You say this:

interpreting casualty numbers that a militant group releases with clear propaganda intent in a light most favorable to them…

but just said this:

Statistically, half their forces are minors.

Pull the other one. If all you wanted was for people not to interpret casualty numbers “in a light most favourable to Hamas” you’d be acknowledging how high the death toll is while making your point instead of trying to distract from it.

There is no need to “play devil’s advocate” - if you believe something, argue for it. If you don’t believe something but think I’m missing something, you can point it out and make a case for why it’s important without being confusing about what you actually believe.

All evidence I have seen is that Hamas does not systematically use child soldiers. We can see the indiscriminate tactics of the IDF; we can put that together with the high death toll to make a reasonable conclusion that vast numbers of civilians have been killed. You’re trying to cast doubt on this idea but the amount of doubt is akin to flicking water from your fingers onto a housefire.

Most of the death toll is women and children (7k and 10k, respectively). Even if you assume all men killed are Hamas fighters, which is not true, that is very high when compared to the attack which triggered the war.

Tesla is headquartered in an ally of the EU; BYD isn’t. Maybe Tesla’s subsidies are a problem to the EC - I don’t know. But you’re looking at it in a slightly simple way, as if it’s very important that this process needs to be fair.

It doesn’t need to be fair; it needs to be good for the EU. Is it good for the EU to impose tariffs on subsidised Chinese vehicles coming in (if indeed they are subsidised)? Quite possibly. (Quite possibly not: how important is it to have a big car manufacturing industry, versus your population having cheaper cars?) Whether it would also be good to impose tariffs on Tesla vehicles is also a valid question to ask, but those questions don’t have to have the same answer.

The article doesn’t suggest it’s impossible. It’s difficult because you have to build up a competitive business from nothing in addition to the one you’re already building up.

If the US said they were going to stop providing military support and tech it may well stop it…

I don’t understand why you would ban it in a country where it has been consumed traditionally. Is there a public health reason behind this?

Anyone, because even the (temporary) right to remain somewhere doesn’t automatically mean you can leave and come back. In the UK if you are granted temporary leave to stay in the country for less than 6 months, leaving for any length of time will mean you’re not allowed back in.

The detail here is that she applied for settled status, which would have granted her leave to remain in (and hence to enter) the country, but it was refused. Pending her appeal she was temporarily granted the right to work in the UK, but she was not temporarily granted the right to remain, it seems - or at least that’s what the Home Office position implies.

It seems like an oversight to me: the application for settled status allows you to leave for up to 6 months at a time and come back and still qualify; if you can still work while you’re appealing a decision, it would make sense to temporarily allow the person into the country.

OK, looks like I misunderstood what you were saying. Fair enough.

I agree that the PATRIOT act has harmed American citizens, but I think that’s a completely Western-centric way of thinking that likely wouldn’t even cross the mind of a radical Islamist. I don’t think it can be said to have harmed the USA in the way that would further any of bin Laden’s goals that we can infer from his words or otherwise. If anything, bin Laden was an authoritarian himself and so would be more likely to believe that state surveillance is beneficial to the wellbeing of the state.

One more time. I have at no time asserted that his stated goal was impossible or unachievable. Quit putting words in my mouth. I’m talking about how they get accomplished, yes?

Seems to me you’re still saying 9/11 couldn’t have achieved it.

You really want to get into a sidetrack about how a surveillance state harms the citizens of a democracy in a way that makes them prefer isolationism?

I want you to lay out why you think the PATRIOT act or something like it was likely foreseen by bin Laden and why he thought it would likely further his goals. You’re hinting at a discussion from the perspective of “privacy-oriented types” rather than from bin Laden’s perspective. There’s to be done here than just argue, “bin Laden wanted to harm America, and eroding privacy harms America, therefore bin Laden did 9/11 to erode privacy.” Many consequences of 9/11 might further or hinder bin Laden’s goals, but IMO we’re talking about more than that.

Why the focus on Patriot Act, when it was one of three factors I listed?

Because it’s the one that I see repeated most often by others and the one find most doubtful.

Why do you keep trying to say that I’m saying his stated goals were unbelievable, when I’ve repeatedly said I’m debating the specifics of how he expected to accomplish them? It’s not a “what”, it’s a “how”.

Because we started with a disagreement over what his goals were and you seem to have maintained your side of that disagreement? If you say “it was X, Y and Z” and I say, “no, it was A and B” and you then say “how on earth could what he did have achieved A” you’re not actually arguing about “how” you’re expressing your skepticism that it was A by casting doubt on how realistic it was.

I’ve repeatedly expressed my reasonings.

