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Index » Regional/Local » Africa/Middle East » Palestine Page: Previous  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10  Next
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Posted: Jul 29, 2014 - 11:45pm

 expertTexpert wrote:
Sister Mary Elephant. Now - are you really a sentient RSS feed?
 
Never heard of her. Aren't we all in one way or another?

I don't remember subscribing to you... {#Mrgreen}
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Posted: Jul 29, 2014 - 10:55pm

 RichardPrins wrote:

Who made you hall monitor?

 
Sister Mary Elephant. Now - are you really a sentient RSS feed?
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Posted: Jul 29, 2014 - 9:13pm

 expertTexpert wrote:
RichardPrins - were you an RSS feed in a previous life?
Almost everything you post (and there's a big denominator) is simply a news aggregate.
 
Who made you hall monitor?
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Posted: Jul 29, 2014 - 8:43pm

The First Intifada: Rebellion in Palestine 1936-39 | History Today
Palestinian revolt - not in Israel today but under the British mandate. Charles Townshend traces its impact and discusses its character.
Panorama of Jerusalem in the early 20th century
Panorama of Jerusalem in the early 20th century

Jerusalem was surely one of the glittering prizes of the Great War, won by the 'stout hearts and sharp swords' which Lord Birkenhead would later commend to the under- graduates of Glasgow University. When General Allenby captured the city in December 1917, he dispelled much of the gloom of the war's grimmest year. The humility of his entry into the old city through the Jaffa gate, on foot, trumped the earlier gaudy processions of European emperors for whom the wall had been barbarously breached. Allenby was a Christian conqueror, and thou he was to prove a sage governor in Egypt after the war, the salient fact for Palestine of his march to Damascus was conquest. Britain occupied Palestine by force of arms and exercised a conqueror's rights.

The chief of these was the distribution of the conquered – or, as the leaders of the Arab national movement hoped, liberated – territory. The discrepancy between conquest and liberation was ultimately to prove disastrous. For the Arab fighters who advanced out of the Hejaz with T.E. Lawrence, the goal was Syria. Palestine as a concept scarcely figured in their mental map of the new Arab state. Though Jerusalem was one of the three most sacred sites of lslam, negotiations between the Arabs and the British centred on the great Syrian cities, Aleppo, Hama, Homs and Damascus. Sherif Hussein almost casually agreed to the exclusion of 'portions of Syria lying to the west of' these cities from the planned kingdom. (...)


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Posted: Jul 29, 2014 - 10:44am

Massive explosions in Gaza as only power plant and Hamas leader's home destroyed
Israel intensified its bombardment of the Gaza strip Tuesday with the destruction of a power plant and the home of a Hamas leader.

freedom4palestine.org

{#Arrowd} Ye ol' favourite Vietnam/Iraq argument: "See folks, you're not seeing/getting the good news! Our occupying force really means/does well!"
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Posted: Jul 29, 2014 - 5:16am

 mutepoint wrote:

The Gaza Cease-Fire Fiasco
Kerry and Obama give both sides reason to keep fighting in Gaza.



 
Just posting the text cuz the WSJ does not allow the full story to be visible from links other than google.

 Editorial Page Editor Paul Gigot says the Obama Administration's plan for MidEast peace isn't clear. 

July 28, 2014 7:22 p.m. ET

The question that routinely comes up regarding U.S. foreign policy these days is: What in the world were they thinking? The latest puzzlement is the weekend fiasco in which President Obama and John Kerry pressed a cease-fire that is likely to extend the war between Hamas and Israel.

As Israel's ground incursion into Gaza enters its third week, the goal of America's foremost ally in the region is clear. It must degrade Hamas as a military and political force to the greatest extent possible.

 

 

That means destroying the rockets the terror group hasn't yet fired at Israel and especially collapsing the network of tunnels used for smuggling weapons and infiltrating into Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must be mindful of Palestinian civilian casualties and maintaining domestic and international support, but a victory requires achieving these strategic goals.

The irony is that Israel's immediate Arab neighbors privately want it to succeed. Jordan wants no part of a Palestinian state run by Hamas, and neither do the Saudis or Egypt's military government. The Fatah Palestinian faction that runs the West Bank also wants Hamas to emerge weaker. Surely the White House knows this.

