Heam

Here's a somewhat-detailed brief on the Islamic State that I recently wrote. I include a lot of information that mainstream media typically do not talk about, as well as US involvement and their indirect facilitation of the organization's growth. I also include my independent analysis which makes this more than a journalistic documentation of the organization. I'll answer any questions in this thread. Sources included at the bottom of the document.

This probably sounds a bit callous of me to say, but whenever women talk about there not being enough "good" guys out there, I assume that they're ignoring something like 90% of the male population and focusing on the 10% alpha males who are in high demand and who don't really need to settle down in their youth. It's my perception that beta men are, for all intents and purposes related to sexuality, invisible to women and it shows in the article posted in the OP. There is a massive swathe of men out there who are looking for a woman to be with in the long term. Ironically, most men are losers from the hookup culture because female promiscuity favors a minority of maybe 20% men at the expense of the vast majority.

Important for you to divulge the important metrics. Questions adjusted for 20 year old expectations: 1) how attractive are you on 1-10 scale? 2) how much money do your parents make? 3) are you in university?

My father drunk dials me from time to time. Haven't spoken to him in about 16 months. He doesn't say he's drunk, but it's obvious because he's slurring words and confusing me with my brother. It makes me angrier knowing I was raised by somebody so callous towards the feelings of others and cowardly.

Joel, that is a horrible story and I extend my sympathies to you. It is amazing that you've pulled yourself from the mire of your history and sought to see through the abusers.

Sorry buddy, you don't get to call me a liar repeatedly and get away with it. You've long since reached the point of simply flinging shit at every user who disagrees with you, and dumping a bunch of YouTube videos with zero accompanying discussion of their intellectual content (not that there was any) doesn't fly as proof of your claims. If somebody took the time to make an actual argument, you don't get to substitute a reply by dismissing the opposition as liars, then posting 10 YouTube videos in rapid succession as if they are in any way addressing the contrary claims to your narrative. You're attempting to pretend I don't exist by having me argue against YouTube videos instead of arguing against you. I take this to mean that my posts and the others which you've lambasted repeatedly as "lies" are creating extreme anxiety in you; to the point where you're now in shill-bot overdrive mode. RE "flooding": you have more posts in this thread and less intellectual content provided than any user here. There's nobody here other than you who's flooding the forum with links to propaganda smut that looks, sounds, and argues like it was crafted in a basement by an intern at Shin Bet's Negev Desert offices. It's gotten to the point where your posts are essentially pollution.

The most dangerous emotional effects of my last breakup were the changes in my psychological disposition which were not directly related to the breakup, but aftershock effects; namely paranoia. I felt a period of near-debilitating grief for a few days after our relationship ended. Crying, lethargy, feelings that I'd never find anybody like her, and many more which I cannot remember now. After about two weeks, things settled down to feelings of moderate sadness whenever I thought about her, and gradually lower levels of sadness as time passed. That was roughly 5 months ago, but I have since chalked the relationship as a thing of the past. I do feel a small tinge of sadness when recounting our times together, however. I think a big reason why I was able to "heal" from the damage caused by the breakup was because of the fact that I really allowed myself to feel the full brunt of the pain, rather than covering it up with substances and false narratives. Otherwise I would have just dragged out the trauma for years. I did notice that I felt a heightened level of paranoia about a month after the breakup. I was fearing financial collapse and apocalypse at any moment (perhaps not a totally irrational feeling), started to consider purchasing a firearm, bought gold and silver, and withdrew most of my cash deposits from the bank. That paranoia has since subsided and I am back to baseline levels to how I felt before I started dating her.

Good point about effect and intent. State propaganda out of Israel goes to great lengths to sanitize the murders it commits by pushing the button which kills 800 people with one hand and waving the scepter of moral piety over the bodies of its victims with the other. Just wanted to note that Lior is not painting an accurate picture of the regional political landscape because many Arab leaders, including the Jordanians, Egyptians, Saudis, and Emiratis do support Israel's strike on Gaza. They also have an alliance with Muslim Kurds, so when he attempts to make it seem as though Israel is afloat in a sea of hostility, he's defaulting to the JIDF propaganda archives circa 1970 and should really consider renewing his subscription. Again, these details do not necessarily coincide with the actual philosophical principles of the discussion you're having, but just giving you some context as to the unreality from which Lior is arguing from.

