicks. Living in the west is waaay better than living in afghanistan or on the gaza strip. This is not news.

Thirith on 27/9/2013 at 10:40

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The thing is, divorcing ethics from outcomes and going by intentions only is so abstract it becomes either naive, cynical or autistic. If outcomes are trumped by intentions, then a failed suicide bombing is more evil than a successful drone strike that happens to hit an Afghan wedding party. Perhaps I'm reducing your argument too much, NuEffect, but IMO your argument is also reductive - and it has the luxury of being almost entirely from the perspective of the perpetrator and of those who aren't involved. I find it difficult to assign superior morality to an argument that downplays practical outcomes and that ignores the people actually affected by what we're talking about. "We didn't mean to do that" may be true, but it makes for a crap justification - in fact, it's the kind of thing kids say (once they're past the "It wasn't me, and the others helped too!" stage).

I also think that you're being needlessly binary in what you're saying. Are the only two options e.g. for Israel to 1) attack and damn the consequences for innocent bystanders or 2) do nothing, roll over and wait for the rockets to strike and suicide bombers to blow up buses? There are (at least) two elements here: how much does an attack affect the actual enemy and how much does it risk killing innocents? It's up to the attackers to decide how much weight they give to each of these, but the more weight they give the former while ignoring the latter, the more they perpetuate the conflict because they turn bystanders into enemies. The sort of thinking that comes close to not giving a fuck about what collateral damage there might be neither convinces me from a pragmatic point of view nor from a moral one.

faetal on 27/9/2013 at 16:09

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I'm not really storming off, just stating why I can't be bothered getting into the Israel thing, as silence can be interpreted too many ways. I'm just tired of hearing the same old responses re Israel, mostly lifted, if not from the news, then at least from Israel's official stance, so I tend not to get into discussions about it since few of the people I've come across have studied the history of the conflict to an extent that allows for understanding of the situation for both sides. If history is written by victors, Israel is also showing aptly that current events can be filtered by the dominant party pretty effectively too.