Just a Reminder

War has tragic consequences, especially for people under leaders that do not care for their lives, but the only way to balance the necessary principles of self defense of a group and consideration for other groups is to fight only in self defense and ethically, minimizing the harm inevitable to the neutralizing of the threat.

If we reject that, we will be rewarding aggression and carelessness, and will end up with neither of the principles protected, in a world full of insane extremist leaders and real violence that is always bigger than the side effects of a country defending itself.

The Journalist Interviewed

 

The Economic Force of Ideologies

When we see the atitudes and opinions of the media and international organization, it is hard not to notice some tendencies.

And honestly, I don't get so dismayed anymore.

There is a lot of honest people in the World, but there are also forces of money and power around.

The human being has long ago learned that there are easiest ways to grow more than their oponents than playing fair.

But when we talk about propaganda, some people think it would all naturally be dominated by the United States, because it has the biggest Economy.

We should not be blind to the economic power of natural resources, and the growth of China, for instance.

And another extremely important thing to think about: how much of the economic force of an extremely controlled Society is alligned and at service of an unilateral political project, compared to democratic societies?

There are strong forces around that do not like human freedom and individual rights.

And people who claim to defend the oppressed often distort things more than clarify.

Also This

 

And This

 

The Middle Path in a Volatile Environment

 

Much More Harm

The mutual protection that people of a group provide to one another, protection from transgressors inside and aggressors from outside, is one of the most basic principles without which no human being can live a peaceful life.

The principle of having empathy for people from another group is also fundamental.

In wars, those two principles seem to clash.

The only possible solution seems to be finding the point where these two principles meet: you don't attack peaceful neighbors, and when you have to strike in self-defense you never aim at civillians, and do the best you can to mitigate civillian harm.

There will still be collateral damage, but the moment you take away the right of a group to fight to defend itself trying to balance those two principles, you are rewarding the leaderships that promote aggression and don't care for their own people.

Because we will be "forgeting" who started situations and releasing them from the responsibility to provide safety for their own.

Collateral damage is always tragic, but rewarding aggressive and careless leaders will have evil consequences that are neither hipotetical nor abstract. Nor are they new.

This logic of how things work in our planet should not feel so counterintuitive. It only goes to show that the concern for human life should not be limited to seeing war casualties and suddenly being outraged.

There is a part of the World where life is not valued. We just can't magicaly make life on that side of the fence to have the same logic that it has in peaceful places.

But we can, and must, be clear with leaders that don't value the life of their own people.

And we certainly must be ready to show some kind of response when the resources of some region start being alocated for ideologies, capacity and plans of aggression.

Why are we hesitant in considering tyrants as enemies, and then want people under their rule not to be subject to the consequences of those ideologies?

There is nothing gained in being blind to diferences in human Societies. Each people have their own traditions that obviously must be respected, but the valuation or devaluation of human life must be seen as a primordial and not abstract aspect of reality.

We can't go all the way and suddenly protect everybody in the World as if their were our own children, but the more firm we are with our standards, the more we make them clear, not being friends with people who treat human life as disposable, suspecting them, and, honestly, being always against them, always fighting them in some form, the more we will be acting in favor of life.

Until then, each and every sudden outburst of global "concern" can and will be used to cause much more harm than relief.

Enter Into The Picture

 "The Syrian Civil War (2010s) killed ten times more Arab Muslins then the current War between Israel and Hamas".

"Oh, you are changing subject"

Really?

This is the territory of France projected, in scale, over the Middle East.

This is Texas.

This is the region where you expect Israel to make miracles.

Ladies and gentlemen, activists, journalists, UN, say Hi ...

to the most careful gun of Texas.

Human Safety, Principles, and the Present Opportunity

Since the beginning, humans have been forming groups. Tribes, Nations. That's how we organized societies. A group of people that provide each other some safety. Protect each other from transgressors inside the group and from agressors from outside. Cultures have formed, with shared values and a sense of mutual protection. That's just how it is. Besides this group protection, is there any other way in which any human being can feel safe and build a peaceful life?

Countries came to be. We have to agree that this group protection is a fundamental principle of human life.