So would I be in the wrong to report mreyallior at this point for dismissing essentially anything I say as "lies," no matter how much evidence and what the case is? He's a particularly volatile individual and seems to have zero interest in an actual debate aside from this amateur propaganda schtick. I mean, I thought post #39 was particularly well-written and well-supported, but in post #42, he says: No supporting evidence supplied. No argument. Just that I'm a liar and not worth his time. Extremely disrespectful. Again, in post #44 What are we supposed to do if Eyal Lior is going to arrogantly presume he's better than myself and other posters by dismissing us out of hand as liars, and feeling "no remorse"?

Joel, do you believe that your morbid interest in totalitarianism stems from the fact that you felt the need to constantly censor yourself? After all, it's not as if your subjects of study are bastions of free speech. How was your relationship like with your parents?

Before I embark on the dubious task of responding to mreyallior, I want to present to readers some context about the current conflict in Gaza thus far. Since Israeli bombs started falling on Gaza roughly 15 days ago 695 Palestinians have been killed of these, at least 155 children have been killed 87 militia members have died 4,550 Palestinians have been wounded by Israeli bombings. Palestinian hospitals are at capacity. They are out of supplies In addition, Israel's shelling is even targeting a hospital On the Israeli side, 34 Israelis lie dead, 178 wounded 32 of the dead and 150 of the wounded are soldiers 2 of the dead and 28 of the wounded are civilians From a raw percentages standpoint, 88% of the people Israel kills are civilians, 22% are children Of the people Palestinians have killed, 6% are civilians, 94% are invading soldiers. Note, from these percentages alone I could weave a tapestry that'd make any sophist cream his corduroys, but in the interest of truth and philosophy, I will present the facts and allow the readers to draw their conclusions. For more context and perhaps as a way to explain the irrationality and combativeness of brother mreyallior, Israel is offering heavy incentives for people to propagandize the internet on its behalf. Obviously this is not to say conclusively that mreyallior is a paid shill, but just something to think about given the current war climate and Israel's horrible reputation in the dying hours of mainstream media and its dominance over the information market. Also worth pointing out that 12 of mreyallior's 14 total posts on this forum have been in this thread alone. Anyhow, without further ado, the following are my responses to mreyallior, and mreyallior alone so as not to provide confusion... Quote in response to common Israeli assertion that Palestinian society is suicidal: "They are. Countless of videos show that they are even happy to testify about being such. So why deny it now? Why such rank hypocrisy? Why lying Waleed? Can't you stay honest for one paragraph? damn..." If Palestinian society was suicidal, I don't think you'd have many more enemies to fight since they wouldn't have one of the highest population growth rates on the planet. That's speaking from a purely logical perspective. Also if there are "countless videos" which back up your assertion that Palestinians are suicidal by nature, and not within the context of a war culture which has taken root after three generations of war against an Israeli wehrmacht, I'd like to see them. Additionally, please post a study which outlines Palestinians' genetic propensity toward suicidality controlling for the presence of Israeli military occupation, chemical weapons attacks, and economic sieges. I look forward to the evidence and I really do thank you for taking the time to open my eyes to another perspective on the conflict. And, if I'm a liar, I don't see why you've continued typing at my text box. I mean, why waste your time? In response to a counterargument about Palestinian militias using "human shields" in conflicts with Israel: "They can be willing human shields or unaware human shields as well." Ah, the moving goalposts. So first it's Hamas taking human shields, but now we have the phenomenon of "willing human shields." So if people are making a show of placing their entire families on a rooftop in order to avoid an Israeli strike against their home, you take the side of the pilot with the 2 ton bomb in the airplane flying a mile overhead rather than the families who seek to protect their livelihoods from attack. That speaks volumes, mreyallior. In fact, it really does play into my assertion that Israeli society bears a sick, barbaric culture dressed up in a neoliberal clown costume in the eyes of Westerners, not unlike the Potemkin villages of ye olde Soviet Russia. I'm taking a break from the direct quotes because at this point in post #22, mreyallior goes into full lawyer-mode with strawman attacks and nonsequitirs about honor killings and suicide bombs. He's throwing the whole JIDF propaganda pamphlet at me at this point, so it's necessary I point out what he's doing so as to highlight the sophistic nature of his argumentation style. His default to shit-flinging is also evidence of the fact that he either never actually read the entirety of post #17 of this thread, which is rather insulting to me as I took great effort in crafting it, or he is purposefully ignoring parts of it in order to make me more closely resemble the strawman from his playbook on propagandizing for Israel. So let's backtrack to post #17, where I state: In response to receiving information about Israel's 7-year economic siege on Gaza, mreyallior replies: "No it isn't, it's free choice. What you mean is restriction or people moving into Israel. This restriction is a result of stubborn cultural choice to engage in terror. Blowing up restaurants, buses, dance clubs, stabbing children and parents in their sleep, kidnapping, stealing and what not. Barbarism. This restriction is necessary because Islam is a culture of barbarism, where sisters are murdered for the "honor of the family" and gay man are put to death too. Give me a break." I don't know if anybody has ever told you this, mreyallior, but when you place a military in control of another country's borders and prevent supplies entering from land, air, and sea, it is not a "free choice." If Israel would like to close its borders with Gaza, that is its decision. That, however, does not give it the right to block Gaza's coastline from receiving ships or its airspace as it currently does today. In response to realizing that Israel does, in fact, blow up Gaza mreyallior responds with the following: "Israel bombs terrorists. If the terrorists had a base where they stay 6 days a week, it would be very easy to target them - they know this obviously so they prefer to stay at home, and by this, turning everybody around them, willing, knowing or not, to a human shield." So in a demonstration that he is not interested in acknowledging any part of my post that interrupts his narrative, he defaults to the tried-and-untrue accusation that Israel's targets are restricted to "terrorists" with no bearing on the broader population save for when said terrorists decide to take on "human shields." The suspension of disbelief required in order to believe something so patently false is indicative of mreyallior's unwillingness to accept the murderous nature of his favorite fascists on the east Mediterranean seaboard despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary hitting him from all directions, including in post #17 and in other posts that people have written in this thread. Finally, he denies the claim that Israel uses chemical weapons, to which I leave you with these:

