Just because WWIII didn't break out this week, don't go crowing about the wisdom of Trump's strategy just yet.

I would argue that Trump and Kim engaging in talks even if it doesn't result in North Korea giving up its nukes is a good thing. Creating a dialogue is the first step towards peace. I certainly haven't heard anything about North Korea shooting up any rockets lately. The US and the DPRK are certainly never going to be bosom buddies but I don't think we'll have to worry about them anytime soon.

As for Iran, I would say them getting a nuke is inevitable if they don't have one already. I'm not blaming Trump or Obama for it, Iran would have gotten a nuke no matter who won in 2008 or 2016. The US and Iran were already enemies in the 2000s and with the US in countries on both sides of Iran, of course they're going to try to get a nuke which is what they've been trying to do for so long. We can do cyber attacks and conventional sabotage, but the only way Iran stays denuclearized is if we invade and occupy, which I'm certainly not in favor of.

Can you prove that Iran has no nukes without a doubt? I’m sure Israel will do everything they can to stop Iran from getting a nuke, but they’re not omnipresent. The US, a far more powerful country than Israel, did what we could to stop North Korea, a less powerful country than Iran, from getting nukes and North Korea got them anyway.

Trump's "fawning" -- and yes, in terms of its emotional register, it has been pretty much that -- approach to North Korea may have reduced the risk of war on the Korean Peninsula for now, and that is good as far as that goes. East Asia is another place where WWIII could break out and especially with the number of people who live there, it would be catastrophic.

But rewarding Kim Jong-Un carries its own risks. Other countries around the world, and certainly Iran, are looking at what's happened with Trump's approach to North Korea and seeing nuclear blackmail rewarded and respected. That will accelerate their drive toward the bomb.

From a non-proliferation perspective, what we should have been doing all along was rewarding Iran (i.e. continuing the JCPOA and lifting the sanctions) for *not* going nuclear. And punishing North Korea for not de-nuclearizing.

Trump's zigged the complete opposite direction on both counts.

I wouldn’t say we’re rewarding Kim. Rather I see it as acknowledging that the sanctions didn’t work, NK got the bomb, and there’s nothing we can do about it without risking lives. The sanctions don’t even really punish Kim anyway, they just punish his people who are starving to death. Sanctions just aren’t effective if the leaders aren’t really affected by them in the first place. It’s a similar situation in Iran. Yes, we had the nuclear agreement, but Iran ignored it and continued making progress towards nukes anyway. Sanctions aren’t effective in this case either because only the people suffer, not the elite. Plus we have them surrounded so why would they give up the nukes? Russia and China are unlikely to help so a nuke is Iran’s only hail mary.

Not a bad theory honestly. Israel is paranoid (for good reason) and quite comfortable defying international opinion.

However, initiating a nuclear first-strike on another sovereign nation would make whatever heat Israel has taken for the Palestinian occupation over the past several decades look like small potatoes. Israel would become a pariah for the next hundred or 1000 years depending on how many fatalities and environmental damage resulted.

And if Israel's intelligence was bad, or they missed an Iranian nuke... bad news for Israel. Not to mention whatever capabilities Iran has to retaliate conventionally. Israel is not that large and even conventional rocket attacks on Tel Aviv and/or Jerusalem could be devastating.

How much are they willing to bet on their Iron Dome?

From what I've read on it, Iran intends to build its nuclear compounds so deep underground that conventional weapons can't reach them.

There exist so-called "tactical" nuclear weapons that could probably bust those bunkers while keeping collateral damage relatively limited. I don't know whether Israel has those sorts of weapons, since I'm not privy to top-secret Israeli military stuff, but they probably do. The use of those kinds of weapons would still be incredibly controversial.

If Israel can keep a lid on Iranian nuclear ambitions through cyber-attacks, as they apparently have in the past, that'd be best.

The Palestinian occupation is hugely controversial, whatever you want to call it.

Are there such people as Palestinians? Do they enjoy equal rights as Israelis?

