> tourists often are very visible and tend to make a bad impression, as most haven't studied the language or learned the numerous behaviour expectations
Tourists are short-term visitors who are there exclusively to spend their money in Japan and leave it with its citizens. If the Japanese do not want that because the tourists don't come fully prepared for living in Japan, then you should just deny tourist entries to the country. It would be win-win for everyone, because there are plenty of other countries who would gladly take those tourists instead.
I'm sure the Sanseito party would be happy to add your proposal to their platform. I doubt the people who work in the tourism industry are voting for them anyway, and the people who benefit indirectly from tourism probably aren't aware enough of the dependency to care about it.
> It's as if all pro-Israel bots and fan accounts are reading the exact same guide.
Historically, many pro-Israel talking point guides/handbooks have been created and used, yes [1][2][3][4]. It would thus be unreasonable to assume that they are not currently being coordinated.
> I use the data to train Nuclear Radiochemistry AI Agents and [...]
As someone who is not involved in this ongoing discussion, I have to just say that invoking LLM agents when asked for credentials is not going to go in your favor.
My use case for data that exists that is pre-AI scientifically vetted work is completely divorced from the specifics of this conversation actually. If I want to do paper-maché sculptures with printouts of these papers, and I still commented on this post, would that be better or worse for you, here?
I was just sharing background. I want to make good models that can help scientists do work. Your personal feelings about LLMs and their capabilities feels quite distinct from the focus on this post, and the chain of comments that have led us here.
It's not a peace deal. It doesn't address any Palestinian concern other than a novel one that is stopping 2 years of constant bombardement (replaced by low-intensity fighting via proxy militias, and smaller scale killings of people who even approach the newly-declared border). Palestinian resistance got nothing out of it, as Israel has abducted and thrown into prisons more people over the past 2 years than it has released through the hostage swaps.
> It's not a peace deal. It doesn't address any Palestinian concern other than a novel one that is stopping 2 years of constant bombardement
That's true for any negotiated, i.e. conditional, armistice. If you want one side to be happy, you have to press for unconditional surrender. Palestine doesn't have the capability to force Israel to unconditionally surrender.
In any case, what we call it is irrelevant. (What the Norwegian Noble Committee calls it is irrelevant.) What matters is what the President thinks. And he thinks it's a peace deal that could make him a Nobel laureate. Which gives him an interest in not letting, as he sees it, an ICC judge mess with his deal.
> Palestinian resistance got nothing out of it
No shit. The October 7 attacks were terrorist attacks. The literature on terrorism is they extremely rarely achieve their political goals.
> That's true for any negotiated, i.e. conditional, armistice. If you want one side to be happy, you have to press for unconditional surrender. Palestine doesn't have the capability to force Israel to unconditionally surrender.
It's still not a peace deal. It does look more akin to surrender of fighting by the palestinian resistance, motivated by the civillian population reaching a breaking point because of the starvation and bombing. Moral of the story is that collective punishment works, I suppose.
> The October 7 attacks were terrorist attacks
There is no logically-consistent definition you can provide that would make that raid a terrorist attack without also capturing Israel's actions as terrorist attacks. The aggressive actions they took that day have been outdone 100-fold by Israel. The prisoners they took were a drop in the sea compared to the number of people Israel held in "administrative detention" alone, let alone all the people they randomly snatch with some bogus accusations. The state in which those prisoners returned compared to the state in which palestinian prisoners returned are day and night.
When their acts are compared objectively, the conclusions never go in Israel's favor.
> still not a peace deal. It does look more akin to surrender of fighting
Sure, whatever, it’s an armistice. Practically, it means Palestinians aren’t dying at hundreds or thousands a clip. And it means Trump can think he’s in line in Oslo.
> Moral of the story is that collective punishment works, I suppose
Moral is we’re in a multipolar world. America is no longer world cop, which means we’re back to 19th century great power dynamics.
