pap

Don't get shirty because you've lost the power to express yourself, or indeed, the ability to edit whatever frenzied message that you shot out in anger. The systematic, widespread extermination or attempted extermination of an entire national, racial, religious or ethnic group. Of course, you could argue that Palestinians still exist, by dint of the fact that 700,000 refugees fled when Israeli soldiers forced them out of homes and businesses. The rest just looks like a question of timetable to me. There are many parallels to draw upon here, and I agree with you on apartheid. Problem is, apartheid is predicated on the idea of racial supremacy, which was a very Nazi way of thinking. See ya at 00:01.

Don't need to, because that's not what you asked.

A couple of excellent interviews with Henry Siegman, former executive director of the Jewish American Congress. It'll take a couple of hours of your time, but if you're genuinely interested in getting a deeper understanding of the background and attendant hypocrisies, these candid interviews come highly recommended. Henry Siegman, Leading Voice of U.S. Jewry, on Gaza: "A Slaughter of Innocents" http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/30/henry_siegman_leading_voice_of_us U.S. Jewish Leader Henry Siegman to Israel: Stop Killing Palestinians and End the Occupation http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/31/us_jewish_leader_henry_siegman_to

Check your inverted racism there, Verbal. Is it your contention that Feiglin is the only person, either Israeli or of Jewish descent, that would come out with this? Your point is moot the moment anyone sees similar commentary from the numerous Feiglin-likes on the Internet. Ran into quite a few Israeli fascists who were all having a right old hoot at my mate being shot to death, largely on account of the fact he spent time helping Palestinians. I can send you the link to Feiglin's vile troll cousins if you want, but I wouldn't recommend it. Let's hope that's the case. Personally, I suspect Feiglin and the like will get everything they want. In time. Regardless, the man should be pulled up before the Genocide Convention. There's no glee here. I genuinely think the Israelis will do themselves and the rest of the Diaspora lasting harm if they continue along this path. Any sympathy that they have for past persecution and the mass murder inflicted on their people will evaporate if they orchestrate an effective genocide themselves.

The deputy speaker of the Knesset's plan for Palestine. http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/concentrate-and-exterminate-israel-parliament-deputy-speakers-gaza-genocide-plan Anyone that thinks the Nazi comparison is a little strong should really take a look. Some highlights:- “There are no two states, and there are no two peoples. There is only one state for one people.” a) The IDF [israeli army] shall designate certain open areas on the Sinai border, adjacent to the sea, in which the civilian population will be concentrated, far from the built-up areas that are used for launches and tunneling. In these areas, tent encampments will be established, until relevant emigration destinations are determined. e) Those who insist on staying, if they can be proven to have no affiliation with Hamas, will be required to publicly sign a declaration of loyalty to Israel, and receive a blue ID card similar to that of the Arabs of East Jerusalem. Verified at Facebook page, which in turn, is verified by Knesset's website. http://knesset.gov.il/mk/eng/mk_eng.asp?mk_individual_id_t=885 Which way to the Genocide Convention?

From my perspective, any attempt at equalising the situation is effectively propaganda, particularly if it plays the Hamas=Palestinian card, which this does. I don't think the video offers any solutions beyond making people feel slightly better about their apathy on a Friday night.

Not sure "don't be a d!ck" really covers it.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israelgaza-conflict-french-minister-says-solution-must-be-imposed-as-turkeys-pm-accuses-israel-of-deliberately-killing-mothers-and-children-9646491.html

Demonstration in London this Saturday:- http://stopwar.org.uk/events/august-9-national-demonstration-for-gaza-no-excuses-be-there#.U989PPldXcj