What would be your term for the people commonly termed "Palestinians"?

Just curious what you would call them.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Jordan

“In 2006 there were reported to be no Jewish citizens.” Fair assumption then that there are therefore no Jewish members of the government of Jordan.

No Jews in your country means you’re not capable of discriminating against Jews in your country!

I wonder why all the Jews left Jordan though? Perhaps prior discrimination? Perhaps because of the establishment of Israel they all just packed up and made the easy move next door? I don’t know, I haven’t asked them all.

Interesting trivia, but it has nothing to do with whether Palestinians have equal rights in Israel, which was the question I asked.

Or: “primarily Arab residents of Israel and its territories,” if that’s a term you’d prefer, although you still haven’t told me exactly what you’d call them.

"What you don't understand is that, in 1948, Jews all over the Middle East were expelled because of the establishment of Israel. And because they were expelled, they were robbed of their property, their businesses, their real estate...all of it without compensation."

A kernel of truth buried in this giant whopper.

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

From the top of the page: "The Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries, or Jewish exodus from Arab countries, was the departure, flight, expulsion, evacuation and migration of 850,000 Jews, primarily of Sephardi and Mizrahi background, from Arab countries and the Muslim world, mainly from 1948 to the early 1970s. The last major migration wave took place from Iran in 1979–80, as a consequence of the Iranian Revolution."

"Expulsion" of Jews did happen, but it didn't all happen at once all over the Arab world in 1948 because of the establishment of Israel. Some Jews left for the Holy Land earlier than that. Others waited. Some Jews lost property when they left. Others didn't.

I'm not saying Jews have been treated kindly all over the Arab world -- not at all. Obviously they have not.

But there were push factors and pull factors, and one of the biggest pull factors was Israel's open immigration policy.

1. "Wikipedia is not a legitimate source."

This explains so much about you.

Wikipedia is an great way of quickly finding basic information on any given subject. It's not perfect, or usually the best possible source out there on any given subject. But it's pretty unbiased overall, and I don't detect a systematic bias in any particular political direction. Wikipedia has no overarching agenda other than the promulgation of knowledge. You're far less likely to be led astray if you start your research of any given subject at Wikipedia than if you start randomly searching the bowls of the internet. Wikipedia entries are almost never made up out of whole cloth; they cite sources, and you can check them out at the bottom.

Scroll to the bottom of this article I posted -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_Arab_and_Muslim_countries -- and you will see that it cites sources 321 times.

Wikipedia entries are typically more comprehensive, detailed, specific, and up-to-date than equivalent entries from Encyclopedia Britannica. And there are just more of them to choose from. But if you were to undertake a big project to compare Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica entries on any given subject, I bet the information contained therein would largely align.

2. Now, as for this thing you cited: https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/The-uprooting-of-the-Jews-from-Arab-countries-552636

The very first lines of the article:

--"One of the major recognized causes of the current wave of antisemitism in Europe and other places is Palestinian propaganda. This sweeping brainwashing effort has succeeded in producing an anti-Jewish climate in many parts of the world..."

Did you write this article by chance? It could have been lifted straight from one of your screeds. The one-two punch of "Palestinian propaganda" and "sweeping brainwashing effort" in the very first two sentences of this article tells me all I need to know about this author's agenda.

This "source" is already so tremendously biased that I'm not going to bother reading further.

And did you happen to see what section of the Jerusalem Post this article was filed under? "Opinion"! Pretty big tell there!

* I am guilty as well.it is SUCH a fantastic template.
it has that perfect amount of curious,smug condescension,but it also conveys a sense of playfulness that I find irresistible.

but I can't look at this template without automatically connecting it to doctorstrangelove (the artist formerly known as choad).

Agree. What a character and a movie. And a fantastic meme, especially on atomic subjects :)

Plus I am quite the fan of the memer known as DoctorStrangelove.

3lqnln.jpg (click to show) Take ours please