Edit: Sorry, I can't reply to your comment below, for some reason.
This part,
> Did you know that Jews lived among Muslims for over a thousand years in peace?
is revisionist because it paints second-class status for Jews as "peace". This is ridiculous, a fiction akin to "separate but equal" without even the pretense of equality.
Additionally,
> The violence started happening when the Zionists wanted the land for themselves, exclusive of the indigenous population (1948 nakba).
Is ahistorical. There have been small but continuous Jewish settlements in the region since antiquity, Jews are indigenous. Further, Zionist immigration started earlier than 1948, as early as the late 1800s, and finally, Arabs fled Israel to avoid the incoming invasion from Arab Muslim nations who, for bigoted reasons, could not tolerate a Jewish state.
> is revisionist because it paints second-class status for Jews as "peace". This is ridiculous, a fiction akin to "separate but equal" without even the pretense of equality.
Let's agree for a moment that there was intense bigotry and prejudice, as I'm very sure there was some amount. As we can also agree, there is human tribalism alive and well to this day between people of minimal or great differences.
Separate but equal is not enslavement or extermination. Dhimmi was the basis for peace, not equality, and I haven't found a compelling alternative narrative.
> > The violence started happening when the Zionists wanted the land for themselves, exclusive of the indigenous population (1948 nakba).
> Is ahistorical.
While I can appreciate what you're trying to say here, the post you are responding to was describing a situation within the context of the Zionist state movement of the mid 1900s. The fact that there have always been Jewish settlements throughout the historical Levant (and beyond) is incidental. Neither of these points are without merit. I'm not sure arguing past each other about who deserves what is constructive.
(Looks like I can reply now)
I feel I've pretty clearly answered your question of "what 'revisionist' means in that context". Dhimmitude is absolutely not a basis for peace. If it helps, think of Zionism as a civil rights movement, but more aligned with Malcom X than MLK.
I don't believe it's incidental that there have always been Jewish settlements, it's exactly the point: Muslims were fine with Jewish settlements so long as the Jews were subservient to a ruling Muslim power, but Jewish self-determination was intolerable.
I do agree that arguing about who deserves what is not constructive. 1948 was 78 years ago, there are ~10 million Israelis, and the country has nukes. The historical perspective is not very helpful here.
I think you’re ignoring the historical context. Jews were being systematically targeted all over Europe, and at the height of the Islamic empire they held ministerial positions in the royal court.
Btw, as a native Arabic speaker, I find it extremely interesting how you’re using ‘dhimma’ to mean servitude, when it literally means those who were given an oath to be protected.
> I think you’re ignoring the historical context. Jews were being systematically targeted all over Europe, and at the height of the Islamic empire they held ministerial positions in the royal court.
I don't understand what point you're trying to make. Individual Jews held prestigious positions in Europe as well. So what?
> Btw, as a native Arabic speaker, I find it extremely interesting how you’re using ‘dhimma’ to mean servitude, when it literally means those who were given an oath to be protected.
Yes, the literal and practical meanings differ. And of course, relying on others for protection leaves you at their mercy and locks you into a position of submission towards your "protector". Avoiding that reliance is perhaps the primary purpose of Israel.
in creating, perpetuating, and expanding israel, the zionist jews betrayed the ones who had protected them for so long, hosting them on lands that for the most part never even belonged to the jewish people to begin with. israel is the only colony turned state in history to have been created by a people who were previously stateless, this fact alone should raise suspicions about the true history and legitimacy of that state.
who gave the jews a state? people think it was britain but britain agreed to the balfour declaration, an agreement made between zionist bankers and the british state which involved upholding the rights of the indigenous arab population and which did not involve the creation of a jewish state. how do you think jews got their state regardless? did britain change their mind and decide to give jews more than they agreed to give them?
why should the arabs have accepted the partition? what was the rationale behind the partition, who made the decision and what right did they have to make such a decision, what was the justification for a zionist state to begin with?
the arabs made war after the zionists started the nakba, if zionists weren't so aggressive the arab states likely wouldn't have sent any soldiers to fight, just taken economic and diplomatic measures.
in historical jewish states, how did they treat the people they conquered? not to mention, most jews in the muslim world lived well outside of their homeland in palestine, and that's not because the muslims pushed them out, they were there before the muslims conquered, and many times they helped the muslims conquer because they would rather have lived under muslim rule than christian rule.
