This is a great and inspirational read. It demonstrates the application of a diy hacker solution to issues like medical shortages caused by the Israeli blockade, but also to dialysis machine vendor lockin which is a global issue.
Check out the section on the difference between QA in the lab and field-testing!
It's also a heartbreaking read to be honest. Check out this quote on why they spread their 3d printers around multiple locations; "There are two reasons we do this. One is that we want to promote the culture. The other is that we’re going to get bombed at some point. When that happens, if we are the only place that has all the 3D-printing knowledge or equipment, then we’re going to set back the entire movement by two or three years. The more we hoard the knowledge or hoard the equipment, the worse it will be. As it is, when our offices eventually do get bombed, we’ll probably only be set back a year. If somebody dies, obviously it will be even worse. "
The level of pragmatism/resilience in statements like this is always baffling as an "outsider" who has never been in even a remotely comparable situation
René Laennec wrote the classic treatise De l'Auscultation Médiate, published in August 1819[5][6] The preface reads:
In 1816, He was consulted by a young woman laboring under general symptoms of diseased heart, and in whose case percussion and the application of the hand were of little avail on account of the great degree of fatness. The other method just mentioned [direct auscultation] being rendered inadmissible by the age and sex of the patient, I happened to recollect a simple and well-known fact in acoustics, ... the great distinctness with which we hear the scratch of a pin at one end of a piece of wood on applying our ear to the other. Immediately, on this suggestion, I rolled a quire of paper into a kind of cylinder and applied one end of it to the region of the heart and the other to my ear, and was not a little surprised and pleased to find that I could thereby perceive the action of the heart in a manner much more clear and distinct than I had ever been able to do by the immediate application of my ear.
He didn't convince me that the occupation of Gaza is almost over.
I may not be an expert on the current state of the near-east conflicts, but it seemed to me as if the state of Israel doesn't really want to acknowledge the Palestinians as either citizens of Israel or as entitled to their own state.
And the Palestinians are not going to cease existing just because they are inconvenient for the established states in the region. Nor do they seem to be able to reign in the radical elements in their midst.
I think what’s quite often forgotten in statements like this is that Israel voluntarily withdrew from Gaza 15 years ago, and Gazans then had an election in which they elected Hamas.
Since then, Hamas has launched thousands of rockets into Israel with the express purpose of targeting civilians, while Israel has lost a huge buffer zone (Hamas now reaches major cities like Beersheva with their rockets).
Worst part IMO is that there have not been any new elections and that Hamas has started enacting Sharia law in Gaza.
...And what you're forgetting is that thanks to Iron Dome, those rockets kill fewer people than, say, electric scooters in Tel Aviv. And that Gaza is subject to an economic blockade making it basically impossible to do, well, anything but be poor and angry: No fishing, no trade, unreliable electricity, not enough fuel, slow internet, etc.
That's not even mentioning the slow annexation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Israel is now officially rejecting a two-state solution, and they are obviously rejecting the idea of giving palestinians full citizenship (which would render jewish Israelis the minority). That implies, logically, that Israel is now denying Palestinians the perspective of any sort of democracy.
Violence against civilians is wrong. But it isn't unheard of in a struggle for self-determination. It's inexcusably wrong for (some) Palestinians to deny Israel's right to exist within the borders of '68. But the enormous power differential between the parties simply places the burden of taking the first step on Israel's shoulders.
> making it basically impossible to do, well, anything but be poor and angry: No fishing, no trade, unreliable electricity, not enough fuel, slow internet, etc.
The blockade certainly makes things difficult, but, like all things, the actual situation is much more complex than that. The people in power in Gaza seem to find it much more expedient for things to remain bad, and all the hate, negative energy, and blame to be directed at Israel, than to put real effort into making things better.
Regarding, for example, your mention of electricity, I've had conversations with people who tried to set up a working electric plant within Gaza, and were stymied by a baffling level of neglect, poor workmanship, and inattention to cleanliness or detail on the part of the Gazans. (I'm not making a general statement about Gazans here, just the ones involved with the project.)