Yet over the weekend Secretary of State Kerry blundered into the conflict promoting a cease-fire floated by Turkey and Qatar that was close to the terms demanded by Hamas. The U.S. hasn't released the details, but Israel's press has published what it says is a one-page summary. The document called on Israel to negotiate with "Palestinian factions," meaning direct talks with Hamas, as well as an end to Israel's military campaign while giving Hamas concessions on border crossings and outside payments. In short, it would have ended the war while leaving Hamas in a position to rebuild its terror economy.

Mr. Obama didn't endorse the Kerry plan per se. But in a readout of his Sunday phone call to Mr. Netanyahu, the White House said in a statement that, "Building on Secretary Kerry's efforts, the President made clear the strategic imperative of instituting an immediate, unconditional humanitarian ceasefire that ends hostilities now" and leads to a deal based on the cease-fire in November 2012. That's the one that let Hamas rearm.

The reaction in Israel was opposition bordering on contempt. Ari Shavit, a center-left columnist for Haaretz, wrote that Mr. Kerry's "decision to go hand in hand with Qatar and Turkey, and formulate a framework amazingly similar to the Hamas framework, was catastrophic. It put wind in the sails of Hamas' political leader Khaled Meshal, allowed the Hamas extremists to overcome the Hamas moderates, and gave renewed life to the weakened regional alliance of the Muslim Brotherhood."

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry attends a press conference following a crisis meeting on Middle-East at the Quai d'Orsay in Paris on July 26. European Pressphoto Agency

He added that "the Obama administration proved once again that it is the best friend of its enemies, and the biggest enemy of its friends." And you should hear what Israel's hawks are saying. We're told Mr. Kerry is upset about being criticized so publicly by an ally, but Israel is a free society and the U.S. doesn't get to impose a gag order.

The upshot of the Kerry-Obama plan is that Hamas feels it has even less reason to agree to a cease-fire because sooner or later the Americans will force Israel to stand down. And Israel has every reason to press its offensive even more aggressively because it knows it can't trust the Obama Administration. U.S. diplomacy has achieved the opposite of its supposed intent.

We say "supposed" because it's hard to know what this Administration is trying to achieve beyond its perennial call to end the violence. From Iran to Syria to Iraq and now to Gaza, this Administration seems to believe that merely enunciating good intentions will yield good outcomes. No wonder it yields more war.

Real diplomatic leverage comes with trust and credibility. Trust comes from being a reliable partner, especially toward your closest allies. This Administration has spent five years expressing private and public distrust of Israel, which Israel has not surprisingly repaid in kind.

Credibility comes from following through on threats and promises, such as "red lines" in Syria or assertions that this or that leader "must go." This Administration has spent five years drawing lines in the Middle Eastern sand that are blown away with the next news cycle.

If the President and Mr. Kerry really want to roll back the tide of war, here's a suggestion: Forget the chatter about a cease-fire and both sides having an equal obligation to end hostilities. Issue statements that support Israel's right to defend itself and that make clear that the way Hamas can stop Israel's incursions is by stopping its terrorism against civilians in Israel and Gaza. That might also be the start—but only a start—of restoring U.S. influence in the Middle East.


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Posted: Jul 28, 2014 - 4:31pm

Palestine solidarity goes mainstream in UK as 100,000 march in London | The Electronic Intifada

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Posted: Jul 27, 2014 - 9:10pm

 DaveInVA wrote:
The journal article that forms the basis of that piece is rather interesting. To wit:

Gaza's Tunnel Phenomenon: The Unintended Dynamics of Israel's Siege
By Nicolas Pelham
This article traces the extraordinary development of Gaza’s tunnel phenomenon over the past decade in response to Israel’s economic asphyxiation of the small coastal enclave. It focuses on the period since Hamas’s 2007 takeover of the Strip, which saw the industry’s transformation from a clandestine, makeshift operation into a major commercial enterprise, regulated, taxed, and bureaucratized. In addition to describing the particulars of the tunnel complex, the article explores its impact on Gaza’s socioeconomic hierarchy, strategic orientation, and Islamist rule. The larger geopolitical context, especially with regard to Israel, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Nile Valley, is also discussed. The author argues that contrary to the intentions of its architects, the siege precipitated the reconfiguration of Gaza’s economy and enabled its rulers to circumvent the worst effects of the blockade.
 
