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Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

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Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#611

Post by names_are_hard »

mcguire wrote: post #373
golergka wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same reason that this conflict always gets the same optics in international media — jewish lives are worth less. At first, as you don't want to believe it, you argue, you investigate, you really try to find any sane reason that while these things are happening on ground with you and your family, everybody else still sees a different picture, and then you just come to realisation that there's no other explanation for…

Israeli lives are worth at least $400 / year each to the United States, given the $3.3B annual aid and a population of 9M. Since 2007, when the US stopped economic aid, it's been entirely military aid. ( https://explorer.usaid.gov/cd/ISR ) In total, Afghanistan gets more, $4.9B, but that only comes to $129 per Afghan. (That's the "you break it, you bought it" plan, I guess.) The next highest is Jordan, $1.7B or $170…

Jordan isn't really the other side in this dust-up. Jordan and Israel get along these days (more or less), and I speculate that the money they both get from the US actually plays a part in that. The money the US gives countries around the world isn't just charity. It buys influence and the ability to decide who fights with who and when, among other things (like who buys what weapons).

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#612

Post by jakelazaroff »

sequoia wrote: post #600
jakelazaroff wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel isn't big, but there are plenty of less likely (and less dense) targets than the Tel Aviv metropolitan area. Israelis can also leave the country. That's not "luxurious", but those are privileges that residents of Gaza don't have. I'm not sure why you're responding so aggressively; you asked why Gaza is singled out as densely populated, and that's the answer.

I’m responding with derision because you’re so casually hand-waving away attacks on Israel as no big deal or not the same because they are “able to flee” (you still haven’t specified where is the safe place they can flee to). Have some empathy for Israeli civilians, just as you have empathy for Gazan civilians. As for the technical question of “most densely populated“ or “more densely populated“ I don’t know why peop…

The fact of the matter is that Israeli civilians have options that Gazan Palestinians do not. I'm empathetic to them as well — it's horrible that anyone has to fear being killed in a conflict. But there is absolutely a disparity, and it's not "hand-waving" to note that it exists without qualification.

That disparity, by the way, is exactly why it doesn't make sense to compare Gaza to cities with regard to population density. It's technically a city, but that's really not an apples-to-apples comparison. For all intents and purposes it's a country/territory, by which standard it is one of the most densely populated in the world.

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#613

Post by jcranmer »

sequoia wrote: post #587
bronzeage wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gaza is literally not occupied by Israel. Israel withdrew all troops and even banished their own citizens from Gaza. All the Palestinians had to do was not be absolute savages and attack Israel after being given their land with no strings attached. Every single restriction put of Gaza was a direct result of the Palestinian's abuse of the disengagement to fire rockets and kidnap soldiers. All they had to do was simply…

@dang how do you “report” comments? BronzeAge: a lot of the facts you are reporting are true and you’re sharing an important perspective that’s missing in this conversation but your comment is turned into complete garbage by the fact that you’re dehumanizing the Palestinians and making yourself look like a genocidal idiot. Stop!! If you have useful criticisms and perspective to add (as you clearly do), add them, and…

I'll point out that bronzeage's comment strikes me as stage 4 of genocide (see http://genocidewatch.net/genocide-2/8-stages-of-genocide/ for a description of the different stages).

And of the various stages, stage 4 is the most critical one to me: the prior stages are all things that exist in generally healthy societies, because it's really, really hard to stamp out discrimination (that doesn't mean we shouldn't try!), but stage 4 is where the rhetoric about outright extermination is built. Everything that comes afterwards is more or less about turning the slaughter from one-off incidents into a systematic slaughter machine.

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#614

Post by golergka »

sequoia wrote: post #587
bronzeage wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gaza is literally not occupied by Israel. Israel withdrew all troops and even banished their own citizens from Gaza. All the Palestinians had to do was not be absolute savages and attack Israel after being given their land with no strings attached. Every single restriction put of Gaza was a direct result of the Palestinian's abuse of the disengagement to fire rockets and kidnap soldiers. All they had to do was simply…

@dang how do you “report” comments? BronzeAge: a lot of the facts you are reporting are true and you’re sharing an important perspective that’s missing in this conversation but your comment is turned into complete garbage by the fact that you’re dehumanizing the Palestinians and making yourself look like a genocidal idiot. Stop!! If you have useful criticisms and perspective to add (as you clearly do), add them, and…

There is nothing racist or inaccurate in the comment you're replying to. I understand why you might think so, but I can assure you, it just means that you dramatically misunderstand the situation.