It seems sometimes as though the people there feel that if they were to give up some of the hate, anger, and outrage towards Israel (justified or not), and actually devote their full energies to improving what they have, then they'd be selling out their cause. A prospering Gaza is a less effective critique of Israeli policy, and a less useful weapon on the public stage in the battle to reclaim ancestral lands.
It's hard to choose language that doesn't carry an inciting valence for someone. I'm not trying to make a "which one's worse, or more at fault" argument; I'm saying that when you're in a bad situation, you can languish in your victimhood, let your hate fester, and do nothing productive to improve your situation, or you can direct some of that energy into positive pursuits. (I speak from personal experience of a culture that struggles with moving past its self-definition as a victim.)
The example I gave was of some people refusing to put in the work to generating their own power, thus perpetuating their dependence on Israel-provided power sources. The situation in Gaza is not a pure function of Israel's actions, but a very complex maelstrom of conflicting cultures, values, and priorities.
Israel controls Gaza and the Westbank in pretty much any sense that matters, especially they limit or prohibit trade and they regularly conduct raids of all sorts.
That in turn means they are responsible for providing water and almost everything else, and the Palestinians have almost no agency over any of their affairs, which also makes it hard or impossible for them to reign in their militant fractions.
And it's hard to expect those in Gaza to not have a problem with what happens in Westbank and the other way around.
Does it? If US build that wall and stop trading with Mexico, it’ll suddenly become responsible to supply the needs of the Mexican people?
Israel supports Gaza because it’s an overwhelming consensus that leaving 1.8mm people, most of them innocent by any reasonable definition, to starve to death, is not a viable option. And no one thinks Egypt, a disfunctioning state by itself, will take any action.
Completely different situation. Mexico is undeniably a larger country and much more self-sufficient. Neither the Westbank nor Gaza are self-sufficient. Israel does not allow Egypt to help them either, even though Egypt is not dysfunctional at the moment.
So Israel is taking active measures to prevent Palestinians from getting help, trading, or even building their own economy (which is tough when you can't produce construction material and Israel doesn't let any in). Israel is also responsible for putting Palestinians into those zones, because that many people wouldn't move voluntarily into an area that can't sustain them.
Their situation has been likened to that of a prison, and the comparison is quite apt. In a prison, the wardens are almost completely responsible for anything that happens inside.
If there have not been any new elections how can you attribute the violence to the Palestinian people, many of whom would have been children 15 years ago.
And if the application of sharia law is cause for blockading a country and rendering its inhabitants stateless then we had better start blockading most of the Middle East.
I would much rather see Israel and Palestine at peace, but what's also forgotten is that Israel created its own monster.[1] Israel's right wing government will do anything it can [2] to undermine Palestine's legitimacy so long as they don't have to confront difficult choices.
Note that the palestinians themselves also don't really seem to acknowledge jews as citizen of Israel or as entitled to their own state (calling Israel "the zionist entity", and not even representing their neighbour on a map in schoolbooks). Also, note that this view is also shared by a lot of arab countries.
This indeed doesn't paint a very bright future for the region.
Why would they when Israel doesn't recognize Palestine as a state? Why should anybody maintain that double standard least of all the people who are at the raw end of it.
Do you think that if they did recognize Israel then Israel would automatically return the favor and recognize a Palestinian state? Of course not.
“Barak offered to form a Palestinian state initially on 73% of the West Bank (that is, 27% less than the Green Line borders) and 100% of the Gaza Strip.”[0]
This is exactly what Israel proposed at Camp David in 2000. Arafat rejected it without a counter-offer.
> Why would they when Israel doesn't recognize Palestine as a state?
In order to get Palestine recognized by Israel as a state.
> Do you think that if they did recognize Israel then Israel would automatically return the favor and recognize a Palestinian state?
