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Jimmy Carter has died

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Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#851

Post by datavirtue »

SideQuark wrote: post #842
johnnyanmac wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given current history, the Feds I guess. President is powerful, but he can't just dig an economy out of recession (which seems to be the times when we have huge swings, for the sake of change). Even if he could, the methods are so unpopular that you basically doom your campaign. Only a lame duck could afford that. That's a part of why the Feds levy a lot of independence. In this case, what the people want isn't alway…

The Feds are not one person, and they cannot affect as much as the President. The main board is 12 members, with several others rotating in and out, and by statute they have congressional oversight. The members also have to answer to the regional banks their section oversees, so there is significant checks and balances. Several of the powers I listed above for the President are absolute (well, up to impeachment, but…

War acts are not under debate here. Those are obvious presidential powers.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#852

Post by worik »

zizee wrote: post #792
worik wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most of the storage challenges are political, rather than engineering. That is a strange statement. There is no place in the world geologically stable for the required period (we have no way to know) We have no way to communicate with people about the dangers for over 100_000 years. Those are technical problems. The political impetus is to get future generations to pay for our current consumption

Vitrification of the waste (mixing it into and storage deep underground provides a safe way to store waste for 1000s of years. > There is no place in the world geologically stable for the required period (we have no way to know) This can be said of anything, which is IMO a defeatist attitude. Nothing we do is guaranteed to not cause harm. Likewise, our inaction could also cause harm. For the specific question of stab…

> Vitrification of the waste (mixing it into and storage deep underground provides a safe way to store waste for 1000s of years.

No. It is a way of loosing it and leaving it around for someone to dig it up and become very sick

Remember, it is hundreds of thousands of years

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#853

Post by genman »

4gotunameagain wrote: post #686
genman wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like Americans and Canadians are not indigenous people of Northern America and Australians are not indigenous people of Australia, they are not. Arabs in Palestine are descendants of colonizers and settlers enabled by the colonial powers.

> Arabs in Palestine are descendants of colonizers and settlers enabled by the colonial powers. So the creation of a state by western colonial powers and the migration of jews from all over the world there does not make them descendants of colonizers and settlers, because they identify with some people mentioned in a two thousand year old book which says they lived there. Oh and they didn't even speak the same langua…

Their home was taken away by The Western Colonial Power - Rome. Jews are the only nation that was crushed by Rome, but survived without their land, all other such nations have perished. Restoring their homeland on their indigenous land was the only morally rightful thing to do when the descendants of Rome recaptured this territory.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#854

Post by genman »

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #714
genman wrote: post #665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with Germans in Czechia was their hostility toward Czech. This heightened with the Nazi occupation. They also didn't become "nationless" as they got German citizenship. The everlasting Palestinian refugee crisis is especially created by UN by creating the UNRWA and inheritable Palestinian refugee status instead of demanding other Arab states to give them citizenship. It is not a problem created by Israel,…

Amazing how Israel defenders claim Arab states should just be forced to give Palestinians citizenship, yet they justify the existence of Israel by saying "Well, no other country would give them citizenship nor were any safe for them, so they needed their own". That logic applies to the Palestinians right now, but you are too blind to ever put yourself in their shoes.

Remind me an Arab state where Arabs are constantly persecuted for being an Arab. It has NEVER been about citizenship (and yes, many countries have very strictly limited immigration of Jews before and after creation of Israel), it has always been about constant persecution of Jews. When Arabs lost to Jews in Israel Independence War then they started to punish and oppress Jews living in Arab states. Were these Jews responsible by any means? No, their only fault was being a Jew. And it's just only a single example.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#855

Post by genman »

mmooss wrote: post #776
genman wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That next "civilian" was an Islamic extremist who took over because the other leaders of the revolution were too weak and foolish and were eliminated by the Islamic extremists. At that moment a military takeover would have resulted in a smooth transition of power to the next actual civilian government. Things are not always simple and straightforward.