Now, of course, we learned, our moral sense evolved, and we developed another principle: the necessity of caring for all humanity, the necessity of having empathy for people in the other groups. This is a very good principle, and necessary for building a better World. I believe it must be considered fundamental, too.

Well, in a war, these two principles pose complex questions for each other. Even when a country goes to war to eliminate a source of threat after being attacked, as is the case of Israel in their war against Hamas, there is going to be colateral damage, there will be loss of civillian lives, even when you do your best to minimize it. 

But you can't totally give away the right of a group to protect itself. So, how to balance these two principles?

People talk about "proportion". But I think it is a wrong idea of proportion. They compare numbers of civillian casualties. But it is not so simple. In fact, you don't hurt one single civillian on the other side to "match the number" of your hurt civillians. That would be wrong.

Once you go to a war because the other ways to bring safety to your people didn't work, you fight for a goal - namely, to eliminate the source of the threat - and you make the best to achieve the necessary goal with the minimal damage possible.

Journalists like to talk about numbers. But how do you calculate what would happen if the Israeli forces haven't destroyed so many missile launchers, both in Gaza and in Lebannon - remembering that Hamas and Hezbollah started firing missiles immediately after October 7th, the massacre that started this war? How do you calculate what would happen if Hezbollah launched the operation "Conquer the Galilee" - a plan to invade Israel by the North killing people, a plan that was in advanced stage? How to calculate what would happen if the terrorists managed to totally take Israeli small towns and communities, gaining terrain, as was their plan?

And moreover, how do you calculate what would be the future of Muslin Arabs if Terrorist Organizations backed by Iran were allowed to grow freely and completely destabilize the region, considering that just the Syrian Civil War caused ten times more Muslin Arab casualties than this Israel-Hamas War?

Well, since you don't have an Omniscient Computer, able to calculate perfectly the exact mathematical outcome in the future of every single human decision, human beings act guided by principles. What else if left for us?

You put the fundamental principles side by side. Like the principle of self-defense of a people and the principle of empathy for all people. Then you try to find the balance. You try to serve each one the best you can without abandoning the other.

You protect your people. You don't aim at civillians on the other side. Even in strikes against military targets, you do the best you can to minimize colateral damage.

Asking someone to do more than that, is asking them to abandon the right of self-defense. And that is like asking someone to sacrifice their own people. Can't you see this kind of sacrifice can't be the guarantee of any good?

What is left, is to find the meeting point of those two fundamental principles. Which is fighting with ethics, minimizing the damage.

Israel has shown their consistent focus on the Terrorist Organizations.They have eliminated pratically all of the main leaders, the most protected people.

This World has always been full of wars. The World we want, a World without war, will come with the cooperation between peoples, between Nations. It can't be brought to be by Israel alone.

To move forward towards a better World, we need to ascribe the right responsibilities. If in this sequence of events - Hamas promotes a massacre on Israel - Israel fights back - Hamas uses their people as human shields - if in this sequence of events you place the responsibility on Israel, you are rewarding both aggression and carelessness.

Some people seem to be guided by this idea: Israel is a Country, Hamas are terrorists, you can demand things from a country, you can't demand things from a terrorist organization. Wait... are you sure of that? What if you can?

People who value life want a World with no wars. But there is an other kind of people too, have you realized?

The other side exist, too. And it's alive and manouvering. And the exact moment you reject the pursuit of a meeting point between the principles of self-defense and consideration for all peoples, you reward carelessness and aggression.

In other words, when we think of the future of humanity, we either balance those two things, or we will end up with none.

Now there is a ceasefire, and the agreements say Hamas must disarm. Instead of pressing for that - which would bring a better time for the region, including for Gazans, most leaders of the World prefer to demonize Israel.

Some even talk about a Palestinian State, when it was precisely the rejection of the Two State Solution by the Arab leaders that caused all this - and they still didn't say "Israel is legitimate".

On excuses like "sovereignity of Gaza" - bullshit talk about the sovereignity of a people who lives under a tyrannic Terrorist Organization for decades, people seem comfortable to lose the best opportunity we had in a long time to start erasing Terrorism.

