Stephen Hawking boycotts major Israel conference

[Svartalf]

1.2 billion arabs? You'oll have to back that up bub. muslim=/=arab. ... plus you fucking finance some of them arabs so you can get their oil, which ain't the same thing as giving foreign aid to a country.

[Coito ergo sum]

1.2 billion arabs? You'oll have to back that up bub. muslim=/=arab. ... plus you fucking finance some of them arabs so you can get their oil, which ain't the same thing as giving foreign aid to a country.

Yes - I ought to have correctly specified Moslem.

Of course it is the same as giving foreign aid. We fucking pay for the fucking oil apart from the fucking aid that we give them.

And stop it with the sanctimonious bullshit about "get their fucking oil" -- you Yerpeeins buy your fucking oil from the fucking Arabs too -- like France, who brazenly violated the UN sanctions against Iraq to buy cheap oil under the table.

[Svartalf]

Sit on a diçk, maybe it would improve your disposition.

[Coito ergo sum]

Sit on a diçk, maybe it would improve your disposition.

I generally respond in the manner in which I am addressed.

[Svartalf]

I was remarking that fucking trade isn't the same as freely financing a fascist, racist, human rights trampling state as you do, or at least let a large number of your citizens privately do, possibly even letting them enjoy tax breaks for doing it under cover of various "charities".

[Coito ergo sum]

I was remarking that fucking trade isn't the same as freely financing a fascist, racist, human rights trampling state as you do, or at least let a large number of your citizens privately do, possibly even letting them enjoy tax breaks for doing it under cover of various "charities".

Trade in oil is not part of the amount of money counted as foreign aid to Arab countries.

As "you do?" You don't think your own fucking country provides similar financial assistance to unsavory regimes? Really?

And, are you suggesting that people in your country don't also send money overseas? (although such private donations would also not be counted as foreign aid).

God damn -- more and more I see this blurring of the lines between government/state money and private money. When we buy oil from Saudi Arabia, the money paid for it is not considered "foreign aid." It's paid for, also, by private companies who then ship the oil to the US and refine it and then sell it on the open market. It's not government run. And, groups of Jews or Muslims raising money to send to other countries is likewise not foreign aid. Foreign aid is money paid by the government out of the treasury or borrowed.

[Jason]

UK author, Iain Banks, has written about why he, himself, has been participating in the cultural boycott of Israel ..

http://m.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/apr/ ... ott-israel

That is quite a cogent article.

My attitude regarding the Israeli nation is this: Between 66 and 135 CE the Romans drove "The Chosen People" out of the "God-given" "Promised Land". During the last 1300 years of the Jewish diaspora the land was populated by people under Muslim rule. Unsurprisingly, these people were not particularly pleased when the UNO decided to give it back to the people who had been driven out of it almost two millennia earlier.

My commiserations go with the Palestinians, but that does not mean I support their efforts to reimpose their culture and governmental modus operandi on the only area in the middle east that is run with at least a semblance of democracy. Despite the "Arab Spring", Israel's neighbouring countries are profoundly undemocratic and theocratic.

Israel, on the other hand, is not exactly a white knight either. Its treatment of the Palestinians within its borders is much like South Africa's erstwhile apartheid, and its regard for Palestinians generally as Untermenschen particularly ironic. My reading of Iain Banks' article is that this is the reason he is prohibiting the sale of his works in Israel. It is also worth nothing that while Banks supports the boycott of Israel, he' does not view its neighbouring Muslim regimes through pink lenses. For instance, he describes Saudi Arabia as a "barbaric excuse for a country."

I wonder if he also boycotts the US, which after all bankrolls Israel and enables its delinquencies.

Interesting question, so I did a bit of googling. It turns out that the US government does not bankroll Israel at all, though it sells weapons to it to the tune of one to two billion dollars each year. These sales come with a rider. The weapons are meant to be used for defensive purposes only. Thus, when allegations were made that Israel had used cluster bombs for offensive purposes during the 1982 Lebanon War, the United States suspended shipments of cluster bombs to Israel.

I have no qualms at all that not just the US, but many other nations sell arms to Israel to help preventing it from being pushed into the sea by its theocratic muslim neighbours, but I do object to its treatment of millions of Palestinians living within its borders. It wouldn't surprise me if this is Iain Banks' attitude as well.

The IDF uses mainly Israeli hardware.. they have their own tank (a version of Germany's Leopard), the Galil (an updated Kalshnikov design rechambered for 5.56 NATO), etc.. though they did use American built F-18s to flatten the Gaza strip and kill thousands of Palestinians not that long ago.

[Svartalf]

Except I effing wish I could stop wasting money on African states, but it only would worsen the African invasion... we don't support tyrants, we bribe the Ns into staying home... there's no such reason for supporting israel.