> That next "civilian" was an Islamic extremist who took over because the other leaders of the revolution were too weak and foolish and were eliminated by the Islamic extremists. Are you talking about 1979? I was talking about 1953. > At that moment a military takeover would have resulted in a smooth transition of power to the next actual civilian government. If you mean in 1979, that's quite a prediction when nobody…

I was obviously talking about 1979, as the topic is Jimmy Carter. The military could have stabilized the power transition. It's not about what military was doing - it was following the orders, and Shah was just too weak because of illness to give any. Iranian revolution destroyed the country and threw it into abyss of Islamic madness, forced millions to flee and forced the rest under inhumane control of theological dictatorship compared to what the regime of Shah feels like a walk in a park.

Iran was not a dictatorship but a constitutional monarchy. It was also like that before 1953. The only actual coup that really happened in 1953, was a coup by Mossadegh, who falsified the parliamentary elections to gain the power and then threatened Shah when he was not appointed as prime minister.

Now, perhaps he could have succeeded with his coup, but unfortunate for himself, he also made some very stupid moves, that removed the important support he needed.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#856

Post by edanm »

siltcakes wrote: post #849
edanm wrote: post #845

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > the later negotiations ended with the Palestinians walking away from deals that gave them almost everything they supposedly wanted > You can't possibly believe this. Every side had to compromise quite a lot. Israel had to give in to some right of return, and Palestine had to give in to having to tell some refugees they would never return to their ancestral lands. Palestinians had to accept a broken up West Bank d…

You keep glossing over Nakba. It doesn’t make sense to “share the land” with people who ethically cleansed your family from said land. You say that you represent “leftist Zionism” but such a thing doesn’t exist as evidenced by your argument against basic human rights.

I'm not "glossing over" the Nakba. Firstly, we probably don't 100% agree on the exact events of the Nakba or the interpretation of them.

But more importantly, I'm not sure how actually relevant it is today. Israel was founded and for sure did some things that weren't great, just as the surrounding Arab countries did things that weren't great. Just as like 50% of the countries today have been through stuff that isn't great.

If no one can live in peace and a joint future because of things that happened in 1940, how is there any peace with Germany? With Japan? WW2 didn't just ethnically cleanse a lot of people - 50 million people died in that war. Yet there is peace, because people chose to stop fighting and figure out a way to coexist.

> It doesn’t make sense to “share the land” with people who ethically cleansed your family from said land.

For the sake of argument, let's assume your idea of what happened in the Nakba is spot on. What exactly is the alternative? What do you imagine should happen to the millions of Israelis that have been born and raised in Israel? If the land isn't "shared", what should happen?

This idea of trying to roll back the existence of countries is antithetical to the entire relatively-peaceful world order since 1945.

> You say that you represent “leftist Zionism” but such a thing doesn’t exist as evidenced by your argument against basic human rights.

Where did I argue against basic human rights?

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#857

Post by edanm »

dragonwriter wrote: post #848
edanm wrote: post #846

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > A generation ago, Israel was working towards a two-state solution. > Yes, very briefly, until Netanyahu’s faction murdered Yitzhak Rabin, and not since. I think we've talked about this before? This is just wrong. Firstly, I wouldn't call them Netanyahu's faction. More importantly, Israel then elected Ehud Barak, who pursued peace, then Sharon was incredibly popular for doing the Gaza disengagement (not in pursuit…

> As for the rest of your comment, I'm not sure where you stand here - does the PA represent the Palestinians? De jure , yes. De facto , not particularly, and they are quite conscious of that, and actively seeking to correct it but actively prevented by Israel whose strategy to mitigate international pressure for peace (and particularly to avoid meaningful US pressure for peace) centers on avoiding having any entity…

> There's no chance for peace with the current Israeli regime, at least as long as it has unshakable support from the US; Hamas is a symptom of the problem (one actively fostered to both divide Palestinian opposition and provide a less Western-sympathetic opposition by Israel when they weren't in their momentary orientation toward peace), not its source.

I wouldn't call Hamas a symptom of the problem, because the majority of Israelis have only the goal of security in mind. An extremist minority, that is unfortunately gaining-in-size-and-power, wants to conquer all the land, but they are still a small minority of the population. The majority of Israelis were historically totally on board with peace and a two-state solution, except for the security risk, which Hamas is one huge part of. (Hamas's actions were specifically targeted at destroying the peace process in the 90s, and are a big part of the reason for the dissolution of the Israeli left.)