VISITORS APPROACHING RAFAH can be forgiven for thinking they have stepped back in time to the 1948 Nakba. On the southern reaches of the town, the horizon is interrupted by hundreds of white tents flapping in the wind. Instead of dispossessed refugees, the tents shelter the mouths of hundreds of tunnels, which for the past five years have played a critical role in providing a lifeline for Gazans hit by a punishing siege. Beneath the awnings, thousands of workers shovel heavy materials for Gaza’s reconstruction. Front-end loaders plow through the sands, loading juggernauts with gravel and enveloping the entire zone in dust clouds. Tanker trucks fill with gasoline from underground reservoirs; customs officials weigh trucks and issue the tax vouchers required to exit. The ground that Israel leveled in 2004 to create a barren corridor separating Gaza from Egypt is today abuzz with activity on and under the surface, as Gazans operate a tunnel complex that has become the driver of Gaza’s economy and the mainstay of its governing Palestinian Islamist movement, Hamas.
 
A “LIFELINE” TAKES SHAPE
 
For millennia, Rafah was the first stopping place for merchants crossing the desert from Africa to Asia. Israel’s establishment in 1948 did not sever the tie, for Gaza was administered by Egypt until Israel’s 1967 occupation. Even after, Bedouins crossed the border unimpeded, continuing to mingle and marry. Only in 1981, when Egypt and Israel demarcated their frontier along Gaza’s southern edge as part of their 1979 peace treaty, did separation really set in. No sooner had the agreement’s implementation divided Rafah between Israel and Egypt than Bedouin clans straddling the fourteen-kilometer border began burrowing underneath, particularly at the midpoint where the earth is softest. Israel’s first recorded discovery of a tunnel was in 1983. To avoid detection, Gazans dug their tunnels from the basements of their houses to a depth of about fifteen meters, headed south for a few dozen meters, and then resurfaced on the Egyptian side of the border, often in a relative’s house, grove, or chicken coop. By the late 1980s, tunnel operators were importing such basics as processed cheese, subsidized in Egypt and taxed in Israel, and probably some contraband as well, including drugs, gold, and weapons.
 
Israel’s “soft quarantining” of Gaza—the steadily tightening restrictions on the movement of persons and goods into Israel—began with the Oslo peace process and in preparation for the establishment in the Strip of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in 1994. After Oslo’s signing, Israel built a barrier around Gaza. Though access continued through Israel’s terminals, periodic closures led Gazans to seek alternatives. The perimeter barrier was among the first targets of protestors when the Al-Aqsa intifada broke out in September 2000, but by June 2001 Israel had replaced it with a higher, grimmer, more impenetrable upgrade. Frequent lockdowns at Israel’s terminals and the destruction of Gaza’s seaport and airport in 2001, coupled with the militarization of the intifada, intensified the drive for outlets south. Hence the expansion and upgrading of the tunnels, which for the first time served as safety valves for wholesalers to alleviate the artificially created shortages.
 
Given their quest for weapons and the need for funds to finance operations during the intifada, the various Palestinian political factions operated the longest and deepest tunnels. The cash-strapped PA sought to co-opt clans along the border where tunneling was easiest. Sami Abu Samhadana, a senior PA security official and prominent Fatah leader in Gaza, himself from a Bedouin clan straddling the Rafah frontier, oversaw much of the expansion. This fusion of security and business interests, of militia activity and private entrepreneurship, was to become a hallmark of future development.
 
Successive Israeli military operations aimed at defeating the second intifada and widening the buffer zone between Gaza and Egypt also targeted the tunnels. In the lead-up to implementing its unilateral Gaza withdrawal plan, Israel razed some fifteen hundred Palestinian homes within a one-hundred-meter-wide cordon sanitaire (the Philadelphi corridor) between Rafah and the border and reinforced it with a seven-meter-high wall. The Mubarak regime largely acquiesced in the wall’s construction, hoping it would protect his realm from a spillover of the intifada and suicide bombing that was threatening its lucrative tourist resorts along the Sinai Peninsula’s riviera on the Red Sea. In addition, it feared that Israel’s withdrawal risked saddling Egypt with responsibility for Gaza’s 1.7 million inhabitants, disconnecting the territory from the West Bank, and thereby ending Arab aspirations for an integral Palestinian state.
 
