All of these countries have majority populations of white Europeans mostly descended from locals... which is to say that they each have a majority population that is of one ethnic and sociocultural background which they have shared for hundreds (or thousands) of years. Their internal social stability has a lot more to do with the historical momentum of their population having primarily shared interests and culture than it does with their method of voting.
no trouble at all
Typically it's the fruits of distributing someone else's artistic labor that are ~~stolen~~ not paid. The artists are under contract with the producers/distributors, so they get paid regardless (if we're talking RIAA/MPAA/record labels/movie studios).
Making a copy of something isn't the same as stealing it. Making a copy of something and trying to pass it off as your own work is fraud, but that's outside the scope of digital piracy. "Theft" requires that the stolen item is no longer in the possession of the original owner.
And Hamas is therefore... representative of Gaza.
Either they are the government of Gaza, or they aren't. Not both.
When the conflict started in October there were a lot of critics of Israel saying that attacks against the people of Gaza were unethical because Hamas does not represent them, and they were not responsible for Hamas' actions.
Attacks against civilians are unethical in any case, but my point here is that the claim that Hamas does not represent Gaza is spurious.
And I’m sure Israel is very happy to keep it that way.
It also seems like the people in charge of the split groups are happy to keep it that way. I'm sure there's a substantial amount of foreign influence, but it looks like neither PNA or PLO have had elections since 2006. PNA under Hamas clearly has some religious/military motivations that they play out with authoritarian style, but it seems that the current leadership of the PLO has inherited Arafat's financial empire:
According to a 1993 report by the British National Criminal Intelligence Service, the PLO was "the richest of all terrorist organizations", with $8–$10 billion in assets and an annual income of $1.5–$2 billion from "donations, extortion, payoffs, illegal arms dealing, drug trafficking, money laundering, fraud, etc." Estimates of the Palestine Liberation Organization's alleged hidden assets vary wildly and only Arafat had the whole picture. A former PLO finance minister said it was $3 billion to $5 billion.
So why would they be interested in sharing/dividing control of that? Israel is probably fanning the flames of the internal divisions, but I bet the self-interest of the leaders of the various groups carries more weight.
I'd like to recommend two books:
- Being Peace by Thich Nhat Hanh (and/or Peace is Every Step and/or No Mud, No Lotus)
- Getting to Where You Are by Steven Harrison
Don't buy "smart" cloud-connected appliances, ever. Even if they don't start trying to charge for shit like this, eventually the service will go offline breaking the product. (should we call this forced obselescence, somewhat different from planned obsolescence?)
We need more buyer demand for "dumb" appliances. Vote with your wallet.
Um... what exactly is being stolen?
Y'know Dmitry, if you had kept your army inside your own borders we wouldn't be having this conversation right now.
Some people seem to have built their identity around the "Israel bad" opinion, and otherwise struggle with nuance.