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Red Dawn

I caught an incredibly bad film tonight, Red Dawn. Mutatis mutandis it could be a Palestinian fantasy of 1967 onwards, only the people defending their homeland are terrorists and the 'Koreans' the good guys. Hope all is well.Nishidani (talk) 22:11, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

All is well. Taking a very long break from WP. Will probably return sometime in the future, but not soon. Focusing on my professional work, as well as on reading books, and enjoying spending time with my two puppies, working on my yard, talking to friends and family, etc.
Every day I read at least the edit summaries of all your contributions, and the full text of your contributions to talk pages, noticeboards etc. Good job on motivating the community to improve that profoundly and vastly incorrect, indeed largely false and misleading, lead section of the WP article on Jews. Enjoyed reading your insightful, thoughtful, evidence-based contributions to these, as well as other, discussions. And good job on keeping your calm and composure in the face of the relentless onslaught of vitriol and ad-hominem attacks on your character and motivations, including the many sick, twisted, baseless innuendos, derogatory hints, implications or insinuations from the usual crowd of civil pov pushers and not-so-civil, serial, habitual, obsessive violators of NPOV, OR, V and RS.
Reading your comment above, I'm glad I missed catching Red Dawn. I've been enjoying watching many good movies recently, mostly foreign films, especially European, Asian, Israeli, Arab, etc (as well as many older Bananamerican films). For example, to our pleasant surprise, we've greatly enjoyed a relatively large number of good films from Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Iceland. And China and Japan.
I have also been re-reading my copies of books by philosophers, thinkers and scientists such as Sheldon Wolin, who died last month. Especially his two most recent books on Inverted totalitarianism. I highly recommend the following conversation, where Wolin and Chris Hedges explain in great depth and breadth why capitalism and democracy cannot co-exist:
  • Link to 8-part conversation (8 separate consecutive parts): [1]
  • Link to full version (all 8 parts combined): [2]
You wrote on WP recently that you've made Quince jam and Pomegranate wine (or juice). Quince jam is my favorite, together with rose-petal jam. And I have a big Pomegranate tree bearing a large amount of fruit every year, I'm now inspired by you to make more productive use of the fruit. Do you use a special device or tool to extract the Pomegranate fruit-seeds? What do you recommend? (I've not yet researched this online, there's probably some tutorials/ info on YouTube ...)
By the way, the WP articles on Quince and Pomegranate are a pleasure to read, with many beautiful photos.
Keep up the good work. Hoping to hear from you soon. Love, Ijon. -- IjonTichy (talk) 00:31, 10 November 2015 (UTC)
I hadn't noticed Wolin's demise, (unlike that of the late lamented, and similar thinker, Gerald Cohen back in 2009), and I'm indebted for your links to the RN video interviews, which I will take in slowly when my house is less encumbered by noise. I'm glad to see you are well, and even more so that you are enjoying a long wikibreak.
I read in Newsweek in the late 70s, I think, an article on suburban trash archaeology in Houston, and it's held me in good stead as a 'tip' (sorrow for the pun: 'rubbish dump' in Australian usage!), as I've foraged through the 'news', which is mostly instantaneous rubbish with a decay rate superior to that of an Ununoctium isotope. One can find out as much about the world by sieving crap, arguably, as from reading Aristotle's Prior Analytics, though it's best to do the former, obviously, after having mastered the latter. I apply this also to trashy popular culture with films like Red Dawn (I made the wrong link to it, I was referring to the 2012 version - their narrative structures are, unknown to the entrepreneurs of patriotism who make them (perhaps Yoram Globus/Menahem Golan etc. etc.etc., were more canny in creating all those crap movies for a political purpose), and the force of analogy appears to be lost on the mass audience. Red Dawn is just a remake of Red Dawn, which had far better actors, and both go back to Invasion U.S.A, 1952. Among the fundamental books for my generation, Leslie Fiedler's Love and Death in the American Novel held a high place, it gave one a sense of profound recurrent patterns over the messy promiscuity of time's endless churning, in line with the vogue for archetypical analysis from Mircea Eliade (a closet fascist who wrote two good books however) to Northrop Frye. It's a lost world now, I guess, but the conceptual gridwork was sound, and helped one reduce, without loss of sensitivity to nuance, a dizzying plethora of novels and films to a manageable framework. I think it was Vladimir Propp who said, or cited either Grimm or Goethe as saying, that mankind has only 5 basic plots for the infinite sea of stories it generates. That's why news is never 'new'. Everything that happens in the I/P conflict, to cite the obvious example, happened 70-80 years ago, and even then, most of the content is in the Book of Joshua and a number of other chronicles.
The only tool used to extract pomegranate seeds is a swat to keep my nephews from getting near enough to plunder them. Just the fingers, to avoid squashing or wasting the juice which tends to squirt. You soak them in pure alcohol for 20 odd days, filter the juice, while separately you make with 2 cups of water and one cup of sugar, and peels of lemon, a concoction, and when it is all dissolved, you leave it to cool, and then mix it in with the pomegranate juice, and after a few hours, bottle it. More or less. I'm glad you have a garden to work, it's a source of infinite pleasure,-especially in these times, if one goes to it alert to the message of A. D. Hope's poem Standardisation murmuring on one's mental lips and one can get a lot of good clean food from one with little labour. If you have a lemon tree, use it as a toilet, to pee on. Does wonders and saves water wastage by flushing. Best as always Nishidani (talk) 15:01, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
Without wishing to disturb either your intelligent withdrawal from this rathouse or leisure, I came across, in a very very good deconstructive article on how many postwar myths identifying Arab and also Palestinian national aspirations with Nazism were fabricated, the following remark:-

The specter of a “Nazi Palestine” in the hypothetical event of Axis victory in the war has been shaped for an American readership. The Perish-Judea literature remains steadfastly silent on the depth and prevalence of prewar and wartime American judeophobia as well as the immovable public resistance to providing haven or temporary refuge for European Jews beyond the restricted quotas established in 1924... The major primary source for American anti-Jewish hate production is the four-volume The International Jew that was sponsored by Henry Ford and put together by a team of writers and investigators working for Ford’s Dearborn Independent newspaper. It influenced Hitler and other future leaders of the Nazi party and contributed to the racist and anti-Semitic backlash on immigration that would last throughout the Nazi period. For the judeophobic and pro-Nazi sentiments in America, see Lee 1980, Dinnerstein 1994, Warren 1996, and Baldwin 2001. For the political or administrative defeat of numerous proposals to offer Jews refuge or temporary asylum in the mainland United States, Alaska, the Virgin Islands, or other U.S. territories, including the Wagner-Rodgers bill that would have accepted 20,000, mostly Jewish children, see Wyman 1968; Morse 1968; and Rosen 2006.

This is precisely the historical structure of inversion and failure to make the implicit analogy I noted in ther 2012 Red Dawn film. Huge volumes of junk are written about Amin al-Husseini's complicity in Nazism, and therefore the Palestinians, yet the record for having systematically denied to Jews a refuge in America (the same goes for Great Britain) during the 30s is infinitely denser than anything you can tease out of the record re Palestinians. Yet the whole onus of blame falls on them, as amnesia surges and the politics of disremembrance and blame-throwing emerge to dominate the discursive landscape. Wiki articles glaringly lack any attention to this informational lacunae across articles on the U.S. for the decisive period, because POV pushers have a sacred alliance, I guess, to sustain. Enough! Nishidani (talk) 16:59, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

Hi Nish, thanks for your responses. I am not yet familiar with the scholars you alluded to above, I will read their WP biographies and check-out their books from the local library. Also your other comments (e.g on the timelessness of human conflict) are thought-provoking and insightful. In my view all human conflict is basically between brothers and sisters.

Yes, I agree peeing at the base of lemon trees is good practice, I've been doing this.

Some recent analysis you may find helpful to your continuing efforts to improve/ develop WP articles:

  • On the right-hand-side column of that page you'll also see links to other recent, informative video essays, for example: one on the savagery, brutality and viciousness of the House of Saud; another video on the root causes of the global refugee crisis; an interview with Noam Chomsky; and more.

Warm regards, IjonTichy (talk) 21:36, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

Anti-Syrian Muslim Refugee Rhetoric Mirrors Calls to Reject Jewish Refugees During Nazi Era. "Opponents of Jewish immigration during World War II used arguments that are being echoed today by opponents of Muslim immigration." -- IjonTichy (talk) 05:28, 6 December 2015 (UTC)
These ironies are everywhere. The most egregious example was the huge hasbara effort to circulate the 'tunnel terrorism' meme during Israel's recent conflicts with Hamas. It flew, outrageously, in the face of Jewish historical memory, but who cares? The otiose somnolence of the moralizing punditocracy gets away with murder, and it is splashed all over numerous wiki articles by loyal editors because few sources make the obvious connection:

The Jews did not distinguish fighters from civilians. The villagers took an active part in the fighting. They prepared themselves for the war for years, and in their villages they built underground networks of caves, storehouses, shelters and hiding places- all of which Cassius relates. Jews visiting these areas in Israel today (for example, near Kefar Amaziah in the Lachish Region) still experience proud excitement, for these sites serves as proof of the nation’s enterprise, of the power of its inventiveness, and also as a mark of the people’s mobilization for war. The Jewish farmers emerged from their caves to stage surprise attacks on the Romans,. However, as soon as the Romans came to know these caves and how they were being used, they probably developed countermeasures, for example, sealing off the entrances and exits, throwing combustible material into them to force out those inside, and setting ambushes at the cave entrances. Thus, unfortunately, many caves turned out to be death traps for those who hid in them Yehoshafat Harkabi, The Bar Kokhba Syndrome: Risk and Realism in International Politics, Rossel Books 1983 pp.32-33

The allusion is to Dio Cassius, 69:12, a text that sounds like the template for so many official Israeli handouts on what Hamas or Hezbollah do.
The Zionist myth of an expulsion after the Destruction of the Second Temple is showcased everywhere as an irrefutable claim to the justice of return, whereas the same doesn't apply to the nakba ethnic cleansing visited on Palestinians in 1948. The analogies are everywhere, and it attests to the strength of propaganda that even intelligent commentators miss them. That is what the blinkering ideology of nationalism does, argue that 'we' are permitted to weep for X, or do Y, while if X or Y relates to the adversary's experience or behaviour, even through our own vindictiveness, it is to be dismissed or condemned as 'outrageous' and a different paradigm ('terrorism') applies. It's hypocrisy on a massive scale. Nishidani (talk) 09:18, 6 December 2015 (UTC)
Yes, I agree, there is massive hypocrisy.
By the way, brave Jewish fighters also used tunnels extensively while resisting Nazi occupation during WWII. For example, the use of sewer tunnels by armed Jews during the Warsaw ghetto uprising, or by armed Jewish partisans in France, and in fact by armed Jews in almost every country in Western and Eastern Europe occupied by the Nazis or by the Nazis' fascist allies.
Jewish resistance under Nazi rule is an informative, interesting, powerful article.
And Jews also used tunnels while resisting the British Mandate forces in Palestine in the 1940's.   IjonTichy (talk) 03:21, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
Yep. I've documented several times on various article pages the use of synagogues to store arms in the Defense of Jerusalem and earlier during the British Mandate period. And there is an excellent Israeli study published some years back on the use of kibbutz kindergartens and health clinics to cover secret underground armouries. Everything Hamas is accused of with moralistic outrage was part and parcel of Israel, and indeed, normal military strategy in conflicts the world over. The only amazing thing is, why the commentariat never laughs this shit off the page when it's plashed there. I mean, the hasbara organizations don't believe it either: they just know it works on the public imagination abroad, and therefore has a function.Nishidani (talk) 08:42, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Interesting discussion with Eyal Weizman in the Los Angeles Review of Books. Among other important issues, he appears to support the sources you cited recently, sources which said the various colonialists (Israel, Britain, Italy, USA, France, many more) were using false reasoning when the colonialists claimed they were justified in stealing the land and other resources of Muslims because the Muslims "deliberately abandoned or neglected the land or otherwise did not take care of the land, resources or economic infrastructure out of deliberate, premeditated negligence." In other words the colonialists are using Orwellian language for falsely, mendaciously claiming that "Muslims are, well, primitive desert-dwelling savages who are naturally inherently incompetent and un-deserving of the resources and thus we are justified in stealing the resources." IjonTichy (talk) 16:47, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. Like everything else, this all goes back to one of the foundational documents of our civilization. The Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites (all of whom were constitutive of the future Israelite amphictyonic league's populations) had an eretz zavat halav u'dvash, and that's what attracted the nomadic outsiders in the neighbourhood. The Babylonian novelist(s) who wrote Exodus then had the old storm god tell them, during the transit at Sinai, that they must not covet their neighbours' goods, having earlier promised them that they could covet the land he promised them. It's an early example of what Gregory Bateson called the Double bind, take-but-don’t-take/be-moral-but-break-the-rules. A huge amount of discursive waffle is required to paper over the schizoid contradiction in the dual message. In modern times, when Zionism dusted off the books of Exodus and Joshua and gave the archaic remit a secular cast, one needed a justification somewhat less visibly internally inconsistent, and so the Land of Milk and Honey was what the Zionists promised they would create from the empty desert that they imagined was Palestine. In short, Zionism reversed the Biblical image, while retaining its colonizing narrative. This time, ‘we’ would not be a nomadic people out of the infertile Transjordan and Sinai teeming into the rich pastures and agricultural lands of the Canaanites. ‘’We’’ would be an advanced urban people (as the Pharaoh's Egyptians were) teeming into the barren, empty landscape of a desertified Palestine to turn it back to what it was when the Canaanites had it, and the local inhabitants, if recognized, were dismissed as vagrant poverty-stricken nomads. They turned the Bible on its head in modernizing the archetype. Religious Zionism now looks like, at last, reverting to type by reversing the secular heresy of early Zionism in a way that will make it more compatible with the original novel’s scenario, now that the Palestinians are finished. My best wishes for a serene productive New Year.Nishidani (talk) 18:28, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Nish happy new year. What is your own personal philosophy of technology, especially what are your views on the impact of technology on humanity?   An interesting article from a couple of days ago by Paul Kingsnorth (30 December 2015): The keyboard and the spade, in New Statesman. -- IjonTichy (talk) 00:43, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

I liked Kingsnorth's prose, when he talks about what he does working the land. All the rest of it, about Kelly and co and googleboys - well, that kind of hypnotic utopian vision of the future has come out regularly over the last century, and the terms change, but it bores me. Perhaps they're right, but the vision is distinctly dull to me. They sound like combination of spokesmen from the new people who destroy the intuitive people in William Golding's The Inheritors, with the folks you meet in Yevgeny Zamyatin's We. If what he quotes is a sign of the caliber of Kelly's mind, then Kelly is a bore, and not too bright, who will of course produce a new species of überbores. In high school, my class had 6 kids with a genius+ IQ. All nice kids, all conformists, and devoid of interesting conversation. When Lobsang Rampa's The Third Eye came out one of them buttonholed me,a precocious skeptic it was thought, and brought it out as proof of miracles. I tried to tell him what my father told me, that it was just proof some plumbers had an imagination that went beyong fixing shithouses. Couldn't convince him, and didn't care to. The technium androbots will be like him, only kill more things.Nishidani (talk) 18:23, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
I have been fascinated by technology since I was a child and I now work professionally in the high-technology sector as an engineer and startup founder, but I dislike most aspects of the blind, overly-simplistic, brain-dead belief in Technological utopianism.
Well! There I go putting my foot into it, and inadvertently insulting you! I once mocked the style of architecture best illustrated by Philip Johnson et al., to a Palestinian interlocutor. He heard me out politely, and his wife added, after my tirade (I was raised on architectural talk at home), that her husband was an architect. The major objection, apart from human rights, to Zionism, is that its Swiss style exurbs and landscaping are an unbelievably painful sight to eyes drenched in the elegant stonework of traditional villages, or what remains of them after bulldozing and bombing. Rawabi for the moment shows the way this development should have been done. I can't get beyond the parameters set by that wonderful man Ian McHarg. Engineers of the pre-high tech era, in cahoots with architects won over to the béton brut style, thought they could force their will, architects called it their 'vision' on a landscape, rather than understanding it, and the aesthetic economies of intelligent human planning. High tech (I'm a fan of William Gibson's novels)'s another world. My humble apologies to your profession.Nishidani (talk) 12:05, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
A couple of articles I think you may find interesting (although I suspect you have probably already read them): Human enhancement,   and   Existential risk from advanced artificial intelligence. -- IjonTichy (talk) 21:16, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

ISIS in Gaza, by Sarah Helm, in the New York Review of Books. Your thoughts? Best, IjonTichy (talk) 21:49, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

More on the continuing, on-going process of Nazification of Israeli society: Netanyahu, Bennett and Shaked Stoking the Fire of Fascism in Israel. -- IjonTichy (talk) 20:33, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

I wouldn't call it Nazification. In problematical areas, the first lesson is to steer clear of any kind of jargon that is simplistic and reductive. When, as happens daily, I read of arrests of children, beatings, seizures of land, hot halakhic airbags wheezing over the theology of snuffing out semisouled goys etc., dozens of societies come to mind. The way the IDF and border police work over the border is more similar to Stasi, and the KGB, but also to South Africa's police under Apartheid. I have the same objection to bundling up Fascism, Phalangism, and Nazism, as to reducing all Arab tinpot dictatorships to the same theoretical template. It is the vice of the contemporary right to dissolve our intellectual care in marking boundaries, distinguishing things easily confused, and when the 'left' follows, it makes a fatal error. In none of these states was it possible to understand, analyse, and publish openly details of what was going on, as it is in Israel. That itself makes a huge difference.
Must be off to my Rome haunts. You're lucky your persimmons stayed fresh. My crops last dozen look like imploding, just too many to get through, and they languish outside in quiet decay.Nishidani (talk) 20:59, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
Comparisons with Nazi Germany in the article on criticism of the Israeli government gubmint.   I use the comparison as a reminder to myself, a mnemonic to help me remember more easily the massive hypocrisy at the root of the structurally corrupt policies of the Israeli gov't, which cynically manipulates the real horrors the Jews have suffered in the holocaust in the hands of the fascist Nazi regime, in order to position Israel as the victim in Israel's own fascist policies towards the Palestinian people.   I hope you are enjoying your stay in Rome. I stayed there when I traveled in Europe decades ago and enjoyed the city and especially its people very much. Will you be able to go see art such as the Sistine Chapel and other attractions? IjonTichy (talk) 19:39, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
And a serene and productive NY to you. Briefly, I like technology, it's proof that the species is sane, which is rather a contrafactual statement. I read New Scientist every week just to assure myself that what I read in the press about the world generally is not representative of anything other than the fact we are primitive animals biologically. My generation will be fossilized shortly, as technological evolution takes over the development of the species. The problem is not science, but the economic system it is embedded in, which assumes that rationality is best determined by a zero-sum game and a quick return on capital. That means ethics, and indeed choice based on long term complex system analysis, is counter-"productive". I look on, bemused, happy to have experienced much of the best the past has given us, but indifferent to the future which will look back on man as he was much as folks at the Smithsonian stare at the dead artifacts. It's late here but I will look at your links tomorrow, for which many thanks. Best regards Nishidani (talk) 22:20, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
What I'm about to say is an over-simplification, due to limitations of time and space. Over the last 8-10 years I've come to develop a very similar philosophy to yours. In my view, humanity is clinically insane - many key aspects of the global human society have been Psychopathologically crazy for many millennia, even thousands of years prior to the advent of the ancient Greek and Roman empires. At the same time, some key aspects of the global human society have always been sane and remain sane to this day. This is a paradox, which is not surprising, since life itself (from "before" the big bang to date) defies logic and is basically a paradox. Several smart people (including e.g Einstein) have said that in their view our technology/ science have progressed far beyond our humanity. In many important aspects our global socio-economic system (capitalism/ private property/ ownership/ money/ power/ hierarchy/ a system based almost entirely on exchange value rather than use value/ a system that commodifies everything, including human lives and more generally almost all life) is obsolete, is enormously detrimental, and is severely slowing down human progress. Any possible transition to a more sane, humane, rational global socio-economic-cultural system would be enormously complicated by the fact that 'capitalism' is extremely deeply, profoundly embedded in the fabric of human society.
Another aspect of the paradox is that, despite the massive global human psychosis, there are still many key aspects of humanity, and more generally life and the natural world, that are rational, kind, beautiful, pleasurable and enjoyable. Cheers, IjonTichy (talk) 20:33, 12 January 2016 (UTC)


