LindeBuzoGray

With the Gini index, mean household means nothing. What the median US household is worth is what means anything. If only one household had all wealth, its vicissitudes and upswings would change the mean - but not the unknown median.

Most of the Gazan prisoners are soldiers, policemen, army reservists. The ones scooped up by accident are being released - two on Friday and two before. Hamas has asked for a brief 24 hour ceasefire to release prisoners but Israel has refused, prolonging the imprisonment.

Ahmad Sa'adat is a "military fighter"? At the age of 70? He has been in Israeli prison for years.

> Hamas (the elected and still popular government of Gaza) murdered over 1000 civilians

Israel killed over 1000 Palestinians from 2018 until before Operation al-Aqsa Flood. There's nothing really unusual about it from.that context. And Israel us currently massacring civilians in Gaza every day.

> the catalyst of the current episode of this conflict

Israelis murdered people on an aid flotilla a few years ago, and are evicting West Bank Palestinians from their homes with settlers, as the Israelis parade around the al-Aqsa mosque.

Some Israelis are saying similar things but they are cabinet ministers, not random people in a crowd.

Israel had a role in creating and incubating Hamas directly, as senior Israelis have admitted.

Haaretz recently printed how Netanyahu also was encouraging Hamas as he wanted war and west Bank settlement, not to make deals with Fatah.

Around the guard towers and military outposts surrounding Gaza, Israel had villages and concert venues - Israel's human shields.

I am watching Israel carpet bomb Gaza right now, I see Israel targeting civilians.

How many thousands of Palestinian prisoners has Israel been holding for years?

Right. Land and air telecommunications are almost totally controlled by Verizon and AT&T. They are also some of the largest cable companies, although Comcast is a competitor. Although Comcast owns NBCUniversal, and we can start getting into the media monopoly.

We can go through business by business and see the rise of monopolies and oligopolies. Universal owns half of the US music market - Universal, Sony and Warner own over 80% of the US music market. Accounting is done by the Big Four, advertising by its own Big Four.

Just down the line - consolidation, oligopoly, monopoly. That is what markets produce. Standard Oil reversed its breakup into ExxonMobil, as did the Baby Bells into Verizon and AT&T. Even the government intervention into the monopolies gets reversed.

> Markets

> We believe central economic planning elevates the worst of us and drags everyone down; markets exploit the best of us to benefit all of us

> We believe central planning is a doom loop; markets are an upward spiral

There's many things off with this. The USSR from the 1920s to early 1950s had enormous economic growth - particularly in the 1930s when so-called free markets in the West had collapsed, by the 1950s and early 1960s it was sending satellites and men to space - before the West. Also, the PRC had enormous economic growth from the early 1950s to late 1970s (and afterward as well).

Also, the US economy is centrally planned. Billions are flowing to military contractors for Israel right now as they were to the Ukraine before - the US is pumping over $800 billion (really over a trillion) this year into this centrally planned economy, and it also de facto plans for the giant medical sector. The Internet we type on was built over decades with government money.

But most importantly, as these are more minor issues - it is a false comparison. The Soviet Union had markets selling radishes for rubles, just like the US does (for dollars). So both had markets.

The difference is the USSR from the 1920s to mid-1960s made production decisions based on the general welfare, the desire for a space program etc. Workers on collective farms made their own decisions, with perhaps some government quotas. In the US decisions are made to benefit the heirs who own companies as opposed to the workers who do the work.

But that is a minor point. The point is that both had markets, little different from one another. But the distribution portion of the economy for the US is compared to the centrally planned production if the other economy. It makes no sense. The US production controlled by and for the benefit of heirs is unmentioned. The USSR-like market identical to to the US market is unmentioned. We compare US production to USSR-like distribution. The comparison makes no sense. Purposefully.

> Think of what this woman and many other women trapped in these regimes are going through

Iran had a parliament in 1953, when the US and UK launched operation Ajax after the prime Minister nationalized Iran's oil. The prime Minister was ousted, a dictator replaced him - who returned to Iran on a flight with Allen Dulles. The conservative mullahs were western allies in removing power from the parliament.

Then this structure the west put into place fell out of alignment with the west in 1979, and we suddenly hear an enormous amount of stated sympathy about "women trapped in these regimes". Sympathy that we didn't hear when the CIA was handing SAVAK lists of progressive, secular women to arrest or kill. It's farcical.

> Iranian oil was nationalized; in 1951 the National Iranian Oil Company took control, and retained it even after Mossadegh’s ouster (even up to today).

Control of oil sales reverted back to British Petroleum (and the Seven Sisters) after the US/UK ousted Iran's prime Minister with Operation Ajax. Not all of Mosaddegh's changes were undone as it would gave destabilized the Shah.

> Second, he wasn’t replaced with a dictator. The Shah had been in power

The Prime Minister ran the government like a modern western government, the Shah was a figurehead. What you're saying is the US and UK wanted to remove the modern parliament to revert to an older, anti-democraric, conservative, traditional government. Which is what happened, and now the Swedes and westerners are whining about the traditionalism the west foisted on Iran, now that it is no longer western aligned.

Aside from mullahs and the dictator, the CIA gave money to criminal elements in Iran to help regain western control.

The Shah was a figurehead and left for Italy. He did not want to run Iran or even go back but was convinced to by westerners. He flew back to Iran with Allen Dulles.

> had forced his father to advocated over a decade before

Forced his father to advocate? Advocate for what?

Right, Mandela got it when he was being conciliatory to the government and its Western support, with other ANC elements being less so.

The same with Arafat - he was conciliatory to Israel and its western support at Oslo, with Hamas and the PFLP being less so.

Both were not fighting when.they got the prize, but being conciliatory.

Also Iran in 1953 had a prime Minister Mosaddegh, who wanted to nationalize Iran's oil. The UK (and US) sought the support of right-wing mullahs, then overthrew the prime minister and replaced him with a dictator. Then the CIA helped SAVAK kill off the secular left for the next few decades. Eventually even the right-wing clerics and bazaari grew tired of foreign interference and threw the western powers out.