I don't know. Maybe they don't want to see how Israel would act without Terrorism. Maybe they've been talking about "genocide" for so long that they are afraid to give Israel a chance to show that all they want is peace.

Prints

 

Clarity

I say to look to natural reserves as a source of power not for bringing hatred, but for clarity about power.

I don't want any Global War - God forbid. But the vocabulary of "oppression" is being perverted for political agendas.

Africa was raped? Yes, and it was a bloody shame.

India was mistreated, and so were native americans and some others.

But China and the Arab Nations had Strong Empires along most of History.

This in no way means we should consider all chinese people or arab people as inherent enemies. That would be untrue and morally wrong.

But extending the oppressed condition to Nations who aren't victims of oppression is a historical mistake.

And leads us to strange inversions.

Like calling the Jews colonizers. Jews are not colonizers of other peoples. As a people - because of course there are bad individuals everywhere - but as a people, they've just been carrying on.

And Israel is the only country they ever had - back there, and now.

IDF

 

Defense and The Absence of It

If you care for human life, you should go a little deeper than the television news and social media, and understand that what happens in the World is a bit more complex than what the slogan people want us to think. You can't go around reducing everything to a mathematical question, making simplistic calculations about human life and death with the numbers you see on the News, and throw away foundational values of civilization, like the right of a country to defend itself, just because it is not your country.

In the current war Israel is in, there are losses on both sides, but the fact that the number in gaza is bigger - although i repeat: since when 1200 is a small number? - it shouldn't erase the order of things, of causes and consequences, who started it, and the cruelty of a diabolical attack purposely random.

It is all very tragic, like wars always are, but we must understand that what many people are demanding - a total restraint on the israeli side - brings no peace. No good development to the region.

While people in the West can feel temporarily satisfied with Israel giving up its strength, the situation in the region will just keep gradually getting worse, with more violence brewing.

How can I say that for sure? Well, because in reality, October 7th was the culmination of a long story, not the start. People who just get it all from the News, may feel that October 7th was the start of something, then Israel's response made it worse. But for the Israelis, it was the result of many, many years of a Terrorist Organization growing just beyond the border, making attacks and preparing to do more and more. It showed that, if that enemy can do evil, it will do, every time, and nothing will "convince" them not to. It was when Israel decided they can't wait anymore for a peaceful solution with Hamas. Or Hezbolah.

After the October 7th massacre, Israel was left with two possibilities. In one, you do nothing and just watch Hamas grow their capabilities of doing harm. In the other, you go to War, and it will have colateral damage, which is tragic.

But we must take away, from our minds, the idea of some kind of innocence in doing nothing. The idea that if you are not acting, you have nothing to respond to. In a situation like this, not taking action is a decision, and every decision has its consequences. If you make the decision of doing nothing, there will also be colateral damage to that decision - more attacks on your people - and you will be responsible for the decision you made.

So the two possibilities, doing nothing or going to war, then translate into two ways of seeing moral duty.

In one, you stick to the notion that when your loved ones are attacked, there must be something you need to do.

In the other, you are being complacent with evil for mathematical reasons.

That kind of mathematics never seem to bring any peace or any good at long term. For Israel and for the World.

See, when israel says that this terrorist activity destabilizes the entire region, they are not talking about simple political polarizations, or small political crisis. They are talking about a region where huge waves of violence are not rare at all, and where terrible dictatorships find their way into power and become very hard to be taken away. A region which is the stage for terrible Civil Wars and horrible massacres.

I am not saying this to defend an idea that Israel has the right to do "anything". It's obvious that, no matter what, they will always have the obligation to avoid colateral harm as much as they can. But I am saying that your numbers just don't have all the answers.

The Jews know that they deserve the safety they are building, after so many centuries of persecution.

Some people don't really get the idea of Peoplehood. It's hard to explain the Israeli point of view for people who don't understand this kind of connection. Peoplehood brings a shared sense of safety. Defending this safety is defending something that is necessary for the World.

We must stop pretending, for convenience, that the World was at peace untill the nation who is winning the current conflict started firing. That would make it so easy to find the solution, wouldn't it?