A long, detailed investigative report: Technologies of Oppression: The Celebration of the Israeli Security Industries in Brazil. Among many other things, explains one of the main reasons why the Israel government has not been, is not now, and is not likely to be in the future, interested in ending the conflict with the Palestinians. IjonTichy (talk) 01:41, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. Well that's been evident from the beginning, and I think a lot of critics within the PLO and in the diaspora noted that the 1993 Accords effectively turned the PLO into an indigenous proxy of the occupiers, even if it was justified by citing the schedules for a 'finalization' of the conflict's issues. There's nothing unique about Israel's sale abroad of the technologies of control developed to keep Palestinians down. The only diff is that in Israel these technologies reinforce a colonial project against another ethnicity, whereas the foreign customers use it to control and repress their internal proletariats in the ghettoes and favelas. The middle class, hag-ridden by financial insecurities, if it notices at all, tends to endorse more policing of the underclass, failing to note that the trend is extending upward, and will soon apply to them as well. If the economist Michael Hudson whose work I've followed for several years, is correct (I note the Reaganite economist Paul Craig Roberts is now praising him to the skies and providing a thumbnail synthesis of his theories), then the rough-ride of the post 2008 decade is structural, and will only worsen, with global ramifications for the whilom middle class. So you have Russia's Chechen solution spilling over into Syria, China's Uyghur panic extending to tensions with Turkey, India's internal Hindutva ideology re Muslims altering its traditional Third-Worldist sympathies, all feed into a first-world 'summitry concern' with coping with 'terror'. There is therefore nothing peculiarly Israeli about this dirty-linen. It's all sold as the protection of the hard-won values of the middle estate, when what is happening in the deeper structural shifts is an hyper-capitalist onslaught on any residual form of social investment of the kind that built our 19-20th century modern societies. The Trumps, Cruzes, Netanyahoos, etc of the world are playing draughts, when the board has morphed into a different game, as intricate as Go. I.e. four opening moves compared to around 360. If you look at the other end of the equation, the logic of computerized financialization, those who draw mathematicians away from science to become quants brainy enough to formulate elegant algorithms that can cope with cosmically massive variables, the result is no better.' Given the volume of trading under HFT, the system can now collapse over the space of a few milliseconds, before human traders or regulators have the opportunity to act. Nincompoops and wizards rule the world.Nishidani (talk) 11:10, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
Over the last 10 years I have spent many hours every day extensively studying all the issues you alluded to above (including, among many others, Michael Hudson's and Paul Craig Roberts' work), and I fully agree with everything in your comment.
I recently re-watched the insightful interviews with Sheldon Wolin (links above) in which he shows why capitalism and democracy cannot truly co-exist.
I've now just started reading the book Nerds on Wall Street: Math, Machines and Wired Markets. Which books have you been reading recently? Which ones do you recommend?
I just finished reading Apprentice to Genius: The Making of a Scientific Dynasty. I very highly recommend it. Best, IjonTichy (talk) 17:45, 13 February 2016 (UTC)
They sound like compelling reads, but, unfortunately, like much don't turn up on Italian bookstore shelves. Aside from a score of novels since January, I've been rereading the Aeneid in Latin over the last few weeks, while reading up on the history of Hamas and the works of Hazlitt for some wikiwork. I've just read Manuel Musallam's book in Italian,A Parish priest in hell, describing his 14 years in Gaza City (1995-2009) which a local store ordered for me. I've also started rereading Arnold Toynbee's A Study of History, in the 12 volume paperback copy I bought when it first came out in the early 60s. Hazlitt had a penetrating mind and wrote with superb trenchancy. Toynbee wrote with an elegant Graeco-Latinate prose on the global structures of history. I read such things for their intrinsic interest and as a relief from the endless wash of verbal noise one has to sift just to keep informed about the world. I don't recommend them to you, esp. since your reading list is just as enviable! Nishidani (talk) 18:33, 13 February 2016 (UTC)
No, that won't do. I thoroughly recommend Robert Macfarlane’s Landmarks 2015. It is a superb study of what the erosion of dialects and language does to see nature, as it was seen and conceptualized in wonderful words of great descriptive precision. Best regards (I must comment eventually on Wolin, it's just I've been a bit pressed for time lately). Nishidani (talk) 19:48, 13 February 2016 (UTC)
I will definitely read Landmarks very soon.
Regarding Wolin, it is best to first read his great book 'Democracy Incorporated,' published in 2008, then view the 8 interviews conducted in 2014. I suspect he is not gonna add significantly to your already extensive body of knowledge, although you will enjoy his specific, unique approach/ angle/ method of analysis/ discernment/ voice/ method of attack, and his enormous depth and breadth of knowledge.
Recommended: This video shows what ancient Rome actually looked like
Recommended: SmartHistory - art, history, conversation (YouTube channel)
IjonTichy (talk) 19:30, 29 February 2016 (UTC)
Sorry for the delay, I'm caught up in heavy duty early spring mowing, pruning etc. I did manage to listen into first interview, all very lucid. Getting books like that, where I live, is difficult, but it's on my future reading list. I did work out a long note stimulated by all this, on the concept of Nature (biology) and 'nature' (economics), why they are antithetical, beginning, 'It has been calculated that 100,000 distinct operations are required in order to manufacture a pin' but I've forgotten it for the moment (perhaps that's better to stop boredom setting in on this page). When I can I hope to pick up the thread.Nishidani (talk) 17:15, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
Sti1ll haven't got round to the review of all 8 but will (too much Toynbee, apart from the daily work here). 2 items in the meantime might interest you.

Yes, I totally sympathize with Rich Forer and Gabriel Goldstein. The transformation of mind-set and core beliefs that they underwent is very similar to my own.

Watched the film All the King's Men (1949 film) last night. I highly recommend it, the story is timeless and powerful. The film is based on the book All the King's Men which received the Pulitzer in 1947.

If you liked the old film, which I saw in the 50s, then I strongly recommend that you read the novel itself. I chanced on a worn pb copy some two decades ago, read it in a couple of sittings and was astonished at the quality of Robert Penn Warren's writing. I'd always just vaguely thought of him as Eleanor Clark's husband, and a minor critic.46-48 was a wonderful period for American fiction, from Gore Vidal to Mailer's masterpiece. Will reply to the rest tomorrow.Nishidani (talk) 20:42, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

Very interesting interview with Mr. Fish (Dwayne Booth), the political cartoonist of TruthDig (where Chris Hedges writes his weekly columns). I have been reading Booth's cartoons for the last 5 years, they are very powerful and highly creative. The interview shows some of his cartoons. Among many other things, Booth and Hedges discuss some cartoons where Booth compared the Palestinian victims of the Israeli vicious assaults on Gaza to the Jewish victims of the Nazi brutal assaults on the Warsaw ghetto, and they briefly discuss Marek Edelman, one of the leaders of the brave Jewish uprising in the ghetto, who, beginning in the 1960's until his death in 2009, favorably compared the Palestinian's struggle against their Israeli oppressors to the Jews struggle against their Nazi oppressors in Warsaw.

Nish you are doing great work on improving WP. Keep up the good work.

By the way the Lilac and Cherry blossom in my yard smell wonderful this week. How does your yard smell like nowadays? Did you get a chance to work on your garden(s) recently?

Best, IjonTichy (talk) 18:45, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

You're enjoying a normal spring then. Here it has been touch and go for two months, as winter refused to behave in a winterly manner, while spring, lacking genes of opportunism, fails to take up the slack in the otherwise mild weather. One can see it from the robins who come down from the hills to feed on the richer if nonetheless meager yields of lower hibernal altitudes. The leader always signals that their bags are packed, and they're ready to fly back up the mountains for summer, by perching on the stringy bark sprouts of pruned mock-orange and chirping farewell as we come and go for a few days in keeping with that curious gift of theirs of befriending and keeping company with tillers of soil. It's the only bird I know that looks you up and down, and in the eye, before deciding whether to scram or not, or cultivate a comradely work relationship (you turn the sods, and he will pick into the mulchy ground as you move on a step or two). I usually predict real spring is on the way by spotting porcupines waddling up the corridor to the door of a mid-evening to filch the leftovers of cat food. So far, none. As for aromas, the only plant that has flowered is a forsynthia (if you ignore the borage that is finally flaunting its broad leafage and dangling a head or two of timid blue blossoms), and they have yet to glove their Chinese bells with an aura of scent. I am held in suspense over the large cherry tree, which I, against advice, heavy sawed back two years ago. It yielded a good crop of fruit last year, but looks stolid even as the mild airs entice it to flourish. We'll see. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 11:12, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Enjoyed reading about your garden. Your description is detailed and vivid, making it easier for me to visualize your lovely garden and the sweet, gentle animals and birds that visit your yard. I hope your cherry tree blossoms, and that your gardens will bear a lot of delicious fruit and veggies this spring and summer.

I found the following on the website of Jewish Voice for Peace:

Anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are not the same thing. Saying that they are is offensive, anti-intellectual, and just plain wrong.

Take Action

Tell the University of California Regents: anti-Zionism is a political belief, not a form of prejudice.

Dear Friend,

This is important.

On Wednesday, the University of California Regents (the governing body of the UC system) will be meeting, and debating whether to adopt proposed “Principles of Intolerance.” On the face of it, these principles are a good idea: they’re designed to help colleges in the UC system stamp out racism and other forms of bigotry.

But there’s one huge problem with them: they define anti-Zionism as a form of prejudice. But anti-Zionism is a political belief, not a form of hatred like anti-Semitism or Islamophobia. The University Regents have no business saying which kinds of political speech are acceptable on our campuses.

They’re meeting on Wednesday, but if we want to make our voices heard, we need to flood them with messages by the end of the day on Monday

Click here to email the UC Regents, and make it clear that Jews and allies throughout California -- and across the U.S. -- won’t let our movement be silenced.

This issue affects me personally. I’m JVP’s Academic Advisory Council Coordinator, which means that I work to help strengthen our movement for peace and justice on campuses across the U.S. But I’m also an academic and university lecturer myself, and I depend on academic freedom to do my research, and have open debate and discussion with my students.

But if this policy is adopted, students and teachers alike could be prevented from speaking freely in classes. Imagine Palestinian students, scared to share their personal experiences. Jewish students, prevented from challenging the orthodoxies of our community. And faculty, always having to look over their shoulder, in case their research and writing dares to oppose Israeli policies.

Anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are not the same thing. Saying that they are is offensive, anti-intellectual, and just plain wrong.

Email the UC Regents today, and tell them that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism.

Supporters of Israel’s human rights abuses have tried this before at the University of California. Last year, UC President Janet Napolitano announced her support for including criticism of Israel in their official definition of anti-Semitism -- but we mobilized and fought back. Over 2,000 of us sent letters to the UC Regents, urging them not to muzzle us, and the definition they were proposing then was dropped.

But now it’s back -- and this time it might even be worse. That’s why the LA Times said that the Regents’ new plan “goes dangerously astray.” The LA Times is no particular supporter of our movement for peace and justice, but as they acknowledge, you don’t have to be an anti-Zionist to know that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are not the same thing.

We cannot be silenced. We will not be silenced. Email the UC Regents right now, and make your voice heard.

Thank you for speaking up for academic freedom,

Dr. Tallie Ben Daniel, PhD, Academic Advisory Council Coordinator

Jewish Voice for Peace is a national membership organization inspired by Jewish tradition to work for the freedom, equality, and dignity of all the people of Israel and Palestine.

www.Jewishvoiceforpeace.org

1611 Telegraph Ave. Suite 1020 Oakland, CA 94612

(510) 465 1777

You piqued my curiosity on Arnold J Toynbee, and motivated me to read his quotes on WikiQuote. He appears to be a highly perceptive, deeply insightful thinker. I will go to the local library and check out his books. Best, IjonTichy (talk) 19:02, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Now I'm feeling guilty for overburdening you. Rereading it is slowing down my own work rate. If you do go ahead, then just look at vol.12 (1961) pp.477-517, which is an historical critique of Zionism synthesizing many remarks made in the earlier volumes. Uri Avnery and Toynbee had an interesting exchange of views back in 1955 by the way regarding the Zionist-Crusader analogy:(David Ohana, The Origins of Israeli Mythology: Neither Canaanites Nor Crusaders, Cambridge University Press, 2012 pp.142f.). Looks like I inadvertently Lopakhined the cherry tree, alas. As for that UCLA violation of free speech, I trust those kids and the authority of wise men like Brant Rosen et al., will show those dumb goyim the monstrosity hidden in their 'politically correct' proposal.Nishidani (talk) 09:06, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

A History of Silencing Israeli Army Whistleblowers: From 1948 Until Today (24 March 2016). - IjonTichy (talk) 16:31, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

A bit thin, and he makes at least one mistake at a quick glance, namely attributing to Yitzhak Sadeh the origin of that obscene notion of purity of arms. It's more associated with Berl Katznelson, I think, who of course died some years before the 48 war and its 60 odd massacres. I'm not so sure he's got it right saying the Al-Dawayima massacre was done by men under Sadeh's command. As phrased it looks like Cook is cooking the books to make the argument that Sadeh led the massacre and then spoke of purity of arms. At least, from memory of my review of that page and additions after reading up on it, recently, I can't recall Sadeh being in command. Worth looking into. But I'm glad you directed me to this. I note that the article on purity of arms doesn't say when it was coined or by who, a serious oversight. Will look into it. Cheers (sounds rather nasty my making this point and ignoring the important content. It's just that critics really have to hold themselves to a very high bar of precision, even if it is somewhat fragile in the face of the tsunami of disinformatzia they try to counter). Cheers Nishidani (talk) 17:14, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
In Syria, militias armed by the Pentagon fight those armed by the CIA (27 March, 2016), The Los Angeles Times -- and an insightful discussion of the L.A. Times piece by Larry Wilkerson. I've seen this issue (of U.S.-funded factions fighting each other) covered previously in the alternative media (for example, Lawrence Wilkerson and Vijay Prashad discussed this on The Real News Network several times over the last 2-3 years), but this is perhaps the first time I've seen it covered in the mainstream media. Your thoughts? Best, IjonTichy (talk) 02:39, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
Nothing, except reading science reports on nature, surprises me there. I once gave an intricate jargon-flush paper on some obscure vein of ideology being bruited out, and a wise old head nudged me with the question? 'Who finances this crap?' It woke me up. His point was, 'follow the money trail' rather than the thinking up front, and you'll figure out what's really going on. Last night I had a few cerebral haemorrhoids trying to bear up as Matteo Salvini, a nasty and dangerous separatist in Italy, talked about the threat from Islam. A europarliamentarian aligned with all sorts of pan-fascist movements, he was improving his credentials by visiting Jerusalem, as most Italian ex-fascists have done recently. I sat through the nonsense, waiting for some attentive journalist to drop the obvious question: 'Salvini, you have for 2 decades bitterly denounced the Muslim invasion of Europe as a threat to the ethnic integrity of Europe's autochthones. So, while you're in Jerusalem, what is your take on the Balfour Declaration's decision to flood a 90% Muslim country with European immigrants?' Of course, no one made the glaringly obvious analogy, and its inexpugnable contradiction. Nishidani (talk) 20:29, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
Yes, the level of hypocrisy is enormous.
IjonTichy (talk) 21:07, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for the heads-up. No doubt some way down the track, someone will write a thorough monograph on the influence on Western policing tactics of Israel's technologies and strategies of 'crowd' control, interrogation methods, blackmail, etc. developed to handle Palestinians and secure the landgrab. It is exactly as if Verwoerd's South Africa had managed to get round things like the Academic boycott of South Africa and the Sporting boycott of South Africa during the apartheid era by exporting its Bantustan divide-and-conquer methods back to the West, and convincing the world that its own use of these instruments was dictated by the need to combat a threat as much external (Communism) as internal. That Judaism is twisted to assume the complex burdens of secular colonial statehood, and the nationalization of what was a cosmopolitan identity of modernity, poses a dramatic threat to both that SA never had, however. There is a certain uncanny confluence of distinct historical vectors here (the logic of Western modernity as financialization,i.e., the return of the feudal estate in which a minority rule masses,+ the trend to ethnonational redemption in which a minority becomes a majority by transforming the majority into a minority).
Enjoy your wikibreak, a sensible thing, as spring breezes in. I'll close this thread tomorrow. If you'd like to interleave your long due leisure with a blip or two in here, just open up a Red Dawn2 section in duke horse. Cheer Nishidani (talk) 11:50, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Reference errors on 28 March

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Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, ReferenceBot (talk) 00:30, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

I'll fix this, Nish. I see you added plenty to the Hazlitt article today. Of course it needs better integration, clean-up, the usual, which I'll take care of. You've dug up more great sources. In fact, you are modernizing Dr. Johnson's observation that "a man will turn over half a library to make one book": in the digital universe, you're turning over half the Internet to make one Wikipedia article! --Alan W (talk) 04:20, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
Fixed, and the ghastly blood-red error message has now gone away. You may now delete the above notice if you wish. Good night! --Alan W (talk) 06:23, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
Thanks, pal. I'm just throwing stuff in for you to pass through the sieve and winnow chaff from gleanable goods. Would have done more, but as usual, got the usual time wasting drivel thrown my way elsewhere. Will add more today. Cheers (and thanks for the Johnsonian remark: had read that somewhere and forgotten it.) Nishidani (talk) 11:01, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
Buy the whey, Alan, re Isabella Bridgwater. Wasn't there some rumour that their marriage was undermined by a tension between her and Hazlitt's son? Hazlitt doted on the son, and in turn the young man resented his new wife, etc.?Nishidani (talk) 13:15, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
On reading 'Where he finds it applicable, Hazlitt brings his subjects together in pairs, setting off one against the other.' Lamb had noted that Hazlitt stands in the tradition of Plutarch, Montaigne et al., and this set me to wondering whether a secondary source links the pairing of portraits is grounded in Plutarch, whose Lives use precisely this same structure, pairing a Latin and a Greek figure. Can't find one yet.Nishidani (talk) 15:22, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
Interesting observation, that about Plutarch. If I find such a source, I'll see if we can use it. But I wonder how far we can go that way. Hazlitt might have even thought that that kind of pairing as having come from Plutarch was obvious, since at that time, as you well know, anyone who had much of an eduction had a Classical education and would have known at least some Plutarch.
As for today's contributions, which I've looked through but haven't touched yet, I do think you've gone a bit too far into detail in some places. I did read Heller, and found reason to bring her into what I did in Characters of Shakespear's Plays. Even there, I didn't think all that much detail was necessary. As for that about Isabella Bridgwater Hazlitt, Stanley Jones did the definitive scholarly work there, which was later also used by Wu. Since I have both books handy, easy enough for me to straighten that out a bit, and, interesting fact, apart from confirmation of the £300 annuity, is that Isabella's first husband was Chief Justice of Grenada, having, yes, started out as a barrister, and he was also a planter. And yes, Wu confirms that about tensions between Isabella and Hazlitt's son, who resented her entrance into the family, which certainly seems to have contributed to the collapse of Hazlitt's second marriage. All that is in sources already in the References, and I don't think we need to add more sources to provide support for it. Now on to straightening all this out. --Alan W (talk) 03:38, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
Looking at that about Hazlitt's attitude toward Shakespeare's plays as best experienced in the "closet", his attitude is more complex than that (his friend Lamb was the one who held the simpler view, and I suspect they debated about that frequently over the years). I think I already covered it well enough in what I wrote about Characters, which is Wikilinked. Hazlitt, after all, did think some of the plays eminently suitable for the stage, and he immensely admired some performers in Shakespearean roles, like Sarah Siddons and Edmund Kean. Best not to risk giving a one-sided view here. Let the reader click the link and see what is in the more detailed article devoted to that book. --Alan W (talk) 03:55, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
The Sampson quote is good. (Very well written, and I think I see the influence of Hazlitt's style on his, by the way.) In fact I think what you came up with is superior to what I put in from Wardle, and I do believe I will just substitute it. (We can't let this essay get too bloated, although I know I do not exactly tend toward brevity myself, so here I am the pot calling the kettle black.) --Alan W (talk) 03:59, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
That's fine Alan. As I said, I'm just reading and throwing in suggestions, and fully expect that you will know what to use, if any, and what to chuck out. I don't even check your adjustments, by reading the diff history, since I trust your judgement to make the right call. Have a funeral today, unfortunately not my own, but will try to do more on this, and start pushing through to the end of my top-to-bottom review, from tomorrow onwards. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 08:04, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
You really have absorbed Hazlitt thoroughly, Nish. Talk about the "disinterestedness of the human mind"! You are as concerned about providing work for your undertaker friend as you are about your own survival. Then again, you speak as if you would simply attend your funeral, then report back. I'd be interested to hear how that turned out. For my part, I am frankly glad to have a breather, as there are some non-Wiki things I want to attend to now. Regards, Alan W (talk) 03:52, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
Hazlitt, like Nietzsche, is a very difficult thinker to synthesize. I was looking at the French section of the European tour, and thinking of the contradictory things he made re the French. Nietzsche admired Emerson as intensely as he despised John Stuart Mill. I don't know how deeply Emerson was read in Hazlitt, but they share great similarities in background and style, and reading of Hazlitt's remarks on the French one is reminded on Emerson. I am thinking in particular of E's apophthegm:'We live amid surfaces, and the true art of life is to skate well on them.' Hazlitt at times attacks precisely the perceived superficiality of the French, for what he considers their reductive domestication, along with all the tidy household sweeping out of useless clutter, of philosophy to witty conversation. He upbraids this as leading to a 'euthanasia of thought'. But then his deep attachment to Rousseau speaks the obverse of this, for in Rousseau he loved the twinning of philosophical critic and imaginative writer, for the simple reason that by nature he was drawn to both speculative thinking and literature. He recognized that philosophy risked losing itself in abstraction as the art of witty conversation among the habitués of the French salons dwindled its cogency by flitting too thickly into details and contexts. Like the German romantic thinkers he strove to find some synthesis or common ground, an interface between pure thinking and practical experience of the world. His criticisms of the French therefore reflect the Anglo-Scottish enlightenment's emphasis on the empirical, while his appreciation of them, in other contexts, betrays an admiration for that quickness of analytic sensibility that, on one level, could cut to the quick of the real forces underlying society, to the logic of power. In this sense his ambivalence in his at times contradictory reflections on 'French character' mediates his own struggle within the tradition of English letters, and in a sense his stylistic verve is the product of an empiricist's amendment of continental 'wit' in order to better argue against the rationalizing detachment of his own country's politically conservative ethos. This is WP:OR of course, but if you can come up with something that bears on this from your deep familiarity with the primary and secondary literature, it might held the introduction of a sentence or two that clarifies what is an evident tension in Hazlitt.Nishidani (talk) 14:00, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
See the chapter on 'Hazlitt and the French: A Jacobin Profile' in Seamus Deane, The French Revolution and Enlightenment in England, 1789-1832, Harvard University Press, 1988 pp.130-157,
Funerals mean churches, which are not bad places to lose oneself in the kind of speculation above, if only to relieve the tedium of ritual chants that invariably have me thinking I must adopt a proper respect for some tribal world's arcane proprieties which I have stumbled upon as a bystander. The dear fellow, laid out, looked more alive, paradoxically, than ill-health allowed him in these last years. It was however nicely done, given circumstances. The bereaved are as poor as church mice, and most of the time was spent in quiet whip-arounds and discreet negotiations to pony up funds for the family to tide them over the next few months. A coronet of orange gerbera was the only symbol - by common accord, all monies were better used to provide for the living, rather than garland with an evanescent flash of colour the dark soil of the deceased's bare plot, provided by the municipality in a cemetery corner for the destitute. A simply cross, of makeshift pine boards, with a photo pinned at the intersection, was more eloquent than the pompous mausolea that dot this country. Nishidani (talk) 14:00, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
Very interesting musings on Hazlitt, Emerson, Nietzsche, et al. I think you've caught nicely Hazlitt's ambivalence about the "French character". I'll think about adding more there. The way he keeps his mind open to new impressions not only of French but of Italian culture as expressed in his Notes of a Journey Through France and Italy (1826) is fascinating, given how narrowly focused he seems at times in what might amount to a one-sided rant. And that, by the way, is, in my opinion, one of his most unfairly neglected books. Nice to see someone reprinted it in paper just a few years ago, as I just noticed, available on Amazon.com (though digital copies are fortunately obtainable free from the usual on-line places). And speaking of books by and about Hazlitt, you no longer need to insert the URL for the Google selections from Gilmartin, as I now own a copy, thanks to your tipping me off indirectly the other day. Looking forward to reading it, along with many of the other books that have appeared recently, unnoticed by me as I have been laboring to absorb the essence of what looked like the most important studies published up until about a dozen years ago.
Good account of that funeral and related matters, conveying a picture of a world I never saw. Though I grew up among many of Italian descent, I have never set foot in Italy itself. Whew, once again getting very late in these parts. Good night! --Alan W (talk) 06:02, 1 April 2016 (UTC)
Well, after I almost electrocuted myself, and the ageing, dithery cat smashed a piece of elegant heirloom porcelain, I thought I'd better hurry to the end today, because bad things come in threes, and the next in the series must be just round the corner. Sorry to be tardy, footdragging and the usual time-consuming edits, not to speak of spring gardening 'chores'. I'll get round to doing another top-to-bottom reviewa, in duke horse, and once we sort out where we go from here, will return to it with renewed concentration. Cheers Alan.Nishidani (talk) 14:42, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Along with you, to judge from much you've said, and your dithery cat, I am aging myself, getting farther along than I like to be reminded; yet I am still working full-time (by choice, as I actually like what I do, the latest of several careers). I mention this here because things have been hectic to the point of near-frenzy for me, and I have been glad to have a break from the Hazlitt article for a few days. So to me the slow pace here has been welcome. Sorry to hear of your near electrocution. But, perhaps unlike your undertaker friend, I am glad to have you still among us. Wikipedia, not just for the Hazlitt article, needs you too much to give you up so easily. I just took a preliminary gander at your latest changes. A few cases, in my opinion, are just differing preferences of word choice. "Crotchetiness", "grumpiness", either would probably do just fine. I have no objection to leaving "grumpiness", as I see things now. And there are other similar cases. Here and there, I think I need to restore a bit of this and that. Overall, the changes you made are fine, in one or two places condensing well what it took me too many words to say. Yes, this is good for a first pass, and we can review the whole afterward. Regards, Alan W (talk) 04:51, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Done. Good to read that fine tribute by Grayling, which I believe I read a number of years ago. A bit slapdash in its handling of details (e.g., Grayling speaks of The New Monthly Magazine as if Hazlitt had just started writing for it and as if it were some obscure publication; in fact, the New Monthly, a major periodical of the day, had been the publisher of a huge quantity of his finest writing starting nine years earlier; but never mind...), Grayling's piece is overall beautifully written and just in its assessment.