In January 2006, four months after Israel completed its Gaza pullout, Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections. Israel responded by systematically tightening its borders. On 12 March 2006, while Hamas was in negotiations to form a unity government, Israel closed Erez terminal to Gazan laborers in Israel, who once constituted 70 percent of Gaza’s workforce. In June 2006, when the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was captured by Palestinian militants (and spirited away by tunnel), Israel shut down the Karni terminal, Gaza’s primary crossing for goods (already closed for half of the previous six months). Israel also prevented the use of the Rafah terminal for passenger traffic and severely restricted access for the European monitoring mission there.
 
Israel’s array of restrictions on trade, coupled with the need to mitigate the threat of punitive Israeli airstrikes targeting the tunnel zone, quickly spurred Palestinians to develop deeper and longer tunnels spanning the width of the Israeli-bulldozed buffer and less vulnerable to sabotage. The tunnel network continued to grow, and infrastructure improved. Even so, the tunnels were ill-prepared for the surge in traffic generated by the near-hermetic seal imposed on Gaza by Israel and Egypt when, in June 2007, Hamas seized control of the Strip, disbanded Fatah’s forces, and chased out its leaders.
 
THE HAMAS TAKEOVER: BLOCKADE AND EXPANSION
 
Hamas’s summer 2007 military takeover of the Strip marked a turning point for the tunnel trade. The siege, already in place, was tightened. Egypt shut the Rafah terminal. Israel designated Gaza “a hostile entity” and, following a salvo of rocket-fire on its border areas in November 2007, cut food supplies by half and severed fuel imports. In January 2008, Israel announced a total blockade on fuel after rockets were fired at Sderot, banning all but seven categories of humanitarian supplies. As gasoline supplies dried up, Gazans abandoned cars on the roadside and bought donkeys. Under Israeli blockade at sea and a combined Egyptian-Israeli siege on land, Gaza’s humanitarian crisis loomed, threatening Hamas’s rule.
 
The Islamists’ first attempt to break the stranglehold targeted Egypt as the weaker link. In January 2008, Hamas’s forces bulldozed a segment of wall at the Rafah crossing to allow hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to pour into Sinai. While long pent-up consumer demand was released, the measure provided only short-term relief. Within eleven days, Egyptian forces succeeded in herding Palestinians back. Egypt then reinforced the army contingent guarding the locked gates and built a fortified border wall. As the siege intensified, employment in Gazan manufacturing plummeted from 35,000 to 860 by mid-2008, and Gaza’s gross domestic product (GDP) fell by a third in real terms from its 2005 levels (compared to a 42 percent increase in the West Bank over the same period.
 
With access above ground barred, the Islamist movement oversaw a program of industrial-scale burrowing underground. With each tunnel costing $80,000 to $200,000 to build, mosques and charitable networks launched schemes offering unrealistically high rates of return, promoting a pyramid scheme that ended in disaster. Preachers extolled commercial tunnel ventures as “resistance” activity and hailed workers killed on the job as “martyrs.” The National Security Forces (NSF), a PA force reconstituted by Hamas primarily with ?Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades (IQB) personnel, but also including several hundred (Fatah) PA defectors, guarded the border, occasionally exchanging fire with the Egyptian army, while the Hamas government oversaw construction activity. Simultaneously, the Hamas-run Rafah municipality upgraded the electricity grid to power hundreds of hoists, kept Gaza’s fire service on standby, and on several occasions extinguished fires in tunnels used to pump fuel.As Mahmud Zahar, a Hamas Gaza leader, explained, “No electricity, no water, no food came from outside. That’s why we had to build the tunnels.”
 
Private investors, including Hamas members who raised capital through their mosque networks, partnered with families straddling the border. Lawyers drafted contracts for cooperatives to build and operate commercial tunnels. The contracts detailed the number of partners (generally four to fifteen), the value of the respective shares, and the mechanism for distributing shareholder profits. A typical partnership encompassed a cross-section of Gazan society, including, for example, a porter at the Rafah land crossing, a security officer in the former PA administration, agricultural workers, university graduates, nongovernmental organization (NGO) employees, and diggers. Abu Ahmad, who had earned NIS 30–70/day as a taxi driver, invested his wife’s jewelry, worth $20,000, to partner with nine others in a tunnel venture. Investors could quickly recover their outlay. Fully operational, a tunnel could generate the cost of its construction in a month. With each tunnel jointly run by a partnership on each side of the border, Gazan and Egyptian owners generally split earnings equally.
 