It’s not clear what "revisionist" means in this context, especially when pointing to Dhimmi.
I’ve never heard of it before today. I’m aware that Jews and Muslims live in Iran today. There is historical evidence, including written accounts, that some arrangement (Dhimmi?) existed over 1,200 years ago—whether social, legal, cultural, or, most likely, a combination. Under this system, the religions coexisted without the overtones of genocide within their communities.
Which has been enlightening. Thank you for highlighting the tenuous situation in Iran, which is not favorable toward Jews. This does shed light on the affair and seems credible to me.
There are no Islamic countries. All Muslim-majority countries remain power structures intended to maintain the power of the powerful and use Islam as part of their means to do so. To call them otherwise or label them Islamic is fruitless.
We do the same for Israel. They claim Judiasm but we know they do not represent it. The same for all so-called Islamic countries.
When an “Islamic country” starts getting several billions of dollars in aid from the US and begins “quadruple tapping” civilians, then I suppose there will be some outrage.
In the meantime, this outrage appears to be more based in the criminal conduct of a genocidal state than any religious amenity
Several Muslim-majority countries have received billions in U.S. aid for decades, not just recently. The clearest examples are Egypt, Jordan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and, in humanitarian years, Syria and Yemen.
Hell, Pakistan got more than $19 billion in U.S. aid from 2002–2010, plus a $7.5 billion non-military package over five years, and Afghanistan got more than $109 billion total through USAID.
Egypt gets about $2 billion a year on average since 1979, mostly military aid.
How do you think Islam spread? Peacefully? Look at history. And look at Islamic texts that preach the subjugation and killing of anyone who isn’t Islamic. It’s much more of a supremacist culture than any other.
islam wasn't the only religion to have an empire. and islam spread through voluntary conversion, for hundreds of years the subjects of the islamic empires remained majority the pre conquest religion. also no muslim empire ever conquered indonesia and malaysia, yet they are two muslim majority countries today.
> hundreds of years the subjects of the islamic empires remained majority the pre conquest religion
Even if this was true, which I dispute, Islam imposes all sorts of methods to oppress other religions. Like special taxes for those who aren’t Muslims.
> no muslim empire ever conquered indonesia and malaysia, yet they are two muslim majority countries today
And now these countries have inhumane systems like sharia courts.
You can dispute but you're still wrong. The majority of people under Islamic rule historically were non-Muslims but were afforded far greater rights than other societies, such as freedom or worship, protection, the right to their own laws, and the right to Islam's laws as well if they wanted.
And yes, they were taxed. Muslims paid zakat, non-Muslims paid jizyah. We can't make non-Muslims pay a religious tax, so they paid a different one. You make that sound like it's a bad thing.
Also, what you said about Malaysia and Indonesia is bizarrely bad and incorrect. It's not worth replying to you, you just spew lies like a Zionist. Oh wait...
Jizyah wasn’t at the same rate as zakat and its rate wasn’t uniform. It was often used to humiliate, reminding non Muslims of their subordinate status under Islamic law
Are you seriously trying to revise taxation of other religions into an “alternative” when it clearly was meant to discriminate and oppress them? The Quran literally says the jizya is about fighting those who don’t believe in “god”, to subdue them.
You are spreading revisionist misinformation, but it’s also so obvious and easy to disprove with a quick search. Why even try to spin it this way?
“Fight against those who do not believe in Allāh or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allāh and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth [i.e., Islām] from those who were given the Scripture - [fight] until they give the jizyah willingly while they are humbled.“
Notice the four characteristics mentioned here (all of them must be satisfied):
- do not believe in Allāh or in the Last Day
- do not consider unlawful what Allāh and His Messenger have made unlawful
- do not adopt the religion of truth (doesn't necessarily mean Islam, since true Christianity and Judaism believe in one God)
- from those who were given the Scripture. That includes Muslims themselves by the way, since they were given a scripture. Elsewhere in the Quran when it refers to Christians and Jews it says "People of the scripture". In other areas it mentions "Those who were given the scripture", which includes Muslims.