Still a lot of work left on both the lead and "Posthumous Reputation", in my opinion. As I've said before, the latter section is not only too sketchy, it is not even accurate. Hazlitt's reputation did not fall into "a small decline" and then start to reverse itself only in the late 1990s. It had had major swings upward and downward and then back upward (in restricted ways, however, not like at present) over the course of a century and a half. Some really major appreciations of Hazlitt started to appear in the Sixties and Seventies, then the momentum increased in the Eighties (Bromwich's study has yet to be surpassed, in my opinion, and that appeared in 1983). And so on. But as I write these words here, material for filling in the gaps is, as you can see, already coalescing in my mind. So we'll get there. Thanks for some great research and editing, and, well, ever onward. Once again, I have gotten a bit carried away with all this, and it is extremely late over here, so good night! --Alan W (talk) 06:49, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Nishidani

Palestine is many things. All I want to know, do you agree that Palestine is a "De-Jure State"?--Bolter21 (talk to me) 20:38, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Palestine is a state of mind, which almost no one minds about.Nishidani (talk) 17:29, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Administrators' noticeboard

Information icon There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.

I tend to yawn in the mornings. Today, I have a technical reason to do so.Nishidani (talk) 08:31, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

3RR

Thanks for defending me, but I had no idea I broke 3RR. Where did I? --Monochrome_Monitor 19:31, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

You didn't. I stuffed up, the fuck-up incidence of geriatric editors tends towards the exponential as one races against time. It's nice to know you'll be editing Wikipedia 70 years after I've tossed in the towel (with some relief! and no small benefit to this place) Nishidani (talk) 19:51, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi Nishidani, I would like to be able to trust MM in the way you do. It would make for a better editing environment between us. Can you tell me where your trust comes from? Mine was damaged after the SPI incident last year. But I can reopen my mind.

For what it's worth I wouldn't have reported MM if it hadn't been for the removal of the TfD template so soon after the warning when the same was done twice on the CfD template. That crossed a line in my book. For what it's worth, MM definitely broke 1RR - the article falls under ARBPIA because (a) MM referred to it as an Arab-Israeli battleground, and (b) Wexler believes that his theory has met with hostility "in part because of the pressure of Zionist ideological needs" (as removed here [3])

Oncenawhile (talk) 21:38, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Nishidani's trust comes from understanding MM. He gets I believe the fact that MM is authentic and a distinct, individual personality and voice. The reality that she is feisty, self-admittedly flawed, impatient, deeply honest and self-aware, outspoken but quick to recant, and fundamentally decent and of vast potential probably comes into Nish's summing up. I would heartily agree. I suggest that you stop thinking of the relationship in the context of blocs of editors who have have opposing POV's, and start dealing with other editors whom you deem worthy as unique individuals. You may start by visiting her talk page to actually praise an edit, or explore subject interests that you might actually have in common. Mentoring MM was the best thing I have done for the project, although MM is her own person. She is a huge benefit to the pedia and has enormous although still visceral, intellectual potential. Her self-discipline is improving markedly. I will not be commenting on the present 3RR report, although I have been watching it closely. It's my feeling that you are promoting a perhaps undue source, and that MM is making some valid points, in her own way. Suggest a graceful withdrawal and a serious debate with MM on this. You would like a better editing environment, so this is a good opportunity for a 1-on-1 debate. This could be an opportunity to create a positive working relationship. You can use my T/P as venue. Talk is better than boards. Regards, Irondome (talk) 23:15, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
In addition to Simon's points, I should add a personal bias. I could never stand anime, having been raised on Walt Disney (who employed briefly my uncle in the early years). But my 2 and a half old niece, who's as bright as a button and will cause MM some grief if she ever becomes a wiki editress, converted me to being a great fan of the genial Russian cartoon series, Masha and the Bear. So I've fessed up: MM is Masha, reduplicated, and I see myself as the old ursine virtual uncle, a sidekick to MM's paternal Simon. The great plague on conflict-ridden sectors of wiki is the IP revert warrior or lazy mugwumps who kibitz and censor according to their profound knowledge of the deeper recesses of every editor who doesn't share their illuminated insight into the truth of a question, and human behavior. MM is not like that - she works with a passion, even if I think she suffers from youth's intellectual over-confidence at times - she chucked out a man of profound and recognized erudition from dislike and POV considerations (Wexler) and did so without mastery of the field - precocity must learn that the loyal handmaiden of deeper knowledge in les sciences humaines is humility before the empirical, rather than meta-reading of an intuited POV in others. But MM is learning that, proved amenable to advice even from such disreputable people like myself, and when she slips, and I note it, I recite the talismanic words of Pushkin:'youth's fervor is its own excuse, for ravings that it may induce' (Thus Babette Deutsch in a deplored translation of a novel in verse that is headed by a citation from Prince Vyazemsky:'И жить торопится и чувствовать спешит', namely 'flurrying to live, and scrambling to feel'. When we see that in the young, we should admire the eager energy, and smile tolerantly on the rash temerity it will occasion, esp. if a benign word or two can bridle in the galloper at the precipice.(So much for what standing in line at a supermarket check-out counter can engender as I stevedored my mindship's hold with a cargo of thoughts, (as the Icelanders say) to while away the waiting).Nishidani (talk) 10:25, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
I should add, before this joint shuts down, that I concur with Oncenawhile's last para above. He is a very acute and precise editor, and has caught me out on several occasions, thank goodness. I suggest that she admit that, and that Oncenawhile take that as sufficient, and inform the AE board that the complaint, being resolved, is withdrawn.)Nishidani (talk) 10:25, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

Khazars

Greetings, Nishidani. A sentence in the Khazars article appears to have a missing piece. Not certain whether it was a part that you developed, but I thought I would run it by you before tagging or removing it. The sentence is in the first paragraph of this section, and reads (emphasis added):

Ibn al-Athir's mention of a 'raid of Faḍlūn the Kurd against the Khazars' in 1030, in which 10,000 of his men were vanquished by the latter, has been taken (by ) as a reference to such a Khazar remnant, but Barthold identified this Faḍlūn as Faḍl ibn Muḥammad and the 'Khazars' as either Georgians or Abkhazians.

It appears the "(by )" was supposed to be filled in but forgotten(?). Or an incorrectly coded 'by whom' tag(?). Thanks, Laszlo Panaflex (talk) 22:22, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Fixed. The 'by' shouldn't be there, and I've checked Dan Shapira's article. What we have is what he wrote. Thanks indeed for your very close attention to these minutiae. Coincidentally, I see that that mischievous genius Eran Elhaik has just put out, with Ranajit Das, Paul Wexler and Mehdi Pirooznia a new paper, 'Localizing Ashkenazic Jews to primeval villages in the ancient Iranian lands of Ashkenaz,' Genome Biology and Evolution 3 March 2016. Several months down the road, it may end up in the Khazar or related article, though so far, it's been met with a deafening silence in secondary sources, I guess not only because it's just out (compare the reaction to his earlier paper). I don't know how to evaluate it,-I'm skeptical on all of this by nature- except to say that that whole field is driven by a self-fulfilling prophetic methodology that, to an historian's eye, looks very odd, so anything that challenges the reigning paradigm is intrinsically interesting. The linguistic mystery at its core has always fascinated me, and for that alone it is worth reading. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 15:26, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Talk:Korean influence on Japanese culture

Hi Nishidani. I realize there are particular considerations about source quality in these articles on influences between countries. Without weighing in on the content dispute on the above page about the Kang source, I want you to reconsider how you're interacting with TH1980 on the talk page here, because your responses are needlessly aggressive. You've patronized them by saying they should have realized something was stupid (in a topic area that is somewhat complicated and nuanced), and told them they know nothing about the topic-- that's the sort of stuff that drives people away from articles and from this project, and not just this editor but other folks who come across this talk page and subsequently want nothing to do with it. If you're concerned with the sources or edits that are being made, that's fine, but you can say so without commenting on anybody's comprehension or making other personal remarks. I, JethroBT drop me a line 12:57, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

True, but how much of my editing time has to be spent in charitable wiping up of incompetent crap placed into articles by people who know nothing of the subjects they edit, but only have one big idea, which is repeated in endless variations, I.e. here, that everything Japanese is Korean? Scholarship is about hermeneutic diversity, not monomania. I've spent, if you examine the talk pages, an inordinate amount of time explaining why the said editor and the person he tagteams with, simply repeatedly screw up on these articles. And I've mostly been polite. But there's a fucking limit. He shouldn't be editing there, and I wouldn't either, except for the fact that several editors call me in when things are at an impasse to resolve disagreements, and it invariably means hours looking up sources these disruptive editors fail to consult (I assume because they deal broadly with the specifics of a topic issue, and do not beat an ideological nationalist line).Nishidani (talk) 15:01, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
I appreciate that you engage in the hard work of resolving disagreements here; it can be really draining, speaking from experience. And I did notice you've been more polite before (like in this discussion), but there isn't a limit. And by that, I don't mean you need to be saccharine-sweet to everyone, and I don't mean you shouldn't be frustrated. But it's not appropriate to engage with people that way (just as it's not appropriate to tagteam / repeatedly ignore policy-related concerns about sources, if that is what is going on). There are other ways of dealing with it. Stick to talking about the problems with the sources and policy, and not about them. If you feel like they shouldn't be editing there, that sort of thing needs to go to ANI, not to be fought over on an article talk page. I understand you might be loath to go there, but condescension and personalizing comments are not helping either of you, even if they are made in an effort to improve the article. I, JethroBT drop me a line 21:27, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
You're dead right, I get pissed off at times and shouldn't. I refuse as a rule to have recourse to AE/AI except in very exceptional circumstances. My beef with editors like User:TH1980, apart from the tagteaming lurk, is that they persist in not learning from what other editors have told them. He never formats his links properly -often neglects to provide a page no., and a link to it, and hunts monocularly for one theme, a Korean presence in Japanese culture. Now I think the peninsular impact of 'Korea' on the formation of the Japanese polity and civilization was profound: but it wasn't, at that germinal time in the dawn of Japanese history ethnonational 'Korean', and it was part also of sinifying effects and influences on that region. I know very well, that Japanese scholarship particularly down to the 70s, and the attitude is still there, felt hostile to this, and tried to spin the 'debt' out of view. But while this is still alive, scholarship tends not to inflect its research with the ballyhoo of Japanese-Korean cultural point-scoring. That's playing the cultural one-upmanship game, and TH1980 is thoroughly caught up in it. When he read that extraordinary claim that modern Japanese publishing was indebted to a technology from Korea, he should have done what any sensible person does with extraordinary claims. Cast about to study the point. Had he done so, he would have realized what people who are familiar with Edo know, - and it's very basic knowledge -that its print culture was basically woodblock, not movable metal type, and having absorbed that, reconsidered his source as a possible POV drumbeat. Still, point taken. Best. Nishidani (talk) 12:43, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
I still think this is a pattern of problematic editing. It is obligatory for editors to observe WP:NPOV, and not merely push a particular POV while carelessly ignoring alternative sources that may contradict what you believe. User:TH1980 has been told several times not to indulge in this, and he persists, notwithstanding the fact his source was mediocre, and it misrepresented known complexities and facts. E.g.
Again this witting POV pushing required other editors to step in and add the background he refuses to examine, wasting their time (I lost 20 minutes of my time better spent on sandpapering and painting my rusted railings, just to rectify this latest careless nonsense (confusing two distinct processes, paper production, which was certainly earlier, and mill technology for its manufacture.

Help

Hi Nishidani, can you please give your opinion on the censorship issue on Talk:Yisrael Katz (politician born 1955)? 2A02:C7D:3FDE:D400:34AC:583A:B24A:5AF3 (talk) 15:13, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

Genetics for ethnic groups RfC

In case you're interested in voicing an opinion, there's an RfC being held here. Cheers!

P.S. I hope your health is holding up. Youth is wasted on the young. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 01:07, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

What health? That's something you never think about when you have it, and do best not thinking about when you edge towards the life/death tipping point! I don't think 'youth' is a viable concept anymore, since it's all wasted these days on tablets/Iphones etc. I was shocked to see throughout Rome the other day dozens of young couples, walking hand in hand, with one of them invariably staring into a cellphone screen. They were not looking at each other, and walked through all the galleries in the Vatican Museums full of Exekias amphorae, Caravaggio-Guido Reni, Raffaele,etc.etc.etc., with selfie-sticks making mugs out of themselves with mug shots. They think Caravaggio becomes significant if an inferior 'dial' with a dopey grin is plunked in the foreground and caught digitally for the virtual fame of family memory. Youth to me is a sense of tremulous wonder and curiosity about the world: they don't have it.(I've replied to your query on the page).Nishidani (talk) 11:02, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
Ah, yes, I only have to look at the neighbours across the road in the morning to see them taking selfies of themselves pretending to finish off some alcohol from the night before to upload to cyberspace in order to prove that they have 'a life'. They're so busy recording their existence thousands of times a day that one can only understand that they don't believe that they exist unless they can see themselves on instagram, see their tweet, recorded their pimple for posterity, and take their mandatory pic of yet another brunch they'll never look at again. Memory has become too cheap to associate with the concept of living. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 23:36, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Khazar theory of Ashkenazi ancestry

Dear user, You are continuously removing sources and details without using the talk page. Can you please use the talk page to explain your edits? The talk page: [4]Ferakp (talk) 16:32, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

This is pure prevarication, if not indeed an outright lie. All it shows is that you jumped into this article without reading the talk page, where the reason why that piece of crap violated WP:NPOV was outlined, and which therefore justified my revert, which you insist now was unmotivated.
here
here
As to Galassi, he has a long record of reverting in favour of anyone who shares his POV, and carelessness about details. See
here.
Effectively you are the edit-warrior.Nishidani (talk) 16:44, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
Read up on WP:OWN. And cease and desist.--Galassi (talk) 12:51, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
I get it. The pleonasm you love, 'cease and desist' is a personal code for 'get stuffed' designed to measure up to WP:AGF for immunity purposes, while aspiring to provoke patient editors to respond by a fairly justifiable 'get fucked'. Well, I will desist from telling you to do that, but provide you with a more useful imperative: Do some reading. You evidently don't, so far, on any topic I have seen you despoil by lazy reverting.Nishidani (talk) 13:15, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
I was told by someone to "fuck off" by them referring me to the reply in Arkell v. Pressdram. People will seek any way to get around telling someone to actually FO without actually telling them to FO. Sir Joseph (talk) 18:04, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
Quite true, Sir Joe. I don't mind being told to 'fuck off' - I often tell myself to do so, when looking at errors in my own edits, and I deplore the idea of reporting anyone for turpiloquy. I've seen a lot of polite behavior sheaving a knife-like enmity, which is one reason I have an allergy to political correctness. Give me Steptoe to Iago any day.Nishidani (talk) 18:50, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
BTW, I hope you don't mind that I sometimes "stalk" you. I oftentimes use you as a free version of curiosity.com Sir Joseph (talk) 19:29, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
I didn't notice that but, of course, I don't mind at all. Let me apologize for the boredom this may induce. On the other hand, I now feel obliged to make my edits or comments a little more entertaining or perhaps 'curioser' , if I may appropriate an Alice-ism, now that I have a guaranteed audience of one, sir!Nishidani (talk) 19:34, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Don't worry, it's only when I'm bored at work or until they firewall Wiki and I have to use my mobile phone. :) Sir Joseph (talk) 19:38, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

This is just silliness. Nish used the talk page. You've got some nerve since your behavior could be described as edit warring! But, I'll forgive you because I just so happen to agree with you. :) Hey, I'm only human and ill-gotten goods are still good...s.--Monochrome_Monitor 04:02, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
Also Sir Joseph Commander of the British Empire, "fuck off" is nothing. I've been told my grandparents should have been gassed. By a Jew, no less! --Monochrome_Monitor 04:04, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
MM.I think you misread. Sir Joe and I have had our strong differences, and no doubt will continue to do so, but I took his note as a gentle gloss, confirming my remark. I said people are formally polite but between the lines, telling one to get fucked, and he added an instance in his own experience of the same. Anyone here, as on Nableezy's page, can say what they like or dislike. Dislike out in the open is a good thing. Were that not the case, people would never marry.Nishidani (talk)
Oh no I understand, I'm talking about ferakp. --Monochrome_Monitor 07:11, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
There you go. I misread you, Ferakp misread me: good reason why we should be a little more patient here, esp when dealing with complex controversies, where even authorities who understand each other's work are liable to be misread. It's late over there , young lady, drop the computer screen and snuggle down to get your forty winks.G'nite (ps. I will, once I have broken my nocturnal fast, and assuaged the rumblings of digestive juices hankering for a croissant or two, sit down and answer at some length, Quintus Symmachus' fair remarks on Wexler, several hours down the line)Nishidani (talk) 07:38, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
I may or may not have written that at 2 AM. But you know what they say, one man's 2 am is another man's 7 am. And 8 am. and 2 pm. Or if you're european, "14". My fasts are all diurnal. It's like ramadan everyday. But I wouldn't call myself nocturnal. I'm crepuscular. :)--Monochrome_Monitor 22:19, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Time to remove the semi-retirement tag?