The sexual reproductive paradigm is the reason for sexual variation, not sperm cells. Almost all of those hundreds of billions of sperm cells end up never fertilizing an egg, so they have no impact on the variability of the species and hence are expendable, just as nature designed them to be. This is illustrated by the fact that increasing sperm cells in a person does not mean there is an increase in variability in a population pool. Let's use this (perhaps uncomfortably graphic) example of Jim, Bob, and Sally Jim and Bob are both trying to fertilize Sally. The genetic distance between Jim and Sally is 1 The genetic distance between Bob and Sally is 2.5 Note, greater genetic distance means higher variability in the genetic code of offspring If I (have one of my medical assistants) take a sperm sample from Jim and Bob and create a solution containing 1 billion of Jim's sperm cells and only 1 of Bob's cells, then mix it in a dish with one of Sally's eggs... ...could we say that Jim's sperm is contributing more potential variability to a fertilized zygote than Bob? The answer is no. So I disagree with your assertion that sperm is more valuable than an egg. In fact, that one of Bob's cells is more valuable than a billion of Jim's if we consider variability as our priority demonstrates just how cheap sperm actually is.

The idea that Palestinians are obsessed with trumpeting their suffering to the media is projection from Israeli shills. Palestinian deaths get comparatively little coverage in Western media.

