Re: POLITICS: Re: grim prospects - US support of Israel vs. an Arabic coalition against Iraq/Iran and US dependence on Saudi Oil -

From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Sat Apr 06 2002 - 22:36:44 MST


Samantha Atkins wrote:
>
> If I was Palestinian at this time I would do everything possible
> to strike back at Israel. If I was Arab I would tend to support
> any means the Palestinians used to fight back, generally
> speaking. Making Saddam out to be a monster and justifying yet
> more US involvement in the area on such a basis is ridiculous.
> Again, what are you calling terrorism? Is what Israel is
> currently doing terrorism?

Why take the side of the Palestinians? I know more about this issue than I
really want to, thanks to my parentage, and you can take it from me that
both sides are raving nuts. There isn't a "right side" here. The colonial
powers treated Arab land like a turkey to be carved up, the Jews decided to
establish their glorious homeland on the most fought-over piece of land in
Earth's history because God told them to do it, the Palestinians raised
their hate as high as it would go because God told *them* to do it and
declared war on the civilians, and Israel decided to hate back. The Jews
aren't going to move to Canada and the Palestinians aren't going to build a
liberal democracy and become software engineers. They're just going to go
on killing and hating. End of story. There isn't a single thing you can do
about it except unleash the Singularity. So why argue? Why spread the
hate?

-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence



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