Signor Nish, I note that you're more active than ever these days. Perhaps that's the modern world in which we live - retirement can mean life is even busier than it was before.

Anyway, I just wanted to say I am pleased that you have stuck at it; your thoughtful contributions keep the quality of our articles high and your good humor and wisdom help us editors sane. Oncenawhile (talk) 09:44, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

I really spend little time on Wikipedia these days. Far too busy doing other things. I've cut it down to about 10% of my day. If you can find a template for semi-retarded or semiotically-decayed, I'll gladly switch it. Cheers and thanks for the kind comments.Nishidani (talk) 11:11, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
Semi-retarded or semiotically-decayed? Both of those sound like mental disorders. The latter brings to mind receptive aphasia and the former.... you know....
I prefer the term "in repose". --Monochrome_Monitor 22:45, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

I'm getting a serious feeling of deja-vu...

Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Korea-related articles#Threaded discussion

The non-sequiturs and the refusal to outright state whether he/she actually agrees or disagrees with me very much remind of CurtisNaito and Enkyo2.

What do you think I should do?

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:26, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

I think it pointless editing here. I'll reflect about whether to come back or not for a month or two. Thanks in any case for arguing on my behalf at A/I but please drop it. No one's listening, and persisting is pointless.Nishidani (talk) 06:54, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
Don't be fatalistic Nish. You've got to pick your battles. I know I do. Have yourself a croissant! --Monochrome_Monitor 10:20, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Korean influence on Japanese culture‎‎

Weren't you opposed to this? Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 22:42, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Computer problems, today's being that the wiki markup boxes are all missing, one more reason for not editing any more. In any case, that is about the nadir of this abysmal editor's barrel-scraping efforts (One could write a very good, more informative, and more detailed article on Korean peninsular influences, more far-reaching than this, if those nuisance nationalist weren't around). This edit, for example, doesn't tell you who Robert T. Oliver was, or why a non-orientalist, paid by Syngman Rhee to write a book in 1945 to present Korea's claims in post-war conferences, should be an authority on the impact of Korean metal-type on Edo book production. Every edit that fellow makes shows he knows nothing of any topic:all he can do is google 'Korea'+'Japan'+influence and then copy and paste the result, ignoring who wrote the book, when it was written, if the information is dated or even correct. If he knew something of the topic he would be adding really interesting things in that section, like the way ŏnhaebon (諺解本) vernacular in text paragraphs glossing Chinese texts, had some inspirational influence on the Japanese introduction of gōtōchū(鼇頭注: "turtle head notes" ), etc, etc.etc. Back to the real world: there's some undergrowth thickening that needs thinning in a wood nearby, and it's a fine day.--Nishidani (talk) 12:29, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
Well, on a rainier day, you'll want to take a look---they're tag-team edit warring to nom the thing to GA. Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 13:07, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
I gather that Song-Nai Rhee, C. Melvin Aikens, Sung-Rak Choi, and Hyuk-Jin Ro, ["Korean Contributions to Agriculture, Technology, and State Formation in Japan,"] Asian Perspectives (Fall 2007) pp.404-459 p.405. is now used everywhere. That is readable in PDF and has a lot of information, but none of it can be used unless it is cross-checked against the recent scholarship, since the whole exercise there is to recast the complex issue of peninsular influences in a nationalist mould. So, anywhere it is sourced should be tagged to ask for independent verification from multiple sources. I'll keep an eye on it, though, though editing's pointless for me at the moment since the wiki markup has disappeared from my editing window, and doing anything here is too laborious without it.Nishidani (talk) 13:17, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

Wexler

You seem to misunderstand the Forward article, the pseudonymous individual is Wexler himself, not his reviewer. And that is the last remnant of the Goodfaith clause.--Galassi (talk) 20:23, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

Don't use the word goodfaith. You show no signs of it.
Why do I have to waste so much time correcting silly errors of sheer disattention, from you or User:Lute88 and User:Ferakp (both of whom came out of retirement from wikipedia to intervene on this obscure issue by backing you)?
Why do you insist on shooting yourself in the foot, in public, every time you cross my path by giving evidence you erase, revert and set down the law without the slightest knowledge of the issues? Replying once more to your Abbot and Costello duet in the academy act with Lute88 (here, here, here, here and here) and now with your pompous know fuck-all edit on my page,
User:E.M.Gregory who specializes in writing victim articles, added material on a subject he hasn't a clue about with with the patently ridiculous edit summary add a little reality to POV lede , cited Jordan Kutzik, 'Don’t Buy the Junk Science That Says Yiddish Originated in Turkey,' The Forward 28 April, 2016 in order to add this to the lead:

Other scholars disagree; the Yiddish newspaper The Forward describes Wexler's theory as "rejected by every Yiddish linguist except for Wexler."

I replaced this for a number of very simple reasons. The Forward did not describe his theory thus, but a junior journalist in an op-ed. You never ascribe to a newspaper adventitious opinions by one of their writers. I've read dozens of articles on this and can sight a piece of tacit phrasal borrowing when it crops up. Those words used by Jordan Kutzik are a plagiarizing paraphrase of an article he read before writing his own. So I used the direct source, for two other reasons as well. The writer of the source Kutzik paraphrased is an accomplished linguist, and writes pseudonomously. What Kutzik modelled his pilfered words on comes from Philologos who began writing for The Fortward on Yiddish and languages when Kutzik was two years old.
Kutzik’s rejected by every Yiddish linguist except for Wexler comes straight out of an article written 2 years earlier by the anonymous/pseudonymous Philologus in the very same journal publishing his own article:These detractors include all serious Yiddish linguists except for Wexler himself.
So I chucked out the plagiarizer (2016 Kutzik) and restored his original source (2014 Philologos)’s words

To this his detractors rejoin that the other cases he cites are no more persuasive and that dozens of wrongs still do not make a right. These detractors include all serious Yiddish linguists except for Wexler himself.'(Philologos, 'The Origins of Yiddish, Part Dray,' The Forward 20 July 2014].

All Kutzik changed was ‘detractors’ for ‘rejected’. Plagiarism.
Hence, in my edit I rewrote according to the original source:

'Other scholars disagree: one writing pseudonymously, has claimed "all serious Yiddish linguists", aside from Wexler himself, disagree strongly with his theory.' (Philologus 'The Origins of Yiddish, Part Dray,' The Forward 20 July 2014].

Ask yourself who is Jordan Kutzik, flinging about obiter dicta as a cub reporter on a popular if minor newspaper catering to a specific constituency which, like him, has no knowledge of the subject, on the technicalities of an obscure linguistic crux, and of extremely complex genetic theory at the cutting edge? Fresh from a BA at Rutgers, having begun (admirably) to learn Yiddish at 16, he airily dismisses a professor emeritus who regularly works with some 20 languages, is an expert on Yiddish, and is still widely published and commented on, despite his ‘revolutionary’ views, mostly politely by colleagues who otherwise deeply dissent from his conclusions. Worse still, he plagiarized a competent scholar of languages.
Shooting yourself repeatedly in the foot is okay in a world where most people limp: they won’t notice anything odd in your teetering deambulation because it looks normative. Scholars try to walk on their own two feet, which arouses envy perhaps in the maimed, but which is, in evolutionary terms, a habit nature or survival insists we do well to acquire.
As you admitted you 'dunno' except that, once more, you have supported an automatic revert of someone who knows what the meaning of what he reads is, showing at the same time that you can’t construe anything for its obvious significance, and can't see a piece of conmanship by an equally incompetent editor like Luke88 for what it is, POV pushing of crap sourcing. Perhaps that is balanced out by feeling comfortable in a crowd of indifferent or mediocre editors with a POV bee in their bonnets:Ferakp, Monochrome Monitor recently, Luke88, and E.M.Gregory.Nishidani (talk) 10:57, 7 May 2016 (UTC)
Perhaps the point of your attrition is this, convincing me of what I have long suspected. That, in the face of the supercilious and disattentive reading habits that flourish on Wikipedia, it is pointless trying to add some serious material to this attempt at a global encyclopedia. If that's what your aim is, then you can congratulate yourself on having, single-handedly, almost succeeded in confirming my feelings, that my presence here is pointless.Nishidani (talk) 11:09, 7 May 2016 (UTC)
Well not quite. For the record, the result of this behest that I 'cease and desist' is that Galassi is to 'cease and desist' from all editing regarding the Khazars.Nishidani (talk) 21:33, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

I'm sorry for being such an ass to you. I was patronizing to the point of condescension and impudent in assuming insight into your intentions. It's certainly not the way a friend behaves. I do consider you a friend and I'm grateful for the support you've given me in my own tribulations, it's shameful that I wouldn't do the same when the tables turned. I don't want to hurt you and I'm truly sorry if I did.--Monochrome_Monitor 15:41, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

That's deeply appreciated, MM. You didn't hurt me: I was just a tad disappointed, perhaps annoyed, at what I thought of as a sign of great promise stumbling down a predictable road of routine. I should clarify that I don't want you 'on-side'. I hope that you just exercise your judgement independently, strictly on the merits of evidence. The human mind was engineered for survival -(a) the weight of a half a million years of biological imperatives to enhance our instrumental approach to the world, and get our way in it far exceeds that late fine-tuning,called civilization, to rewire our instincts towards grasping the deeper logic of things. My politics are pretty simple: 'decency applied across the board'. When it comes to (b) anything requiring close construal of an ingested field of controversy,however, esp. historical or theoretical, then I go into pyrrhonic mode as per Sextus Empiricus, when he writes of the Sceptics as "Zetetic" (open minded searching enquiry), "Ephectic" (suspensive after results emerge); "Aporetic".' Entine, if I get my notes together, is totally committed to (a); the field he is kibitzing on is tangled up with both (a) and (b), and evaluating the merits of the issue is no simple manner. Read Dan Graur's blog, from top to bottom. That's where I am, more or less. Certainly, it cannot be adequately addressed by complacent reverting. That's all. Best wishes, my young friend.Nishidani (talk) 09:22, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
Thank you. Of course it's better to keep an open mind, but in this case it's being open minded to the plausability of theories put forward by people with strict agendas, who seek validation at the expense of truth. Ie, openmindedness to closemindedness. But I digress. While my complacence gave me the changes I was looking for, it was a pyrric victory. Like that? Because you said pyrronic? :P Thanks again my venerable dutch uncle. <3
That should be pyrrhic victory. I could list a dozen agendas (I did so while shopping in a supermarket) affecting all participants in this debate and those who write sources, beginning with Entine. As to agenda spotting, your Nish homework for this afternoon is to meditate on Luke 6:42, ma p'tite soeur, and mull its echo in Baudelaire's address to his readers, where he makes, or am I fuddled?, soeur rhyme with pleur:)Nishidani (talk) 20:02, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
Ack, you want me to read the christian bible? ;P Muchas gracias for the french lesson. --Monochrome_Monitor 03:50, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
What's Christian about the Bible, old or new? It's all Jewish historically. And in any case, there's always the dictum advising one to 'know your enemy'.Nishidani (talk) 07:40, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
Ah, touche!--Monochrome_Monitor 15:09, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

continuing our discussion on jewish historiography here

I didn't google the answer, lets not be presumptuous. I did go to the bar-kochba page to remind myself of the figure. I agree that a majority of the worlds jews were in diaspora at the time of the destruction of the second temple, that isn't contested in any serious scholarship. And you are right that this diaspora, the hellenistic diaspora, is unique in that it was the only diaspora that was largely voluntary unlike the babylonian or assyrian. Rather like today's jews existing with two loci in israel and the us, the jews of the period had the conservative/judean loci and the hellenistic loci at alexandria and antioch. The majority of Jews may have already been in diaspora throughout the roman empire, but ALMOST ALL OF THEM BECAME CHRISTIANS, as I'm sure you know. The jews exiled from the land by the romans (the judean exile/jewish roman wars and bar kochba) and later the byzantines (who largely ended the presence of Jews in the land of Israel who remained concentrated in the Galilee, particularly in Tiberias, where many sages of the Mishnah and Talmud lived) are the vast majority of the surviving jews today, these jews form the basis of the ashkenazi, sephardic, north african, and italian Jewish communities. The Jews of the babylonian exile are today's iranian, iraqi, and caucasian (ajerbaijani/georgian) jews. (This is deduced both from historiography and genetics, with these two populations forming distinct clusters which split off some 3500 years ago). Jewish and historic scholarship focuses on the history of the former group, whose exile from the land came to symbolize the Jewish experience of suffering in the nations both in the eyes of the exiled jews and their Christian persecutors, for whom the "wandering jews" became a confirmation of the superiority of their new religion. Put this together and it's obvious how Jewish and Western scholarship came to regard the diaspora as a primary, if not THE primary, aspect of pre-Israel Jewish identity. Compare it to the babylonian exile, only the intelligensia of the israelites (scribes/priests/royalty/etc.) were actually exiled, but I don't see you calling the babylonian exile a meme. Both jewish collective memory and historiography focus on the Jews exiled to Babylon, since this population is the one which documented their experience into religiously and historically significant writings. And in these writings Cyrus's decree to return occupies a similar place to the Israeli Declaration of Independence, even though in both cases most Jews were content to stay put. This simplified narrative of Jewish history is not a malicious construct of Zionist thought, it developed organically. History is a flawed science, it is ipso facto anthropocentric, and history after the development of writing is particularly susceptible to human meddling. The Jewish experience or perception of the same reflects how humans think about the world and their relationship to it. Many Jews were exiled by the Romans. Not all Jews, but human beings always look at history in light of their current situations, and the majority of Jews for almost 2000 years identified with the experience of exile. Disregarding the Roman exile entirely as a romantic fabrication is just as context and nuanceless as adhering to it in its extreme, if not moreso.--Monochrome_Monitor 18:23, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

  • The majority of Jews may have already been in diaspora throughout the roman empire, but ALMOST ALL OF THEM BECAME CHRISTIANS, as I'm sure you know.
What does that translate into in terms of genetics?
  • The jews exiled from the land by the romans (the judean exile/jewish roman wars and bar kochba)
There is no evidence for this, apart from exclusion from Jerusalem. Jewish communities are attested in the Galilee throughhout that period, in any case, and some historians like Moshe Gil still argue that Jews were a majority in the late Byzantine-e3arly Arab period, which is why you get the submeme arguing that the Arab invasion caused the flight to Europe (this curious fantasy is cited several times in the genetic literature).
  • and later the byzantines (who largely ended the presence of Jews in the land of Israel)
What evidence have you for this, as opposed to the collapse of the economy in the late 2nd century onwards?
  • (the Galilee from which come)the vast majority of the surviving jews today, these jews form the basis of the ashkenazi, sephardic, north african, and italian Jewish communities.
There is no historical evidence I know of for this.
  • Generally the narrative you are repeating is the rabbinical formulation which consistently read of the exiles in theological terms. Religious thinkers (Christian, Jewish, Islamic etc.) generally are not good sources for what actually happened. The Babylonian and Roman events were construed as the implementation by a secular enemy of a punishment, the diaspora being a punishment for some failure, in their view,to uphold the halakhic ideals. Most articles reflect the religious spin not historiography. Some sources say 60-70% of the Jews were in diaspora before 70 CE. They could have returned at any time, from anywhere in the Mediterranean. They didn't, perhaps because the 'diaspora/exile' meme still hadn't taken a grip on the collective identity.Nishidani (talk) 14:43, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
A good example of prose written with one intent, but meaning the opposite, and as such, turning out a nonsensical statement.
A very large number of wiki articles are grounded in carelessly composed sources like this.

To save priceless as-yet undiscovered fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which include the oldest surviving manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, from being looted, an extraordinary archaeological excavation has been going on with more than 500 volunteers from Israel and abroad sleeping and living in a camp in the desert'. Michael Bachner,'Saving the Dead Sea Scrolls from looters,'Ynet 25 May 2016

