Is Economic Superiority Due to Cultural Superiority?

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I have no idea. How about Israel stops its occupation and blockade so we can have a fair test.

Certain values within cultures lead to economic superiority in some respects.
A culture better at defending its borders results in better import/exporting, trade, population control, balance of wealth.
A society built on land plentiful of resources will have more at stake, and develop over time to manage and defend it better.
So in some cases, having economic superiority can influence the society to have cultural superiority.

One might want to ask:

a) whether the economic superiority is sustainable
b) whether other types of superiority are more important than economic superiority
c) wtf economic superiority actually is (where do living standards and poverty come in?)
d) other questions I haven't thought of

so no.

^^^^

Yeah, in absolute literal meaning I would agree and say no.
Elements of each may boost each other but that's about it I reckon.

A fair test would mean military violence within a very short period of time. The Palestinians don't want to govern their land. The Palestinians want to govern Israel. All of it, without compromise. Additionally, they're raised with heavy rhetoric, and the underlying thought is not just hatred of Israel's government, but also hatred of Jews, as is a common theme in Arabs, and has been for more than a thousand years. Stopping the blockade and opening the borders would simply mean they'd form armed groups and cross the border trying to conquer Israel. Fortunately, not even the combined forces of most of Israel's neighbours were able to defeat it, so these bands of poorly-educated militia would be annihilated.

No, he is correct, herbicide is - or rather, was - used against Bedoiun crops. The Supreme Court in Israel struck the practice down only a few years ago:

http://books.google.ca/books?id=O5rs8Uk ... ps&f=false

It was struck down because the herbicides were being delivered by air and people were getting sick. There was no concern for the destruction of crops, and the Land Authority now plants trees on Bedouin fields to ruin the crop instead.

Settlers also regularly attack Palestinian farmers during the olive harvest, and while they plant trees on Bedouin fields, they destroy olive trees on Palestinian land to prevent that crop.

You know what Chile and the US have in common versus Ecuador and Mexico? Being whiter.

The whole word culture used in this context is a code-word for race.

He is being a racist. A stupid racist at that. And one that seems to be intentionally misleading the public. Because he would like us to forget the economical boycott with US and Israeli authorship that Palestinians have to endure.

Edit: And of course, in his Cherry picking he chose US vs. Mexico instead of Canada vs. US.

Last edited by Vexcalibur on 01 Aug 2012, 5:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Canadians are richer than Americans now. That must mean that Canadians are culturally superior.

Well, you certainly wouldn't know it from a comparison of music, television, etc

Americans founded blues and rock n roll, jazz, hip-hop, created most of the great modern movies. We have ... Justin Bieber.

Bit of an exaggeration but seriously, despite a few very notable cultural achievements, overall we're just not as culturally developed as the US (and it's nothing to do with size, since there are lots of smaller nations that have founded their own unique cultural products).

In fact, if you ask me, the richest culture tends to come from economic failure. Blues came out of the impoverished South in the US. Roman culture is long dead, but Jewish culture lives on, despite having been a minor, backwards, poverty-stricken province on the remote frontier in Roman times. And so on. Wealth and well-being tends to destroy culture, which is why we have so little of it.

Even better, it came from the impoverished black people.


Yet there are cases like the Italian Renaissance, which started in Florence, one of the richest cities of one of one of the richest region of Europe, and the lead of which was later taken by other cities, in an evolution that basically shadowed economic realities.

It means the Canadians are smart enough not to support an oversize military establishment. The U.S. has been fighting the "forever war" and it is bankrupting the nation.

ruveyn

"Sam should keep punching Hamish in the face, because Hamish is angry at Sam and if Sam stopped then Hamish might get up and retaliate. And Sam is super strong and cool, so Hamish would just embarrass himself."

Classic victim-blaming.

No. Sam has become very wary of Hamish's actions after Hamish's friends attacked Sam. Hamish has made it repeatedly clear, and is holding a firearm less powerful than Sam's, that he'll shoot Sam the moment Sam takes off his bulletproof vest. Should Sam take off his bulletproof vest? Those are the borders and the sanctions.

Hamish's friends attacked Sam, because Sam scared the police away with terror bombs at the King David Hotel and other places, then raped Hamish, and took everything he owned, without provocation, because he read in a book that Hamish's stuff belonged to some relatives of his once, thousands of years ago.

The past is the past. Don't forget, there were plenty of zionists around before Israel was founded. And what will happen now, if a one-state solution or any opening of borders is forced upon Israel, is that the Palestinians will attack. That's the future. If you want to learn from the past, fine - but don't use it as a justification to intentionally opt for the wrong future. Interestingly, it's the people who really like the words 'freedom', 'tolerance', 'equality' and 'democracy' who oppose those matters most in this situation, because of the obscure idea - and there's some hypocrisy - that Palestinians should get large tracts of land back that only the oldest few (presumably in their 80s or 90s by now) remember as theirs.