> no logically-consistent definition you can provide that would make that raid a terrorist attack without also capturing Israel's actions as terrorist attacks
Granted. But Israel also waged a military campaign against Hamas infrastructure (and allegedly the Gaza population).
I’m not making a moral argument. Just a practical one. Killing a kidnapping civilians is a goading into war. Sinwar was explicit about his expectation of war with Israel.
He thought Iran and its proxies would be more capable. That’s a fair miscalculation. But after being faced with evidence of that fuckup, he didn’t sue for peace or attempt to return the hostages.
At the same time, Israel could have absolutely prosecuted this war more precisely. (They didn’t, and that has and probably will cost them a great deal until someone realises turning Netanyahu over to the ICC is a get out of jail free card.)
In the end, since October 7, the best Gaza could hope for was ceasefire and international occupation. The idea that an independent Palestine was ever on the table from anyone relevant, i.e. Israel and Palestine’s geographic neighbors and defence and trading partners, was always wishful. (I mean independent as sovereign. A demilitarized Gaza that is independent on paper but in practice bordered by the region’s most powerful military is the West Bank all over again.)
> The October 7 attacks were terrorist attacks. The literature on terrorism is they extremely rarely achieve their political goals.
Is every act of violent resistance against one's oppressor a "terrorist attack", what does the literature say? What distinguishes a terrorist attack from a counter-offensive?
Is it the targeting of civilians? But that didn't start on October 7th, so if that's the case, why isn't Palestine getting everything they want, and why aren't you arguing that Israel shouldn't expect to get anything out of their terrorist attacks against Palestine?
Last one is a rhetorical question, we know the answer by now. Israel and the US have all the power therefore their actions are righteous and any sort of retribution is terrorism, propped up by a million different ways to try to erase and rewrite history.
It’s quite easy to argue that the October 7th attacks were terrorism. They explicitly targeted non-strategic civilian communities and events, for political purpose. They fit within the definition as clearly as any act could.
Argue what you mean. You believe those terrorist attacks are _justified_. There are lots of ways to argue that point. But one of them is ends justification. Did it work out for the people it was supposedly on behalf of?
Yes, October 7th was a terrorist attack - so what? Israel's actions before October 7th were also terrorism, and their actions after October 7th have been many orders of magnitude worse than terrorism.
"Palestine doesn't get what they deserve because they engaged in terrorism" is a hypocritical, useless argument.
P.S. Everyone is "justified" in doing anything they can to regain their freedom once all legal options are exhausted. If you lock a person in your basement I believe they're entirely justified in bashing your face in the first chance they get. It's absurd to imply that they aren't, and it's even more absurd to try to use "but they bashed my face in" as a moral justification to further victimize your basement prisoner.
> What distinguishes a terrorist attack from a counter-offensive?
Objectives. Targeting military infrastructure and symbols of a regime can deplete martial capacity and domestic support. Targeting civilians pretty much always results in unifying the enemy—this goes back to Hitler trying to bomb Britain into submission from afar.
> that didn't start on October 7th, so if that's the case, why isn't Palestine getting everything they want
Huh? Nobody argued that everything except terrorism is a winning strategy.
> why aren't you arguing that Israel shouldn't expect to get anything out of their terrorist attacks against Palestine?
They’re the stronger military. Absent international law or pressure, might makes right.
> Last one is a rhetorical question
Literally answered it. If you’re saying you’ve presumed an answer and don’t wish to hear others, sure.
> Israel and the US have all the power therefore their actions are righteous and any sort of retribution is terrorism
You’re getting lost in your own analogies.
We can construct convincing moral models that indict both sides of this conflict because multiple actors have behaved abhorrently. (One or two have more capability and thus can act on their impulses more fully.) If you’re writing as a historian, sure, apportion blame.
If you’re thinking as a strategist, however, outcomes are what matter. And on an outcome basis, October 7 was strategically stupid (it could has been genius, but Hamas and PJ have no discipline), while the current ceasefire saves lives.