You misread what I wrote. I said that the jews who were exiled or fled from the jewish-roman wars and later from the byzantine wars compose that cohort of jews today, and jews of iraq/iran and the caucauses are another cohort. That's the predominant theory explaining why these groups genetically diverge approximately 2500 years ago. As for christians, its rather simple, most hellenized jews became christians, so they cannot contribute substantially to the basis of today's jews. Because today's jews are jews, not christians. As for judea there's evidence of devastation around jersualem as well, and remember judea is rather small place and the majority of its population lived in the capital. The theological formulation of jews does not ever say every jew was exiled by force. Many great sages lived in babylon when they could have joined the gallilean jews. The reason the destruction of the temple is so significant is not because it accompanied a massive expulsion, it didn't. Its because the jewish religion revolved around the temple. After it was destroyed rabbinical judaism dominated the other sects, grounding the religion in torah study rather than sacrifices at the temple. This made it possible for jews to fulfill all their mitzvot outside the land, an mobility which allowed jews to survive, unlike the unfortunate samaritans who clung to their holy site and now number in the hundreds. I don't know who says in 70 ce all the jews were exiled. That's wrong and any jew who reads the mishnah and talmud know that. If any jews believe it today its because of christian thought, they believed the temple was destroyed because jews rejected jesus- case in point the ending of mel gibson's snuff film. But the jews, emmigrated, fled, or expelled, always conceived of themselves as in exile. That's not a zionist innovation. "Next year in jerusalem" has been part of the passover seder for millennia. You're right that jewish history is presented as an endless chain of catastrophes when it's much more complex. Most jews in diaspora lived quiet lives separate from the the Christians, they had social and economic disabilities but were concerned above all about freely practicing their religion. It was generally agreed that if they kept to themselves and showed deference to the christian authorities they would be left alone. On many, many occasions they were massacred or forcibly converted or expelled, but in periods of calm many lived happy fruitful lives. Brilliant people like vilna goan enriched jewish thought while living in third-world conditions. The diaspora story is filled with tragedies but overall its a triumph, a people stubbornly refusing to cease to exist. Honestly I think the switch in mindset to the diaspora being one huge catastrophe comes from the shoah.--Monochrome_Monitor 18:13, 29 May 2016 (UTC)
There is no textual, historical evidence that 'the jews who were exiled or fled from the jewish-roman wars and later from the byzantine wars compose that cohort of jews today' (whose genetics differ from the Iraq-Iranian cohort). For like their Carthaginian, semitic-speaking cousins, Jews were, not only in Iran/Iraq, they were all over the Mediterranean long before the fall of Jerusalem, and these were not expelled from Judea. Italy's Jewish community was in place probably by 200BCE. So your affirmation just repeats a religious myth. Nishidani (talk) 18:25, 29 May 2016 (UTC)
'many times, massacred, forcibly converted'. I could write, were I to imagine myself a Christian and parody that, an horrific counter-narrative of the same nature for Christians, for example, for this period, who for centuries suffered persecution, mass killings, and forced conversiona to paganism etc. Soi losing one's Jewishness made no difference for many centuries to converts to Christianity, at least until Constantine. They did for centuries what the Jewish wisdom in Christianity advised at Matthew 10:23 ("when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another" hence diaspora, also for Christians. (Strategos for example says Jews slaughtered Christians at the Mamilla Pool if they refused to convert in 614CE). If one wants to nurture a grievance, as a building block for pride in modern defiance, fixed with the mortar of ancient ressentiment, anyone can get an abundant nutrition by milking history selectively for the tragedies that bear on one's own, whatever your ilk or ethnos. If I had the wrong tutors, instead of a learned but historically cosmopolitan father, for what I learnt as a child of what English did to the Irish for nigh on a millennium, a practical genocide at times, I'd have ended up a nationalist nutter.Nishidani (talk) 20:54, 29 May 2016 (UTC)
I read Martin Goodman's Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilisations a while back and was very impressed with it. It gives an excellent introduction to this subject area and has a fine bibliography. It was extremely well received. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Irondome (talk) 21:35, 29 May 2016 (UTC)
It has nothing to do with religion. I'm not talking about population historiography, i'm talking about a very common interpretation of genetics where those two groups of jews split off around the first temple period. Again, I'm not making generalizations. Some Jewish communities resisted hellenization, case in point the ancient greek jewish community. But it's generally thought that the jews of southern europe (ashkenazi and sephardic) are descendents from judeans internally displaced in the roman (and in the case of ashkenazim the holy roman) empire. As for Christians, you probably know this but the "age of martyrdom" in early christianity is a myth.--Monochrome_Monitor 03:16, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
Oh I know about the mamilla controversy and I agree the museum shouldn't be built there. The land of Palestine is not palestinian cultural property, it has a rich history of which the palestinians (unless you count arab/aramean christians) are a relatively recent part. There are greek antiquities, armenian antiquities, even roman antiquities in the "holy land". If you're speaking in environmentalist terms I'm all for ecological preservation, but Israel has a way better reputation for environmentalism than my country or yours. If we're talking about the villages destroyed or deserted in 48, obviously that was horrible (as are all wars), but its not usually what I associate with the word antiquities. If we're talking about the middle ages my folks lived in lithuania since the founding of vilnius and invitation of german jews to the city in the 14th century and the expulsion of the jews from portugal in the 15th. They lived there a damn long time. My great grandmother's family had a prosperous cheese farm which was pillaged by the germans in world war one, and she lost everything, including her sister. Her exile from her mother country was only a few decades before 1948. Anyway, I don't identify with lithuania at all and I have no desire to visit that horrible place, and that's the main difference between me and the great grandchildren of palestinian refugees who dream about returning to houses that they never knew that no longer exist. I don't deny that's an important distinction. But after arriving at ellis island she built a new life for herself. There's no reason for any palestinian to be living in a refugee camp 70 years later... it's mind-boggling that with the most foreign aid per capita in the world they don't have permanent housing. --Monochrome_Monitor 04:37, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
MM comes to her history as someone like myself might come to Irish history had I memorized works like Denys Scully's Statement of the Penal Laws, which Aggrieve the Catholics of Ireland, (1812), overlaying family stories of dispossession, famine, prejudice and on two occasions, virtual genocide (Great Famine (Ireland) and the genocidal policies of the Elizabethan period, premised, you see it in Edmund Spenser, on the idea that the Irish were 'foreigners' descended from Carthaginians, and deserved the fate meted out to the latter (Carthago delenda est) by Romans in the Punic Wars (Ben Kiernan, Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur, Yale University Press, 2007 ch.5 pp.169ff.); of forefathers fluent in Irish, Latin and English, denied a school and reduced to teaching the village scamps while hiding in hedgerows on Sunday. This was the distant past, recalled but not traumatically, for I was raised in affluence by parents who did not dwell on the ghettoized world of origins, but the fortunate present. Apart from the contempt for Palestinians, redolent of the attitude of contempt of Ezra and Nehemiah for the am ha-aretz, this strikes me, MM; as very June Leavittish, an American, whose quest for her ‘inner self’, imagined as approximating some 'Jewish soul forged in a belly of fire' led her to abandon rural Vermont and dwell in a slum in Kiryat Arba. Her story is captured in a wonderful vignette by Henryk Broder, ‘Tagar and the Teepee Family,’ in his A Jew in the New Germany, University of Illinois Press‎ 2004 pp.122-129.
I think Nishidani is talking about the Jewish revolt against Heraclius. Because you were talking about a Byzantine era expulsion. It is true that and Eutychius and the Sefer Zerubbabel both talk of Jews having to flee to the “hills and Egypt” or “caves and valleys” going off my memory here. But it’s all very vague and based on apocalyptic / polemical writings.
Jacob Neusner argues that the revolt was so unsuccessful because of an already limited Jewish population. A perspective that I think most scholars generally hold. The Jewish community of that era does not seem that healthy. The Sanhedrin moved a few times and Yerushalmi was never finished or properly edited, possibly do to persecution etc.Jonney2000 (talk) 05:51, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
Exactly, my point was simply that, in those times, whatever population got the upper hand, it took it out on the other. Jews aided, with good historical motivations for revenge, the Sassanids, and slaughtered ensued in Jerusalem; further south, one report has a Sassanid Christian abetting the Persians in the taking of Alexandria, and slaughter ensued. The Muslims seemed to have been the only conquerors who introduced some institutional sanity in this sectarian opportunistic and theological slaughter. In all of this, we lose sight of the Samaritans, who had a far harder time under the Byzantines than the Jews - they certainly revolted against the Byzantines with far greater frequency, and subsequently disappear, though demographically they had been historically a substantial component of Palestine. Nishidani (talk) 12:30, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
The potato famine reminds me of the holodomor. If the holodomor is genocide than the potato famine is... though personally I think genocide requires intent to kill in whole or part, neither of which I think fit that bill. Not that my opinion matters. Anyway that doesn't make it any less horrible for the people who experienced it. Have you read A Modest Proposal? As for the samaritans here's a great article[5].--Monochrome_Monitor 15:05, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

What I find particularly interesting is when you say that whenever population gets the upper hand they take it out on the other. You're right, look at yemen's jews who massacred yemen's christians. However fate has had it that jews have very rarely had the upper hand. I also find it funny that the article I linked connects samaritans to this with a quote from josephus: "they alter their attitude according to circumstance and, when they see the Jews prospering, call them their kinsmen, on the ground that they are descended from Joseph and are related to them through their origin from him, but when they see the Jews in trouble, they say that they have nothing whatever in common with them nor do these have any claim of friendship or race."--Monochrome_Monitor 16:08, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

I think that might be the Human nature thing. Irondome (talk) 16:14, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
Simon is correct on that particular quote, but it is selective. Jewish-Samaritan biblical and post-biblical relations are far more complex, and reading Josephus's works is the way to grasp some of those intricacies. One strong lesson I learned in learning Greek was to look at what ancient sources leave out, because it is the victor's narrative basically (that's what got me to handle the P of the I/P conflict articles). That is why I always have the Samaritans in mind, and why I am often annoyed by the complacency of historians in not giving due thought to them as an autonomous and important political, social and cultural presence throughout this period.
Of course I've read the Modest Proposal. One reads everything by certain authors. As to the Samaritans, it is the elephant in the room in all our articles, and most general historical books on Palestine 400 BCE-600CE, as if everything were Jewish versus. In all the demographic literature, one reads of the carrying capacity of land, and then a breakdown of the population to Jews and pagans/Graeco-Romans etc., with Samaritans made invisible by being included, inappropriately in the former, in the face of Josephus whose works constantly mention the striking opposition of these two indigenous groups. This is a very serious defect in the popular story narrative you, and wikipedia articles, embrace. Their presence destabilizes the us/them paradigm and distinguishing their remains from Jewish remains (synagogues, miqva'ot etc) is no easy matter. Samaria is often thought to be largely Samaritan/pagan in New Testament times, but in the stan dard meme tale it is all Jewish. For this Byzantine period, esp. regards the revolt of 529 CE you get the same wild swings in conjectures (from 300,000 Samaritans to a tenth of that figure) As to the great famine, read Kiernan's book. The first Elizabethan genocide was deliberate, it's openly declared in many documents. The Holodomor was a planned genocide: the problem was to feed Russian cities, so everything edible was systematically ransacked by commissar teams from every house in thousands of Ukrainian villages in order to feel the former. In the mid-50s the Soviet agronomists advised Mao to not repeat this, but he went ahead and 26 million starved to death. This happened under the eyes of the authorities. 4 million people don't die accidentally. The Turks got away with it with Armenians, the Russians with Ukrainians, as the numbers grew exponentially. All of those Luftwaffe technicians and trainees at Borisoglebst and Lipetsk in the early 30s would have noted itNishidani (talk) 16:27, 30 May 2016 (UTC).
'However fate has had it that jews have very rarely had the upper hand.'
That is why they have long been an example to humanity, and a constant prod to the conscience, when it exists, of the powerful. It is interesting that the Khazar narrative finally, after a 1,000 years, has an alien elite converting to Judaism yet imposing tolerance on all, from pagans to the other Abrahamic faiths, as a state rule. Whether this is true or not, it is what the Jewish tradition, informed by the wisdom of accommodating to others' empires, said happened when they finally could assume the reins of statehood. I'm afraid this unique lesson in Jewish memory has worn thin within Israel. What I see there is the normal sociological outcome of history under the standard arrangements for political projects of that kind, a loss of the uniqueness that made the modern diaspora such a striking factor in enlightened modernity.Nishidani (talk) 16:45, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
I'd be happy to work on including the samaritan viewpoint in wikipedia articles. Because of their small numbers today they are often ignored, but in the past they outnumbered jews (I agree samaria had a larger samaritan population than jewish population and I didn't think anyone argued against it). Christians view them through a patronizing sort of "noble savages who were nice to jesus" lens and jews view them equally patronizingly as backwards jews.--Monochrome_Monitor 19:15, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
Just keep an eye out for improvements if your curiosity wends that way. Please don't fall into essentialism, the attribution of attitudes, traits etc to human aggregates that must thereby logically be attached to all members of the set of, for example, 'Jews' or 'Christians' or any other assortment. I've noticed this frequently. There is no 'Jewish' or 'Christian' attitude to 'Samaritans'. I was in the West Bank once, with a Catholic religious group who were mulling ways to help out Muslim children. Unanimity was reached, save for one member who objected that helping Muslim children would only help them grow up to be terrorists. The room froze in embarrassment: There is a saying in Italian that suggests silence is dangerous because it is so rare, it only occurs when a pope is born. Anyway, I spoke up (I won't live long enough to know if I succeeded, by filling the silence, in avoiding the birth of another pope in that year), and told the Catholic dissenter that he was disowning his own faith, ignoring Luke 10:25ff., and, in a short lecture prefaced by apologies for speaking out of turn, since I wasn't a Catholic, noted that in the NT, that parable indicated that Jesus, a Jew, was stepping outside of the ethnic exclusiveness current in some versions of Judaism, and glossing Deuteronomy and Leviticus, clarified that a 'neighbour' (rea) was a word that extended beyond the Jews themselves, and could apply even to the notorious Samaritans, an enemy, who could show more pity than a Levite himself to another Jew in dire straits. In stating that, Jesus was saying that in his reading of Judaism, even a non-Jew could show a humanity that others within the fold failed to manifest, and thereby honour the Torah. Jesus said that as a Jew, and did not regard the Samaritan in the parable as 'backward' anymore than 'Christians' think the Samaritan in the parable, or the Samaritan woman in Sychar were "noble savages who were nice to jesus" (first time I've heard that). I don't worry that you know nothing of Christianity, no one is obliged to understand another religion, though it means one will never be able to read the history of art intelligently. But your remark is also unfair to Jews, of whom Jesus was one and, in that tale, made a point historically that Christianity has all too often honoured more in the breach than in the observance.Nishidani (talk) 20:17, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
I admit I overgeneralized. My point was samaritans are rarely given airtime unless they relate to jewish or christian history. I've actually met christians who think jews are backwards a la Marcion.--Monochrome_Monitor 01:55, 31 May 2016 (UTC)
And I read what some theologians in the West Bank write of the inferiority of goyim: so what? Idiots are everywhere, in every group, community and nation, they do not, except in politics, define those nations' essence. Talking of idiots, I, for one, must read a new book by Roberto Calasso, but, before that, do something more important, tuck into breakfast outside, where I'll no doubt wonder if Simon is sneaking around the rules and having some bacon with his. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 06:58, 31 May 2016 (UTC)
And it would appear I am not the only one..https://twitter.com/baddiel/status/679708250753904640 Irondome (talk) 16:51, 31 May 2016 (UTC)
I don't eat bacon or blood but I eat shellfish.--Monochrome_Monitor 17:01, 31 May 2016 (UTC)
I trace my earliest skepticism about Catholicism to food: meat was strictly forbidden on Fridays. But by an odd coincidence, I was given some pocket money to buy my lunch at the tuck shop on that day of the week but the Catholic primary school didn't provide any meat Fridays. I would sneak out through a break in the fence and walk out down the road a few hundred yards and buy myself a meat pie in a delicatessen, lashed with ketchup. I stumbled on Greek mythology in my father's library at roughly the same time, and the seeds of paganism were sown, much to my mother's grief. Dad approved, quietly.Nishidani (talk) 17:07, 31 May 2016 (UTC)
I should add that the Friday rule had one exception: we were instructed that, if guests of non-Catholics, Protestants, Jews, whoever, and served a meal on Friday evening, that politeness to one's hosts was to overrule any dietary scruple, and everything served was to be eaten. I think of this often, when watching vegan boy-or girlfriends compelling a mother or aunt to cook a separate meal for them on visits. One last thought. My father recounted as one of the hardest experiences fighting in Libya in the North African campaign, an episode in which an Arab latrine worker whose group of labourers he had treated kindly, esp. given the widespread contempt of our troops, came up and handed him a chunk of goat's cheese, foraged from his pocket. He thought respect courtesy and showing thanks required that he take a bite of it in the man's presence, and managed to do so, despite a churning stomach.Nishidani (talk) 17:29, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

continuing debate

I didn't drop anything about entine. I have always defended him as a source. I have never defended yanover, I agree jewishpress is a crappy source except for info on america's modern orthodox. You think I have no individuality? Your responses are boilerplate anti-israel rhetoric. "Fizzle in the guy", "oppressors", "carpet bombing". It's ridiculous. Calling vietnam genocide is also ridiculous and appalling to people who have known real genocide. (Intent to destroy a people in whole or in part? I think not) 1. The "500 children killed" meme is a figure published by Hamas which includes adolescent fighters. 2.It's ballsy to compare Hamas to jewish rebels against the romans, I'll give you that.
2. Jews in the Bar Kochba revolt were fighting against foreign domination, hamas is fighting against a lawfully imposed blockade implemented because of their belligerence. Israel occupied the territories because they were used to wage war against it, occupied judea to weaken the persian empire. Israel isn't concerned that the rockets will kill massive numbers of people, they have the iron dome for that. They are concerned about the fact that most of their population is hiding in bomb shelters and daily life cannot continue until the barrage stops. Hamas uses unguided missiles that are cheap to produce, the iron dome uses guided missiles that are expensive to produce. As the missiles continue they are losing a lot of time and money, and their population is panicking. You also say that "more palestinians died than israelis". That's not how proportionality works. It's the proportion of civillians (sic) killed to legitimate military objectives accomplished, not one side's deaths to another's deaths. [Israel is defending its country], not expanding it. Gazans live in a modern society despite their lack of high-tech weaponry to kill Israelis. Gaza has luxury cars, iphones, fancy hotels. If you're rich of course, most people live in poverty, but that's class stratification for you. It's asymmetrical war fare. For asymmetrical warfare a 1:1 (israel's figure) or even 2:1 (hamas's figure) civilian:combatant ratio is actually pretty great. Compare it to the afghanistan war's 4:1. You focus on the 'suffering of Gazas (sic)- which I agree is immense, and the feeling that its a great injustice. But think about it. Why would Israel WANT to make gazans suffer? Even assuming they don't care about them at all (as the demonizers say) its a waste of money on expensive munitions and a source of international opprobrium. It is in their interest to minimize civilian casualties. My empathy for suffering is distinct from my conception of justice. Justice is not making sides suffer equally in warfare, or else Germany should have carpet-bombed los angelos like we did dresden.-

.--Monochrome_Monitor 19:35, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

Talk:Jewish nose

Something happened to the talk page, apparently after your most recent edit, that removed the recent discussions on "so called" and "problematic content". Please see this prior version. Perhaps we could restore the linked version, and then you could try adding the sources again? K.e.coffman (talk) 22:13, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

I'm reluctant to edit that page: it's a matter of some delicacy - I think it is something the concerned community should thrash out among themselves. All I did was offer some suggestions re sourcing. I am astonished that the obviousness of writing "so-called" is being challenged. But if that is what the consensus determines, it's none of my business to question it.Nishidani (talk) 22:20, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

@Permstrump and Altenmann: Pinging you both as something happened to the Talk page. I included the last "good version" above. Perhaps we can agree to restore it, and then re-add our respective new comments pulling from Talk page history? Otherwise, it will continue to be a mess. K.e.coffman (talk) 22:35, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

There is something weird is going on with the talkpage. I think I just restored it to correct version, but I'm starting to look into the edit history to figure out what happened and to make sure nothing else is missing. Maybe not coincidentally, yesterday I went back to the talkpage to look for the first conversation between Nishidani and Doug Weller about adding "so called" to the lead, because Nishidani added it here on June 10 with an edit summary that said "Following Doug's suggestion on the talk page. It should be 'so-called'..." but I couldn't find it on the talkpage and I could have sworn I read that conversation the day before. I suspect that there are one or two editors making some fishy edit summaries on both the article and the talkpage. I'm making a list of links and will post them on the talkpage when I'm done. Nishidani, FWIW, apart from those one or two editors, I think consensus is with you about adding "so-called". The sources definitely support adding it. I re-added it with 2 sources yesterday, but was reverted, twice. —PermStrump(talk) 22:52, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
I'm very sorry, Permstrump. My carelessness caused an ambiguity. In the first sentence I indicated I was adopting Doug's suggestion we use Patai, which he had suggested. In the second I was making my own judgement. The two are not connected. My apologies.Nishidani (talk) 07:01, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
What's interesting is that I found the "nose" page via Nishidani's editing history, from the AE thread on Galassi—not because I was following Permstrump around after our editing of Creation Museum. I've not even known that Permstrump had edited the page before. Fringe is fringe, right? :-) K.e.coffman (talk) 23:04, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
FWIW I think Altenmann was right about what happened with the talkpage. Nishidani, does it make sense that maybe you forgot you were viewing an older version and accidentally edited from there? Otherwise I can't figure out how the page reverted without markup in the edit history. I will comment more on the talkpage more about some of the odd edit summaries on the main article though. K.e.coffman, I was confused about which talkpage I was on when I saw your username again. :-P —PermStrump(talk) 23:56, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
K.e.coffman, do you think anything you wrote is missing from the current version? I didn't think so, but now I'm second guessing myself. —PermStrump(talk) 23:58, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
I think Altenmann fixed it. At least what was added today; I've not followed the older stuff as I only come across the article today. K.e.coffman (talk) 00:03, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

Armenian nose

The article you linked at Talk:Jewish nose was pretty cute. "So important are noses to Armenians that a Nose Monument has even been erected in the centre of Yerevan. 'Let’s meet by the Nose Monument and take a stroll,' you might say.... Even among Armenians themselves, a genuine Armenian nose isn’t something you encounter very often." So... Armenian's don't have Armenian noses and Jews don't have Jewish noses?! Mind=blown! (I meant that in a tongue-in-cheek kinda way, in case that wasn't clear.) This joke went over my head though: "To make a very bad pun you just might be kith(rough pronunciation of k'it', one of several words for that organ) to the Armenians." What organ are we talking about? The nose? Or one you didn't want to say in English? —PermStrump(talk) 23:16, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

Just want to lighten things up there. Kit' is one of the Armenian words for 'nose' and it has a light aspiration on the final 't' which means one could also transliterate it as 'kith', though English 'th' is different. Kith in English as in 'kith and kin'. We often forget that the Jewish gift for humour is one of the great treasures of our culture, and were editors a little less intense, one could make that page a little more relaxed. Debresser is (rightly) proud of his 'Jewish' nose, and I just quipped that in Armenian that would suggest he had an Armenian nose. Cheers.Nishidani (talk) 07:35, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

First of all thank you for your concern with personal details, but there's another thing I asked there see here's the original questions. This is not related to Wikipedia, just a question to someone who might know. I belive you know more than me about things like that, do you have any idea what is the legal status of the Mandate (the text)? And if you happen to have a source, preferably a non John Whitbeck source becuase John Whitbeck is someone who define me (zionist) as a suprimacist colonialist so using him as a source will make me sound weird., becuase I try to explain to a fellow that we do not need to stay in the West Bank because of international law. Thanks--Bolter21 (talk to me) 17:47, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

About the other thing, email your mentor, since we've noted and agreed on some prospects regarding you and he'll explain, being superfine on the uptake, my edit removal.
When you write:

I try to explain to a fellow that we do not need to stay in the West Bank because of international law