Well, it's always nice to be accused of making lazy comparisons by someone making nonsensical comparisons, especially when accompanied with the prior claim that the British somehow "won" the Troubles. Having spent three years of my life living in a post GFA Northern Ireland, I know that the situation over there is rather different to Israel and Gaza. First, though there are definitely areas that swing one way or the other, and notorious prisons like the Maze, there was never any equivalent of Gaza in Northern Ireland, never an area in which the general population were locked up, hemmed in, and left to die. Indeed, in many counties, including the one I lived in, allegiance alternated from town to town. In terms of democracy lost, residents of NI had to put up with checkpoints, secret trials and a British armed forces occupation. Far from ideal, but a far cry from the plight of the average Palestinian. Anyone wanting out could leave, and often did. Those in Gaza can't leave, nor could those trapped in the Second World War ghettos. The Palestinians have worse days than Bloody Sunday almost every time Israel rolls into town. Ridiculous, but I'll field it anyway. First off, you're wrong about Poland. The Germans did have territory there, the League of Nations free city of Danzig, ultimately the key point of dispute that led to the invasion. Long story short, we guaranteed the Poles safety, they actually believed it and got belligerent over Danzig. As Pat Buchanan says, the war guarantee guaranteed the war. Who knows what might have happened if it, and the corridor, were restored to German control. The invasion of France certainly couldn't be justified in the same way, nor does it need to be. You are now in the ridiculous position where you're arguing it's okay for Israel not to withdraw their forces because Adolf Hitler wouldn't have done the same thing with his forces in WW2. Finally on this point, is it now okay for any invader to do what you've done here and say "nah, nah - I'm not invading ya, honest. I'm just directly improving the territorial security of my land (by taking yours)"? I'm not claiming for a second that the Israelis are bunging Palestinians into gas chambers, but does it really make any difference over the long term? When tanks roll in and destroy schools, hospitals and the vital infrastructure? Look at how much Palestinians have lost in the last 70 years. Do you think they'll survive another century? Israel, for its own sake, should try to be the responsible modern state it claims to be, and recognise that it has to make concessions. I know you'll immediately counter with "but Hamas said...", but to drag your NI comparison back in again, this time usefully, a lot of stuff was said during the Troubles that people ignore now. My position has been consistent. Take off the stabilisers and let Israel fend for itself as an independent country. That means no vetoes, no special treatment and the correct application of international law. I'm surprised more people didn't vote for them. Still, 44% of the vote is not a substantial share of the vote under the circumstances. People vote for extremists because they think they'll fight harder. More than half of all voting age Palestinians rejected what Hamas had to offer, yet you've tried to equate Palestinians with them throughout. I'd be about to congratulate you for a bit of honest debating, but there is this. "Condemn the deaths of the three Israel soldiers right now, or you're an anti-semite!" (Did I catch your subtext there correctly, Charlie?) I've always found your jingoistic regurgitation of history to be a little juvenile, but these last couple of posts have been a revelation in plumbing the shallows of your historical knowledge. You will taken seriously no more. Quite the feat, considering your audience.

Why do you find this offensive, and why aren't the comparisons valid? Merely stating that you're offended by another's opinion is not an argument, even if you try to shift debate onto more manageable ground afterward. I think that there are some startling comparisons to be made, if one is brave enough to make them. Galloway has already made the Warsaw ghetto comparison, one I've already repeated and you've ignored. A group of people, hemmed in, without political representation or certainty in any other outcome apart from dying within their walls. Palestinians have been rounded up, dehumanised and left to die on the few pieces of land they have left. It also doesn't help that you're arguing from the perspective of a recent rocket bringing all this calamity. Since Israel was founded, the Palestinians have lost homes, businesses, whole cities and any ancestral right to return to the land of their birth, despite the borders being open for anyone Jewish looking to help build the Israeli state. You are demonstrably incapable of seeing this episode from the perspective of the Palestinians, which is odd, as if the shoe were on the other foot, and proud Toby Bull was ekeing it out in some cave in Cornwall, I doubt you'd have too many problems if he fought back against his hypothetical invaders. This is a poor comparison - maybe if you weren't trying to serve two masters, implying that British persistence somehow "won" the conflict, you'd have made a better fist of it. If the British derived any victory from Northern Ireland, it was the realisation that while propaganda might be something you can feed the public, it's not suitable for conflict resolution. Sorting something as historically complex out would take a lot of messy, and sometimes very ugly decisions. People formerly branded as terrorists, legally unable to have their actual voices heard on television, are now part of a power-sharing arrangement in Stormont. This is because the UK belatedly realised that we were never going to solve NI by killing terrorists to death, that we inevitably had to deal with the people we didn't much like, because they were going to be around afterwards. The present government Israel has no interest in a two state solution, and therefore isn't as constrained. Nope. It all began in 1948, when people were forcibly removed from their homes and pushed toward the ghettos we see now. Again, nope. Hamas is not a state. Palestinian doesn't equal Hamas, however many times you try to make it so. To use your crappy NI example, the IRA had some pretty extreme views too, including it being perfectly legitimate to assassinate members of the British serving forces. They are part of the political process now, and condemn the very violence they used to orchestrate. That's only possible because at some point, someone stopped treating them as merely terrorists. You're going one further. We've had two schools bombed this week and you're still talking about Hamas. Oh aye? When was the last time that Israel was in the hands of those that practiced Judaism? Honestly Charlie, I'm surprised that someone that touts himself as a historian can come up with this guff. You frame the whole conflict as if it starts and ends with Hamas. I'll suppose they'll be to blame for the Palestinian genocide when there are none of them left. Posthumously, of course Much respect lost here, I'm afraid.