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#615

Post by golergka »

banannaise wrote: post #607
golergka wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Purely from a numbers perspective if you put aside all other variables Why would you put aside variables that are more important to casualty numbers? It's not a symmetrical situation. One side tries to increase casualty numbers on both sides of the conflict. The other side tries to decrease casualty numbers on both sides of the conflict. How would comparing casualty numbers in this situation tell you anything about…

Bombing civilian buildings is not a way to decrease casualty numbers on both sides of a conflict. The more peaceful alternative to bombing civilian buildings is not sending leaflets and then bombing civilian buildings , it is declining to bomb civilian buildings . Using slightly less violence than is available to you does not make you the good guy, especially when the violence you use is drastically higher than the v…

> civilian

Citation needed. If a building is used for warfare, it is not civilian building.

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#616

Post by betterunix2 »

lacksconfidence wrote: post #588
betterunix2 wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does that have to do with the fact that Hamas derailed the peace process and continues to be the most significant obstacle to peace?

As far as i can tell you are advocating to punish the residents of pallestine because some time ago, when most of the current residents were either children or unborn, someone else did a bad thing. To me that seems exceptionally unjust.

How am I saying anything of the sort? Regardless of when the people were born, it is a fact that they do not have a functioning government. It is a fact that Hamas derailed the effort to establish that government, and that Hamas has repeatedly interfered with those efforts over the past 15 years and continues to do so now. I am not "advocating" anything, I am simply stating the reality of the Palestinian situation today and why they are in that situation.

You seem to think Hamas is some long-past group. Hamas controls Gaza today; they are the ones launching rockets at Israel right now. Hamas remains the most significant obstacle to peace between Israelis and Palestinians right now. As the rulers of Gaza, Hamas has been a brutally repressive regime, roughly on the level of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Hamas deliberately spreads their military assets across densely populated civilian areas in order to maximize civilian casualties during war. The Hamas charter says that the role of women in society is to produce more men. They have cracked down on hip-hop, baggy pants, hair salons, and even indigenous Palestinian folk tales.

I personally think the Palestinians deserve better than Hamas. Why do you keep dismissing the overwhelmingly negative impact this group has had on the Palestinian people? Why do you keep looking for a way to deny the role Hamas has played and continues to play in preventing the formation of an effective civil government and a functioning Palestinian state?

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#617

Post by guerrilla »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #402
MyKneeGrows wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's why they target news agencies such as AP. Now you can't get pictures on the ground. So we all have to rely on is low resolution maps to judge damage. "Security measures", or so they say. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck....

I'm not seeing any shortage of pictures from the ground. I mean, I agree that targeting news agencies would be a step you would take if you wanted to prevent images from the ground but you would have to be far more sweeping in your approach. If the goal is to prevent news images from making their way out of Palestine this may be the most abject policy failure the world has ever witnessed.

> you would have to be far more sweeping in your approach

Would you or could it be seen as deterrence?

> this may be the most abject policy failure the world has ever witnesse

I mean there are a lot of opeds in Hebrew (some lamenting this supposed failure) and Arabic press right now saying exactly that, so I wouldn't rule it out entirely.

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#618

Post by guerrilla »

cnlevy wrote: post #590
gokhan wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IDF couldn't provide any evidence of Hamas' existence in that building, it was all over the media yesterday. https://twitter.com/haaretzcom/status/1394287848950427649

The postman was late. It doesn't mean there's no evidence https://twitter.com/haaretzcom/status/1394631387265777666

I'm thinking as democracies we should not rely on secret evidence. I'll buy it when it's public, until then the burden of proof remains on them. It's okay not to kmow.

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#619

Post by slg »

toyg wrote: post #558
slg wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Jews and Israeli are distinct. Maybe diaspora is incorrect word, but those who call Israel their home country and reside in the US are of the diaspora of Israel. There are something like 100k Israelis is the US. They have virtually no political power. If you want to say "Jewish Diaspora" say "Jewish Diaspora". It really seems like you are using "Israeli Diaspora" in order to avoid accusations of anti-Semitism. My co…

This actually leads me to wonder why US Evangelicals are so utterly pro-Israel. Christians have a long history of discriminating against Jews, but surely this modern development is not about over-compensating for that...? Is it just a "the enemy of my (Arab) enemy, is my friend"...? I don't find particularly puzzling that the US, as a whole, might have pro-Israel policies for historic and strategic reasons; however,…

The numbers I have seen is that somewhere between a third to half of Evangelicals support Israel specifically because Jews controlling The Holy Land is seen as a prerequisite to the End Times, the Second Coming of Jesus, and all the stuff from the Book of Revelation.

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#620

Post by hunter2_ »

NickNameNick wrote: post #310
londons_explore wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With modern high powered CPU's, more detailed maps, and particle filters (which require all that cpu), dead reckoning has become much more viable. I suspect you could go hours driving round a city with the GPS and WiFi location turned off before losing your position - simple wheel speed, gyro and compass is sufficient for most stuff.

You'd also need to account for slope.

When turn-by-turn directions specify traveling 1 mile down a very steep grade, do they mean 1 mile along the slope, or 1 mile along a flattened map?

Only the former would match the car's odometer, of course.

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