The sentence is ambiguous implying:
(a) we don't have to stay in the West Bank because international law is an obstacle to our permanent presence there, or obliges us, as occupiers, to reach a settlement to disengage from there.
(b)We need to stay in the West Bank, not because of what International Law requires (that, being an occupying army there we have obligations to the Palestinians there etc.) but for some other reason.
I'm not quite sure what kind of material you are asking for: the legal status of the Mandate. It is a legal document, and therefore has no 'status'. Zionists aren't by definition supremacist colonialists. A substantial number of distinguished Zionists thought the movement ended in 1948, and that the events of 1967 threaten(ed) to destroy the legitimacy obtained in 1947. If by Zionist one means someone who defends the legality of the state of Israel (i.e. the obvious) then anyone from myself to Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky is a Zionist. If by Zionist you mean someone who militates for the incorporation of the land beyond the Green Line into Israel, well, that is colonial supremicism. The state of International Law regarding Israel's position vis-a-vis the Palestinian Territories is most authoritatively set forth, by a mostly unanimous vote, in the 8 advisory opinions in pdf linked on this page.
To be brief, the following sections state the legal essence:
  • 78 The territories situated between the Green Line (see paragraph 72 above) and the former eastern boundary of Palestine under the Mandate were occupied by Israel in 1967 during the armed conflict between Israel and Jordan. Under customary international law, these were therefore occupied territories in which Israel had the status of occupying Power. Subsequent events in these territories, as described in paragraphs 75 to 77 above, have done nothing to alter this situation. All these territories (including East Jerusalem) remain occupied territories and Israel has continued to have the status of occupying Power.
If you require something else, try to reframe the request.Nishidani (talk) 19:14, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
Well that's not really what I am searching and indeed I explained my self really bad. What I meant was, what is the significance of the Mandate paper today? Does pats of it still imply today? The man says that Hebron is a Jewish land according to the Mandate (the instrument) and that no legal instrument since then can revoke it. As we both know this is not true, (I offered res. 181, 242 and 3236 as examples but he didn't accept them) I need an explaination about wether today the Mandate paper is still relevent today, is it still holds any legal value, to the point of justifying something like Israeli control of the borders of Mandatory Palestine?. If I"ll tell him that the international community or the UN regard it as occupied he won't accept, so I need something to refute his claim that "Hebron is rightfully Jewish sovereign territory according to the Mandate paper whose legal significance still exists". My purpose is mainly to make people understand that things such as Natali Bennett's plan (which you might find ridiculously funny) make no sense. And thank you for your time.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 19:56, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
I know the works of the two resident Kiryat Arba 'experts' on the so-called broader historical legal suppositions for their position. The problem is, this is all amateurish, if somewhat erudite, speculation. You can find the legal instrument underlying the Mandate conferred on great Britain here, and see that there is no mention of Hebron. The obvious source is the aptly named Howard Grief's The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel Under International Law: A Treatise on Jewish Sovereignty Over the Land of Israel, Mazo (Matzo?)Publishers, 2008. It's an historical curiosity that a British soldier by the name of Harry Potter was killed in Hebron during the Mandate (from memory 1938/9) and magical thinking prevails there. If you wish to persist, (which I think pointless) ask him for the precise wording and source of his contention.Nishidani (talk) 20:44, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
He already gave the quote after I asked him: "Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people..." For now I told him that the Mandate paper said that the creation of a Jewish National Home will not hurt the rights of the people and according to the UN people have the right for self determination and therefore because the UN recognized the Palestinians as a nation in 1974, according to the Mandate paper, the Palestinians have national rights and Israel which is the Jewish National Homeland can't revoke them. But does the Mandate paper legitimate today? This really matters to me becuase if someone present me with an argument I don't have an answer to, I must find it, to have an answer and to expand the knowlege on the subject. I"ll read the source you sent tommorow and again I really appriciate your help.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 21:56, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
If that's his argument, forget about it.
'of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people' does not mean 'the establishment of Palestine as the national home for the Jewish people'. That in was the subject of much contention in the drafting of later legislation, and means 'inside' not 'all of'.
In any case hebron is not mentioned, but thought to be there by entailment. Suffice it to remind the chap that the Israeli carve-up of the occupied West Bank is based on two (spurious) principles (a) land seized on 'security grounds' for the IDF, which is then used for settlements, in violation of the Geneva Conventions about the transfer of populations and (b) Israel law accepts the Ottoman law of title of 1858, so that, no generic claim to the land of 170,000 people in Hebron could be recognized by the supreme legal authority of Israel, esp. if the owners can present Ottoman legal title. No! I'm being optimistic because, functionally, the law is a nightmare. Actually, the inhabitants of Susya have written legal Ottoman title to that land dated 1882, which should mean that by the use of the very legal system regarding land title for the occupied territories Israel took over from the Ottomans via the British and then the Jordanians, those folks's claim to their land is unchallengeable. In fact, the foremost legal expert for Israel Ruth Kark recognized that their claim is legally impeccable. Result, yesterday their homes were bulldozed, because one judge in a Jerusalem court, who happens to come from a West Bank Israeli settlement, swung the verdict. In international law, there is case for Israel's title to the West Bank or Gaza, since the November 29 1947 deliberation by the UN which created Israel divided it into two future states, one for the Jews (31% of the population being awarded 56% of the land, 96% of which lay in Arab title, or tenant use, and one for the Palestians (awarded as the 66% of the residents, 44% of the land). The only way, technically, Israel can receive international recognition for land beyond the Green Line is for the Palestinian Authority to cede it in a treaty.Nishidani (talk) 22:14, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
The problem is the person is one of those who don't recognize the Israeli control as occupation and furthermore he claims that since Palestine is yet to become a fully recognzied state (Which I can't argue with him because I agree) the Palestinians are not the legal sovereigns of the territory and therefore the Jews, represented by Israel are the only legal sovereigns with the justification of the Mandate paper. The question is not about private land ownership, but on national sovereignty, as I demand Israeli withdrawal from Hebron as a compromise for peace while he says that we can't leave Hebron and that according to international law Israel has the right to stay in the West Bank and Hebron. In his minds there is no occupation according to international law and there is no legal Palestinian national entity (the PA is effectivley an autonomy) with legal claims to the West Bank and the Mandate paper is the only excuse that the Jews are allowed to practice soveriegnty in Hebron. So, pretending that the Madate paper say the Jews can pratice soveriegnty over Hebron, does it still qualify today? Right-wing Israelis are much more hardline than me when defending Israel.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 22:25, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
There's no problem, because your friend is just expressing a personal opinion, to which he or she is perfectly entitled. The problem of personal opinions is whether they are connected to reality or not, i.e. to what extent are they informed by facts, and 'authoritative' interpretations (I use that word not to indicate 'authority' but the result of a dedicated pursuit of the state of the art by competent specialists who take on board all views and evaluate them with analytical precision and respect for rational principles of judgement). Your interlocutor is not interested in having their views changed by the facts or wider reading, and hence is an ideologist, whose mindset defies any inflection from the world of facts. Perhaps your best bet is simply to cite an impeccable source on this: Justice Thomas Buergenthal. He's (a)Jewish (b) a Holocaust survivor (c) justly concerned with Israel's security issues as they are affected by the Palestinian Territories (d) one of the great authorities on international law (e) he was one of the judges in the International Court of Justice case regarding the building of Israel's Separation Barrier (f) He wrote a dissenting opinion but (g) underwrote the general principles of that verdict (h) namely, as you can see in his dissenting opinion, that structure is built on 'Occupied Palestinian Territory'.

2. 1 share the Court's conclusion that international humanitarian law,including the Fourth Geneva Convention, and international human rights law are applicable to the Occupied Palestinian Territory and must there be faithfully complied with by Israel. 1 accept that the wall is causing deplorable suffering to many Palestinians living in that territory. In this connection, 1 agree that the means used to defend against terrorism must conform to al1 applicable rules of international law and that a State which is the victim of terrorism may not defend itself against this scourge by resorting to measures international law prohibits.'etc.

Those credentials are impeccable: Buergenthal knows what he is talking about, your acquaintance is ignorant.Nishidani (talk) 10:26, 21 June 2016 (UTC)
I"ve now understood his claims. As you have expected, he is referring to Howard Grief's thesis, but we came into a conclusion that we can't reach a conclusion due to the ideological differences between the two of us, mainly because I want Israel to withdraw from (94-96% of) the West Bank and the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem regardless any legal claims. Therefore even if Grief is right and Quigley (who critisize him) is wrong, I still don't see a future of Israeli control in the West Bank, after all half of my thinking is based on Nihilism and Anarchism. This Thomas Buergenthal article on the other hand is an interesting piece I kept, as well as most of the rest of the sources above.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 13:25, 21 June 2016 (UTC)
When I was just a little older than you, some centuries ago, I was taught to think psychoanalytically in personal terms, and sociologically in broader contexts. The former is culturally a piece of deadwood in most quarters, so forget that, but thinking sociologically means that one looks, in a general argument, for the interests, and contextual contraints operant in anything. If you're close to a top quality library (given upcoming events!) you might consider using a day this summer to read, for example, an excellent fluent exponent of this, Stanislav Andreski's Military organization and society (later works teach the method over a wider scope of subjects). Such scholars don't deal in right or wrong, they deal in the real forces at play in terms of options for a given social structure within a definite historical moment or context. let me illustrate, people can waffle on Israel's choices over the last decades in moral reproval, but they have been dictated by mechanical factors related to aliyah and demography, and nothing else. (a) Mizrachi immigration had the unintended effect of undermining, within a generation, the Ashkenazi Labour ascendancy, and you got Likud; (b) post 1989 Soviet immigration created a Russian enclave, reflected in the interests of a new party Yisrael Beiteinu, which bridged with Likud's Irgun radical tradition inherited from Ze'ev Jabotinsky; (c)33% of citizens, totally haredi, 20% dati leumi, and 12% more halakha-observant, forming a religious constituency whose birth rates a far higher than that among secular families. Put those elements together, and the political options for rational compromise are politically impossible, and virtually closed off. Most of our sources are 'mood-influencers' and don't care for the subterranean realities beneath the rhetoric. But at the same time, non-withdrawal consists of a conserving a malignancy at the heart of Israeli democracy because the state trapped in these cross-vector interests will be forced to maintain both colonial-military control and settlement increments whose outcome will be one part functional/part dysfunctional mega-state for some further decades. Individuals can do little within this inextricable mess, except strive to maintain their decency in the everyday real world, which is what most folks tend to do.
So while you and I agree on this issue (disengagement from the WB), but it is a moral evaluation, based on practical considerations of a democratic kind, with a very large practical cost for Israel, in that Israel gains nothing, and would lose a lot in order to regain its soul or sanity as a normal nation, but most importantly no government in the present environment has the (suicidal) guts to take that decision,* for psephological reasons. It would complicate Israel's internal stability at the negligible value of making Israel, at last, a full fledged international actor. The one argument for a pull-out as you put it, is that it avoids what is looking like the sociological fate of non-withdrawal, i.e. the internal dissolution of Israel's democratic prospects, (p.s. if you are talking of Quigley's position on the Sèvres Treaty, then prob. neither he, nor certainly Grief is correct). Regards Nishidani (talk) 14:01, 21 June 2016 (UTC)
  • the guts. There are exceptions, Lyndon B. Johnson's provisions for his Great Society were held up by the limpid calculation that, were he to enact civil rights enforcement, he would lose the democratic base in the South and condemn his party's future electoral results. Despite disliking him at the time, I've learnt to admire someone who, when he had to decide, said, more or less, 'we have an obligation to history, and our founding principles, whatever the damage this will do to our party's future prospects', and implemented it. The result was a Republican ascendency consistently reconfirmed, if not presidentially, then in the 2 houses of the Senate and Congress, that had deadlocked real reform. Nishidani (talk) 14:10, 21 June 2016 (UTC)
Well Israel is doomed, we know that, but it seems that everywhere is "doomed", Europe with migrants, or revived fascist movements, USA with bad presidents, or just SJW and pretty much the West, with it's low birth-rate.. but if you look at Syria, they are already "doomed" and yet they might get out of their turmoil.. There is my father's assumption that one day either us or the Palestinians will be genocided (or both) so maybe I"ll just use my French citizenship to live the rest of my life in Polynesia or something... But until then, I can tell you that the comforting fact, that Israel's main problem is simply a sharp rise in the price of living since 2007 and corruption. I am more scared of a full economic destruction rather than... angry Palestinian with rocks. Right now I dedicate my reading to Israeli things, I"ve read Yoav Gelber's book on the 1948 war and currently I am reading Altneuland that I got as a gift, but maybe after this one I"ll put some time to read a non-Israel related book, maybe even in English (by the way me and you? 80-90% mutually intelligible)--Bolter21 (talk to me) 18:38, 21 June 2016 (UTC)
I recite to myself a poem entitled Said Hanrahan, when I get depressed, which means, very rarely. I do it to mock myself. Israel's economic problems are more or less a structural problem in the world economy, nothing unique: we're all in the same boat, but I won't be round to rock the boat raft. If you feel more comfortable with French, when asking for info, or asking me personally for edit clarifications, don't hesitate to use that language. Keep sane and enjoy life whatever. Youth's a rare and ephemeral gift. I'll probably have to recite Said Hanrahan when Spain wipes out Croatia in the Uefa match that's just started. I always back long shots or underdogs. Regards.Nishidani (talk) 19:11, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

Zionism forced exodus

Why did you revert my edit? The linked article is about the exodus and many of the reasons and exoduses were not forced. It is extreme POV to include that in the lead when the article doesn't assert that at all. Please self-revert. Sir Joseph (talk) 16:52, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

The exodus from Egypt, from which we take this stupid, but established, expression, was not compelled, but elective. The Palestinian exodus was not elective, but compelled by the circumstances of war, at gunpoint, by spreading panic, or implementing in various fields a thinning or expulsion policy, attested minutely throughout the literature for each area. When Great Britain in the war evacuated hundreds of thousands from its major cities, it was a temporary measure, not an 'exodus'. No Palestinian chose to piss off - those that moved, moved to other temporary locations to avoid the lines of conflict. It was definitely neither biblical nor, in the common acceptance of the extended meaning, a departure from one's native land to settle in another. I would retain 'exodus' only if it were accompanied by some adjective indicating it was not willed.Nishidani (talk) 17:19, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
The term is wikilinked so that someone can view the full information. Having forced in there is a NNPOV. In addition, while you may bring sources, others can bring sources, as it is in the Wikiarticle, that many people left on their own, and many people were told to leave by the Arab leaders. All that translates into using just "exodus" and not forced exodus. Sir Joseph (talk) 17:35, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
You should not edit articles if you have zero knowledge of the relevant modern literature on the subject. That you are totally unfamiliar with the topic is shown by the extraordinary meme:'many people were told to leave by the Arab leaders'. This is a piece of deadwood from the hightide of post 1948 Zionism's hasbara whose purely propaganda function is recognized as the scholarly consensus. It was compellingly and comprehensively demolished by Erskine Childers and Walid Khalidi almost 60 years ago. There is radio broadcast evidence for Arab leaders pleading for people to stay in place, esp. after the use to which the Deir Yassin Massacre was put, with its broadcast boast that 248 Palestinians had been massacred. Every one who moved, after that date, had this story uppermost in their minds, convinced, rightly or wrongly, that staying would put them and their families at lethal risk. According to the ablest Zionist historian, Benny Morris, a further 23 massacres took place throughout that period by the Haganah. The Palestinian version counts 62-68, in part based on the fact that Palestinian casualties in villages are estimated at 13,000 - including people who had disappeared and could not be accounted for after the war. Palestinian families from that period conserve the keys to their homes, in the massive housing stock left behind: they left, temporarily, as battle lines shifted. One does not do that in an exodus to settle in another country. It's pointless giving history lessons, esp. when Ireland is about to thrash Italy in the Uefa cup.Nishidani (talk) 18:47, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
You seriously need to stop your condescending attitude. I have put up with it for far too long. You have reverted to a NNPOV and UNDUE for the lead. You can see the Causes of the 1948 Exodus here: Causes_of_the_1948_Palestinian_exodus#.22Arab_leaders.27_endorsement_of_flight.22_explanation "Fifth: the Arab governments' invitation to the people of Palestine to flee from it and seek refuge in adjacent Arab countries, " , "The withdrawals were carried out pursuant to an order emanating from Amman. The withdrawal from Nazareth was ordered by Amman; the withdrawal from Safad was ordered by Amman; the withdrawal orders from Lydda and Rale are well known to you",""The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny but, instead, they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland, " Sir Joseph (talk) 19:15, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
Again, you are only showing your incompetence, the citation being from a period memoir of one Syrian politician, which has found no external corroboration.
More importantly, wiki pages (which typically index primary sources from a period, and not the more comprehensive analyses of later secondary source historians= are not reliable. 99% of wiki articles on history are primitive or mediocre.
Third, you didn't read down the same page. Had you done so, at this section, a modern Israeli historian whose knowledge of archives is magisterial, is cited as writing:-

Morris estimates that Arab orders accounts for at most 5% of the total exodus:

Arab officers ordered the complete evacuation of specific villages in certain areas, lest their inhabitants "treacherously" acquiesce in Israeli rule or hamper Arab military deployments.... There can be no exaggerating the importance of these early Arab-initiated evacuations in the demoralization, and eventual exodus, of the remaining rural and urban populations.[60]

Based on his studies of seventy-three Israeli and foreign archives or other sources, Morris made a judgement as to the main causes for the Arab exodus from each of the 392 settlements that were depopulated during the 1948-1950 conflict (pages xiv to xviii). His tabulation lists "Arab orders" as being a significant "exodus factor" in only 6 of these settlements.

All the rest of that page is a huge effort to cite whatever slight evidence can be dredged up from the faulty or malinformed memoirs of Arab politicians in the 1950s and build it up into a wiki case in support of the meme, a gross WP:Undue bloat of trivia, that has been scrutinized by scholars and dismissed as basically irrelevant to the historical facts of that period. And not that Morris's analysis does not speak of some programmatic mass 'exodus' under Arab advice, but military orders in a handful of cases to evacuate a battle zone, which is normative in all conflicts, and does not constitute a policy of national flight across the board. But, back to the match. Take a rest from editing, and read some modern books on the subject.Nishidani (talk) 20:13, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

Your name

Yes, I'm talking to you again. On your talk page. Somehow despite your incessant belittling of my intelligence and character I found it in my heart to forgive. I just thought you would think this is amusing. I'm 95% sure you're a man, but whenever I'm talking about you with a third person pronoun I think "she". It's your username. It sounds like a girl's name. I wonder if that's like a Bouba/kiki effect thing. Just warning you because I will probably slip up one day.--Monochrome_Monitor 18:32, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

My father had a rule, endorsed by my mother: 'Never let the sun go down without burying your disagreements with a handshake'. I take Simon at his word for your high intelligence. Perhaps that is why I have been severe. I don't like to see gifts wasted. You have, I am given to understand, a scientific background (mine was to be a medical doctor, before adolescence distracted me). I don't think you quite grasp that the humanities and esp. historiography, require, at their finest, a very different use of intelligence because they deal with probabilities, cruxes, likelihoods, and relative assessments of tricky evidence. If I can impart one useful lesson, it's this. I may be a hard taskmaster, but, even when frustrated by the fatigue caused by what I take to be carelessness, I don't hold grudges, and find resentment odious, esp. if detected in myself. Don't worry about gender. I'm pretty sure I'm male, because my wife is not a lesbian. And don't overply the worrybeads about Jews. The Jews, god bless, will always survive and thrive, anywhere, even in Israel:)Nishidani (talk) 18:58, 25 June 2016 (UTC)
Must rush. The Croazia-Portugal play off is about to start.Nishidani (talk) 18:59, 25 June 2016 (UTC)
Awww. :) Enjoy your soccer. --Monochrome_Monitor 22:27, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

[6] Here's a source not tainted by Jewish bias. I don't appreciate being called mccarthyite.--Monochrome_Monitor 03:04, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

The Guardian isnt covered under Wikipedia's BLP policy. Your talk page however is. nableezy - 04:14, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
Jewish bias? There is no such thing as 'Jewish' bias. If you can't understand that, i.e., that it is one of the deepest pathologies of slipshod thinking to attribute to all members of a set a trait attributed to one member (or subgroup) of the set (ethnically, Jews, Irish, Turks, Arabs, etc.etc.etc.), then it's pointless arguing. Indeed if you make the same conceptual error that the classic anti-Semite makes, then there is no way out of the trap. Whatever Gilad's views, what little I know of them appears to reflect the same collectivist labeling one finds every day in mainstream politicians concerning 'Arabs'. If Gilad, a powerless man, is an anti-Semite, then, by the same token, psychoanalytically, a large number of the world's political elite, a significant party of the Likud constituency and leadership, would be 'anti-semitic' by logical entailment. For in either case a flawed generalizing inference is made collectively against a 'race' or people because of hatred for a particular incident or trend associated with one or some of them. Yesterday, a Palestinian gunman killed a settler, a rabbi, in a drive-by shooting, that also critically wounded his wife and injured their 2 children. The immediate response by the Israeli government was to lock down the lives of an estimated 700,000 Palestinians in the Hebron Governorate, and lay out plans for demolishing a large number of Palestinian family homes in the occupied territories, where Israel, the military authority, gives one or two permits a year for a population of hundreds of thousands. I.e. one person of Palestinian ethnicity committed a crime against Jews, therefore all people of Palestinian ethnicity in that whole region will be punished. This is guilt by association, which is what, classically, anti-Semites do.
And I didn't call you a McCarthyite. Drop it. Nishidani (talk) 07:44, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

Notice

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war according to the reverts you have made on Zionism. Users are expected to collaborate with others, to avoid editing disruptively, and to try to reach a consensus rather than repeatedly undoing other users' edits once it is known that there is a disagreement.

Please be particularly aware that Wikipedia's policy on edit warring states:

  1. Edit warring is disruptive regardless of how many reverts you have made.
  2. Do not edit war even if you believe you are right.

If you find yourself in an editing dispute, use the article's talk page to discuss controversial changes; work towards a version that represents consensus among editors. You can post a request for help at an appropriate noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases it may be appropriate to request temporary page protection. If you engage in an edit war, you may be blocked from editing.
We have a conversation on the Zionism talk page about seeking consensus on whether the appropriate terminology ought to be re-establish or establish. Regards.