Israel holds regular elections in which power is peacefully handed over. The Israeli public is a lot more likely to recognize a Palestinian state if that state's actions include something better than continual promises to restore Jews to a subjugated state.
But, Hamas's Gaza continues to hold rallies in which such lovely slogans as "Palestine is ours and the Jews are our dogs."
i think the original 1947 UN proposition of partition was accepted by the jews and not the arab population of the region (at the time we didn't use the term "palestinian" to speak of arabs living there). This was the best time because the situation was a bit more symetrical then. Just two people on one land who couldn't live next to each others and had to be split.
Both don't acknowledge each others right for existence, at least at the level of their political leadership.
Even though I believe Palestinians have committed lots of wrong against Israelis, and I acknowledge their right to defend or protect themselves, I can't blame Palestinians for feeling oppressed, hopeless and angry. It would be superhuman to expect them to not have these emotions.
Israel is clearly dominant, militarily and in every other way. That also means they have the bigger responsibility to go first in terms of peace.
"Apartheid state" is an incendiary and useless label, though the comparison is indeed useful.
Unfortunately, the continuing violence of Palestinians against Israelis and the rhetoric about the destruction of Israel are the main argument for maintaining that oppression. And a particularly good one, as far as reasons for oppressing people go.
"The continuing violence of Palestinians against Israelis" - This framing is just the manifestation of utter ignorance or of blatant bias. For those who are interested and want to construct their own opinion:
What framing? It's absolutely true that Palestinians are committing acts of terror/violence against Israeli citizens. I'm not saying that all of them do it. I'm not even saying most of them support violence against Israel/Israelis, though you could get that impression when listening to their leaders. Both small scale violence with knifes or guns, up to rockets, are an undeniable fact.
I am purposely depicting both sides. Just as I am not ignoring the suffering of Palestinians at the hand of Israeli forces, and that Israeli forces have at times gone far beyond what is morally or legally justifiable.
But it doesn't help to label this "Apartheid". It's a totally different conflict with different causes and entirely different solutions. If Israelis where to give citizenship to all Palestinians (and I would say the Palestinians have some claim to that), Israel would cease to exist and I highly doubt Palestinians would protect Jewish Israelis...
This is the most difficult and complicated conflict in the world in our time. There are no simple solutions, but the last thing that helps is to heap blame on one side.
Gaza residents have been in control of their own fate since at least 2005. Unfortunately they elected Hamas, a terror organization, to be their government. Hamas predictably declared war on Israel:
Gaza Palestinians have fired over 30,000 rockets on Israeli civilian population centers since the Israeli occupation of Gaza has ended.
Current state of Gaza isn't occupation, and certainly not "apartheid". It's a small, weak entity waging murderous war on a much stronger country.
If a small nation fired 30,000 rockets on US civilians, the US would annihilate it. Israel is being merciful in Gaza. It has to, partly, because of anti-semitic propaganda such as you cited.
That propaganda is a major reason Gaza residents elected Hamas. Arguments such as "Israel is just a colonial force and should be eliminated" feed Gazans' fantasies of destroying Israel, which is Hamas's explicit agenda.
Hamas charter explicitly states that its goal is to kill every Jew in the world, and certainly in Israel:
This is the organization currently in control of Gaza, elected by the majority of Gaza's residents.
It's convenient to ignore these realities and just paint Israel as the villain and Hamas/Gazans as victims, as you have done. Unfortunately, simplistic positions such as yours only support and embolden extremists like Hamas and feed into further violence, continuation and escalation of this conflict.
> Gaza residents have been in control of their own fate since at least 2005.
I wouldn't want to litigate the Arab-Israeli conflict on a message board but this is just such a fundamentally absurd thing to say that I thought I should respond. They have a "government" but are not citizens of an actual country and they do not have a real economy because they are under blockade. They are not in control of their own fate, except in some existentialist way that invites comparison with prison inmates or something.
apartheid in particular refers to West Bank (eg East Jerusalem) Palestinians that blue cards (so they can travel freely in Israel but can't own property in Israel, can't move residences in East Jerusalem, suffer road closures and checkpoints, and don't have access to any social services.
