Arafats mysterious ailment
- Thread starter habilis
- Start date
pds
Registered
Thank you Cat
Not spin - Just facts - there's more than one rat in the cupboard.
This is a very different world from Kansas City. No one here is innocent, not even the children. It is not a Christian world where the highest virtue is forgiveness and love. It is a violent, hard scrabble world where honor is the highest virtue. Cat can see that an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind, but here it is better to be blind and honorable than seeing but perceived as weak.
Arafat has blood on his hands. But who was it that brought the Palestinian movement to Oslo? He tried to change. He failed in his attempt to create a viable government out of the hopes that were born in Oslo. His failure should be seen in the light of the difficulties he faced. One of the biggest ones has been the double speak and the dirty dealings of the Israeli government that has always harbored the intention that Sharon imposes and declares - The West Bank is Israeli territory.
Take a look at the map of the "barrier wall." I'll post one for you. Granted there are reasonable arguments for the thing. I would be in favor if it it were along recognized boundaries. But it is not. Look, the red line runs along the right side of the uppermost yellow block. It is a fence, a cage. The green color does not mean it is unoccupied or only belonging to Israelis. The wall separates children from their schools, farmers from their markets and families from each other.
When they speak of giving back 98% of the West Bank to the Palestinians, they are speaking of 98% of the yellow space, not the green space.
It is not surprising to me that this offends the honor of the Palestinian.
(end of seminar - anyone for a cuppa joe?
)
Not spin - Just facts - there's more than one rat in the cupboard.
This is a very different world from Kansas City. No one here is innocent, not even the children. It is not a Christian world where the highest virtue is forgiveness and love. It is a violent, hard scrabble world where honor is the highest virtue. Cat can see that an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind, but here it is better to be blind and honorable than seeing but perceived as weak.
Arafat has blood on his hands. But who was it that brought the Palestinian movement to Oslo? He tried to change. He failed in his attempt to create a viable government out of the hopes that were born in Oslo. His failure should be seen in the light of the difficulties he faced. One of the biggest ones has been the double speak and the dirty dealings of the Israeli government that has always harbored the intention that Sharon imposes and declares - The West Bank is Israeli territory.
Take a look at the map of the "barrier wall." I'll post one for you. Granted there are reasonable arguments for the thing. I would be in favor if it it were along recognized boundaries. But it is not. Look, the red line runs along the right side of the uppermost yellow block. It is a fence, a cage. The green color does not mean it is unoccupied or only belonging to Israelis. The wall separates children from their schools, farmers from their markets and families from each other.
When they speak of giving back 98% of the West Bank to the Palestinians, they are speaking of 98% of the yellow space, not the green space.
It is not surprising to me that this offends the honor of the Palestinian.
(end of seminar - anyone for a cuppa joe?
)Attachments
habilis
Ministry of Re-Education
The death of Arafat(The worlds best known terrorist, second only to bin Lauden and Saddam) is just another nail in the coffin of oppression and a great chance for real change in that troubled part of the world. Naysayers on the left will try their best to spin it negatively, after all, another one of their terrorist hero's, is going to die, and Bush will get a chance to further his succes at spreading freedom in the ME.
Luckily the new media is here to break through the years of backward fringe leftist rhetoric and outright lies, and the sea change has only begun. The shift to the right is really just shift to the truth. Post 9/11 people want the truth, not rhetoric - something the left can't seem to understand. The left can't win this argument because they stand with the terrorists, and the new media is exposing you guys every day, they stood with Hitler just before WWII and protested our involvement. They stood with Saddam and his mass graves and protested our liberation of the oppressed people. They stood with Al Qaeda and protested our invasion of Afghanistan - they stood against the freedom that the people now have, electing their own officials. They don't understand that to treat the symptoms of oppression, is to cure the disease of terrorism. As always, the left is for the short term - don't see the big picture. They get upset when you talk the truth because it's "not fair". they get upset and call it "character assasination" when I insult a terrorist - but just look at how they insult their OWN president Bush.They just want to keep their heads in the sand where it's nice and cozy.