What it essentially says: if you do not follow the law of the land, whether you are a Christian, Jew, or a Muslim, there are consequences. Every nation has laws, and if you break those laws you will be prosecuted. In this case it says those will have to pay a "fine".
I don't know Arabic, but I read the English differently. I see "fight against those who X, and those who B, and those who C" as different groups, all of whom one is supposed to fight against.
I find it quite hard to read this passage like you do and see this as evidence of equality of treatment between Muslims and non-Muslims. Even the translator interprets 'religion of truth' to mean Islam.
Plus I think in general you're ignoring the pretty hostile tone of this passage. The jizyah is explicitly intended to be a humiliation ("humbling"). I was skeptical, but I think this passages is strong evidence that the jizyah was intended to "discriminate and oppress" non-Muslims.
As apologetics what he's saying is complete nonsense. The jizyah has been interpreted by every islamic society as a tax on non muslims, not a fine for those who break the law. You could argue that the passage doesn't actually say that the purpose of jizyah is to humiliate people (humbling is different) or that islamic societies in practice didn't (typically) use it as a means of ridicule, but saying that actually it was just a fine is utter make believe.
The mainstream academic consensus is that Jews generally fared better under Islamic rule than in medieval Christian Europe. Scholars also agree that jizya was paid in lieu of zakat (which Muslims paid) and military service.
Of course, this raises the question: if Jews fared better under Muslim rule than under Christianity, why would they leave their alleged homeland and go to Europe, only to want to go back a thousand years later?
Does it raise that question? Or is it rather a hopelessly ambiguous and undecidable question that's really more of a racialist rhetorical argument? The state of Israel was not formed based on a calculation of whether the Ottomans were better sovereigns to serve under than the French, German, or Russians.
I hope I'm communicating well where I'm coming from, which is not that you're wrong (or right) but rather how unproductive this particular species of reasoning is in modern geopolitical discussions.
Yep, and this is the obvious dishonesty of the people who single out Israel. It’s one country with a Jewish culture, where non-Jewish people also prosper in large numbers. But there are MANY officially Islamic nations where there is a state religion, where laws and religion are mixed together, and where violence/oppression of minorities is normalized and welcomed. Not a single pro-Gaza or anti-Israel activist will acknowledge this. It’s dishonest. Israel is much more egalitarian and frankly, civilized.
> Not a single pro-Gaza or anti-Israel activist will acknowledge this
Go easy on the Kool-Aid.
It's the opposite; those things are not talked about because they are universally acknowledged by anyone except the groups themselves as bad.
The problem with Israel is that you have a huge number of people who are not even Israeli gleefully supporting a genocide, either overtly or by doing everything in their power to silence anyone calling it out. This is a stark contrast: the only people actively supporting the oppression of minorities in Syria or Saudi Arabia are those carrying it out. There are no large groups of powerful people solely comprised of Americans in the US or Germans in Germany who do their best to silence criticism of Saudi Arabia. I'm sure you'll be able to find a few PR firms that Saudi paid, or a few people with business interests there who did such things, but it's completely incomparable to the Zionist lobby and the active carrying out of its interests.
What’s dishonest is your racist defense of a murderous and genocidal country that cynically uses Judaism
as a shield for war crimes. You should really think deeply about how you’re conflating the Zionist state with the Jewish people… not sure a lot of them are in board with your project. There is no world in which a Jewish-supremacist state is righteous.
As for equal rights, it is to laugh. Israel is an apartheid state. Ask any expert in the subject.
