I suggest you read Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes before spending more time mocking keto. Ketogenic diets have lots of backing in science and have changed many lives and posts like these can be very hurtful.
You're getting downvoted because your post is incredibly disrespectful to countries where the main demographics are historically oppressed groups. Obviously North Koreans love North Korea, or else it wouldn't exist.
Many of us are insecure from being bullied as kids and being in a profession where we are often surrounded by people who are smarter than us. Also the extremely high pay creates an imposter syndrome, where we feel like society has "selected" us to be the most intelligent and we can only live up to that standard by having contrarian views on a wide range of topics.
The sad thing is most of us would be better off lifting weights or making money or going to social events than developing eating disorders.
Israel is hardly powerful in the US. US foreign policy is overall pretty antisemitic. Israel would own half of Egypt at least if the US didn't drive them out in the Yom Kippur War.
Israelis themselves prided themselves on invading but with every intention to not take Egyptian land. Israelis weren’t driven out, they beat Egypt to show their power and created a good relationship with them. No Israeli I have ever talked to says half of Egypt should have been theirs or the US drove them out, they always make a point they bargain and prefer peace.
I'd like you to define how US policy is "antisemitic". Why are these horrible US antisemites giving Israel military aid and money?
Also, I cannot imagine Israel would want to conduct an occupation of half of Egypt. Look at the difficulty of occupying the Palestinian territories. Look at US occupations recently, and the US has far more resources and Egypt would be far more hostile to Israel than Iraq and Afghanistan were to the US.
I have never heard such crazy ideas before from anyone. Its completely ridiculous, not even the most fringe right wing Yigal Amir supporting Israeli would say what he did.
AFAIK, a major reason the US gives aid to Egypt and Jordan is to buy peace for Israel and the Mideast. Certainly if they attacked Israel, that would be the end of the line for those two countries. IIRC, Egypt's aid is tied to the Camp David peace agreement with Israel.
I have never heard once of an Israeli who thought Egypt belonged to them after the war. This viewpoint is so foreign from any Israeli I ever spoken to it’s completely new.
Very much so, a paradox given millions flying in defence aid to both Egypt, and Israel.
The kind of lobbyists in Washington are not rooting for the secular state of Israel, but pretty much specifically for the orthodox Haradrim, or the kind of Neftali Bennet.
Equally so, Israelis hating Arabs don't preclude them propping up the criminal Saudi state, and a small portion of Saudi elites who hate Turkey.
Israel and Egypt both being top recipients of US aid is part of the peace arrangement. Egypt is by far Israel's strongest neighbor, militarily. No coalition of neighboring states has any chance defeating Israel without them, so the US pays Egypt not to mess around with Israel.
Egypt was defeated by Israel who had no intention of keeping their land, and they have had a better relationship than most other countries in that region for a long time.
OK? The US aid arrangement is also part of the whole thing, though.
[EDIT] Oh damn, when did Jordan rocket up the list of US aid recipients? I gotta start keeping up with geopolitical shenanigans again, I'm clearly behind the times. But yes, the Egypt thing was, if not publicly the case, one of those open-secret things that're taken for granted in poli-sci and policy circles, like "Israel has nukes", or "the US removing MRBMs from Turkey was part of the deal for keeping Soviet nukes out of Cuba". The US pays Egypt not to mess with Israel.
It’s as useful as the money they used in Afghanistan. This isn’t the 70s anymore. Egypt isn’t incentivized to battle Israel, and Israel isn’t incapable of defending itself.
It wasn't incapable then, either. Clearly. But this takes some of the heat off them, and discourages Egypt from permitting—or encouraging—non-conventional anti-israel forces within its borders, or abroad, even as its domestic politics shift (no-one wants to shut off the money hose).
And in return for said aid, Israel has become an American puppet and stays about the size of New Jersey without us having to use force. Between sending in troops and paying them, the US decided to pay. Imagine if a bully promised to not beat you up as long as he could pay you a small sum to sit in a corner in a fetal position all day. These politics are a lot more complex than you're making them out to be.
If the US hated Israel it wouldn't have supported its creation, and last I checked the US is paying Israel not the opposite. Your analogy is stupid and pointless. Are you crying in a fetal position all day making analogies out of your own delusional fantasies?
>If the US hated Israel it wouldn't have supported its creation
The US did not support Israel past the original vote, rather it tried to push a series of measures that would have been detrimental to Israel. At the time Israel was far more reliant on the USSR.
