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asr comments on How likely is Peter Thiel's investment into seasteading to pay off? - Less Wrong Discussion

14 [deleted] 30 August 2011 04:54PM

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Comment author: asr 02 September 2011 07:21:49PM 1 point [-]

WARNING: MIND-KILLER FIELD AHEAD

And if the US is on Israel's side, is it not odd that its policy is that peace should be made by the stronger side yielding land and money to the weaker side?

It's only odd if you abstract away a lot of uncontroversial and widely known facts.

The US gives quite a lot of aid to Israel, in diplomatic and financial terms. Support for Israel is a standard part of both parties' political platforms. That US support for Israel is limited or qualified doesn't make it nonexistent. There isn't a Palestinian government has reliable control over any money or land to speak of. If there's going to be any yielding of either, it's going to have to be to the Palestinians, not from them. And most of the Israeli leadership is perfectly aware of this.

Comment author: sam0345 03 September 2011 04:53:09AM *  6 points [-]

That there is such an entity as "the Palestinians" reflects the fact that Palestinians get paid for being Palestinian, paid rather a lot. There was no such entity, no such people, until the money started flowing.

And who pays them? It is remarkably difficult to find out, almost as if paying them was some sort of criminal plot.

But if you dig deep enough, it is primarily the United States and the European Union. And the supposedly European Union aid somehow winds up passing through NGOs full of graduates from the American Ivy League.

The Paris conference (who?) provided 7.7 billion in Palestinian aid over three years 2008-2010. Note that no one seems to want to have their names on these payments.

High estimates for US aid to Israel are based on such highly creative accounting as including Jewish migrants from the US to Israel as foreign aid, and international investment as foreign aid. Actual direct aid for Israel from the US in 2008 was 2.38 billion, which seems remarkably similar to western aid to Palestinians - except that aid to Israel is done with trumpets blowing, and aid to "Palestinians" is done furtively.