Re Independence of Gaza and etc. Yes idf pulled out but there's a blockade. So let me ask you what you would do if lived in an open prison? Do you think maybe you would lash out? And about those rockets which are not much larger than bottle rockets: how many Gaza Palestinians are killed for every Israeli during and incursion? During a bombing? Answer 200x times more https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza%E2%80%93Israel_conflict . I'm not saying that the Palestinians are justified but that Israel's response is untenable - if a child strikes an adult it is unacceptable that that child is beaten within an inch of their life.
The thread is about Gaza, so my comment focused on Gaza.
Gaza and the West Bank are currently separate entities.
The situation in the West Bank is more complicated, and Israel can be considered to still occupy it. The main reason Israel hasn't pulled out of the West Bank the way it did with Gaza is because of the dire result of the Gaza pullout. The conflict has clearly gotten worse and certainly more bloody since that pullout.
You are incorrect about East Jerusalem residents not having access to "any social services". They are Israeli permanent residents and have access to the same services as any resident or citizen of Israel:
> As residents, East Jerusalemites without Israeli citizenship have the right to vote in municipal elections and play a role in the administration of the city. Residents pay taxes, and following a 1988 Israeli Supreme Court ruling, East Jerusalem residents are guaranteed the right to social security benefits and state health care.
They also don't suffer checkpoints etc, and can certainly move residences.
There are other territories which are not part of Israel, such as Ramallah, where people never were residents of Israel. Israel does hold military control over some of these territories, in the same way the US controls parts of Iraq and Afghanistan. The US doesn't grant US permanent resident or citizen status to Iraqis and Afghanis, either.
>They also don't suffer checkpoints etc, and can certainly move residences.
You're wrong. They cannot leave East Jerusalem and retain the classification. I'm on my phone so I don't have access to my journal database but here is an infographic that cites btselem and a researcher https://s3.amazonaws.com/VP2/visuals/en/209b704ee29e77117615... . And They indeed do suffer from checkpoints - I've seen them myself - because there are towns on the other side of the wall that are technically East Jerusalem. There are East Jerusalem villages cleaved in half by the wall.
>The US doesn't grant US permanent resident or citizen status to Iraqis and Afghanis, either.
This is a gross oversimplification of eg Hebron where Israeli citizens are by absolutely any measure illegal residents and yet Israel does not evict them, idf protects them, and Palestinians suffer.
How do you imagine the US government would handle a us community moving to Kabul and stealing land?
> They indeed do suffer from checkpoints - I've seen them myself - because there are towns on the other side of the wall that are technically East Jerusalem. There are East Jerusalem villages cleaved in half by the wall.
You are talking about towns and villages that are not part of "East Jerusalem". East Jerusalem is just a part of Jerusalem, which is a city. There are no checkpoints within the city.
Of course as always in the case of Israel, there's vicious fallacious propaganda to paint Israel as a villain, claiming that villages that are miles away from Jerusalem should be considered part of it and their residents should also be granted residency.
>Of course as always in the case of Israel, there's vicious fallacious propaganda to paint Israel as a villain, claiming that villages that are miles away from Jerusalem should be considered part of it and their residents should also be granted residency.
>While Kafr 'Aqab was unilaterally annexed by Israel with the rest of East Jerusalem and falls under its full jurisdiction, it is separated from Jerusalem by the Israeli West Bank barrier.
>"Much has been spoken and written about the Shoafat refugee camp (population: 30,000), which suffers from a dearth of infrastructure and from poverty. Kafr Aqab (25,000 inhabitants) and its adjacent neighborhoods are in a similar situation. Officially, they lie within Jerusalem’s municipal jurisdiction, but in practice, they receive woefully inadequate services from the city."