The truth is getting out, the people are changed, the monopoly the left once had on mass media is crumbling very fast.
Arafat is almost dead, and a bright new era of peace awaits, don't be tricked into getting lost in the small picture. The small picture is where the left has been doing nothing but going in circles, worshiping the endless bureaucratic control loop, worshiping good intentions - but not results, worshiping and clinging to the old systems and institutions in a new world, still trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.
The coming world war can be avoided, the nuclear buildup can be reversed, stay the course America.
Luckily the new media is here to break through the years of backward fringe leftist rhetoric and outright lies, and the sea change has only begun. The shift to the right is really just shift to the truth. Post 9/11 people want the truth, not rhetoric - something the left can't seem to understand. The left can't win this argument because they stand with the terrorists, and the new media is exposing you guys every day, they stood with Hitler just before WWII and protested our involvement. They stood with Saddam and his mass graves and protested our liberation of the oppressed people. They stood with Al Qaeda and protested our invasion of Afghanistan - they stood against the freedom that the people now have, electing their own officials. They don't understand that to treat the symptoms of oppression, is to cure the disease of terrorism. As always, the left is for the short term - don't see the big picture. They get upset when you talk the truth because it's "not fair". they get upset and call it "character assasination" when I insult a terrorist - but just look at how they insult their OWN president Bush.They just want to keep their heads in the sand where it's nice and cozy.
The truth is getting out, the people are changed, the monopoly the left once had on mass media is crumbling very fast.
Arafat is almost dead, and a bright new era of peace awaits, don't be tricked into getting lost in the small picture. The small picture is where the left has been doing nothing but going in circles, worshiping the endless bureaucratic control loop, worshiping good intentions - but not results, worshiping and clinging to the old systems and institutions in a new world, still trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.
The coming world war can be avoided, the nuclear buildup can be reversed, stay the course America.
that's a fucking lie, the french locked up a huge number of socialist, communist and a lot of non-left anti-fascists before WWII
In America it was people making weapons and ammo who opposed the war, why cut off half of your customer base?
they were against a war to save US from those evil and non-existent WMDs, which Bush and Blair said was the reason to go to war.
hahahahaha Fox are very left wing, americans are morons your politics is all right by European standards, I'd rather vote Tory than Democrat
'cause Ariel Sharon is going to kill every single Palestinian?
so you support bad intentions? and have Bush's (bad I assume...) intentions had results? World Peace? Democracy and non-violence in Iraq?
maybe America could help this by destroying their nukes until there's only enough to destroy the world once, or learning how to pronounce the word.
Cat
Registered
markceltic
Apple Addicted
Hold on there mrfluffy you're talking like Cheney now with those F bombs! Will the mods do something about this or will you be responsible for inflicting this kind of language on innocent eyes.
pds
Registered
What a shame, just as we were about to start a conversation in which we could all learn something from each other...
What happened? Habilis, did something you ate go down wrong? Why have you coughed up the ideologue stuff again with all the name-calling and labeling? It only gets people all riled up.
Did you look at the map? Tell me, what do _you_ think about it? Does it look equitable to you - does it look like the mental map you have (and I had before I got here) of two separate entities, Israel and the West Bank? I don't know exactly where the map comes from - just did a quick google of israel barrier wall and picked the first one. The reality of the situation is worse than the solid colors show. There are tanks and soldiers on every hill in the yellow areas. There are highways that connect the settlements to one another and Palestinians are not allowed to use them. The impediments to free movement are manifold.
How do you think a true leader of the Palestinian people should react to the reality of their occupation? Please - not how they shouldn't - how should they?
P
What happened? Habilis, did something you ate go down wrong? Why have you coughed up the ideologue stuff again with all the name-calling and labeling? It only gets people all riled up.
Did you look at the map? Tell me, what do _you_ think about it? Does it look equitable to you - does it look like the mental map you have (and I had before I got here) of two separate entities, Israel and the West Bank? I don't know exactly where the map comes from - just did a quick google of israel barrier wall and picked the first one. The reality of the situation is worse than the solid colors show. There are tanks and soldiers on every hill in the yellow areas. There are highways that connect the settlements to one another and Palestinians are not allowed to use them. The impediments to free movement are manifold.