You haven’t expressed a reason to believe that bin Laden wanted the USA to pass a law like the PATRIOT Act. You’ve made implications that you maybe don’t actually believe it that strongly, but not gone so far as to say that you don’t believe it, and you’ve talked about the other things you believe, but you’re quite reticent to talk about that one.

I don’t mind leaving aside the other stuff because this one, I think, is more egregious.

Just because you couch it in terms of opinion doesn’t mean it’s not a claim about truth; you’re just not saying you’re certain of it. I wouldn’t expect certainty - I would just expect that whatever you do believe you believe for a reason, and that you would be able to articulate that reason, which you aren’t doing.

With your successive replies it sounds like you’re more comfortable defending the position that “bin Laden’s stated goals are unbelievable” than “bin Laden’s goal was to make the USA pass liberty-reducing legislation.” It’s OK if, on reflection, you think the latter isn’t really supported by the facts and that’s why you’re not defending it or giving a reason for it.

Unlikely - it’s too cheap to get rid of. It will degrade its effectiveness as it’ll need to deploy, fire very few rounds, then leave, unlike traditionally where a battery might fire loads of rounds before moving off.

Are you unable to see how we have harmed ourselves since then? How about how Israel is harming themselves right now?

This is just an invitation to commit the post-hoc fallacy.

I’m not claiming any truth or facts or anything

But you said:

Similar to how Bin Laden very much succeeded in his goals

That’s an assertion/claim as to what those goals in fact were. And you still haven’t found any reason that they included “make the US pass laws which restricted its own civil liberties” other than the fact that that’s what eventually happened.

So, the only reason you have for not believing bin Laden’s stated goals is that, you assert, it was too obviously impossible to achieve them.

You haven’t presented any reason he instead must have wanted to cause the USA to sacrifice domestic freedoms as a motivation. What about all other possible motivations? Why that one? It seems like it doesn’t do bin Laden any good for that to happen. Instead it seems like it’s how an American, unable to understand the world through any lens except an American one, might decide bin Laden’s motivations must be viewed.

The counter-battery radar doesn’t prevent artillery from working; it makes it dangerous for them. Theoretically the units that took this out could already be destroyed after having had their coordinates calculated and counter-battery fire immediately called down on them.

In practice it was just setting up, having been tracked to its location, and possibly wasn’t working yet. Also the GMLRS rockets fired by HIMARS are not ballistic - they execute a counter-battery-confounding turn. And the salvo is fired quickly after which the vehicle immediately leaves - it can park, get ready and fire a full salvo in under a minute. When the first rocket is detected a couple of minutes later, the launcher will already have driven off and counter-battery coordinates will not be that useful/

How does it not make sense? One way of achieving your aims is making it very costly for the people blocking those aims to continue doing so.

No people on Earth would just go “oh welp, guess we better go home now.”

Conflicts often end in a negotiated peace where neither side has been conclusively defeated, often indeed amounting to “welp, we’d better go home now.” The cost to the US military in Vietnam turned public opinion against the war until it became politically unsustainable.

More broadly, this attitude inevitably leads to post-hoc cynicism, where you look at someone who failed to achieve their stated goals, conclude in hindsight that they made no sense and that they therefore couldn’t ever possibly have believed sincerely in them.

If it really made zero sense, it would make zero sense to use as propaganda. The fact that it makes enough sense that you believe bin Laden even used it to convince others means you accept that people could believe it. It’s not unreasonable to think that bin Laden was smarter than the people following him, but you haven’t done the work to show he couldn’t believe it.

getting us to pass the Patriot Act, invade some countries and start ripping ourselves apart.

This assessment of al Qaeda’s goals I have only ever heard from Western propaganda and the popular consciousness, not any serious attempt to analyse them. While bin Laden’s statements could be lies (more relevant than whether they’re propaganda, which can be true), I think it makes more sense to take his word for his own motivations than what amounts to nothing more than the popular Western view of his motivations, filtered through years of our own media. Of course there may be some serious analysis of his goals somewhere I haven’t read - feel free to point me at it. It should come along with some reason not to believe his own explanation though.

I’m skeptical that it exists though, because this understanding of his goals essentially denies that he has any goals beyond hurting America: it’s “they hate us because we are free.” But bin Laden laid out perfectly clearly that his hatred of America developed from seeing Muslims killed in attacks which were enabled by American intervention - something which I see no reason to cast doubt on, and as such see no reason to doubt his explanation.

Similar to how Bin Laden very much succeeded in his goals for the Sept 11th attack, by getting us to pass the Patriot Act, invade some countries and start ripping ourselves apart.

Bin Laden’s goals were to get Americans to replace their government with one that would get out of the Arabian peninsula and stop supporting Israel. He consummately failed.