Let’s talk about the racist death-penalty-for-Palestinians law that just passed to Ben Gvir drinking champagne and to celebratory prayers in the Knesset. Or what about the fact that gay people cannot legally marry? Or that protesting the genocide gets you brutally arrested. Not to mention the ghetto that Israel has turned Gaza into. (shame on the Zionists!) What about no right of return to the people who lived on the land that Israel stole and continues to steal? (let me guess: all in self defense!) It goes on and on.
Why did this repose by someone else get flagged dead? It's factual and provides additional context. Deng why do allow these posts but then allow such one sided 'discussion'?
"The penalty imposed by the Palestinian authority for selling their property to a Jew is the death sentence. Conversely, the Palestinians or Jews or Christians inside Israel don’t face any such restrictions."
Your comment is an example of that dishonesty, since you’re ignoring all the Islamic supremacist states while stating your opinion that Israel is supremacist. Something like 20% of Israel’s population are Muslims, and they’re prospering there, so you can’t call it supremacist. On the other hand, officially Islamic nations are explicitly supremacist. They have state religions and laws against blasphemy and rampant systemic discrimination.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Israeli group B’Tselem have published reports characterizing Israel’s legal framework (especially considering the occupied territories) as apartheid or involving systemic discrimination. I’m not sure what more can be said.
The Amnesty International observer in Gaza reported students who were working together on projects with Israeli students and hoped that were be treated with extreme prejudice. Totally an unbiased organization on the subject.
The idea is that this is a political deal, not a business deal - by buying WBD, the Ellisons add CNN to a portfolio that already includes CBS and TikTok, and shaping coverage matters more to them than the stock price.
I think this was actually on the table and rejected. Which is why the "control the narrative" argument is fishy, or at least missing something. And now having just defended Oracle I have to go take a shower.
There are no taxes incurred on the gains or losses realized inside a traditional or Roth IRA when trades are executed. With a Roth IRA, the dollars come out tax free within certain constraints (age or account lifetime, roughly speaking), with contributions sourced from after tax earned income. With a traditional IRA, taxes are due when withdrawn. They can only be funded with dollars, not shares or assets. You can direct your investments with a self directed IRA for esoteric asset classes, but the IRS has strong guidelines around this to prevent self dealing as well as requiring transactions to be “arms length”. You cannot borrow against these accounts (although you can roll traditional IRA funds into a 401k and borrow against it there as a fixed term loan at an interest rate set by the plan administrator that follows the benchmark rate).
What changed? I didn't see anything in the article that says you can't buy startup (or other non-public) stock in an IRA, and if you do and it goes well, your IRA can become very valuable. If I work for a startup again, I'm definitely going to see if I can get early stock into a (Roth) IRA, because it'd be real handy if the stock does well, since you can trade in a IRA without tax consequences. Seems complex to set up though.
The US isn't at war in Ukraine, we're not fighting there. Nobody who's actually anti-war looks at Russia's invasion and says "oh that's fine let it happen", everyone supports the right to defend yourself.
The US is sending crazy amounts of money over there while average Americans are seeing their living standards get worse and worse. Grassroots republicans want Ukraine to fight their own war with their own money, not keep sending money over their while Americans go hungry.
So then we're not worrying about the "anti-war" position anymore, alright.
I mean, grassroots Republicans elected Reagan who beat the Soviets and Bush who wanted to "fight them over there so we don't face them here", they're certainly comfortable with spending money on the military.
They haven't historically wanted to spend that money on welfare though, so I'm not sure that Americans are going hungry because of Ukraine.
Well, in this case the war was started by someone else, with neither aid nor encouragement by anyone American. Acting to help one of the fighting parties win doesn't seem noticeable "pro-war", AFAICT, it's just a question of how the war ends, as opposed to other possible ends of the same war.
Fund the war is an odd way to put it IMO, since the war would be there anyway… but leave that. I don't follow American politics. Do grassroots republicans oppose helping Ukraine now? I seem to remember that some months ago, a large majority of democratic voters did and a smaller majority of republican ones. How has the situation changed?
> During the meeting, which is known in internal Amazon lingo as a “fishbowl” meeting, Jassy declined to share data that motivated his decision to require employees to return to the office. The CEO told his charges it was a “judgment” call.