From enterprises primarily geared to weapons smuggling, the tunnels rapidly turned into what one trader described as “the lungs through which Gaza breathes.” By the eve of Operation Cast Lead in December 2008, their number had grown to at least five hundred from a few dozen mainly factional tunnels in mid-2005; tunnel trade revenue increased from an average of $30 million/year in 2005 to $36 million/month. Mitigating to some extent the Gaza economy’s sharp contraction resulting from the international boycott of Hamas, the PA’s ongoing salary payments to some 75,000 PA employees, including some whom the PA had ordered to stop work, sustained the government’s liquidity and purchasing power.
 
Meanwhile, the area of tunnel operations doubled to eight kilometers, extending along the border from the Rafah terminal west to Tel Zagreb near the coast. So congested were some parts of the border that diggers had to burrow tunnels one on top of the other, using Google Earth to map routes and make sure they stayed on course. Teams of six laborers working round the clock in two twelve-hour shifts could dig an average of ten to fifteen meters a day. Once functional, tunnels were constantly upgraded to speed deliveries. Over time, they were fitted with internal lighting, intercoms, and generators to maintain operations during frequent power cuts. The tunnels’ rough-hewn edges were smoothed to reduce damage to imports.
 
“Legalized” by Hamas on the Gaza side of the border, the tunnels remained clandestine on Egypt’s side. Thus, while in Gaza the tunnel mouths were moved from the basements of private homes to the open terrain fronting the Philadelphi corridor, in Egypt the tunnels extended deep inside Egyptian territory. Up to three-quarters of a standard eight-hundred-meter tunnel was on Egypt’s side. And while the tunnel mouths, protected from the elements by white canvas, were open on the Gaza side, in Egypt they remained concealed.
(...)
Seeing how it's all published in a journal (aside from plenty of Israeli infiltration), it's pretty obvious Israel knew of these "terror tunnels" as they now have taken to calling them.
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Posted: Jul 27, 2014 - 6:32pm

REPORT: HAMAS USED CHILD LABOR TO BUILD TERROR TUNNELS; HUNDREDS KILLED


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Posted: Jul 26, 2014 - 10:44am

 mutepoint wrote:

I support Israel and their fight against the terrorist group Hamas. I have no beef with the Palestinians, other than they deserve a better elected government than a suicidal bunch of terrorist assholes who will settle for nothing less than the elimination of Israel and her Jews.

Given the choice to support a liberal democracy or an international terrorist organization, it's an easy decision for me. So I support Israel unequivocally. And without hesitation. Same like the last go round between Israel and Hamas in 2008-2009.

Vehemently disagree my position? Then hit the unfriend button, and Shalom, motherf****r.


Oh right, this is RP.  You're stuck with me - as I am with you.

That's worked out so well in the past, hasn't it?  
 
This and this

‘No more deaths’: Israelis protest the Gaza war | +972 Magazine

(...) And this is sort of the problem: It’s like the agony of love – it’s the worst but it’s also the best. This is Israel at its best – brave, sacrificing, caring, loving. The tears. It’s so warm. We are a great big family. We are.

And when do we know it best? In war. And because we have so many wars, we have so many of these great national lovefests, these tragic/heroic communal sagas. We’re good at it, very good, great. And it’s not a show – the media may kitsch it up, but they don’t have to – this is real. The soldiers are real, the deaths are real, the reactions of people are real. For an Israeli Jew, it’s extremely hard to resist being part of it. And at the emotional level, why should one try?

But there are at least a couple of conditions attached to this communal experience: One, there can be no reminders of what we are doing to the people in Gaza. The media have to give it a little bit of time or space, tucked away, for appearance’s sake; they seem clearly apologetic about this. Nobody, but nobody, in the communal embrace wants to see or hear about the Palestinians in Gaza.

The other condition is that no one may ask whether the cause these soldiers are fighting for – this war – is right or not. Whether we, Israel, could have prevented the deaths. Whether we, especially we parents, are even just partly responsible for getting more than a few of our soldiers killed.

Nobody can ask that question, not in public; he will be shouted down angrily. He will be silenced.

And so this display of what’s best in Israel goes hand-in-hand with the demonstration of what’s worst in it: The conformism, the robotic thinking, the blind obedience, this fucking lemming-like quality. You hear people repeating it in the media like an oath – we believe in our soldiers, we believe in the mission, we believe in our leaders.