How do you think a true leader of the Palestinian people should react to the reality of their occupation? Please - not how they shouldn't - how should they?
P
pds
Registered
What a shame, just as we were about to start a conversation in which we could all learn something from each other...
What happened? Habilis, did something you ate go down wrong? Why have you coughed up the ideologue stuff again with all the name-calling and labeling? It only gets people all riled up.
Did you look at the map? Tell me, what do _you_ think about it? Does it look equitable to you - does it look like the mental map you have (and I had before I got here) of two separate entities, Israel and the West Bank? I don't know exactly where the map comes from - just did a quick google of israel barrier wall and picked the first one. The reality of the situation is worse than the solid colors show. There are tanks and soldiers on every hill in the yellow areas. There are highways that connect the settlements to one another and Palestinians are not allowed to use them. The impediments to free movement are manifold.
How do you think a true leader of the Palestinian people should react to the reality of their occupation? Please - not how they shouldn't - how should they?
What happened? Habilis, did something you ate go down wrong? Why have you coughed up the ideologue stuff again with all the name-calling and labeling? It only gets people all riled up.
Did you look at the map? Tell me, what do _you_ think about it? Does it look equitable to you - does it look like the mental map you have (and I had before I got here) of two separate entities, Israel and the West Bank? I don't know exactly where the map comes from - just did a quick google of israel barrier wall and picked the first one. The reality of the situation is worse than the solid colors show. There are tanks and soldiers on every hill in the yellow areas. There are highways that connect the settlements to one another and Palestinians are not allowed to use them. The impediments to free movement are manifold.
How do you think a true leader of the Palestinian people should react to the reality of their occupation? Please - not how they shouldn't - how should they?
habilis
Ministry of Re-Education
C'mon pds, that's like asking me what would I do if I was Hitler. I can't answer that. I can't pretend to come from a mind full of hate. I would say let's call it quits TODAY, lets call a truce and work towards a permanent peace so both sides can prosper. I would dismantle all the hate groups and stop writing checks to finance C4 explosives, shoulder fired rockets, and other weapons from Iran. Of course this would be an incredibly difficult task, but if I was the leader, they would follow.pds said:
What you're not taking into account about that map is that the Palestinian Islamo groups often fire rockets into Israel from within the Palestinian territories - these rockets have a range of between 3 to 5 miles. Now, if the Israeli's put a border with populated zones inside this range, the Palestinians could fire rockets over the wall and they would hit targets every day, Sharon isn't allowing that to happen, would you? I've also read that the Israeli's had to take terrain into account and that effected some of the so-called land grabs.
The Israeli's need a defensable border or their children keep getting murdered. It's that simple.
pds
Registered
Thank you.
I don't think it's asking you to be Hitler, perhaps that's the aftertaste of "my mile in his moccasins" post. I wasn't asking you to be Arafat, but to look at the situation from the other side of the wall that is unilaterally defining the borders that you have been negotiating for several years. (note - true leader).
I completely agree that Israel should have a defensible boundary. I have said many many times that a wall with a 500 foot no-man's land would be fine - on the green line.
You say "it's that simple," but in my experience not much in life is "as simple as that." The bottom line may be simple, the factors of the equation that produces it are often complex and convoluted. The solution has to take all parts into account.
What drives a man to terrorism? Dissatisfaction and frustration. Disenfranchisement. Evil in his heart. Fanaticism. Hopelessness and ideological confusion (the two are often related). Poverty and Economics (the checks Arafat signed were not for small amounts of money). There are lots of factors. All of them are present in Palestine. Most of them will be better served by investment and development rather than bombardment, bulldozers and missle attacks.
Concerning the 3-5 mile buffer-zone - a good idea perhaps, but is there a possibility of that in real terms given the intermingling of "settlements" in the yellow and the green zones on the map? Don't forget there are more than 120 of them and many of them are agressively armed camps. Most of the katushkas are fired at settlements (though some are at Israel proper).