From somebody who actually has violated the 1RR at that page, this is a curious notice to be sending. nableezy - 03:25, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
Well, I've struck that out. It is the first time in 10 years that I've seen someone post an edit-warring notice on the page of an editor who made just one edit.Nishidani (talk) 11:39, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Serious stuff

You really should write this down. It is important. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Omysfysfybmm (talk • contribs) 09:06, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

I don't understand why you write ‘a nation of monkeys’ on the discussion page but not on the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Omysfysfybmm (talk • contribs) 14:38, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
Because I don't want to misuse Wikipedia as a propaganda forum for a cause, unlike editors who dig for shit and throw it into articles, or specialize in making a special page for every incident of terror the press reports. Nishidani (talk) 14:55, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
The terms some Israeli political, religious and military leaders have used in public to describe Palestinians, e.g. ‘lice’; ‘moles; ‘animals’; ‘two footed beasts’; 'cockroaches'; 'vermin;' ‘beasts and asses’; ‘ravening beasts’; ‘leeches’; ‘ants’; ‘snakes’; ‘subhumans’; ‘crocodiles'; ‘mosquitoes’ to be exterminated; people who ‘live like dogs’; ‘grasshoppers’ to be crushed underfoot; ‘a nation of monkeys’; etc etc, are almost exactly the same terms the Nazis have used in public to describe Jewish people. And the same terms the white Bananamericans have used in public to describe the Native Americans in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. And similarly most of these terms have been used by almost every colonialist power to characterize their victims throughout the last 10,000 years of human history. Ijon Tichy (talk) 06:10, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
I've heard that language everywhere, even from dear friends. A very good Japanese mate once thought he was giving me an avuncular tip for my own good when he saw me talking to a well-dressed chap in a bar - I basically learnt Japanese by getting drunk in them everynight while chatting - by mentioning the incident later and flashing 4 fingers: yottsu /4) = walk on all fours, an animal, a 'euphemism' for the word 'eta' written with characters that signify 'much filth', meaning of pariah extraction. One of my first impressions of England was of a gentle Pakistani ticket collector extending his hand under the elbow of a short Saville Row dressed bureaucrat in bowler hat stepping onto a bus: we were just outside Whitehall. The busman intended assisting this old bureaucrat to get on the double decker. Instantaneously, I saw a magical act of metamorphosis, as the bureaucrat, trembling with rage, spurted out, almost spitting with horror- 'Fuck off, you black bastard!' etc. I saw the same metamorphosis when a friend I was discussing the niceties of Japanese history with reacted to my allusion to a mutual acquaintance, a man of extraordinary distinction and profound humanity -by suddenly twisting himself into Fagin and adopting a Jewish-cockney accent, more or less saying:'Hey, the man you admire is a Jew'. It shocks me to this day in recalling it. More basically, Auden once quipped that if men knew what women said of the male species behind their backs, the human race would cease to exist. You're right that this is typical of colonial attitudes, but it goes much deeper, and, I'm afraid, these days, with the onset of political correctness, that the attitudes survive but under cover. The worst racists are, as often as not, people who are impeccably polite in their verbal behavior, and murderous when it comes to making 'hard' decisions that will affect disastrously the damned of the earth. If there is a difference among democracies, it is that in the Israeli instances, such remarks, a commonplace in the highest quarters do not lead to resignations or much scandal - they blow over in a day or two and are rarely reported abroad. The policy of 'containment of Communism' in newspeak regarding South America was actually, in private, spoken of as the 'elimination of a virus'. In Chile, both Nixon and Kissinger's interventions to keep it in check led to the murder of 3,000 innocent people,- on suspicion of being 'infected': i.e. the equivalent of the Twin Towers fatalities, as Chomsky has noted. The former is forgotten, the latter sacralized, by the same population.Nishidani (talk) 09:40, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Ali Abu Awwad

The article Ali Abu Awwad has been proposed for deletion because it appears to have no references. Under Wikipedia policy, this biography of a living person will be deleted unless it has at least one reference to a reliable source that directly supports material in the article.

If you created the article, please don't be offended. Instead, consider improving the article. For help on inserting references, see Referencing for beginners, or ask at the help desk. Once you have provided at least one reliable source, you may remove the {{prod blp}} tag. Please do not remove the tag unless the article is sourced. If you cannot provide such a source within seven days, the article may be deleted, but you can request that it be undeleted when you are ready to add one. RolandR (talk) 13:01, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

I never write articles without extensive sourcing. Some POV pushing crank wiped them all off the page when I had delisted it from my watchlist. Drop one's attention for a minute, and years of work can go down the memory hole.Nishidani (talk) 14:51, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
I'm sorry, this notice was placed automatically by Twinkle, and I didn't check to see on whose page. Had I realised that you had created the article, I would have contacted you directly. I have left an explanation on the article's talk page about how this misunderstanding arose. RolandR (talk) 12:21, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
No apologies needed. Answered there. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 12:38, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

That Page

I sincerely apologize for dragging you into this, so immediately too, but;

Recent edit by TH1980, here[7] and updated here [8].

I have a couple of questions about it,
1. What does he mean by "advanced", what's advanced about it? compared to previous workings.
2. Originally, "may even have been made by a Korean immigrant..." later changed to "Probably made by either a Japanese artist or a Korean artist". The issue is, what does the source say? (I don't have it, I think maybe you do)
3. Not actually related to the edits; the wording, it seems, very suggestive without being explicit. Both of the above comments apply, also "true art" does as well. There's a marked difference when discussing China though, "However, Tamamushi Shrine is also painted in a manner similar to Chinese paintings of the sixth century." It's far more matter of fact, lacks the flair of words used when discussing Korea.
My questions are 1)Is the edit correct?, you discussed the sourcing for the writing, I can't seem to find it and 2)Is this a general pattern throughout the article, the writing for Korea vs China? Mr rnddude (talk) 15:10, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
This is not about whether he finally got an edit right. It is about how much work and waste of time it takes for any editor to force that ideologically fixated nationalist blockhead, who, with his tagteaming mate, controls by persistent rewrites and reverts of everything the content there, to admit that he cheats round the clock in his use of sources, while maintaining a magnificent composure per WP:AGF even when hauled over the coals for his deceptiveness.
TH1982 wrote over a year ago

The first Japanese lacquerwork was produced by or influenced by Korean and Chinese craftsmen in Japan. Most notably is Tamamushi Shrine, a miniature shrine in Horyū-ji Temple, which was created in Korean style, possibly by a Korean immigrant to Japan. Tamamushi shrine, described by Beatrix von Ragué as "the oldest example of the true art of lacquerwork to have survived in Japan", is decorated with a uniquely Korean inlay composed of the wings of tamamushi beetles.

2 days ago he re-edited the page to adjust this section, accepting just one part of my argument, that this 'Korean' shrine shows a Sui Dynasty i.e. Chinese style, as many sources noted. here. Under further protest asking him to justify the phrasing uniquely Korean inlay from the source at his elbow (which I didn't have) he then changed it to this
I could see there that he was tacitly admitting that he had fudged his source. So I looked up the German original to which I have access, and it said

'Wahrscheinlich ist es richtig, den Tamamushi-Schrein in den Stralungsbereich koreanischer Kunst in Japan zu rücken, sei es, daß er von Koreanern selbst dort hergesellt wurde, sei es, daß Japaner ihn in Anlehnung an koreanische Arbeiten schufen.' Beatrix von Ragué, Geschichte der japanischen Lackkunst, Walter de Gruyter, 1967 p.5

This states unambiguously that the work may be either of immigrant Korean or local Japanese manufacture. I detected therefore that while under pressure he was adjusting his text, he still wouldn't budge on the assertion it was 'possibly' the work of a Korean.
I forced him to transcribe the book he had access to which said the same thing:

It is probably correct to place the Tamamushi shrine within the overall context of Korean art in Japan, whether it was made by Koreans in Japan or whether Japanese craftsmen created it, referring back to Korean models

I.e. he wrote possibly by a Korean immigrant to Japan while before his eyes the source said the shrine was possibly the handiwork either of a Korean or a Japanese craftsman in Japan. That is deliberate source falsification. I showed this with pedantically minute, step by step, wiki-for-kindergarten-preschoolers' steps. For, is it 48 hours?, he refused to make this correction, but finally, when I told the page that since the idiots dictating its content won't kindly fuck off, I'll fuck off, he yielded and at last corrected it here.
He falsified over a year ago the source text in more than 3 key points, and even after I called his bluff, took 2 days to correct each point.
You want to waste your time arguing comma by comma with a POV-pushing cunctator who does this with every item on that page (90% of which) has not been subject to third party verification. Go ahead, but you're wasting your time. Lots of luck.Nishidani (talk) 16:50, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
As I said above, I am no longer interested in that page, because two years dealing with polite passive aggressiveness tells me I'm wasting my time, so I'd appreciate the courtesy of you just not consulting me any more on it.Nishidani (talk) 16:50, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
No problem, thanks for the response and sorry to bother you. Cya around, Mr rnddude (talk) 00:26, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia! We welcome and appreciate your contributions, such as Benjamin Murmelstein, but we regretfully cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from either web sites or printed material. This article appears to contain material copied from http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/dec/05/defense-jewish-collaborator/, and therefore to constitute a violation of Wikipedia's copyright policies. The copyrighted text has been or will soon be deleted. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with our copyright policy. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators are liable to be blocked from editing.

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Thank you, and please feel welcome to continue contributing to Wikipedia. Happy editing! (Sorry about the "welcome to Wikipedia" stuff; this is the template the copyvio template says I'm supposed to use...) TransporterMan (TALK) 02:35, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Hmm. Well T M, this is very odd. Some IP plunked a copyright violation accusation into the text here, which since I'd delisted the page after editing it, I missed. I guess your template is an automatic substitute for his assertion. I'll leave this to User:Avraham or anyone else, but the accusation was false. I used 7, mainly book, sources to provide details on this. I use Lilla in paraphrase several times, but only one very short quote. I think fair usage allows one to paraphrase a book or article, and am under the impression that copyright involves extensive direct use of a source. Under the principle I assume is used here, (a) because one source is challenged, all the other sources in the passage are rendered invisible until that one issue is sorted out (b) you can't paraphrase any article from the New York Review of Books several times, for dates, place names, ands biographical data, without getting their permission. But you can cite the Holocaust Encyclopedia entry on Elie Wiesel 8 times, the Jewish Virtual Library entry 7 times, and the Huffington Post obit 6 times, without having similar issues raised. Or a closer analogy for a controversial figure in the same tragic circumstances, Rudolf Kastner uses Anna Porter's biography 15 times. Has an article, discreetly used and duly acknowledged, some special status on the New York Review of Books, which excludes fair use? Or is this simply that an anonymous IP plunked a deceptive claim about copyright abuse which after a lapse of time was converted into a template that blocked the content? Nishidani (talk) 09:23, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
@TransporterMan: I read the text line by line against the source and see very little direct copying. To me it looks like standard paraphrase and given that it is properly cited I don't see how it is a copyvio. Perhaps you can explain more. Zerotalk 14:12, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hallel Yaffa Ariel--Bolter21 (talk to me) 18:33, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Just wanted to clear out a small thing

I wouldn't mind unless you'd state it the second time but I am actually not quite bilingual between Hebrew and French, my English is better than my French, especially in writing. If you assumed it's because I wrote I am a French citizen, I wasn't really born in France but to a French mother.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 22:56, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

I topped my class in French, and was reading the classics by 15 in the original - not a sign of intelligence at all, just a passion for the language which seemed to say things more insightfully that English. I finally went to France, got off a train in Paris and asked for some information and the porter listened, turned round to his mate and said, ignoring me:'Fuck, another one of them Pommie arseholes thinking he can speak French!', the smashing of my illusions was so embarrassing that I never spoke it again for 10 years, even when I had what the Japanese can a 'sleeping dictionary', and she, a Parisian, like most young French people those days at least, couldn't spell for nuts. Meaning, if you learnt your French from a native speaker from childhood, even if just everyday colloquial French and not the high falutin grammar of Racine, to bridge the gap and reach total native fluency usually takes just a few months of immersion in France or its outremer societies. In that sense you are fluent, and bilingual. Aa to grammar, Harmer's 'The French Language Today' (1954) has a large section on the grammatical errors in Flaubert, Gide, Proust etc. In short, to use a showbiz idiom:'Avec le matériel que vous avez, il n'y a vraiment pas besoin d'aller au charbon'. Regards Nishidani (talk) 07:20, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Can we remove the "alledgedly"

I know Ma'an likes to say "alledgedly" and it makes sense becuase Ma'an is not an Israeli source and it doesn't have the instinct of believing every IDF report, but if there is a video proof, the "alledgedly" is irelevent. Here is the video.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 10:46, 6 July 2016 (UTC) I am talking about this of course.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 10:49, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Good catch. I'll remove it immediately. By the way, you don't need my permission for the obvious.(My reading of that is that it was what will emerge in future years, a imitative suicide pattern (or, I see now Copycat suicide). I first noticed this while reading as a boy The Sorrows of Young Werther. Its publication led to a wave of suicides, as did Misao Fujimura's in Japan at Kegon Falls back I think in 1903. Look at the video closely. I've never been able to understand why, in the U.S. and Israel no effort is made to shoot such people in the legs or arms or shoulder, with one shot. Lack of training, I suppose. It's quite easy at that distance to disarm or incapacitate a woman waving a knife at you, you know (I'm biased: I had an aikido teacher who on request showed how one can clap one's hands on a sword without being scarred. Definitely not advisable. In practice, he told us that when threatened, even if one is an accomplished fighter, the best move, if possible, is to walk or run away). Still, this is a personal reflection and has nothing to do with the correct interpretation of available sources. I'll do it immediately. Nishidani (talk) 10:58, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
I understand it, but after so many of those happened in the last 8 months, imagine yourself talking about tommorow's game and suddenly a woman apear with a knife 1 meter from you and you also apear to be stuck between the woman and the pillers on the sidewalk... People panic. This whole thing happened in 10 seconds, I wouldn't judge a person for such incident. In other incidents you can see a guard shooting the guy five times and he continues to move and try to attack people.. There are incidents like Hadeel al-Hashlamoun but I would not rush to blame the soldiers for mistekenly helping a person commit suicide, well except for the dumb Azaria guy or the or the "girl with the scissors".--Bolter21 (talk to me) 11:19, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
Absolutely no intention of judging the soldiers. In that environment, they applied an army regulation, and that regulation is the problem, since a couple of dozen so killed have constituted no danger and could, with discretion, have been treated otherwise (as in least three cases I can recall, Israeli checkpoint soldiers have done, not exercising their legal option). But for wiki purposes this is neither here nor there. Regards.Nishidani (talk) 12:06, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
You never shoot for the legs. When you shoot someone, you shoot "to stop the threat." In addition, when you shoot someone your aim is not good at all (due to stress/adrenaline), as evident by cops shooting 40 times, so they are trained to aim for the largest mass. Finally, even if you shoot the legs and hit the legs, that will just anger the person and increase adrenaline and make that person super strong and they can cause harm and even kill the cop/soldier. It's a sad fact, but if you go up against a trained shooter, they will shoot to kill in most cases as the most prudent course of action. A person "doped" up on adrenaline is extremely unstoppable, similar to someone on heroin who takes 4 cops to subdue. Sir Joseph (talk) 13:46, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
Family members in the army told me the instructions are to shout ("wakaf!"), shout and threat ("wakaf wa la ana batuhak!"), load, shoot at legs, and those are only when the man is far away, let's say 10 meters, but if the man (or woman in this case) is 1 meter from you, you don't have time for this, the procedure is to shoot to kill only when there is a clear threat to your life, and when a woman armed with a knife is 1 meter from you, that's justifiable, because you don't have the time to think "is she going to attack? is here knife really dangerous? is she strong enough?", when you are under a life threat, you are allowed to shoot to kill, and this is the reason guiding many soldiers, who either misinterpret the orders or just try to save themselves from jail.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 15:12, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
Sir Joe. First of all, countries should not put their citizens or soldiers in situations of danger unless there is a national threat. national threats should not last 50 years, by refusing to just go home and leave the enemy in whatever peace he deserves, or war/civil inrternecine strife he choses within his own borders. In any case, they don't do that in Europe, they are trained to shoot them in non-vital parts of the body(here, or here, or even in the US covering stationary threats with a knife-wielder); a year into the Al Aqsa intifada 21% of the 4,448 Palestinians hospitalized after clashes with Israeli troops were shot in the legs;(b) such incidents in thoroughly legally civilized countries lie in the independent hands of a judiciary, not in military courts, and (c) Israel does this predominantly in an occupied territory to which it has no recognized legal right (d)it is ethnically-determined judgement because police or soldier-response to threats are, like the US with blacks, deal one way if the source of the perceived threat is an Arab or a Jew, the latter:are regularly overpowered by police, even while brandishing a knife; (e)Jewish terrorists are cornered in their homes, and arrested, and the homes left intact, whereas Palestinian terrorists are almost invariably shot dead in their homes, and the homes demolished; (f) girls aged 13 to 18 like many in these incidents, don't require 4 cops to subdue them; (g)every week, at demonstrations, Palestinians are shot by a combination of live and rubber-coated bullets from a distance of 49-70 metres, beyond any threat; (h) It is standard practice, organized by a commandant, spotter, and marksman (though often, as in the Beitunia killings, or Elor Azaria shooting a 'neutralized' aggressor dead with a shot to the head (didn't know that article existed), to name one of a few score cases I know of) in demonstrations to shoot one or two in the crowd, identified as a ringleader, from a distance of safety; (h) in numerous cases, up to 10-15 bullets are shot, continuing when the person is down, as in the case mentioned by Bolter, Hadeel al-Hashlamoun, who posed no threat except to a M15-touting coward. Her case disproves your theory. She was first shot 3 times in the leg by a soldier separated from her by a 1.2 metal barrier, and then while felled had a further 7 bullets pumped into her, or like the long drawn out case of Yusef a-Shawamreh, a 14 year old kid ambushed (it's on video) for picking vegetables on a patch of their family land fenced off by the Separation Barrier, or the brother trying to protect his sister in this case. There are dozens of such incidents. In the U.S. they get huge coverage, and often lead to independent inquiries. In Israel . I'd appreciate it if we close this. Some young editors may find themselves in military service shortly, and it is inappropriate to put them in jeopardy by arguing the toss about things, perhaps even causing confusion, to their danger, for complex events that can only be understood in context.Nishidani (talk) 15:28, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
When someone is close enough to you, you don't shoot at the legs. Had the soldiers shot the women in the legs she still had plenty of space and then the buildup of adrenaline to then continue stabbing. The first rule of shooting is to neutralize the threat, not shoot the legs so that the UN will be happy. If you don't want to get shot and possibly killed, don't try to stab or attack police, or soldiers. Your examples are not self-defense examples. Sir Joseph (talk) 15:38, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
You can. That woman stopped three times, holding the knife in her hand, waiting, taking a step, waiting, taking a step as 2 grown men pointed guns at her. And that is what the soldier did with with Hadeel al-Hashlamoun: no matter how much adrenaline is pumped into you by three bullets to the legs, you can't spring from a fallen position over a metal barrier 1.2 metres high and attack the soldier two or more metres away with a knife. Drop it.Nishidani (talk) 16:11, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
I guess you didn't see the same video I did. I saw a video where soldiers kept backing up and warning a lady not to continue, and to put down her knife. She decided not to.They made the right call. There's only so much you can do before someone wants to kill you, but I guess since the soldiers were Israeli, they should have let themselves be stabbed so that the world could breath better that a poor Stabberstinian was able to stab someone. Sir Joseph (talk) 16:18, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
Wrong guess. You obviously fast-read the above, didn't mull each piece on its merits, and confused my remark about this soldier shooting a fallen woman from a position of total security with the video of today's case. You're welcome on this page, but only if you pay close attention to what is being said.Nishidani (talk) 17:14, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
I am not talking about all those cases, only cases where someone shoots in self-defense, in other words close quarters. My point is that in general, in close quarters, you don't shoot the legs, you shoot to neutralize and that means shooting the largest mass. Sir Joseph (talk) 17:22, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
Please read what you stated earlier, whose confusion I clarified. I read the blog you got that from about shooting at the central mass. In Europe, even terrorists are shot in the limbs, as I instanced. The world is various, rules change from area to area. I have variety, and you repeat a meme. That's it folks.Nishidani (talk) 17:36, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
Just as an endnote. The new rules say you can shoot with live ammunition any Palestinian who slings stones, even in non-lethal circumstances, where there is no threat and no danger to the IDF soldier.Nishidani (talk) 18:50, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
The "no threat..." is not part of the guidelines, that is "SYNTH" from Adalah. Slingshots and fireworks are lethal, and it specifically didn't mention throwing stones not with a slingshot. Sir Joseph (talk) 18:57, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
You know what 'fireworks' means in English. I do, I threw and dodged a lot when I was a kid, but not, of course, against an army of occupation, but other gangs, or in infragang warfare. According to the new police regulations, "an officer is permitted to open fire (with live ammunition) directly on an individual who clearly appears to be throwing or is about to throw a firebomb, or who is shooting or is about to shoot fireworks, in order to prevent endangerment." It is further specified that, "stone throwing using a slingshot" is also an example of the sort of situation, which would justify the fatal use of live ammunition.Nishidani (talk) 19:48, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
Inform yourself about the distance rules in clashes. They are calibrated in order to place one beyond a stone's throw, while the other in one's sights is well within range.Nishidani (talk) 19:51, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
We got ourselves a gangster here...I was never in a "gang" but in highschool we used to drop lit fireworks out the third story window down to where the smokers hung out...hormones I guess. Sepsis II (talk) 20:11, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
I was in one before hormones raised their smugly head called the 'Blood Brothers'. I was initiated by being threatened with pun ches unless I screwed up the courage to punch a boyscout, my age, just after he'd taken some oath. They thought it funny to watch kids becoming virtuous, and then walloping them. We were both 8. I punched him in the face, and he burst out crying, more stunned than hurt. It was the first and last time for me. I ran messages, or stole money, or helped break into factories at nighttime, etc.Nishidani (talk) 20:16, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Nish, you're wasting your time. If the person you're talking to is a reasonable adult then fine I won't say anything when you have these discussions with them. I didn't even read past a certain word up above before I went to edit the section and skip down to the bottom, so maybe there was some epiphany there that I missed but I doubt it. I humbly ask that you not engage in discussions unrelated to Wikipedia articles when you are well aware that the person you are talking to will not be convinced by any type of reason and is, even if not intentionally, for all intents and purposes trolling you. It's pointless responding to that stuff, and Im pretty sure you know it's pointless. nableezy - 20:57, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