So it supported its creation just like I stated? What kind of antisemite country supports the creation of Israel? Do non antisemites by that logic not support the creation of Israel?
I never said the US was an antisemitic country? Both that and 'the US unconditionally supports Israel' are myths. The US position is occasionally cynical but consistent and unemotional.
Anyway, the US policy at the time was determined by the State Department which was very anti-Israel for various reasons. Truman overrode them for the US vote, but was too busy with other affairs to set policy afterwards.
My mistake I thought you supported the person that I originally responded to. Is that why they had kibbutz? I know Israel was more communist at the beginning and it even worked for a while, but they ended it. I remember Milton Friedman talking about how he liked Likud in the 60s.
Well, that was the local Socialists' idea of how to implement "a new society", not much to do with the USSR. It couldn't scale for obvious reasons, and their own descendants abandoned this almost entirely.
In the technical sense of 'place still existing', yes. In the sense of 'non-capitalist economic arrangements' most have abandoned their former arrangements.
Yes sorry I mistyped, it was early, I meant the bully pays you to sit in the corner, otherwise he beats you up. Sure he's paying you, but it's still clearly coercive.
Israelis don't see the US as a bully. I have never heard of this viewpoint, Israel has settlers, it has borders, and if it chooses to change its borders the US won't be the bully, it will be a battle with the other countries in the middle east. I don't get any of your points, you are complaining about money that Israel takes and how its coersive, so you don't have to take the money?
Trump moved the US embassy to Jersusalem, and the US gives billions of aid to Israel. What is your criteria for "antisemitism"? If accepting the capital of Israel, giving money, military aid, is your definition of antisemetic it dimimishes Nazis activity if you group aid into "bullying" and "antisemitism".
Basically his position, when you strip out the inflammatory rhetoric, is that the US wants to keep Israel weak and dependent on US aid. i.e. Get Israel to make concessions (say returning the Sinai to Egypt), the US covers up for that with aid, but the aid can always be withdrawn (say if Israel dares make the US upset, or if some radical President is elected), leaving Israel dependent, and at risk in the long term.
I don't think that accurately describes US policy anymore, if it ever did. Modern day US administrations have withdrawn from the world, and that means their ME policies are not determined by reality, but by domestic ideologies and domestic political considerations.
Are you Israeli? I read his rhetoric and I have never seen such ridiculous statements made by anyone. They are so disconnected from reality I never seen this kind of belief in my life.
I've read all kinds of absolutely insane rhetoric on I/P (way beyond this), I don't think much would surprise me anymore. That conflict used to generate way more of this type of rhetoric than anything else, but recently other issues seems to have caught up in this department...
When you take into account the history of BIPOC oppression and hate it makes some sense. They're perpetuating a type of hate that's already rampant and even normalized. It's on a spectrum between crimes of passion and organized crime.
Also it's generally recognized as a social good to penalize those who take advantage of the weak and less fortunate.
Maybe, but surely you would agree it should be up to the appropriated culture to decide what is appropriate?
If a historically marginalized
group feels that you are appropriating their culture, the proper response is not to learn their history and then tell them that since you read a book it's now OK. It's to stop.
Most cultures have a wide variety of opinions. If someone wants to wear clothing associated with another culture, should they listen to the people saying "no, that's just for us", or the ones saying "we like seeing our ideas spread", or "of course, I'm happy to sell you this hat that I made in the traditional style"? In my experience, there will always be voices across that entire spectrum. If one always listens to the most restrictive ones, then it just makes everyone more isolated in their own bubbles.
I do think there are some areas where most people can agree that use of another culture's artifacts is in poor taste and not generally acceptable. A very specific example would be that members of a culture that conquered another culture shouldn't wear clothing or jewelry that was looted from the conquered people. I think most people would agree that that crosses a line. Same for costumes that trivialize or mock another culture, like children playing cowboys and "Indians" in the 20th century, or minstrel shows. But outside of that core, I think it turns into a grey area very quickly.
It's a really tough problem to find a good answer to, and IMO it's impossible to find one that makes everyone happy because of that diversity of opinions in nearly every culture.
I agree that it should be up to the appropriated culture. I’m not saying all you have to do is read a book. If you want to participate in another culture it takes a lot of work to learn and participate respectfully. And you’d probably have to do it up front rather than after the fact to justify yourself.
For example: Eminem is respected as a rap artist because he apprenticed himself to the culture and celebrates it. He didn’t just try to make money off rap and learn a bit of history about it to justify doing so.