It's a mess, no doubt about it. Separation may be the only way to advance at the moment, but not the kind that pushes all Palestinians into the Gaza Strip and takes over the choicest parts of the West Bank.
I don't think it's asking you to be Hitler, perhaps that's the aftertaste of "my mile in his moccasins" post. I wasn't asking you to be Arafat, but to look at the situation from the other side of the wall that is unilaterally defining the borders that you have been negotiating for several years. (note - true leader).
I completely agree that Israel should have a defensible boundary. I have said many many times that a wall with a 500 foot no-man's land would be fine - on the green line.
You say "it's that simple," but in my experience not much in life is "as simple as that." The bottom line may be simple, the factors of the equation that produces it are often complex and convoluted. The solution has to take all parts into account.
What drives a man to terrorism? Dissatisfaction and frustration. Disenfranchisement. Evil in his heart. Fanaticism. Hopelessness and ideological confusion (the two are often related). Poverty and Economics (the checks Arafat signed were not for small amounts of money). There are lots of factors. All of them are present in Palestine. Most of them will be better served by investment and development rather than bombardment, bulldozers and missle attacks.
Concerning the 3-5 mile buffer-zone - a good idea perhaps, but is there a possibility of that in real terms given the intermingling of "settlements" in the yellow and the green zones on the map? Don't forget there are more than 120 of them and many of them are agressively armed camps. Most of the katushkas are fired at settlements (though some are at Israel proper).
It's a mess, no doubt about it. Separation may be the only way to advance at the moment, but not the kind that pushes all Palestinians into the Gaza Strip and takes over the choicest parts of the West Bank.
moav
Hunter of Muffins
Destroy all humanity and let's start all over again.
Are humans savages or a peace loving race? If someone from far away saw our world they would think the Huns had risen again. It is not only human nature to hate, but to be jealous and kill the weaker it is our animal instinct. You want something I have or don't believe I should have? Is jealousy a protective mechanism? Why were we born with these instincts that if switched on and trully let out we would try our best to mame every living soul. We were born as beasts. Religion nor any law will ever stop the rage the we keep locked up inside. If every day a man would come over to your house tell you to stand in the middle of the road for everyone to watch and slap you in the face and everyone were then to laugh you would not die that day or in a thousand years of being naked in front of a crowd and being slapped... but day after day and year after year the hatred would grow until you had to kill... Human kind must be reclassified like dogs, apes or any other beast. There are probably 100 sub groups of human looking creatures... we are not all alike, each has a different characteristic each his own animal. We were not meant to live and coexist peacefully with each other. A mouse and cat could be taught and disciplined to live together... but when the lights go out and there minds wander they may not wish their foe dead but gone far from them.
Why do we kill bugs... to eat them? Why do we hunt deer and raccoon....becuase we fear for our lives they will hunt down our children? If everyman but one were to turn in every item in the world that could cause pain or death that man would be king but only for a day or maybe less.
Are humans savages or a peace loving race? If someone from far away saw our world they would think the Huns had risen again. It is not only human nature to hate, but to be jealous and kill the weaker it is our animal instinct. You want something I have or don't believe I should have? Is jealousy a protective mechanism? Why were we born with these instincts that if switched on and trully let out we would try our best to mame every living soul. We were born as beasts. Religion nor any law will ever stop the rage the we keep locked up inside. If every day a man would come over to your house tell you to stand in the middle of the road for everyone to watch and slap you in the face and everyone were then to laugh you would not die that day or in a thousand years of being naked in front of a crowd and being slapped... but day after day and year after year the hatred would grow until you had to kill... Human kind must be reclassified like dogs, apes or any other beast. There are probably 100 sub groups of human looking creatures... we are not all alike, each has a different characteristic each his own animal. We were not meant to live and coexist peacefully with each other. A mouse and cat could be taught and disciplined to live together... but when the lights go out and there minds wander they may not wish their foe dead but gone far from them.
