General Politics Thread

[invergowrie arab]

I'm absolutely willing to acknowledge an evolutionary imperative for women to be main care givers.

The attachment developed between mother and baby at birth and during infancy, particularly via breastfeeding, makes the mother ideally placed to be the main care giver in the early years. We also have the evolution of the menopause and have ample evidence to show that in societies where there are women beyond child bearing age who can support women through pregnancy or bring up children in the not uncommon event of maternal death in childbirth, that infant mortality rates are far lower than in societies where this doesn't happen.

These are all of course societal constructs and post industrial revolution western society is a fantastic example of having been freed from many of bonds of agrarian and pre agrarian societies we can experience profound societal change and shifts in gender norms that disproves the theory that behaviour is related to chromosomes rather than social factors.

As a very small example that Granny will remember is from about the 1850s to the second world war Dundee men were known as kettle bilers as they were the main home makers as women, who cost less to employ, were the main breadwinners employed in the jute mills.

I remember studying tribes in sub Saharan Africa who do it completely the other way round where women hunt and the males look after the children.

So we can all now agree that gender and race have nothing to do with genes and move on.

[dorlomin]

On the term "Zionism". It may not be explicitly antisemetic to bang on about "Zionism" but its sure as hell true that many of the most raving antisemites loved the term. 

Protocols of the Elders of Zion. 

Zionist Occupation Government. 

Zionist Bolshevism

 

Many people like The King and Granny Danger, love to attack "Zionism" when they mean the state of Israel. It is a deliberate ploy to use an ambiguous term that often is used by extremists from the far right and Arab\Islamist movement as a synonym for Jew. This ambiguity is deliberate as they have been told in the past. 

 

Its much like ranting about the "Zionist dominated media". (As seen by on MP) Since most people in the UK do not want the immediate extermination of the state of Israel you could classify them as "Zionist", thus most media reports on the issue will implicitly accept the existence of Israel thus are "Zionist dominated", but using that term deliberately plays with the antisemtic trope of the "Jew Dominated Media" conspiracy theory. This goes right back to preWWI antisemitism. By playing fast and lose with language that evokes antisemitism they are happy when they are called antisemitic as it allows them to play the victim "I am only attacking Israel". No, if you attack Israeli policy say "the Israeli state". If you are talking about pro Israeli media reports say "pro Israeli media reports". Using the term Zionism is just a dog whistle to Jew hate. Something some on here are keen on. 

 

 

The argument against this used by the antisemites is that Zionism is a political movement, but a Scottish football forum is the last place one should need to provide examples of political movements used as religious\ethnic slurs. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/******_Brotherhood

[dorlomin]

If Black people were taking about the old South Africa , and freely intermingled White, whites ,Afrikaans ,Europeans, no one would dare called they racists and try and use semantics to shut them up, because everybody knows to who and what they are referring to.

Why is black capitalised? I have read this a couple of times and its just gibberish. 

[welshbairn]

From the EU working definition of Anti semitisim , which is the standard used most anti Racisim organisations. One of the definitions... "Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor."

 

The State of Israel is an established fact that gets its legitimacy from functioning as one for 68 years. Moral justification doesn't come into it. But I don't think it is anti semitic to say it wouldn't exist without having carried out a deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing.

[Ad Lib]

The State of Israel is an established fact that gets its legitimacy from functioning as one for 68 years. Moral justification doesn't come into it. But I don't think it is anti semitic to say it wouldn't exist without having carried out a deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing.

Israel is not a state that seeks ethnic homogeneity. It has committed many systemic attrocities against Palestinian Arabs, and it has committed many war crimes for excessive use of force and gross recklessness as to civilian casualties, but it has not and does not adopt a policy of "ethnic cleansing". That has a very specific meaning.

[dorlomin]

Anyway, one last titbit. Livingstone is justifying his Hitler comments. 

 

 

"In 1933, after competing in several democratic elections and finally becoming the leader of the largest party in the German parliament, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany. In the subsequent election, his party went on to achieve a higher percentage of the vote than before his appointment. In the following years, he made attempts to reverse the details of a treaty imposed on Germany in the wake of the First World War that was agreed internationally to have been unjust. However, Germany’s neighbours, France and Britain—rulers of the two largest empires in the world—were unhappy about these attempted revisions and declared war on Germany in September 1939. In 1941, both the USA and Soviet Union joined the conflict, despite both having promised to stay out of it. The war was terrible, including the fire-bombing of German cities, the horrendous mistreatment of German prisoners of war by the Soviets, until ultimately the forces of totalitarian Russia invaded Germany, precipitating mass forced migration of Germans in Eastern Europe and destroying the capital, Berlin.â€

Historical truth is a funny thing – it lives in the whole, not in the parts. Any relatively knowledgeable reader of the above paragraph would spot instantly that it is a terrible perversion of the historical truth of events in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, yet no individual part of it is factually inaccurate. The Nazis were indeed the largest party in the 1933 German election, though missing here is the important context that this was an election in which the polling booths were surrounded by Nazi stormtroopers; both the USA and the USSR did join the war having attempted to stay out, but in both cases it was because Hitler had declared war on them. Genocide is entirely absent. Important context and relevant evidence has been missed, to render these individual accurate facts into a something that no one remotely familiar with the period concerned could call “the truthâ€.

 

You can be entirely accurate in your historical "facts" and completely distort the widely understood history of the time. 

