[QUOTE=âTreatyStones, post: 995695, member: 1786â]Map of current wars (or large scale civil unrest)
Red: Major wars and civil unrest, 1,000+ deaths per year
Yellow: Minor skirmishes and conflicts, fewer than 1000 deaths per year
no mention of BOI?
[QUOTE=âYoung Ned of the Hill, post: 995726, member: 80â]the dullards in the EUâs response
The [U]EU has said it is disappointed with the Russian sanctions[/U] and said they are âclearly politically motivatedâ.[/QUOTE]
All sanctions are politically-motivated. No flies on the EU.
the calorie restrictions on people in Gaza imposed by the Israelis is quite Nazi-esque
The food calculation, made in January 2008, applied the average daily requirement of 2,279 calories per person, in line with World Health Organisationâs guidelines, according to the document.
âThe stability of the humanitarian effort is critical to prevent the development of malnutrition,â the document said.
The defence ministry handed over its document on the food calculation to Gisha only after the group filed a freedom of information petition.
Israel also used baffling secret guidelines to differentiate between humanitarian necessities and non-essential luxuries. The outcome was that military bureaucrats enforcing the blockade allowed frozen salmon and low-fat yogurt into Gaza, but not coriander and instant coffee.
To combat the blockade, Hamas built a network of tunnels through which they smuggled in food, weapons and other contraband from Egypt at inflated prices.
[QUOTE=âTheUlteriorMotive, post: 995753, member: 2272â]the calorie restrictions on people in Gaza imposed by the Israelis is quite Nazi-esque
The food calculation, made in January 2008, applied the average daily requirement of 2,279 calories per person, in line with World Health Organisationâs guidelines, according to the document.
âThe stability of the humanitarian effort is critical to prevent the development of malnutrition,â the document said.
The defence ministry handed over its document on the food calculation to Gisha only after the group filed a freedom of information petition.
Israel also used baffling secret guidelines to differentiate between humanitarian necessities and non-essential luxuries. The outcome was that military bureaucrats enforcing the blockade allowed frozen salmon and low-fat yogurt into Gaza, but not coriander and instant coffee.
To combat the blockade, Hamas built a network of tunnels through which they smuggled in food, weapons and other contraband from Egypt at inflated prices.[/QUOTE]
Get your head around this one: Israel consistently maintains that it is not âoccupyingâ Palestinian or other territory. But, the Israeli High and Supreme Courts have regularly used* occupation law (part of the body of humanitarian law or âlaw of warâ), to justify abuses committed by the Israeli state against people in the (not?) occupied territories, rather than applying israeli civil law.
*For âusedâ read âabused/misappliedâ.
[QUOTE=âglasagusban, post: 995759, member: 1533â]Get your head around this one: Israel consistently maintains that it is not âoccupyingâ Palestinian or other territory. But, the Israeli High and Supreme Courts have regularly used* occupation law (part of the body of humanitarian law or âlaw of warâ), to justify abuses commuted by the Israeli state against people in the (not?) occupied territories, rather than applying israeli civil law.
*For âusedâ read âabused/misappliedâ.[/QUOTE]
Gaza and the West Bank donât exist, as far as Israel is concerned. They are âJudeaâ and âSamariaâ. They are part of Israel.
Itâs just that the people in âJudeaâ and âSamariaâ donât have any rights, except the right to sit and wait while they get blown up by Israeli bombs.
But thatâs not apartheid, no, no, no, definitely not apartheid.
[QUOTE=âThe Scouse Cafu, post: 995762, member: 2660â]Gaza and the West Bank donât exist, as far as Israel is concerned. They are âJudeaâ and âSamariaâ. They are part of Israel.
Itâs just that the people in âJudeaâ and âSamariaâ donât have any rights, except the right to sit and wait while they get blown up by Israeli bombs.
But thatâs not apartheid, no, no, no, definitely not apartheid.[/QUOTE]
No. Well, yeah, but: the superior courts in Israel have time and again recognised that Israel is âoccupyingâ these areas and applied occupation law. At the same time Israel maintains internationally that it is not âoccupyingâ these areas.
[QUOTE=âYoung Ned of the Hill, post: 995724, member: 80â]The Israeli Army claims to have destroyed 35 terror tunnels (otherwise known as âtunnelsâ), and yet, remarkably few verifiable photographs have emerged to demonstrate the truth of their claim.
No independent journalists have been escorted into Gaza to view the tunnels as they were being destroyed, which means we only have the word of the wittily-named IDF.