Why do we kill bugs... to eat them? Why do we hunt deer and raccoon....becuase we fear for our lives they will hunt down our children? If everyman but one were to turn in every item in the world that could cause pain or death that man would be king but only for a day or maybe less.
markceltic
Apple Addicted
If anyone gets the chance to see the music video of pearl jams" do the evolution" I think that would speak to moav's point of view quite nicely.Really in the end it comes down to conditioning,how else can you fool someone into thinking that by blowing oneself to bits they're going to heaven to be with a harem of virgins.
habilis
Ministry of Re-Education
I support realistic gradual advances that end in results. While the left supports crowd-pleasing platitudes that only serve to build bigger and bigger bureaucracies.mrfluffy said:
For example:
The left has been promising a paradise to the inner city blacks for 35 years, promising them a new life and a way out, but the ghettos are getting bigger every year. Good intentions - no results. The left promises more and more social freebies to the blacks to KEEP THEM POOR. Look to the old axiom: "If you give a man a fish, he'll eat once and back asking for more, if you teach a man to fish he'll prosper on his own" - power to the people is the motto of the right. The reason why the democrats want to keep the blacks poor and addicted to social handouts is so they have more voters to keep them in office. It's all about power.
On the other hand, the republicans want to give black children the ability to go to a private school, paid for by the government in the form of vouchers. under Bush they also get $1,000 cash per child. Kerry wanted to end the child tax credit. The right sees education as the key for long term transformation.
The left created affirmative action as another handout which is government sponsored racism. Affirmative action forces an employer to look at the COLOR OF YOUR SKIN rather then the CONTENT OF YOUR SOUL. This has the log term net effect of dumbing down the black community - since blacks will not be judged by their skill level or education any longer. This also has a net effect of dumbing down America as a whole. But the democrats want you to think the republicans are racists??? by removing government sponsored racism (Affirmative action), we raise the standards for everyone.
adambyte
Registered
habilis said:
Wow. That's so absurd, my brain just exploded.
That is definitely not one of the reasons I vote democrat, and I don't think that kind of logic even crosses the minds of any democrats in general. That's seriously perverted thinking right there, and I doubt that's the what democrats are thinking.
habilis said:
I agree with your whole "teach a man to fish" argument, however, I disagree that vouchers for private schools will improve the situation. By giving out vouchers, you're giving up on the public education system. What we need to do is keep teachers accountable and invest in teachers and schools.
btw, I still don't know how I feel about Affirmative Action. At this point in our history it seems to be some sort of necessary evil to begin to equalize opportunity.
bbloke
Registered
habilis said:
Saddam Hussein was not a terrorist, he was a dictator. Just as an aside, no link was ever found between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, although the Bush administration strongly suggested one existed before invading Iraq.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47812-2004Jun16.html
habilis said:
Well, actually, you'll find a lot of the troubles in that region have been, erm, "not exactly helped" by us in the West. If you want a brief overview of Saddam's rise to power and his actions once there, try this Flash movie:
http://www.ericblumrich.com/thanks.html
Note that the USA under the Reagan administration (yes, the political right of the USA, not the "naysayers" on the political left) supplied Saddam Hussein with chemical and biological warfare agents.
habilis said:
No, I'm afraid we are seeing a large propaganda war and I feel you are being considerably deceived by the Bush administration, or else are turning a blind eye to the truth. There is a great deal of hypocrisy surrounding the USA's dealings with and attitudes towards Iraq.
With declassified documents, you can see that Rumsfeld was no stranger to Saddam Hussein:
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/
"There is no mention of Mr Rumsfeld having raised the issue of chemical weapons with Saddam Hussein, though he said he did in an interview with CNN in 2002."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3324053.stm
"The dossier claims that 24 US firms sold Iraq weapons including nuclear and rocket technology and that some "50 subsidiaries of foreign enterprises conducted their arms business with Iraq from the US"." and "The UK and the USA have been accused of supporting the Iraqi chemical and biological weapons program through the sale of chemicals and technology."
http://web.amnesty.org/pages/ttt4-article_7-eng
habilis said:
That statement is ridiculous, those on the left are not supporting "the terrorists." I am not siding with one political camp or another, as I do not agree with tribalism, but I have very strong concerns indeed about the Bush administration's policies and feel we are being lied to on a grand scale.