Note, I realize this is a topic about human shields in general, and not necessarily a discussion about Palestine/Israel, but as the OP links to content dealing with that particular conflict, I illustrate my point using the same conflict as an example. This issue of "human shields" is Israeli propaganda and if we dissect it factually and logically, I think it is easy to come to this conclusion. The idea of "human shields" thrives on the perception that is purported by Israel and its Western sycophants that Palestinians and Muslims in general value human life less than do Israelis. Palestinians are suicidal crazies while Israelis are first world loving peaceniks thrown into war against their will. The act of taking a "human shield" would necessitate that a Palestinian militiaman, at gunpoint, force civilians to absorb the shocks of Israeli bullets and bombs. In other words, said militiaman would have to hold hostage an entire population of Palestinians at all times of the day in order to force them to the front lines whenever an Israeli strike is imminent. This, from a logistical standpoint, is impossible. Palestinian society has multiple militias (a "free market" of militias, if you will). Any one militia that decided it was to take hostage the entire Palestinian population to stand on rooftops while Israel bombs targets from the sky would quickly find itself at odds with the militias who would decide to defend the local population. Furthermore there is no great power disparity between Palestinian militias and the local population. The maximum capacity of any force Palestinians can field is restricted mostly to RPG's and Kalashnikov rifle derivatives and these are relatively easy to obtain. Large tribal factions in Gaza are, ironically, better equipped than most Islamist militias in active conflict with Israel. I also want people to try and understand the ridiculous nature of the claim of "human shields" by looking at the logistics of Gaza. It is an enclave of about 1.8 million and one of the most densely populated places on the planet. You can check this link for a comparison of the details: http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/07/22/here-s-how-big-gaza-comparison-some-cities-around-world It has a population growth rate of about 2.8% per annum, which is the 13th fastest in the world. Gaza is not a state and it has no army. It has militias whose members are recruited from the fabric of a society which has been under arbitrary Israeli authority since at least 1967 and under arbitrary Egyptian authority before that. Israel levels a siege on the territory which it has kept up since 2006. Before that, it fielded a large occupation army in order to police the population of Gaza but found the area largely uncontrollable via infantry because it is so densely packed. There is very little economy to speak of. 40% of the population is officially unemployed. Of those who are employed, only half are in the private sector. This is a direct result of the Israeli siege which prevents supplies from entering the enclave. Where goods do not pass, rockets and bombs do apparently. Furthermore, UN fact finding missions have concluded that Israel does intentionally target economic hubs such as Gaza's sole airport which has been closed since 2001, factories, bridges, and roads. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Fact_Finding_Mission_on_the_Gaza_Conflict So while Israel no longer fields infantry in Gaza because of its logistical impossibility, it does control what enters and leaves the enclave. It is often described as the largest open air prison on the planet. ( http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/12635-noam-chomsky-my-visit-to-gaza-the-worlds-largest-open-air-prison ) Restricting the freedom of movement of people and materials into Gaza is an act of violence and so the idea that Israel is somehow minding its own business while suddenly receiving a barrage of rockets for its kindness is yet another line out of Defending Israel for Dummies ®. Israel frequently bombs Gaza, sometimes with more intensity than others, and because the area is so densely packed and due to what can only be chalked up as a combination of egregious incompetence and a lack of regard for Palestinian life, it mostly kills people who are not affiliated with the militias it is claiming to attack. My position on Israeli violence is that it does not care about distinguishing between militia-affiliated and non-militia Gazans. If it cared about the lives of Gazans, it wouldn't be inflicting an economic siege for 7 years running, nor would it have fielded an occupation force, nor would it continue inflicting war after war on the people there knowing well it does not possess the capacity to prevent civilian deaths. It also would not dump chemical weapons on hospitals, schools, refugee camps, and target civilian infrastructure. Hamas is still around even after more than a decade of Israel trying to destroy it. Islamic Jihad, Aqsa Brigades, and every other bottle rocket militia with 5 lb warhead tips pointed at Israel remain as strong as ever despite the IV drip of military steroids financed by US taxpayers remaining stuck up the IDF's butt at all times. Why does Israel continue the same strategy it has used for years if it cares so much about civilian life? Israel has to sell the carnage it inflicts to the tax donkeys in the West by claiming they are fighting an intractable and opaque fanatic enemy who intentionally puts people in harm's way. The illogic they are selling is that Hamas holds civilian hostages in places where their weapons' caches are located so as to deter an Israeli strike because, as the story goes, it is exploiting the Israeli weakness of compassion for the innocent in order to continue its eternal war against the state of Israel and finish what Hitler started. Yet, if this strategy is already known to everybody with a Time magazine subscription, and it is also understood that Israel is going to bomb weapons caches whether civilians are there or not, then why would you place weapons in an area with civilians in the first place? Wouldn't that immediately be a red flag to Israeli military intelligence that it's where you put your weapons? Furthermore, is there a place in overpopulated Gaza where there are no civilians? Also, if civilians knew that they were being used as hostages would there not be some mass civil movement in Gaza to prevent themselves from becoming pawns in a game of demonic Chinese Checkers between Hamas and Israel? There are so many obvious questions that can be asked which poke holes in this absolutely idiotic propaganda schtick put on by Israeli shills that we actually have to start looking internally at ourselves to understand why these lines even register with us. For the thinking person, and for the person who examines the evidence of past Israeli aggression, the fact is obvious that Israel does not care about civilian life, and that it even takes great pleasure in inflicting as much suffering on Gaza as it possibly can before Bush, Obama, or whatever oligarch hand puppet at the mantle of the US tax farm has to take the punch bowl away.