But then we risk to erase universal right and wrong. Which I believe some people would like.

Some people want to make us forget to ask who started a war, and other chains of cause and consequence. Including the moral imperative of defending your people.

When israelis hear the names of Terror groups, what comes to their minds is not simply a story they heard on the news. It's a danger that is right at their fence, a group of people who killed, raped, kidnaped, a whole lot of people, at random, and laughed all along, and all that very, very recently. A monster who promises to do more if it can.

A people is not obliged to deliver themselves to human sacrifice. This would be insane.

There are responsibilities that the World should have taken upon himself if we say we care so much for lives in the Middle East. We should not have just watched weapons being brought to Gaza, tunnels being built, children being indoctrined in Terror, Hamas becoming the government of Gaza, and so on.

There are always voices that raise themselves against any kind of "judgement" about what happens in other parts of the World. They say we can't "intervene with someone else's sovereignity". Well, we can't impose that people become exactly like us, but if we can't do anything when a weapon storage is being built, when a doctrine of destroying the neighbor is being established, then how can we change the natural consequences of it?

I do believe that, when a cult of death, when an ideology that clearly claims for the destruction of another country is developing, a line is being crossed, and some kind of action must be taken. Otherwise, it is only hipocrisy to say we care for life everywhere.

Now Israelis, and Palestinians too, are paying for the silence of the West while all this situation we have now was being created by insane leaders.

And if we become unable to respond to this insane leaders, then everybody, including Muslin Arabs, will be at their mercy.

It is not any secret that they use their own people as human shields, making the work insanely hard for Israel.

But we need common basic notions of good and evil, a good memory to remember who started the wars, a loud voice against cults of death, to know which side is the defender. Only then we can find our way in this World which is tragically always at war.

So we can allow the growing of the values that will make mankind free.

Is all this too abstract? Common values of good and evil, peoplehood, who started things, do this sound like "just talk" to you? Is cause and consequence an abstract thing?

I have a strange proposal: what if we joined our desire for peace with the possibilities of artificial intelligence and create a mechanism that makes impossible for any weapon, be it guns of missil launchers or fighter jets or whatever, to fire a single shot if there is any possibility of civilian damage? Imagine that we are so commited that we make this mechanism so powerful that no weapon in our country, existing or to be built, ever escape its surveillance, and it is absolutely impossible to ever, ever turn it off.

Now imagine that 3/4 of the countries in the World accept the proposal, but 1/4 doesn't. Now, what should we do? Imagine that the 3/4 are so willing for it that they activate their systems anyway, now just the other 1/4 doesn't have it. 

Which, of course, includes Iran... and Russia... North Korea... you got the picture.

Don't you think it would be insane from the start? Or do you think it would not be insane as long as the violence never gets at your door? God knows I hope it never gets here, but then, aren't we being a bit unfair to the Israelis?

Seriously, when you see the image of a masked and armed terrorist, does it feel abstract?

Your simplistic view is abstract. You rely on the false innocence of non action, while ignoring what it means in this Universe to erase the right of peoples to defend themselves.

And this will make us lose every oppirtunity that appears to end terrorism, this cult of death that already caused so much damage and just can't be tolerated.

From My Heart

 Yes, we know who started this war.

We know how diabolical october 7th was.

Yes, we know the Terrorists are backed by Iran, and they didn't stop attacking.

Yes, we know that they put their own people in danger as a strategy.

Stil...

Civillian deaths are tragic.

Horrible.

What can I say?

All I can say right now is this:

I swear by God that if we were in Word War Ii, and my wife and my son were somehow stuck in occupied France and they died of a bomb from the Allies... I would blame the Nazis. Squarely.

( Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, with their monstruous plan for thr World )

Israel, keep doing the best to minimize harm.

World, the time to end Terrorism is now.

"In principle"

Imagine I send you a bill for fixing your computer. I didn't make it work, didn't tell you what to do, didn't show you the exact component where the problem is. But I solved the question "in principle".