Anyway, in this post, Iâm not going to argue about terrorists or Islamists or even Zionists. I wonât allow myself to be sidetracked by the handbook of spin.
No indeed. In this post, Iâm simply going to ask about the details of how terror tunnels, aka tunnels, are constructed and destroyed.
Iâve only seen a few photos of what the Israelis called a terror tunnel, so youâll forgive me for not having much information to go on, which is surprising when you consider how technologically advanced Israel is compared to the rest of the world. Youâd imagine theyâd at least send in a crack team of anti-terrorist photographers to show the world what the Palestinians have been getting up to in their compound.
I promised not to get political in this, so I wonât suggest that tunnelling is a natural thing for people trapped behind a fence by occupying forces. I wonât even make a comparison with the Warsaw ghetto where people did exactly that. Instead, Iâll just concentrate on the details of tunnelling.
As I said, Iâve only seen a few photos of the (terror) tunnels, but thatâs fine. We can take a guess at their dimensions.
My estimate is that theyâre about 2 metres high and about a metre wide. Roughly. We wonât argue about minor details.
Therefore, a tunnel of letâs say 1 kilometre in length requires the excavation of 2,000 cubic metres of soil, but weâre told by the Israeli military that the tunnels reach right into Israel, perhaps even under the houses of the people in Sderot, for the purposes of kidnapping them, so letâs call it 10 km.
That tunnel would produce 20,000 cubic metres of soil, enough to create a hill 8.5 metres high by 100 metres in diameter. For old-fashioned people like me, thatâs about 30 feet high and 330 feet across. Quite a mound.
Itâs probably reasonable enough to assume that they didnât dump any of this in the Israeli-occupied area outside the fence, so they had quite a problem getting rid of it. A 30-foot-high hill is hard to miss, especially if youâre being watched by the most sophisticated surveillance operation in the world.
How did they achieve this feat of covert engineering without being observed? Did they put the earth in their pockets and walk around a football pitch, whistling nonchalantly and shaking their trousers as the guards watched from their towers?
Now, thatâs just one (terror) tunnel, but these people somehow managed to build 30, or was it 35, (terror) tunnels, according to the Israeli Forces.
Thatâs a lot of football fields, a lot of trouser-shaking and a lot of whistling, without the worldâs most sophisticated intelligence service noticing a thing.
Well and good. Now hereâs the second point.
How do you destroy a 10 km tunnel in a week?
Do you systematically travel along its entire length, blowing it up and letting the top cover fall into it? Does that actually work if the tunnel is deeper than, say 5 metres? And doesnât such subsidence leave a clearly-visible trace at the surface?
Surely the IDF would be delighted to produce aerial photographs showing the precise tracks of the destroyed tunnels, based on the surface subsidence? Wouldnât that be a major propaganda coup against the terrorists?
Apparently not, since photos of the tunnels before and after demolition are lamentably rare.
If the IDF knew where the tunnels were, why did they not simply close them off wherever they entered Israel, without the need to invade Gaza? After all, tunnels inside the ghetto were never going anywhere.
Just one final point. When people are hemmed into a ghetto by overwhelmingly-superior military force, isnât that what they do?
Dig tunnels?
The children of the Warsaw ghetto survivors should know all about having to do that.[/QUOTE]
Where did you find that
some guy at work emailed it to me
As Homer Simpson would say: âoccupied, not occupied. occupied, not occupied, occupied, not occupied. occupied, not occupied. occupied, not occupied. occupied, not occupied. occupied, not occupied. DOH (demolish occupied homes).â
Obama has just given the go ahead to air strike ISIS.
Unbelievable hypocrisy in his speech where he clearly values the lives of Iraqiâs over those Palestinians
IDF reporting new rocket attacks from Gaza.
Iâd say their thrilled
[QUOTE=âcaoimhaoin, post: 996119, member: 273â]Obama has just given the go ahead to air strike ISIS.
Unbelievable hypocrisy in his speech where he clearly values the lives of Iraqiâs over those Palestinians[/QUOTE]
Iâd imagine the yanks were just waiting for some kind of a lull in Gaza before getting involved again in Iraq. Their own efforts of brokering a peace there were a disaster with John Kerry looking like an idiot. The Cairo brokered ceasefire seems to have given them the option now to intervene although Iâm sure, even if the latest IDF reports are BS, the US felt they had to act asap no matter whatâs going on in Gaza/Ukraine or wherever. It could well be a case of too little too late, the unrelentless march of ISIS, accompanied as it is by unrelentless butchery seems to have caught everybody on the hop.