[RadgerTheBadger]

Every politician will look to f**k us over. Whether they are Tory, Labour, SNP, UKIP or whoever they are all looking to shag us

They are all the same

Edited April 30, 2016 by HairyBawz

[welshbairn]

Israel is not a state that seeks ethnic homogeneity. It has committed many systemic attrocities against Palestinian Arabs, and it has committed many war crimes for excessive use of force and gross recklessness as to civilian casualties, but it has not and does not adopt a policy of "ethnic cleansing". That has a very specific meaning.

 

I was referring to the formation of the State which required a Jewish majority so it could call itself a democracy, the episode the Palestinians call the Nakba. There are arguments about how many Palestinians were directly forced out by Jewish forces and how many were simply refused the right of return after fleeing the war, but there is no doubt Israel had a deliberate policy of "encouraging" Palestinians to leave to make way for the new arrivals of Jewish settlers.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfer_Committee 

 

 

[Granny Danger]

From the EU working definition of Anti semitisim , which is the standard used most anti Racisim organisations.

One of the definitions...

"Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor."

That's a self-serving definition. There are people and descendants of people who were dispossessed by the creation of Israel who could legitimately argue for the disbandment of the state.

Personally I don't think it's the way forward but it's a legitimate argument.

[DeeTillEhDeh]

On the term "Zionism". It may not be explicitly antisemetic to bang on about "Zionism" but its sure as hell true that many of the most raving antisemites loved the term.

Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Zionist Occupation Government.

Zionist Bolshevism

Many people like The King and Granny Danger, love to attack "Zionism" when they mean the state of Israel. It is a deliberate ploy to use an ambiguous term that often is used by extremists from the far right and Arab\Islamist movement as a synonym for Jew. This ambiguity is deliberate as they have been told in the past.

Its much like ranting about the "Zionist dominated media". (As seen by on MP) Since most people in the UK do not want the immediate extermination of the state of Israel you could classify them as "Zionist", thus most media reports on the issue will implicitly accept the existence of Israel thus are "Zionist dominated", but using that term deliberately plays with the antisemtic trope of the "Jew Dominated Media" conspiracy theory. This goes right back to preWWI antisemitism. By playing fast and lose with language that evokes antisemitism they are happy when they are called antisemitic as it allows them to play the victim "I am only attacking Israel". No, if you attack Israeli policy say "the Israeli state". If you are talking about pro Israeli media reports say "pro Israeli media reports". Using the term Zionism is just a dog whistle to Jew hate. Something some on here are keen on.

The argument against this used by the antisemites is that Zionism is a political movement, but a Scottish football forum is the last place one should need to provide examples of political movements used as religious\ethnic slurs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/******_Brotherhood

I think bracketing GD and The King as being the same is not really fair.

The King clearly is an anti-semite.

GD is an anti-Zionist who is very defensive.

[MarkoRaj]

On the term "Zionism". It may not be explicitly antisemetic to bang on about "Zionism" but its sure as hell true that many of the most raving antisemites loved the term.

Ludicrous argument. A is racist and uses term x. B uses the term x so B must be racist.

[Granny Danger]

I think bracketing GD and The King as being the same is not really fair.

The King clearly is an anti-semite.

GD is an anti-Zionist who is very defensive.

Thanks for that.

Being outed by this Sevco fruitcake as being allied to right-wing and pro Islamic thinking is the most bizarre accusation I've faced on P&B. And that's saying something.

[MarkoRaj]

Many people like The King and Granny Danger, love to attack "Zionism" when they mean the state of Israel. It is a deliberate ploy to use an ambiguous term that often is used by extremists from the far right and Arab\Islamist movement as a synonym for Jew. This ambiguity is deliberate as they have been told in the past.

[/url]

Isn't the criticism of Zionism about the fact that they have reclaimed Israel at the expense of the human rights of Palestinians? So criticism of the Israeli government might not necessarily be the same thing even though they subscribe to that particular ideology.

The only people who are keen to conflate the terms are the accusers.

[AUFC90]

Those bloody anti-semites are at it again.

[Granny Danger]

Those bloody anti-semites are at it again.

Are Galloway and Livingstone just out of shot?

[AUFC90]

Are Galloway and Livingstone just out of shot?

[THE KING]

Well done Ken dont back down to the rabid Israeli lobby.

[vikingTON]

Isn't the criticism of Zionism about the fact that they have reclaimed Israel at the expense of the human rights of Palestinians? So criticism of the Israeli government might not necessarily be the same thing even though they subscribe to that particular ideology.

The only people who are keen to conflate the terms are the accusers.

No, the terms have in fact been regularly conflated by anti-Semites for their own purposes for over a century. This is absolutely basic stuff. The comments regularly made by Anti-Semites on the left (anyone wishing a sample should check out Thursday's Daily Politics on iPlayer from about eight minutes in for twenty full minutes of rummaging through that gutter) are not solely critical of Israeli state policy. They are critical of the right of Israel's state to exist yet are, curiously, silent about the millions who were similarly ethnically cleansed in displacement form in the creation of European and most other nation states - see the mass expulsion of Germans from East-Central Europe between 1945 and 1948 as just one example. The same people also happen to refuse to share a platform with Israelis (Galloway), claim that Hitler's policy towards Jews was Zionist (Livingstone), support the compulsory 'transport' of Israel to North America (Shah). I could go on but no, watch the actual episode and educate yourself about what is the tip of the iceberg of a widely acknowledged problem.

[THE KING]

How can I have hurt and offended the Jewish community when the prime minister of Israel said exactly the same thing?"

[welshbairn]

 support the compulsory 'transport' of Israel to North America (Shah).

 

Re tweeting a cartoon of Israel in America before she was an MP doesn't amount to suggesting the enforced transportation of Jews across the Atlantic. Likewise I'm sure your various solutions for "The Failed Statelet" issue won't ever come back to haunt you.