> Kafr 'Aqab is located 11.2 kilometers (7.0 mi) north of Central Jerusalem and 2 kilometers (1.2 mi) southeast of Ramallah.
This village is literally 5 times closer to Ramallah than it is to Jerusalem. Jerusalem and Israel itself aren't very large, 7 miles is in fact a huge instance in Israel-scale.
Someone saw a potential for political gain by describing a distant village as "a neighborhood of East Jerusalem", and you decided to repeat this propaganda.
This conflict is rife with propaganda, I suggest you check your facts instead of unwittingly helping to spread disinformation.
>This conflict is rife with propaganda, I suggest you check your facts instead of unwittingly helping to spread disinformation.
you can keep repeating this as much as you want but so far you haven't presented any evidence to the contrary other that your own vociferous accusations.
You are linking random propaganda and trying to legitimize it with phrases like "here is east jerusalem according to any city planning/organization definition".
Clearly the Israelis don't accept this definition. You are presenting an untenable Palestinian position as absolute truth.
Nobody objective looking at this map would consider Kafr 'Aqab to be part of East Jerusalem. Someone drew an odd-shaped tentacle extending very far away from the city so it will be unnaturally and unreasonably included, for political purposes.
To be fair, I think the interviewee is using the word “capitalism” to mean what some in the US today proclaim to be capitalism. I don’t have any citations for what I’m about to say, but I’ve heard of some US politicians describe the United States as a defender of both democracy and capitalism: compare this rhetoric with how similar US politicians describe “socialism” and “communism”. As a result, I interpret the interviewee simply continuing to make that association as incorrect as it is.
If one wasn't attempting to make money from others, and expect the State's help in doing so, it would make no sense for IP to exist as a concept.
It's like when people say "competition is good for innovation". HN (the hobbiest stuff featured here, not the venture capitalist stuff) is proof that people will always do stuff for the fun of it. Hobbiests aren't competing - they're cooperating. Cooperation is far better for innovation than competition as you're helping each other and sharing resources, not making it harder for others to work in a similar area.
I don’t think I agree; hobbyists have rarely, if ever, made truly compelling end products. I don’t think hobbyists could have produced Uber in every city I visit, or the iPhone, or a usable desktop OS (not kernel - OS), or even the microprocessor.
Capitalism describes a social organization where some people (the capitalists) own the means of production whereas most people are working for them. And nowadays, the «means of productions» are mostly in the form of patents and intellectual property (as most companies almost never build anything themselves[1], and pay contractors to build stuff for them).
[1] Apple don't build Mac, Mc Donald's don't operate most of its restaurants, car manufacturers merely attach together a bunch of spare pieces built by contractors, etc.
The point is that capital is not defined as the property of the capitalists. There are virtually no pure "capitalists" in the sense that they only own capital and do no work around that capital.
In developed countries there aren't even that many pure workers, because most workers own insurance policies, some "means of production" or even equity in a company or two.
The problems which are often called "capitalism" are in my opinion more about a power disequilibrium causing exploitation, especially using capital as power to take capital away from poorer people or distributing the value gain in a way that is perceived as inequitable.
Capitalism is indeed a form of oligarchy, I don't think this is a controversial view.
Oligarchies can be justified by different reasons: religion, lineage, etc. In the case of Capitalism, it's an oligarchy legitimated by the “merit” of the dominant, who were somehow chosen in the great market competition.
The point is that any form of oligarchy means redistribution of wealth from the powerless to the powerful.
And capitalism is not about "merit" but about possession. Lots of "Capitalists" (by which I mean people who derive most of their income from capital investments rather than labor) have inherited much or most of their wealth. Merit is not a requirement. Enough property to exert power and therefore redistribute wealth however is.
“Merit” isn't a real thing, but it's the mythical value that's used as a moral justification of the current state of societies. Like virtue, honor or faith in other kind of oligarchies.