I got a Logitech Flightstick yesterday. I was going to go for the X52 by Saitek, but the only one my local PC World had in stock had already been opened, and was cheekily still at full RRP. Pretty happy with the new control scheme. I'm doing the retro thrusters on the keyboard, but pretty much everything else is done through the stick. It has tons of buttons I've not even bothered mapping yet, so I could potentially move some of my other commands onto it. The worst thing on the 360 controller is probably the throttle. It's digital, kinda relies on a meter. Not great for precision control. A flightstick with a proper throttle makes a lot of difference - so does rudder control. I can see this game becoming a YouTube wonder. There are so many opportunities for little meta challenges, like docking a ship in a particularly expedient way, or my new favourite - blasting out of a space station at full speed.

JackFrost - you've talked much sense on this thread, and I applaud you for that, but let's not narrow the debate down to Hamas. I'm sure that's what Israel would like, but in truth, their forces are rolling against Palestinians of all political persuasions. I agree with you on them being deluded about being able to defeat Israel through military might, but I wonder, would any of us really be any different if some ancient claimant to the UK suddenly got the backing to oust the resident population, and we were hemmed into some part of the country, undergunned and entirely ignored by any legitimate political process? You are completely correct about them being a tool for Israel, but it'd never work outside the machinery of a mass media that seems hell bent on apologism and looking the other way.

Some screenies from a triple monitor set-up. Quality not as good as in-game, as I had to shrink 'em using JPG, but yeah, wow - and believe me when I say it looks even more impressive in motion.

I'll take that, and raise you with an "Alps is nowhere near as tedious as people trying to score cred off Alps". Nothing intended your way.

This is a Telegraph article from 2012 goes some way to explaining our involvement. The cowardice at the heart of our relationship with Israel. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/9740044/The-cowardice-at-the-heart-of-our-relationship-with-Israel.html

We are involved. That is the point. Right now, Israel should be being dragged up on all sorts of international crimes. It isn't, because as we've said before, action is vetoed by the US and UK. In Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, we were being asked to invade other countries without proof that they needed invading. I don't think there is any real doubt as to the current oppressors of the Palestinians.

That's where you'd be wrong; it actually has everything to do with us. In 1917, the British Empire agreed the principle of a Jewish homeland. In 1948, the British Empire made good on this agreement Since 1948 onwards, the UK has vetoed UN resolutions against Israel after it has broken international law. Both David Cameron and Ed Miliband have declared themselves Zionists, which only acts to legitimise the ongoing human rights abuses in Gaza as well as the disastrously disproportionate excursions that we're witnessing right now. I don't go on the main board and wax lyrical about how we need someone to protect the back four, because in truth, my knowledge of football isn't that great, I'd be talking out of my ring and made to look a fool, especially if I was idiotic enough to take a pop at someone who did know what he or she was talking about. Just a thought.

You can change your handle at any time and retain all of the followers. Source: me, after changing my Twitter handle.

I've just been keeping the thread going until the real experts weigh in, Jamie. What is your understanding of how this crisis came to be?

What about all the Palestinians that don't belong to Hamas? This comment merely illustrates how well the Palestinians = Hamas = Terrorists message is burrowing its way into the minds of the unwary. Israel is a fundamentalist rogue state which promotes anxiety, operates on extremes and the certainty that it is morally right. It is in violation of several UN resolutions; the only reason it has been able to avoid them is because transatlantic apologists have always vetoed any actions against their international law breaking. Or perhaps more succinctly:- Perhaps not a monopoly, but pretty one-sided - and I think there are better uses for your analytical talents than this verbose, fruitless attempt at equalisation. Would you have been as non-committally "two sides to every story" over the Warsaw ghetto or apartheid in South Africa, both comparable (in their own way) to the way Palestinians are presently treated?

I've been on PC's for years, but have always fancied a Mac. Was in PC World yesterday and they were promoting their Mac stock on a load on interest free bundles. Didn't buy one, but indicated an interest at some point. The missus informs me that Juvenile Unit #2 fancied a Mac as well. She's already got a decent-ish laptop, which could be given to someone else, so I asked whether she'd prefer a Mac to her current machine. Oh no, she'd like a Mac but she still needs a PC. Pretty much describes every PC owner that has ever fancied getting a Mac. Should give you an idea on priority.

http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Elite:_Dangerous_FAQ#Will_there_be_newtonian_physics.3F

You can buy wired 360 controllers which just go into the USB slot. There's also a version out there that comes with a wireless dongle, so you can use wireless pads too. Personally, I wouldn't recommend a 360 controller to play Elite: Dangerous with. I'm starting to look at flight sticks myself.

Finally got a nice little trading run from the game's starting position. I am hauling textiles from Aveban City to Chango Dock, using a 360 controller for now. The headlook view is amazing; probably the single biggest upgrade beyond the mere cosmetic. It's useful, you can work out where stuff is without moving the direction of travel. I've got no docking computer, so I'm having to do all of that manually. One of the coolest parts of this game is queuing up to dock and seeing a ship you've never seen before, wondering "wtf is that?".