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Evidence emerges of Israeli use of phosphorus weapons in Gaza

guardian.co.uk

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Re: Evidence emerges of Israeli use of phosphorus weapons in Gaza

#21

Post by swombat »

chaostheory wrote: post #20
Maktab wrote: post #17

White Phosphorus is not a banned substance, nor is there anything obviously illegal about Israel's use of it in this conflict. It's certainly not a chemical weapon or any other sort of WMD, despite what some of the more breathless reporting would imply. The only international convention which may regulate the use of White Phosphorus is Protocol III of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, however as WP is d…

and to think that swombat thought "There can be no useful and constructive dialogue on this topic"

That wasn't constructive, it was destructive (i.e. it destroyed the premise of the entire article), and it wasn't dialogue, it was a monologue.

Re: Evidence emerges of Israeli use of phosphorus weapons in Gaza

#22

Post by Maktab »

swombat wrote: post #21
chaostheory wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and to think that swombat thought "There can be no useful and constructive dialogue on this topic"

That wasn't constructive, it was destructive (i.e. it destroyed the premise of the entire article), and it wasn't dialogue, it was a monologue.

It was intended a constructive addition to the debate; whether it's constructive or destructive to this particular article's premise is neither here nor there.

And I disagree with your interpretation of my post as a monologue, obviously. A monologue implies a one-sided stream of writing or speech to which any other views are given little to no opportunity to respond. Many blogs are an example of this sort of thing. But this is HN: There's no restriction or limitation on anybody writing a response to my post that's equal in status, relevance and visibility. That makes it a dialogue.

To be honest, I also have reservations about these kinds of stories appearing on HN, but since this one's already here and still active I wanted to enhance the dialogue by providing more information about the legal background surrounding WP's use. If you're unhappy with the submission then flag it as unsuitable, but don't try suppress actual discussion on the subject if it gets underway.

Re: Evidence emerges of Israeli use of phosphorus weapons in Gaza

#23

Post by swombat »

Maktab wrote: post #22
swombat wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That wasn't constructive, it was destructive (i.e. it destroyed the premise of the entire article), and it wasn't dialogue, it was a monologue.

It was intended a constructive addition to the debate; whether it's constructive or destructive to this particular article's premise is neither here nor there. And I disagree with your interpretation of my post as a monologue, obviously. A monologue implies a one-sided stream of writing or speech to which any other views are given little to no opportunity to respond. Many blogs are an example of this sort of thing. B…

Over-analyzing smart-ass comments leads nowhere... I wasn't putting down your comment, I was putting down the equally smart-ass "look, there's useful discussion here" comment that was addressed directly to me.

Re: Evidence emerges of Israeli use of phosphorus weapons in Gaza

#24

Post by gommm »

swombat wrote: post #14
rw wrote: post #2

This sort of story is important; I don't care if we call this "Hacker News" or not. [edit]: If you disagree, reply .

There can be no useful and constructive dialogue on this topic, and therefore, whether or not it is called Hacker News, it is pointless to post it here. It's important, certainly, but do you really think anyone here is not aware of what's happening in Gaza? So then, the only value of reporting this would be to create an interesting discussion - but on a topic so politically inflammatory no useful discussion will come…

I don't completely agree with you, from the current discussion on this thread, I found Maktab comment interesting.. There were also interesting link to the wired article on the point of view of the UN, a link to the use of White phosphore during the irak war. And, most importantly there wasn't any flame war (except between maybe between those who think that there can't be any constructive dialogue and those who think that there can be)....

Now, of course, I'm usually more interested in articles about startups, software, business and science but I also like Hacker news because I find the discussion interesting and the people well read. And reading the different points of view of people here on such a topic is interesting (as long as we don't get articles about Gaza every day, it's nice and as said it _is_ an important topic)

Re: Evidence emerges of Israeli use of phosphorus weapons in Gaza

#26

Post by cabalamat »

rw wrote: post #2

This sort of story is important; I don't care if we call this "Hacker News" or not. [edit]: If you disagree, reply .

I don't doubt that it is important. It still doesn't belong on HN. There are many issues that are important that don't belong on HN. If HN becomes a general news source, it will lose its usefulness for me, and no doubt for others.

Re: Evidence emerges of Israeli use of phosphorus weapons in Gaza

#28

Post by tlrobinson »

colinplamondon wrote: post #10
rw wrote: post #2

This sort of story is important; I don't care if we call this "Hacker News" or not. [edit]: If you disagree, reply .

I think a lot of the value of HN is the perspective that the community here applies to stories. While the story itself may not be specifically about startups or hacking, the perspective that people bring to bear is almost always informative and thought-provoking. Something may not be Hacker News, but that something may also turn into a great hacker conversation in the course of a thread. I feel that with HN it's real…

While I agree with you in general, in this case I don't think there's a whole lot of insight to be had, other than "is this illegal?" or "is this immoral?".

A good "standard" for Hacker News material might be "would Hacker News users bring a different/better perspective than the average [relatively intelligent] person?"

I don't really see that applying in this case.

Re: Evidence emerges of Israeli use of phosphorus weapons in Gaza

#29

Post by palish »

Okay, sorry, no. This story is ridiculously Reddit.

"This sort of story is important; I don't care if we call this 'Hacker News' or not."

pg once linked to a Reddit comment by a passionate Redditor who refused to follow the rules. The gist of the comment was, "I refuse to post this Ron Paul story to the Politics subreddit because I feel it's just too important."

And now here we are about a year later and Ron Paul hype turned out not to be even remotely important, and so yes, maybe Israel is using phosphorous, or maybe the whole thing is staged to make Israel look bad, or maybe....! My point is, you can't know the whole truth, so please post this to some other community that values importance over intelligence!

Re: Evidence emerges of Israeli use of phosphorus weapons in Gaza

#30

Post by azharcs »

davidw wrote: post #12
pg wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes stories become big enough that they spill out of their ordinary stream. For example, there is a stream of news about Ebola fever that under normal circumstances is read mainly by infectious disease specialists. But if there is a really big Ebola outbreak somewhere, that starts to be relevant to everyone. What's happening in Gaza now seems pretty serious.

> What's happening in Gaza now seems pretty serious. Serious things have been happening in that part of the world for more than 2000 years, and will continue to happen long after we're all dead. I think they are given ample coverage on other sites, and there are plenty of other forums to discuss them on the internet. Or, put another way, say this site had some hawkish Israeli users and some Hamas-oriented Palistinian…

Serious things have been happening in that part of the world for more than 2000 years, and will continue to happen long after we're all dead.

Your argument seems like "This is not my problem, Why do i care" kind of thing. It is very important for smart people to bring out a solution to this serious conflict which has continued for almost 60 years. We can clearly write it off as an conflict which cannot be solved and it will continue forever. I am pretty much sure there is a solution to this conflict and it has to come from a bunch of smart people who want to change world in a good way, HN community looks like that group.

I think they are given ample coverage on other sites, and there are plenty of other forums to discuss them on the internet.

There are tons of sites to discuss Ruby, Python, Erlang etc and there are bunch of other sites to discuss Google, Yahoo or the current Economic Situation. Why should that news even be discussed here? The answer is in HN, we get a different and rational perspective to certain news stories unlike other places. I would pretty much like to say, any news which is serious and impacts lot of people or a region should be discussed here for finding peaceful solutions.

'All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing' - Edmund Burke

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