> Capitalism describes a social organization where some people (the capitalists) own the means of production whereas most people are working for them.
This is not accurate. Capitalism describes a system where people are free to own means of production. A hypothetical system where everyone owns some means of production, would still be capitalism.
> A hypothetical system where everyone owns some means of production, would still be capitalism.
No, it wouldn't, because it is marketable ownership of the means of production that defines capitalism; that is, it is the buying and selling, not the ownership alone, that is key (particularly, historically, the marketability of the means of production is a key factor distinguishing capitalism from feudalism, in which much of the means of production was owned but attached to entailments which the current owners were not free to alienate.)
For a version of your example, if everyone owned a fixed, equal share of the means of production which was not marketable, that would be an implementation of socialism.
> No, it wouldn't, because it is marketable ownership
I have to be sincere, I never saw this definition involving marketability anywhere, this is new for me. Perhaps it's really like you say, but that's not the definition I had, nor the one I see as the generally accepted one when checking up the definition of capitalism.
> For a version of your example, if everyone owned a fixed
But that is the thing, it isn't fixed. You are free to manage it, sell it, buy it, as you wish. That's why it's an hypothetical situation, where everyone would end up with a part voluntarily and not forced by the state.
> I never saw this definition involving marketability anywhere, this is new for me. Perhaps it's really like you say, but that's not the definition I had
But then also this about your hypothetical about a “capitalist” system where “everyone owns capital” which makes it capitalist as opposed to socialist:
> You are free to manage it, sell it, buy it, as you wish.
You seem to explicitly recognize that marketability—the right to buy and sell—is an essential element of the kind of capital ownership that defines capitalism in the same post that you claim that it isn't.
My bad I misunderstood your answer to my first comment. I understood you were taking about the marketability of the produce, not of the means of production.
In any case, that is the reasoning of my second point when originally answering to you: A hypothetic situation where most people would own means of production, would still be capitalism when means of production are free to exchange hands.
That is too say: it's capitalism by definition as long as the means of production can exchange hands freely, it doesn't matter if they are all concentrated on the possession of a few or not.
> it's capitalism by definition as long as the means of production can exchange hands freely, it doesn't matter if they are all concentrated on the possession of a few or not.
If they can be freely exchanged, absent active as social management if distribution (which is not capitalism), they will become narrowly concentrated over time. Broad distribution is not a stable condition.
> Capitalism describes a system where people are free to own means of production.
That's a fairly broad definition, so broad you lose all the meaning. By this definition, half of socialism (all but Marxism-Leninism) counts as Capitalism. Same for many economic system around the world since the beginning of History, while historians unanimously describes Capitalism as born in the late Middle-age/Renaissance in Europe (they don't agree where though, some talk about the Protestant counties (Max Weber), others think it was born in northern Italy (Fernand Braudel), while some consider the Jewish community as being the cradle of Capitalism).
I think your definition is highly influenced by the US anticommunist propaganda of the world war, who tried to create a dichotomy between Capitalism and the totalitarian communism. The reality is way more complex than this black-and-white narrative.
Using fucked up in the first sentence, not in quotes, gave me something like the feeling that reading Dante in Italian instead of Latin must have given his audience.
I know exactly what you mean. And yet after a page worth of text I felt like the editor made the right call: the text would have lost a bit of its soul if they had redacted it in a socially more accepted way.
Check out the section on the difference between QA in the lab and field-testing!
It's also a heartbreaking read to be honest. Check out this quote on why they spread their 3d printers around multiple locations; "There are two reasons we do this. One is that we want to promote the culture. The other is that we’re going to get bombed at some point. When that happens, if we are the only place that has all the 3D-printing knowledge or equipment, then we’re going to set back the entire movement by two or three years. The more we hoard the knowledge or hoard the equipment, the worse it will be. As it is, when our offices eventually do get bombed, we’ll probably only be set back a year. If somebody dies, obviously it will be even worse. "