do you need to personalize everything? Sir Joseph (talk) 22:54, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
I dont think you quite understand what that means. But no, I dont. nableezy - 05:00, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
You're quite right, but editing Wikipedia, and life generally (aside from watching things like fireflies outside my window at the moment) is pointless. It's somewhat less pointless, if you try, regularly through the day, to give the chaos of cluttered information one is exposed to a thorough sweeping, allowing no bulldust to pile up, as one rearranges the mental furniture throughout the day. This morning my wife and I went early to the market because the local 'madwoman' (not really, but manic) goes later, and buttonholes her for an hour. My wife can never ignore someone in distress, and ends up hyperstressed. So I'm gradually developing a semi-professional presence there, because every one scrambles, and the manager thinks she hurts trade. But she turned up. So I intercepted her, and I distracted her to rant at me, complaining of marriage and its woes. I had mysay, making little headway, but then quipped 'My dear, you know the old proverb:'Marriage:first year heart to heart, second year, arse to arse, and third year, up yours!'. Changed everything,she laughed and forgot her misery, for the mo', and didn't harangue my wife. A local business man, in relief, offered me a cup of coffee (I'd seen him coming, and beat him to the cashier) in thanks. Working here's a bit like that: it is good mental housekeeping; you may be speaking to the wind, but the wind travels passed stopped ears, and a whisper of what you state may caress a casual bystander's thoughts, and not everything one does will suffer a revert.
I guess you've finished jumu'ah, but I won't ruin the video replay, except to say Wales did itself proud against Portugal, Bale in particular. Thanks, and 'nite, Nab.Nishidani (talk) 21:21, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
Im just saying there are things worth the effort and things that are not. Reasoning with "true believers", of whatever persuasion, generally falls in the latter bucket. nableezy - 05:00, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
Yes, dead right. I've dropped Talk:Korean influence on Japanese culture‎ from my concern list, and the article. 'True believers' are the majority of mankind, with varying degrees of delusion from your average 'go with the headlines'/group gossip type to the John Waynish gun-for-talks' drumbeaters. I reflected yesterday that the £10,000,000 spent over 7 years on the Chilcct Report concluded over 12 volumes, twice the size of Proust's masterpiece, saying exactly what any reader who knew the topic, or read Alexander Cockburn or Robert Fisk, etc.etc. knew down to the eve of war, that the beady-guy and the squiggly-eyed chap were engaged in enacting a delusional fantasy that, as predicted by 6 academics in their 30 minutes briefing to Bliar in November 2002, would take 2-3 decades before the self-evident con sequences of an unprovoked invasion would work its way out of the desolation. 7 years and over 2 million words to confirm what could have been said in a paragraph or two 13 years ago. Compare the King-Crane Commission which took just 2 months to write before the implementation of the British Mandate. It saw the obvious consequences and wrote them down with detachment. Go ahead, and Zionism will dispossess the vast majority of Palestinians of their homeland, and this would only be done by the presence of a large standing army of occupation abetting the project by the exercise of force. Obvious, and we have thousands of books, of delusional historiography pretending this wasn't inevitable, humming and haaing about misunderstandings, or Arab anti-Semitic terrorism, duly cited here. Like Wikipedia editing in these areas.Nishidani (talk) 09:48, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

Nableezy, I agree with your astute analysis of Sir Joseph's behavior.

Nish, I agree with your philosophy of life, that life generally is pointless, and that there are some things that make life somewhat less pointless. I love the following quote from physicist Steven Weinberg:

"The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things which lifts human life a little above the level of farce and gives it some of the grace of tragedy. ... It is almost irresistible for humans to believe that we have some special relation to the universe, that human life is not just a more-or-less farcical outcome of a chain of accidents reaching back to the first three minutes, but that we were somehow built in from the beginning. ... It is very hard to realize that this is all just a tiny part of an overwhelmingly hostile universe. It is even harder to realize that this present universe has evolved from an unspeakably unfamiliar early condition, and faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat. The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless. ... If there is no point in the universe that we discover by the methods of science, there is a point that we can give the universe by the way we live, by loving each other, by discovering things about nature, by creating works of art. And that—in a way, although we are not the stars in a cosmic drama, if the only drama we're starring in is one that we are making up as we go along, it is not entirely ignoble that faced with this unloving, impersonal universe we make a little island of warmth and love and science and art for ourselves. That's not an entirely despicable role for us to play."

Love, Ijon Tichy (talk) 21:14, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the quote. A wonderful mind. I've only read his classic First Three Minutes. If you'll permit me a late night quip, though, the only black hole he can’t apparently fathom is the P of the I/P conflict, when he warned a colleague against romanticizing the 'primitive' Palestinians. But we all have lapses, and this is swept away by the tsunami of his tidal reflections. G'nite, pal. Nishidani (talk) 21:53, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
The last time I've read the entire WP article on Weinberg was in 2012, and in the 4 years since then I've completely forgotten that he has said some things that range from utterly stupid to almost racist or perhaps even outright racist. Sorry about that. If I would have remembered that he said those crappy things, I probably would not have posted his quote above on your talk page.
Can you recommend any other people who have expressed a philosophy of life that's somewhat similar to the quote from Weinberg above? I don't want to continue anymore to associate my (somewhat frequent) thoughts about the meaning of life with Weinberg, now that I'm aware of the shitty things he said about Palestinians and about people who have expressed sympathy or solidarity with the Palestinians. Best, Ijon Tichy (talk) 02:52, 14 July 2016 (UTC)
I don’t think we should measure anyone by their positions on the ‘Palestine’ question. We all have our blindspots. Any wise man will say something of profound stupidity at one point in his life, just as any stupid person will come out with something of dazzling profundity somewhere along his trial/trail of tears. In both cases, despite themselves. In fact when you mentioned him, I went rambling at midnight through the stacks to take up his book and reread marked passages to end the day in wise company, but couldn’t find my copy.
Weinberg’s statement takes off from Pascal’s Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m'effraie (The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me). There’s something of that behind Newton’s late reflection:

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

What has happened is that the sheer paralysing weight infinity pressing down upon one’s cognitive solitude is somewhat domesticated by a compensating sense of slow achievement in making some sense of the vast unknown in which we are embedded. Likening that striving to the play of a boy on a beach means that Newton had, unlike Pascal, found joy, an aesthetic pleasure, in playing at the juncture where the sensible world of experience faces off against eternity. But Pascal’s unease remains, in the thought that these pebbles and pretty shells of thought are nothing, in retrospect, to the ‘vast unexplored ocean’ beyond. The intangible, menacing void of space however is softened into a palpable reality by the analogy with an ocean that is instinct with ‘truth’.
One turns to poets as always to see through to the deeper side. Blake, whose eyes saw angels dancing in London’s streets, and had senses so acute he was reputed to hear the the shift of carriage wheels of a coach coming to a country tavern, where he sat with friends miles away, took Newton’s reflection and reinterpreted it in his monotype by submerging him under that sea, measuring away with his calipers, and reconciled the contrast between ‘sand’ (the sensual world our senses delight in) and infinity by making the former compact of eternity’s divinity, as pantheistic mystics always do:
Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau;
Mock on, mock on; 'tis all in vain!
You throw the sand against the wind,
And the wind blows it back again.
And every sand becomes a gem
Reflected in the beams divine;
Blown back they blind the mocking eye,
But still in Israel's paths they shine.
The Atoms of Democritus
And Newton's Particles of Light
Are sands upon the Red Sea shore,
Where Israel's tents do shine so bright.
Leopardi, some years later, overwrought with a physical malformation, illnesses, a monstrous mother, and a frustrated love life, still managed to sift out joy from both Pascal and Newton’s anxiety, when he wrote L'infinito:
I’ve always loved this solitary hill,
I’ve always loved this hedge that hides from me
So much of what my earthly eyes can see.
For as I sit and gaze, all calm and still,
I conjure up my thoughts; my mind I fill
With distances that stretch out boundlessly
And silences that somehow cannot be
Heard by my heart, which feels a sudden chill.
It seems these rustling leaves, this silence vast
Blend into one. Eternity draws nigh.
The present sounds and seasons, those long past
Become one sea of endless lives and deaths.
My thought is drowned, and yet it does not die:
It plunges into sweet, refreshing depths.
(il naufragar m'è dolce in questo mare.)
That’s not quite it, the poem , of unbelievable potency, is untranslatable, but it picks up Newton's unfathomable ocean and dives rapturously into it and captures how we can stare back at the meaninglessness of infinite space, while sitting in a small hedged world, and the fond hill beyond, and find that little things like the rustling of leafage sound an harmonious counterpoint to the awesomely chill silence of eternity, so that, in the end, the human subject (after all, consciousness is just nature happening to go beyond its entropic dynamics of creative destruction by accidentally creating a singularity capable of self-awareness. Nature paradoxically 'tripped' (LSD) out of its genial brutality or brutishness, by enabling a part of it to make a quantum leap beyond its natural thrust, endowed with a Medusan gaze that can pierce reflectively into the heart of its thinginess, and find, despite the frigid truth of eternity, joy in the sheer fortuitous, dysfunctional act of sublunary perception itself). Leopardi got it just right: Gerard Manley Hopkins stepped back into what the Thane of Cawdor in Macbeth called ‘supernatural solicitings’, but captures the same thing, even if in provincial theological trappings, in that magnificent poem that runs:
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
No one should ever read that without recalling how stumbling upon it in a library radically transformed the life of Stanley Kunitz in 1926 (a wonderful year for poets, over a dozen American masters of the genre were born that year).
This is offhand, and doesn’t quite measure up to your request. I must do some work, but will search my memory b(l)anks (like all modern banks, on the verge of bankruptcy these days, being slower) to forage out something more precise. Affectionately. Nishidani (talk) 11:05, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

A title

I thought you would soon take advantage of my sanction to make sweeping edits to the Khazar hypothesis page, but happily you've actually added content instead of deleting mine. I'd love it if you could transfer most of the content from the Khazars page to the hypothesis page- particularly about the history of the hypothesis. It belongs there! One tip, try not to go overboard with the prose which can be borderline turgid. For example, insouciant. Most readers will not know what that word means. Oh, and it was my birthday! Hooray for me!--Monochrome_Monitor 04:08, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Then a hundred happy returns for you!
You noted then that I stay off a page after, as a result of my actions, someone ends up getting sanctioned. That's a principle. Even if I believe I am in the right, there's a sense of guilt, to be paid by a symbolic form of self-punishment, like not ducking in to profit from the situation.
No, articles aren't written by transferring blobs from one good article to a mediocre one. They are written from the bottom up, fresh. I transferred the basic points on Khazars re its history, and am just expanding them on the hypothesis page. The Khazar mainpage is very stable by editorial consensus, and way past GA level. It was ridden of the POV-mongering that made it impossible to edit, and returning to try and strengthen a POV slant is deleterious.
Anything I delete will be registered on the talk page, for reference later. In our squabble, you edited so hectically, without talk page notes, that no one could have the slightest idea of what you'd done over the long term.
That said, I must have breakfast. Enjoy your summer, go to the beach, dance a bit etc: the real world is not a computer screen or scream, but the books that this technology replaced, or otherwise, a walk in a Norwegian wood, fireflies flitting like dongs with a luminous nose over the nightscape, or stretching oneself rigore mortis to catch and be swept up by a comber breaking towards glistening sands etc. Regards Nishidani (talk) 07:35, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Hah. I see what you did there. I'm not asking you to change anything on "khazars" slant-wise. I'm saying that it should not go into the subject in so much detail. And Jonney agreed, "Just trim the text and drive readers to other article." Please stop invoking an imaginary consensus. There is no consensus that the page should go into so much detail about the khazar hypothesis. In fact in our discussion about it you were outnumbered 3:1. --Monochrome_Monitor 12:04, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

The version of Khazars you see is one done under the constant watchful eyes and independent corrective judgements of Users Jeppiz, Andrew Lancaster, Laszlo Panaflex and a few others. The article goes into great detail in all sections, and in the section you object to, the detail is proportional to the detail in others. And proportional to the lead. I don't think anything there should be altered except with a proposal made to the talk page, with input from those editors, who can and do disagree with me on specific issues, but guarantee a neutral perspective.Nishidani (talk) 21:26, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

You are (or appear to be?) wrong, for once...

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Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 13:22, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

EM

My humble advice is to ignore him and not spend any time on that talk page. Complete and total waste of time. Only reason I posted there was so if he reverted again there would have been a notice of him being aware of the rule and to demonstrate how he would selectively enforce it. nableezy - 16:07, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

You're right of course. Dialogue with the deaf. Nishidani (talk) 20:27, 19 July 2016 (UTC)
of course, all is not lost. There are tougher forms of communication like that heroic Isa Amro trying to talk to David Wilder :) Nishidani (talk) 21:17, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

1RR

I believe you just violated WP:1RR at Israelites. “WarKosign” 20:37, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks WarKosign. I always appreciate a tip-off on possible issues like this. Correct me if I err but I don't think 1R applies to an historical article dealing with events ca.900 BCE, as it does inflexibly, happily for us, in the I/P area. At that time neither Jews nor Palestinians existed. We only have Israelites. If I'm wrong of course, please drop me another note, and I will of course revert.Nishidani (talk) 20:54, 26 July 2016 (UTC)
Article's talk page says that it is of interest to both wikiproject Israel and Palestine, and so it seems to me that it does fall under WP:ARBPIA. Specific subject that is being discussed is also very relevant - it affects the claim modern Jews have on Israel (Palestine) as their ancestral homeland. “WarKosign” 21:11, 26 July 2016 (UTC)
There is absolutely no way an issue like the relationship of Israelites to Samaritans in 900 BCE can be connected to the I/P conflict. Palestine is the historic name for the area from prehistoric times, and is not to be confused with the politics of 'Palestine' as the 'State of Palestine'. As to the claims of Israel, Jeezus. If we have to apply 1R to every article dealing with Israel from the 1207 BCE when the term is inscribed on the Merneptah stele, because whatever you edit in will be read as influencing the hot air balloons of Jewish legitimacy claims, we are entering into the sphere of pure insanity. I'll ask User:Doug Weller for clarification. He know the topic area well, and has the neutrality to make a call regardless of POV interests. Okay? Whatever he says is more or less Tanakh as regards policy. If you have another admin in mind, by all means drop them a note. The more input the better, because this has vast ramifications. (Aside from the fact that, and I can produce it, the Samaritan-Israelite link is vastly documented, and Debresser's edit is just running in the face of numerous technical studies of its historiography.) Nishidani (talk) 21:22, 26 July 2016 (UTC)
In my opinion ARBPIA applies: "The area of conflict in this case shall be considered to be the entire set of Arab-Israeli conflict-related articles, broadly interpreted". Feel free to disagree. I consider 1RR an effective tool for stopping edit wars and wouldn't mind seeing it applied to the whole wikipedia. I notified Debresser as well about what I think was their violation of 1RR. I'm not going to report either of you, just wanted to reminder you both that edit warring is not the way to go, no matter how wrong and/or biased you consider each other. “WarKosign” 21:31, 26 July 2016 (UTC)
Well, the Arab-Israeli conflict is a century old. To take broadly construed as twisting that century into 3 millennia is a long-stretch in policy hermeneutics. Rest assured that I revert when, rarely now, it is ascertained that I broke the rule inadvertently. I've called on an admin to review this. Regards Nishidani (talk) 21:35, 26 July 2016 (UTC)
I was afraid this would eventually happen. We now have a severe danger of millennia-creep in what was a sensible and sound policy within the bounds of the very recent events that is I/P. Where will it end? I think we should urgently clarify a cut-off point, distinguishing the ancient and diverse mass of articles on WP which could be seriously retarded in their development, from these modern events. It would be hugely counter-productive if fully applied, and if anything will attract a bogus "legitimisation - delegitimisation" aspect to many articles and will dangerously politicize them. Completely anarchronistic thinking here. Maybe a 1RR rule on the whole project will one day come, but this is not the best area to start imo. Irondome (talk) 21:49, 26 July 2016 (UTC)
Thanks Simon. Well, perhaps it is to the good that WarKoSign brought it up, just so this, which I'd never imagined, is clarified, one way or another. I don't know how much my word is trusted round here, but I must say this: a magnificently successful modern state does not need to show the incessant rumblings of anxiety of legitimation I occasionally see here, spilling over into Biblical hermeneutics, ancient Near Eastern history, genetics etc.etc. The world around Israel is in ruins, when not a petrol-driven monoculture of Potemkin village flashiness, because it has been dominated by utterly incompetent pseudo-modernizers. I know the environment in geostrategic terms tends towards apocalyptic worries, but I once heard Ernest Gellner saying that the problem with very successful modernizers is that they fail to just ease up a little to enjoy the fruits of their success. Anxiety is counter-productive in that it only ends up in irrational micromanagement that loses sight of the big picture. I've never believed the legitimacy of Israel, or any other nation, rests on certificates of lineal racial descent, or the Biblical stories, which mostly aren't true, but constitute a mythopoetics as contemporary with hermeneutics of the human condition as you find in Greek tragedy. Oedipus is still with us, though a Greek myth (that turns up in the Amazon and Africa!), as is Isaac under Abraham's knife, which is equally true, though it never happened probably. Israel in law exists,- irrespective of whatever stories were told to justify the implementation of the Balfour declaration: its legitimacy no longer rests on those stories, and cannot be challenged except by someone who wishes to make a public statement of their antisemitism. Don't believe that? Look at any cutting edge research, archaeological, historical etc., in Israel, and most of the narrative is way out of whack with the common story. Nothing unusual, this happens everywhere, from Japan, to China, to the United States, and only the political elites keep harping on the 'City upon a hill, or the autochononousness of Yamato emperors (the Imperial house won't allow excavations from fear of finding a Korean peninsular connection), etc,etc.etc. Ease up, chaps.Nishidani (talk) 22:18, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

Talk:Israelites

Hey, this is a reminder to keep a cool head during content disputes, especially in as heated an area as you're editing in. The last paragraph here is unhelpful on several levels. Edit dispassionately; if you're getting too frustrated, relax and take a break. --Lord Roem ~ (talk) 11:19, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

You're quite right. The pity of these things is that if I document quite minutely stalling through automatic reverting on a series of pretexts, which lasted two days, wasted several hours of my time on just one edit, and, at the end of 50 hours, in which the editor had ample time to actually look and examine the one line cited to actually construe it correctly, he finally admitted that his objection was wrong, and that the reigning Samaritan authority on the topic, reliably published by William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, is more reliable than any wiki editor for Samaritan history, this falls by the wayside as an index of a behavioural problem. Multiply that kind of obstructionism over numerous edit disagreements for several years, and one gets an inkling of how much effort is required, extending through massive talk page remonstrations, to A/1, to achieve what simple common sense and standard wiki protocols on collegial editing would achieve in 5 minutes. To say 'fucking'/ or exclaim 'what the fuck', at the end of yet one more proof of WP:IDONTLIKEIT cunctator removalist obstructionism, is obviously not bon ton. To engage in the other order of obtuse refusal to actual parse a simple sentence over 2 days is, if done politely, something that falls under our radar. By the way, I'm fairly patient, rarely unnerved, and use such expressions while feeling quite serene. If you knock on a door several times, and no one present answers, you don't keep politely knocking: you give the door a healthy thump. Still, your advice is well-taken.Nishidani (talk) 15:18, 29 July 2016 (UTC)
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