> Peace always requires parties compromising on their goals, largely because they recognize that they are unattainable at acceptable cost. Why both Fatah, Hamas, or the numerous other Palestinian factions might do so is...fairly obvious. Israel, whose goal is no more the destruction of the Palestinian people entirely than Hamas’s is destruction of Israel, has bottomless US support, little effective (though plenty of symbolic) international opposition, and continues to progress (slow over the long term, quite rapid recently) progress towards its goal

Unfortunately, I agree with most of this. The current government is a disaster on many levels for Israel, and is not only not interested in peace, but is actively furthering that in many ways. I think this has been true for many years.

The opposition to the government comes from many places, but most of it is ineffective. Worse, the part of the opposition that comes from a pro-peace "trying-to-arrive-at-a-deal" place within Israel is severely weakened, since in Israeli's experience, that approach has always led to security disasters. So the Israeli left is tiny, and even if we were to get a new government, it is unlikely to pursue peace any more than the current government is. (Though the important silver lining - it will hopefully be a centrist-right government, not an right-extreme right government, which is making everything much, much worse.)

This makes it all the more obvious that the main way to arrive at peace will be for the Palestinians themselves to stop the violence and start making steps towards peace from their side. If the Israeli populace were ever convinced there's an actual partner for peace, the Israeli left and pro-peace camps will actually have something to work with.

I hope the one thing that comes out of this disaster that was October 7th and is the Gaza war, is a renewed boldness for peace activists pushing both sides to actually work towards a peaceful resolution.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#858

Post by siltcakes »

edanm wrote: post #856
siltcakes wrote: post #849

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You keep glossing over Nakba. It doesn’t make sense to “share the land” with people who ethically cleansed your family from said land. You say that you represent “leftist Zionism” but such a thing doesn’t exist as evidenced by your argument against basic human rights.

I'm not "glossing over" the Nakba. Firstly, we probably don't 100% agree on the exact events of the Nakba or the interpretation of them. But more importantly, I'm not sure how actually relevant it is today. Israel was founded and for sure did some things that weren't great, just as the surrounding Arab countries did things that weren't great. Just as like 50% of the countries today have been through stuff that isn't…

You just glossed over Nakba again:

”Israel was founded and for sure did some things that weren't great”

The very foundation of Israel is illegitimate. That is the core issue.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#859

Post by gadders »

acdha wrote: post #807
gadders wrote: post #754

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean you can guess that might have happened, but I can't imagine a weak president like Carter saying "Tear down that wall" or calling USSR the evil empire.

He didn’t have Reagan’s stage presence to be sure, but did either of those really change what actually happened to the USSR? I’m pretty certain most of the work was being done by socioeconomic factors which weren’t affected by sound bites.

"And according to Douglas Brinkley, a history professor at Rice University and the history consultant for CBS News, many observers saw the speech as "disastrous." Communist leaders were critical of the remarks, and even West Berlin's then-mayor, Eberhard Diepgen, was wary.

"We were all a little more skeptical than American politicians -- the significance and the chances of tearing down the wall, there we were skeptical," he recalled in an interview years later.

"It was not well-received within the foreign policy community or the pundit class," Brinkley said, in an interview with CBS. "Many people called foul."

As Brinkley notes, however, history has been kind to the president's speech.

"It's seen as a turning point in Cold War," he said. "I think Reagan's speech bolstered the morale of the pro-democracy movement in East Germany."

"There was a movement that was growing and building toward liberalization and this gave great impetus to it in the aftermath," added Duberstein. "Even though people in the Soviet Union thought the speech was provocative, it worked."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/remembering-reagans-tear-down-t...

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#860

Post by zizee »

worik wrote: post #852
zizee wrote: post #792

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vitrification of the waste (mixing it into and storage deep underground provides a safe way to store waste for 1000s of years. > There is no place in the world geologically stable for the required period (we have no way to know) This can be said of anything, which is IMO a defeatist attitude. Nothing we do is guaranteed to not cause harm. Likewise, our inaction could also cause harm. For the specific question of stab…

> Vitrification of the waste (mixing it into and storage deep underground provides a safe way to store waste for 1000s of years. No. It is a way of loosing it and leaving it around for someone to dig it up and become very sick Remember, it is hundreds of thousands of years

> Remember, it is hundreds of thousands of years

Remember that I have already said I disagree with this as something we should be worried about.

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