Could some brave soul please leak whatever data these guys are seeing? Reports, statistics, even just emails where they whine about empty offices? Something tangible that gives us mere mortals actual perspective.
The conversation is dominated by conspiracy theories about real estate investments and 'CEO vibes', it feels untethered and fact-free.
The data probably suggests they should lay off a bunch of people & that this might be best way for them to do so, in terms of not legally needing to offer severance, legal issues, PR, stock prices, etc.
100% this. Employers know they can turn up the heat so to speak by making the workplace less enjoyable and more people will leave b/c of that. That saves them from having to lay off people. I think it's important to note layoffs tend to push stock prices down and that's what these folks specifically care about b/c that's what's good for their pocket book.
I have read this reasoning from time to time, but how does it make sense?
Wouldn't most of the high performers who don't want to go back to the office, just quit and get a better job, while low performing individuals would stick as long as possible since they could keep slacking as long as they go to the office three days a week?
The premise here is that they're holding off a layoff, or at least minimizing the layoff. A benefit of not doing a proper layoff: when you tell people you're just enforcing a new policy, you can make exceptions.
So, if this doesn't reduce the workforce enough, a proper layoff will soon follow. We saw Google enforce "return to the office" in April 2022 followed up by layoffs in January 2023. Microsoft had similar timings WRT to return to the office and layoffs as well.
And again, the premise here is about layoffs, letting a large number of people go. Amazon can fire individual slackers if they want to without playing these games.
For truly high performers who are indispensable and a flight risk, the company will always make exceptions. But those are truly rare (<5%) and even among those, some want RTO, some want WFH and some want a hybrid.
> Wouldn't most of the high performers who don't want to go back to the office, just quit and get a better job, while low performing individuals would stick as long as possible since they could keep slacking as long as they go to the office three days a week?
Maybe, but that sounds like a problem that isn't guaranteed to happen and isn't one that you'd be personally held responsible for, since everyone else was doing the same thing... how could you have known? No one ever got fired for buying IBM and all that.
"We already successfully exclude low-performers due to Stack Ranki--er, Unregretted Attrition--so this policy will only be impacting the insufficiently dedicated." /s
If the CEO has a wealth of data and it says with remote working Metric A has gone up which is good, and Metric B has gone down which is bad, they have to make a judgement call about which metric to rely on even though they're making an evidence-based decision.
Great, then share that evidence. The problem is all these royal decrees to return to the office never come with even a shred of actual data to explain them.
Once it became clear that they couldn’t show WFH harmed productivity, their arguments became increasingly abstract (e.g., “office culture”) and finally we’ve arrived at simply “because I said so”.
Why should RTO need data? That was the setup until 2020 and it worked. Especially for the leadership who have grown up in that requirement. Onus is on the pro-remote side to provide data that that works.
Sample size of 1 - at my company, remote sucks even if we tried to go all-in on fully remote. I simply cannot have trusted relationships with my colleagues since everything has to be writing or is possible being recorded when on video. In person, both parties can share candid thoughts in person without any fear of being recorded for ever.
Sounds like you work in a kind of cut throat place. Is yours a common worry? I have never worried about anything like this in the last ~7 years of working remotely
I also worked at some of the nicest environments (Google) and still, it was drilled into our minds that anything in writing can be used against us or company. In various formal and informal trainings, we were explicitly told to carry out sensitive conversations in person.
If there's no evidence a call is being recorded, I'm very comfortable that it is not.
That said, I do think it's harder to establish solid working relationships purely virtually. Possible but harder. During the pandemic a lot of people probably coasted based on prior relationships and we're likely starting to see some of capital running out.
>That was the setup until 2020 and it worked. Especially for the leadership who have grown up in that requirement.
And people were very happy with carriages until cars came along. Things change, the world changed, WFH became the new reality. Being stuck in the past way of doings just because it was done in the past is idiotic. Leadership is especially bad about adapting to change because it means actually having to learn and try new things, which 100% explains their resistance to WFH.