> If you’re thinking as a strategist, however, outcomes are what matter. And on an outcome basis, October 7 was strategically stupid
"It didn't work therefore it was stupid to even try" is one hell of a way to judge strategic decisions. When all your options have a near-0% chance of success, everything is going to look "stupid" in retrospect, by that logic.
> [...] then what work is this phrase even doing? Why does anyone even say it?
Most people are far more emotional than logical (possibly as a consequence of a lack of basic education in logic). They are not precise with their language, and they are not logically consistent in their words and actions. A lot of them (most?) tend to say things that make them feel good, or that they aspire towards, not things that are actually true. It's not even a conscious choice to lie, they're too used to being like that, and there isn't enough peer pressure to change since most people are like that, too.
A technical person on the spectrum should consider most people inherently "bugged" and treat all their outputs as unreliable.
>They are not precise with their language, and they are not logically consistent in their words and actions. A lot of them (most?) tend to say things that make them feel good,
Thanks for this, I think you put this really beautifully.
>or that they aspire towards, not things that are actually true
I think this last part was the part I was missing. I really appreciate your thoughts.
> Also: You are promoting that we keep a grudge. Are you planning to let go of it sometime?
I have to ask -- why? Your population is hundreds of millions, you can afford to let go of bad people and replace them with better people. You don't need to let go of a grudge against war criminals and their media collaborators. They're not your family, or people that you simply have to learn how to deal with because you can't lose them.
I'm assuming here that it is a goal to get rid of such people eventually. Then that requires making steps towards that goal. Be unforgiving towards people who wield power unethically.
"The strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must" has been written down as geopolitical reality by Thucydides around ~400BC [1].
For some reason, over the past few decades the powerful countries from the West employed rhetoric to suggest that their actions are guided by principles and morals. That was most likely a reaction to a huge wave of anti-colonial revolutions and national liberation struggles that tore the Western empires apart. However, USA and Israel have taken off the mask over the past 2 years, and that weasly rhetoric is now over.
> we should now bet that Venezuela should expect big turmoil in the coming years
That much is obvious, given that:
- There are ongoing sanctions against the country by USA
- USA has a portion of its fleet just off Venezuale's shore, killing people in boats
- USA has an active $50 million reward for information leading to arrest of Venezuela's current president
- Current president's main rival is being internationally propped-up in the midst of all of the above, most recently by having the Nobel peace prize awarded to her
- That main rival has publicly supported US imperialism, promises privatization of Venezuela's energy resources, has called for US regime change in Venezuela, and is strongly Zionist and supporting a genocide
So, yes, Venezuela should expect big turmoil in the coming years.
> I think trump genuinely deserves the prize if peace in the Middle East achieved
The current ceasefire proposal doesn't address the wider struggle for liberation of the indigenous people of Palestine, and as such it cannot be anything more than a temporary stop to a 2-year genocide against them. Settlements are still being built and fences around Palestinian houses are still being erected in the West Bank. Ethnic Cleansing continues. There is no peace until Israel undergoes the same transformation that Apartheid South Africa did when it turned into just South Africa (which requires efforts from the entire world to boycott it).
Ironically, this reply was the only one downvoted against my downvoted post, but I do agree that sketicism is the right attitude here.
Settlements are continuing in the West Bank, which are widely regarded as illegal by the international community.
There is little doubt amongst international experts that what Israel has done is genocide, and the parallels with South Africa are justified.
I'm hopeful that the genocide won't continue. However, I also think it's unlikely that peace will be achieved. Some form of violence or occupation is more likely, driven by Netanyahu's political interests.
Tourists are short-term visitors who are there exclusively to spend their money in Japan and leave it with its citizens. If the Japanese do not want that because the tourists don't come fully prepared for living in Japan, then you should just deny tourist entries to the country. It would be win-win for everyone, because there are plenty of other countries who would gladly take those tourists instead.
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