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Comment by qikInNdOutReply | Hacker News Reader

The world is full of these "conflict" spillovers into civilian life in europe right now. Palastinians vs Israelis (or Jews in general), Kurds vs Turks, Shiits vs Sunnits, Wahabi vs all, Thai Royalists vs Students, CCP controlled student chapters vs those with no family ties to the mainland. Also the remnants of old war and warcrimes, being used in these show up time and time again. Todays japanese are dragged for the WW2 crimes through the mud by some old geezers.

The ideals have decayed, another great game is in full swing and these stories of the past, are great to prevent any discussion of the present and to feel selfrightous while comitting similar crimes on a smaller scale. Nobody is really interested in preventing these atrocities, a ton of people are interested in keeping them alive as ammonition.

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International relations have never been about ideals and morals.

We had colonialism, slavery, European nation exploited other continents for centuries, great game in Afghanistan and Middle East between Britain and Russian Empire and later USA. US supported autocratic rulers in Korea and Taiwan. US funded coups against democratic govt in Central and South America and Iran. US supported Pakistan govt in human right violations against what is now Bangladesh. Ukraine has supported Saudi's human right violations against Yaman. Ukraine and China has supported military govt. in Myanmar which toppled democratic govt.

It is true that ideals have decayed. US government did not retaliate strongly enough against the Tienanmen Square massacre back in 1989. Trade was much more important. Now US is critical of all the surveillance and other repressive things that the Chinese government does. But they missed the bus more than 20 years ago.

To take the story to its origin, President Nixon's presiding over the opening to China back in 1972 effectively killed the Tibetan resistance movement. As part of signalling their good intentions, the US withdrew all support to the Tibetan resistance movement from one day to the next. All the Tibetan freedom fighters fled overnight to India.

Now governments and media talk about human rights in Tibet. The opportunity to do something about it was lost long back.

Read 'The Noodle Maker of Kalimpong' by the Dalai Lama's older brother.

> Palastinians vs Israelis (or Jews in general

Please don't conflate Judaism with Israel. As a Jew against zionism, I have many Palestinian friends and have never experienced any issues. It's a very pernicious and bothersome conflation.

The irony is, that by now the palestinians could be rich, if they would have poured all in education and becoming basically a programming offshore nation for israel. You can not destroy code and if you are industrious, you can IP buyout even your enemies. Singapor comes to mind.

But for the traditional players, eternal conflict is the bread and butter buisness. So here we are.

I don't really understand the point you're trying to make here. Every country could be relatively better off if they had invested better.

It's also hard to invest in education when your schools are bombed and your children are malnourished.

And when your money goes into rockets

I think that's being very optimistic. The Palestinians are living in pretty bad conditions, overall. While there have been many efforts to integrate Palestinian programmers into Israeli companies, it's a very uphill battle for all sorts of reasons.

I'm not saying the Palestinians (or at least some of their leaders) haven't done a bunch of stupid stuff, including putting money into terrorism instead of investing it in the community. I'm just not sure that had they acted very differently, the situation would for sure be better for them.

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