Much easier to glance at badge swipe-in times and go chew out some peon than to figure out how to actually do the work of management.
>Onus is on the pro-remote side to provide data that that works.
Sure, and that's already been shown. In 2020 there were dire predictions of productivity drops when WFH was implemented on a large-scale. Turns out, that didn't happen. All attempts to determine the effects of WFH show no-to-positive effects on productivity.
Ergo, it works.
So, again
>Why should RTO need data?
Because, as noted above, there hasn't been any measurable drop in productivity due to WFH. This is why in my first comment I said that the justifications used by management have become increasingly abstract, because there is nothing concrete they can point to as support for their decisions.
Sorry you work in such a harsh environment, consider changing jobs.
> All attempts to determine the effects of WFH show no-to-positive effects on productivity.
Nope, we had a different experience. For the first few months, we all coasted on our prior relationships. Also, it was a pretty unique moment in the history and there was a "let's rise to the challenge" feeling.
Later on as employees churned and new ones joined, as well as the remote fatigue set in, we saw a drastic drop in productivity.
> Because, as noted above, there hasn't been any measurable drop in productivity due to WFH.
There has been, in our company. Management is wondering why we have less output when our workforce has more than doubled in the remote setting. To their credit, they literally went all in on remote. But one key thing they didn't realize is that remote needs rewiring of the entire communication culture. Much easier said than done.
> Could some brave soul please leak whatever data these guys are seeing? Reports, statistics, even just emails where they whine about empty offices? Something tangible that gives us mere mortals actual perspective.
Yeah, the "Gut" dataset, gathered from "My ass", and filtered by "bullshit" column.
We have to stop playing this game and pretending like RTO is some hidden innovation-building gem that no one is aware about that turns failing businesses into Fortune 100 powerhouses.
People in the 90s had it figured out - if you want people to get together to discuss important issues, it's called a business trip. No, you don't need to do it for every sprint or feature proposal. Do it in moderation, 2-3 times a year, and let people live where they want to live (usually next to their families).
>The conversation is dominated by conspiracy theories about real estate investments and 'CEO vibes', it feels untethered and fact-free.
One might think the fact that they don’t readily offer concrete evidence to support their actions is itself evidence that these “conspiracy theories” are on the right track.
The conversation is dominated by such talk because, as you said, no evidence otherwise has been offered to explain the fervent desire of those at the top for returning to the office.
I really like having a lot of screen real-estate. So, I bought a LG 34WK95U-W, which is a 34" 21:9 monitor with a 5120x2160 resolution. It was about $1100. I also bought a very sturdy monitor arm ($100). The monitor floats above my laptop (the two screens form a squat "T" shape) and I get a lot of screen space and it looks very crisp.
Sister comment I made about roast date. Super important for most snobs, along with dark/light roast etc. etc. there are lots of variations. But the roast date is interesting to me as it affects the "supply chain" aspect of this. You will have to fly/truck (but not sail) the coffee if you are not near where it was roasted.
This applies only to beans. For ground or instant ... doesn't matter. Damage has been done :-)....
To elaborate - it really depends on the type of coffee. Some people really like the cheaper robusta - some people like a 2nd wave arabica blend - some people want that very expensive 3rd wave coffee where you know the story of the farmer and his family. You choose what type and quality of coffee you want to have made and we will find someone in our manufacturer network to make it for you.
Edit: Sorry, I can't reply to your comment below, for some reason.
This part,
> Did you know that Jews lived among Muslims for over a thousand years in peace?
is revisionist because it paints second-class status for Jews as "peace". This is ridiculous, a fiction akin to "separate but equal" without even the pretense of equality.
Additionally,
> The violence started happening when the Zionists wanted the land for themselves, exclusive of the indigenous population (1948 nakba).
Is ahistorical. There have been small but continuous Jewish settlements in the region since antiquity, Jews are indigenous. Further, Zionist immigration started earlier than 1948, as early as the late 1800s, and finally, Arabs fled Israel to avoid the incoming invasion from Arab Muslim nations who, for bigoted reasons, could not tolerate a Jewish state.
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