I have already stated my rationale for including a "kill ratio," which is that it provides an illustration as to who is an aggressor in this situation amid the propaganda fog which is belched out of the dank furnaces of American mainstream media. I take it that you did not fully read my post because this fact floats well over your head and you have continued to repeat essentially the exact same fundamental arguments that you made in your first post and even misconstrued my points to suit your narrative. For example, from my statement: Israel is a country in the OECD with a first world standard of living while Palestinians live in squalor and rely on a system of tunnels dug underground to get basic items for survival. These are a people so devastated that they have had to resort to building with mud bricks because of a shortage of building materials due to Israeli blockade and siege. Meanwhile you have Tel Aviv a couple hundred miles away which is one of the most prosperous cities on the planet. You replied: Advancement of a country has zero to do with anything at all. It doesnt mean that the country that is less advance somehow has the right to attack it. My original statement ties in with the fact that there is a power disparity here. How you misconstrued this to mean that Palestinians are justified in attacking Israel because Israel has more money is beyond me and I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you are confused. Unfortunately, you aren't even arguing with me, but a projection you've canvassed over your screen. I would appreciate that you give me the respect of acknowledging my points. I'm not going to sit here and patiently try to reason with somebody flittering through propaganda cue cards and pretending I don't exist. Furthermore, you seem to demonstrate serious ignorance of the conflict. Israel never pulled out of the West Bank, it maintains 300,000 settlers there and an enormous occupation force policing the area: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Bank#Israeli_occupation Also the fact that you can sit here with a straight face and ask me how Palestinian poverty is Israel's problem while it maintains a full-blown occupation and economic/military siege over the West Bank and Gaza, respectively, demonstrates that you are completely disconnected from the reality of this conflict and that you did not even read the research posted in the OP. I'm not here to cater to your insecurities about an apartheid state that you seem vehement about defending despite overwhelming evidence highlighting its evil nature. Show some respect, please.

When a nuclear-armed state with tanks, attack helicopters, F-16 bombers, naval warships, and the full backing of the world's sole superpower's political and media apparatuses invades an impoverished ghettoized enclave which it has placed under siege for 8 years, I think that is by any sane, rational person's standards an act of aggression. And when the kill ratio is 600:1, Palestinian to Israelis (literally), it is obvious there is a power disparity there. I post this in order to illustrate who is the aggressor. Zionism is one of the pet projects of the US's oligarchy and the fact of the matter is that Israeli society has the military advantage and can pull its boot off the throat of the Palestinians at any time. It opts not to and instead continue to inflict a horror cinema upon Gaza on the US tax donkey's dime. Israel has no shortage of good press in the West, and it is one of the main reasons why it is afforded the diplomatic cover and military aid to continue slaughtering civilians en masse. That needs to end and this is an illustration of the abject sickness of an Israeli society which should not be supported any more than Hamas should. The difference is that one is considered a terrorist organization, while the other is dressed up in a neoliberal clown costume and paraded before the eyes of Americans as the Middle East's "sole democracy." Calling the Palestinians "aggressors" against Israelis is like calling Jews in the Warsaw ghettos aggressors against Nazis. History inflicts its horrors again and again. The cycle needs to stop. Israel is a country in the OECD with a first world standard of living while Palestinians live in squalor and rely on a system of tunnels dug underground to get basic items for survival. These are a people so devastated that they have had to resort to building with mud bricks because of a shortage of building materials due to Israeli blockade and siege. Meanwhile you have Tel Aviv a couple hundred miles away which is one of the most prosperous cities on the planet. Do you see the problem there? Do you understand why, given these circumstances, I would paint a picture where the focus is placed on Palestinian suffering? There is far more of it to go around. As for my thoughts on violence in Russia, you'll have to wait until I release independent research on it.

I've compiled a synopsis of the current military conflict/humanitarian disaster in Gaza, along with its historical and regional contexts. I thought FDR listeners would find this of interest, and I sent a copy to Mike who forwarded it to a researcher that is currently working on compiling data for a presentation for FDR. Info included: Military positioning, brief summary of the crisis Gaza geography and demographics Background info on Hamas, its history Background info on Operation Cast Lead in 2008-9 Debunking Israeli propaganda Affects on children Regional context

https://www.youtube.com/user/barbarossaaaa/videos?flow=grid&view=0&sort=p Too many good videos to select just a few. I've learned a lot from Barbarossa and I'd highly suggest all men watch his videos.

They're mocking you because the fact you work hard means you've set a standard whereby they have to work hard. I'm assuming you guys don't make bonuses working retail unless you're on commission, so obviously the mockers are looking to get by with as little work as possible. At least that's what I think.

I'll be there. Thanks for the space, Daniel.