Like saying Gaza is a "concentration camp". People are not in uniforms, forced to do things, like the Jews in the actual Concentration Camps, the ones that originated the term. People have cars and homes. There are streets and commerces in Gaza. So, wait a minute... Maybe it's something else. Let's think of what it actually is.

The same way, Israel does not have, in its Constitution, a discriminatory device like the "apartheid" in South África. So, whatever the problem is, and I am not saying problems don't exist, it is something else.

Or "genocide". Israel states that they are fighting to dismantle Hamas - and Hamas did attack them first, bloodly. The war does not have a high proportion of civillian casualties for combatent casualties, compared to other wars. And Hamas didn't surrender yet. Also, as tragic as the casualties are, the number is not even close to the historically undisputed genocides.

But people say Gaza is kind of the same as a concentration camp "in principle", Israel has kind of the same as an apartheid "in principle". Genocide "in principle".

Israel is not saying Hamas is kind of like a terrorist group "in principle". They are affirming Hamas strictly fits all the commonly accepted definitions of terrorism, and then following on with the job of showing facts to prove it.

So if you are saying Israel is an "abusive state", then call it an "abusive state" if you want, but then go and show facts to prove it. Call it "unnecessary war casualties" if you want, them go to the hard job of arguing about it. Don't scream slogans and act like the conversation is over.

But it is always easier to go around borrowing the feelings generated by different situations.

When Israel talk about October 7th, it's a thing in itself. Not a symbol of something else.

Stupid Comparisons

 

The Sign

 

What Kind

Definition

 

Same Situation?

 

Back From Where

 

No Tolerance For Terrorism

 

One More About Defense

 

Not So Simple

Political discussions are important, but we must avoid a world vision that is excessively simplistic.

This kind of simplistic vision  can lead people to automatically hate anyone who is generically placed on the "other side".

Moreover, it can make people think that everybody on the planet who is generically placed on "their side of the fence" politically will always be on their side, no matter how badly they act towards their fellow human being.

No matter what your "algorithm" tell you,  there is still more to the world than that, thank God.

One More About Good And Evil

 

Do Something or Do Nothing?

 

The Button & The Brain

As I've said before, I believe there is a deterministic aspect of our existence and a real free will, that don't exclude each other, they are just diferente angles of seeing the same things. Our actions have causes, but all the web of causes and effects of the World could only be seen by a highest point of view which we will never posses, so from the human perspective, we do have free will.

Still, the deterministc angle raises some questions. Are there people who have more "luck" than the others? On the other hand, is anyone guilty for having "luck"?

I think we can fairly agree that good things happen to good people, bad things happen to good people, good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to bad people. If being good was always easy, it would be not really "being good". One things that I find important to note, however, is that when "good" things happen to bad people, I firmly believe it doesn't really give them inner peace, it doesn't give them real joy.

But, are the people who do bad things somehow innocent because of the deterministic angle? The free will angle shows that people have choice, and, even though it's tragic, if a person takes an evil path, that's what he becomes. That becomes what he has inside.

And as for the bad things that happen to good people, as far as I know, every religious tradition have among their most important commandments, that we all should try to do something for the people for whom life is not being the kindest.

The problem comes when a lot of people start to think about this as if the people who have some "luck" have an "original sin" to atone for.

This idea of "original sin" comes from a purely economic point of view. From seeing the goods of the World as limited, quantifiable, and thinking that what someone has, the other will be lacking.

Of course this thought encounters its "perfect" expression. in an ideology that sees all the processes of human life as having their origin in material economic diferences.

Money is quantifiable and easy to be considered s limited, so they can oversimplify everything and say that what abounds here will surely lack there. But it is not true because Civilization started and developed precisely because of the fact that the Earth does give more than what we put in it. So does the Universe.

And more importantly, Money is far from being the one and only big fator behind everything. And suffering is not a monopoly of the economic poor.

Imagine a little girl that sees a man pointing a gun to her father's head. There is pain, there is trauma...

Now of course, we must care for the poor, but the problem is the illusion that the solution is easily achieved. That ending the economic problems would be the most simple thing in the World.

It is easy to tell people to think: "why don't rich people just give everything right now"?