The bird might well have flown and any half hearted response now from the West could only exasperate the problem. If ISIS come out intact which Iâm quite certain they will, they will have proved themselves to be legitimate in the eyes of the fundamentalist strand of Islam and beyond, it could well be the making of them. The likes of Hezbollah, Muslim Brotherhood, Iran, not to mention whateverâs left of Al Qaeda would be under serious pressure then to either put up or shut up, maybe perversely that is what the yanks really want.
[QUOTE=âLazarus, post: 996121, member: 286â]Iâd imagine the yanks were just waiting for some kind of a lull in Gaza before getting involved again in Iraq. Their own efforts of brokering a peace there were a disaster with John Kerry looking like an idiot. The Cairo brokered ceasefire seems to have given them the option now to intervene although Iâm sure, even if the latest IDF reports are BS, the US felt they had to act asap no matter whatâs going on in Gaza/Ukraine or wherever. It could well be a case of too little too late, the unrelentless march of ISIS, accompanied as it is by unrelentless butchery seems to have caught everybody on the hop.
The bird might well have flown and any half hearted response now from the West could only exasperate the problem. If ISIS come out intact which Iâm quite certain they will, they will have proved themselves to be legitimate in the eyes of the fundamentalist strand of Islam and beyond, it could well be the making of them. The likes of Hezbollah, Muslim Brotherhood, Iran, not to mention whateverâs left of Al Qaeda would be under serious pressure then to either put up or shut up, maybe perversely that is what the yanks really want.[/QUOTE]
Murder is murder and no life is worth more than any other, but the videos coming out of what these ISIS lads are at is fairly fucking shocking. They act like people drugged up to the last. The rhetoric and the motivation for such carry on has to be buried very deep and in bedded from a young age. Its scary hatred.
They were known(at least to the West) as AQI(Al Qaeda in Iraq), for a while under Al Zarqwi, but have taken on a much more virulent strain then even Al Qaeda since their operations in Syria and new leadership, Al Baghdadi. (Bagdhadi pretty much told Al Zawahiri, AQs spiritual leader, to go fuck himself earlier this year when he fell out with the other opposition forces in Syria). Actually their probably no worse now than they were during the Iraq War but the difference is they have the means now to carry out their massacres on a grand scale. Their most likely being funded by Saudi and Quatar but have gained a high degree of self sufficiency because of their successâs. Perception among fellow Muslims has generally been opposed to them, even amongst fellow fundamentalists, but if they are seen to make some sort of a stand against the great Satan that could change quite quick. The yanks have no choice though, if the puppet government canât look after their oil then theyâll just have to go back in and do it themselves.
No definitive docs yet on ISIS but I came across this which isnât bad. Although itâs barely a month old itâs already itâs already out of date as ISIS has evolved into the Islamic State now but a decent account of how they came to be nonetheless.
[QUOTE=âcaoimhaoin, post: 996119, member: 273â]Obama has just given the go ahead to air strike ISIS.
Unbelievable hypocrisy in his speech where he clearly values the lives of Iraqiâs over those Palestinians[/QUOTE]
It is hypocrisy of the highest order, but something had to be done before thousands more people die.
Agreed but I donât think hypocrisy is the word. The us/eu recognise Israel as a state. It is recognised as a state under international law. Isis is no such thing really.
I donât actually think Isis is an incredible force per se, more a small bunch os highly motivated, well organised and funded psychopaths with local knowledge. The only solution to them I suspect would be back to a military dictatorship of sorts in the affected countries a la Egypt, if those countries continue, or want to continue to exist as things are. Europe will be awash with traumatised people if this continues.
Whilst what the IDF is doing in Gaza is shocking and wrong, I personally despise fundamentalism in all itsâ forms, and if push came to shove, would rather live in an Israeli style âdemocracyâ , than the style of âdemocracyâ that exists in Gaza currently, where a rabidly fundamentalist govt came to power and immediately dismantled the opposition. I would not want my wife or kids living under sharia law, and would sign up to fight against it were that a serious threat.
and⌠weâre back on 
Whatâs happening?
I find it mad that Hamas started firing rockets again once the ceasefire ended. Although looking at the state that Gaza is in after the first bombardment itâs going to make much odds to them.
Oh ya I agree.
I actually would have no problem with America policing the world if they were fair and just about it.
But fuck them, they let hundreds of kids die to win votes. All the good they did in the WWâs is completely undone many times over.