Rumsfeld on TV, as one example...
http://www.moveon.org/censure/caughtonvideo/
Also, how about some of Bush's record, which includes examples of total u-turns to manipulate public opinion:
(Warning: contains language and images of violence/gore that some may find offensive)
http://www.hategun.com/features/mistaken/
habilis said:
That statement, too, has no credibility. It was the right who frequently stood by while Nazi Germany grew.
"To left-liberals and Popular Front hangers-on such as Geisel, it was no coincidence that America's most impassioned anti-interventionists were also its most outspoken racists and anti-Semites. Intolerance and conservatism seemed of a piece to most liberals in those days. When isolationists such as Senator Gerald Nye called for congressional hearings into Hollywood war-mongering, more than a few critics read it as subtly anti-Jewish. There was no subtlety when Father Charles Coughlin used his weekly newspaper, Social Justice, to lambaste Jews and Communists, nor when Charles Lindbergh told an audience in Iowa that the "greatest danger to this country from the Jews [lies] in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government.""
(Note that the beloved Dr. Seuss was, *shock horror*, aligned with the political left... and he was anti-Nazi.)
http://www.forward.com/issues/2000/00.12.01/arts2.html
After all, why would the left be "purged" in Germany if they were the sympathizers?
http://www.germanculture.com.ua/bl_third_reich.htm
You will also notice the American Nazi Party comes under the banner of the "right wing," not the left. (Note: I'm in no way labelling all of those on the right Nazis (!), I'm just trying to show it would be improbable that those on the left, as was alleged, would be the most likely to stand still and keep quiet during the rise of Nazism.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing#United_States
habilis said:
You mean the ones that the American political right helped to create? See above. And here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,866942,00.html
habilis said:
Yes, thank goodness the American military put an end to torture and other abuses.
http://web.amnesty.org/pages/irq-torture-eng
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/04/27/60II/main614063.shtml
Videos: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/truth/view/
habilis said:
Have a look at these facts about Palestinian living conditions. Here you can see the signs of true oppression.
http://www.newint.org/issue348/facts.htm
One can argue that automatic military support of Israel, regardless of its actions, by US administrations has not helped this situation. Do not interpret this as me saying I'm against the existence of a state of Israel, I'm just saying that Israel too is not without its human rights violations and acts of deplorable violence. It's a complex situation, and blaming one side for all the misdeeds is simplistic.
habilis said:
Eh? A lot of the media has an inherent right-wing bias; for instance, Fox News is regarded as a joke in many areas outside of the USA.
habilis said:
Is this a joke? (Especially considering the actions of Ariel Sharon!)
See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3980903.stm
("The Israeli military has been put on high alert, although no troops have been moved into potential trouble spots.")
habilis said:
And yet America continued to build its nuclear arsenal for decades... but doesn't want anyone else to have them?
http://www.brook.edu/FP/PROJECTS/NUCWCOST/50.HTM
"Jacqueline Cabasso, executive director of the Western States Legal Foundation (a public-interest organization that monitors and analyzes U.S. nuclear-weapons programs) sums it up this way: "The U.S. is spending more money on nuclear-weapons research and development than ever before, giving its nuclear arsenal new military capabilities and elevating the role of nuclear weapons in its aggressive and unilateral 'national security' policy." Cabasso cites ongoing work on such weapons as a "Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator" as clear evidence of U.S. intentions to pursue nuclear weaponry, not work toward its elimination."
"...the Bush administration's January 2002 Nuclear Posture Review laid out a nuclear policy that calls for the development of low-yield or so-called "mini-nukes" and integrates nuclear weapons with conventional strike options..."
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0213-01.htm
Again, I want to make it clear I do not align myself with one political group or another (as I am against jingoism), but I do have concerns about the Bush administration, which is why I have posted and tried to provide references as evidence. I also in no way hate America, as I lived there half my life and have a great deal of affection for the country. However, affection for a country does not equate to supporting the current government, regardless of its actions. I differentiate between the current administration and the country as a whole.