Okay, imagine if you have 300 millions and there is a million people in you country starving. You could give 300 bucks to each of them and solve their problem... for a week.

And if you pick 300 hundred people at random and give a million to each, what is the evidence that everybody's problem will be solved in long term?

If we made the - impossible in practice - total distribution, that is, we gather everybody's money then distribute it equally among the people, how should we keep producing everything we need?

I mean, the Earth gives more than what you put in it, but for that there are tools, techniques, strategies. The "distribution" would produce a chaos, and more poverty. Who would produce what? With what tools? What would happen with the money value and the inflation?

To be honest, I do think rich people, especially the super rich, could be doing, in a lot of stances, better for the World.

Take those big tech giants. I personally don't think they are doing the best they could. But if they are not caught in crime, then assaulting them is wrong, and they are caught in crime, only legal procedures are acceptable. That being said, I have a right to imagine, and say, that guys like them could do better.

I know nobody has a trillion in his pocket to dispose of it anyway he wants, they have to respond to stock holders all the time. But yes, I think they have a chance to do something much more inclusive and fruitful than they are doing. But why would they listen to someone like me, anyway?

By the way, my main contempt with the Internet giants, is that they do not behave in an open and clear way with their algorithms, with their rank numbers, and have the power to "ban" people and make it virtually impossible for a person who gets banned to defend herself and get back.

They are like restaurant owners who shouldn't have the right to refuse to serve someone. Or better yet, they are private builders and administrators of roads, that have a duty to make it safe, acessible and democratic.

But anyway, it's the idea - the false idea - that everybody that have swimming pools in their houses could just push a button and all the suffering in the World would be disappear, that is the biggest poisonous idea, a mental poison given to many people.

"Not building" a swimming pool does not magically solves the problem of someone else.

But the idea that everybody that is prosper could push a button - or snap their fingers - then all suffering would disappear - is extremely dehumanizing.

Because, if it is that simple, then why don't they just push that button? Why don't they just snap their fingers? The insane conclusion is that they don't care for nobody, not even for children, right?

And once you start seeing things this way, violence becomes justifiable. It would be okay to hurt these "monsters", right?

And once people start taking the path of violence, something happens within them. In their minds. I'm no pshychologist, psychiartrist or neurologist, but I am pretty sure there is damage. Or better yet, it shapes who they become. They become people for whom violence is the main things, destruction is not only normal but desirable. It becomes harder and harder to return to a path where peace and joy are achievable.

Take the problem of Israel and their neighbors. In the past, History shows us, in the end of Empires, two things: Jews expelled from antisemitic Arab countries and Nazi Europe, and Arabs being displaced from part of the Palestine. By seeing only the problem of the Palestinians, and not the pain of the Jews, not the fact that more than 99 percent of the Middle East still belongs to the Arabs, and that some Jews always lived in Palestine and returning for Israel is a deep cultural dream and became the only possibility of real Jewish Independence - not count on the goodwill of others all around the World - by seeing only one side, you make the Jews the great villains.

And you kill the chances of finding a real good solution. As if the Israeli were just witholding the happiness of the Palestinians in their hands for cruelty, and not just defending themselves in a violent region.

You sponsor an ideology where killing is acceptable, violence is the goal, destruction serves a good purpose. Bomb killings, stabings in the street, all creating an absurd system of reward in their minds, that culminated in a diabolical attack where more than a thousand - by no means a small number - people were mudered at random, raped and kidnapped, which started this war. And fed an insane form of thought in the minds of many Arabs, that only takes them further from the possibilities of inner peace.

There is an old little story, that I quote here as illustration, that, when a Nazi officer went to kill an old Jew, the Jew turned to heavens and thanked God. "What are you thanking him for?" The Jew answered, "because he didn't make me like you".

As students and others go to the street and chant "Gloablize the Intifada", I would say that, well, you seem comfortable in wishing evil to the Jews, we are realizing that, but do you see what you are wishing upon the Muslin Arabs?

The worst. The worst for their minds, the worst for their lives.

As is anyone who says things like "let the poor take arms and kill the rich".

Killing opportunities of peace will never bring happinness.