We believe in the mission. We believe in our leaders.

War brings out the best in Israel, and the worst. But it’s the worst qualities that allowed this war to happen in the first place, and that are preparing the ground for the next one. Wouldn’t it be nice if Israelis could devote a little of their courage to the contemplation of breaking ranks, and give a little of their compassion to the Palestinians? Maybe then they could find a better arena for their awesome bravery and generosity than one war after another after another.


(...) What happened here in Beit Hanoun, and in other neighbourhoods of Gaza hardest hit by the Israeli assault, will inevitably demand an explanation: whether the extremity of violence unleashed in these residential areas in recent days was proportionate, or if the destruction amounts to a war crime.

Those are questions for the days ahead. On Saturday, however, in the midst of a 12-hour humanitarian ceasefire, the concerns were more immediate ones, as thousands of Palestinian residents flocked back to their ruined neighbourhoods to see what remained.

As they came on foot and in cars, they were accompanied by fire engines, bulldozers and ambulances of the Red Crescent, whose crews by mid-afternoon had recovered 85 bodies, many of them partially decomposed, buried under the rubble of Gaza's most damaged neighbourhoods. Medical officials said yesterday that the death toll among Palestinians has passed 1,000. (...)

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Posted: Jul 26, 2014 - 8:55am

Claim that Hamas killed 3 teens is turning out to be the WMD of Gaza onslaught | Mondoweiss
Why Israel is losing the social media war over Gaza | Informed Comment
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Posted: Jul 25, 2014 - 4:58pm

It Turns Out Hamas Didn’t Kidnap and Kill the 3 Israeli Teens After All
By Katie Zavadski

When the bodies of three Israeli teenagers, kidnapped in the West Bank, were found late last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not mince words. "Hamas is responsible, and Hamas will pay," he said, initiating a campaign that eventually escalated into the present conflict in the region. 

But now, officials admit the kidnappings were not Hamas's handiwork after all. 

Non-plagiarizing BuzzFeed writer Sheera Frenkel was among the first to suggest that it was unlikely that Hamas was behind the deaths of Gilad Shaar, Naftali Frenkel, and Eyal Yifrach. Citing Palestinian sources and experts the field, Frenkel reported that kidnapping three Israeli teens would be a foolish move for Hamas. International experts told her it was likely the work of a local group, acting without concern for the repercussions: (...)

They knew all along the settler kids were dead (see gag order). They also knew Hamas wasn't responsible, but: "9/11, Iraq, 9/11, WMD, 9/11, mushroom clouds, 9/11, WMD, yadda, yadda, yadda, 9/11, rah, rah, rah, dictator, WMD, what?, Democracy! Terrorists!..."
kurtster

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Location: where fear is not a virtue
Gender: Male


Posted: Jul 25, 2014 - 10:13am

 RichardPrins wrote:

You're assuming they'd be out to eat us, but maybe we'd just end up being enslaved as exotic pets or workers assembling alien iDevices. {#Wink}

 
I didn't say who would be doing the eating ...  

There's always that Soylent Green stuff, kinda thingy, too ...

Then they go Pol Pot and go for people who wear glasses. 
R_P

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Posted: Jul 25, 2014 - 10:07am

If we can have just war, why not just terrorism? - Giles Fraser
I was criticised for suggesting there could be a moral right of resistance to oppression but Christianity has thought a great deal about the idea of just resistance
cc_rider

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Location: Bastrop
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Posted: Jul 25, 2014 - 9:58am

 Red_Dragon wrote:
Even if your wild optimism played out and we united to repel the invaders, as soon as they were gone we'd go right back to slaughtering each other.
 
Quite true. Isn't that what has happened in:
The Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. etc. etc...
oldviolin

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Posted: Jul 25, 2014 - 9:53am


R_P

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Posted: Jul 25, 2014 - 9:44am

 kurtster wrote:
Yeah, but once the fix is in, they're the first to get eaten.  Nobody trusts a sell out ...
 
You're assuming they'd be out to eat us, but maybe we'd just end up being enslaved as exotic pets or workers assembling alien iDevices. {#Wink}
kurtster

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Location: where fear is not a virtue
Gender: Male


Posted: Jul 25, 2014 - 9:42am

"The Prime Directive is not just a set of rules. It is a philosophy, and a very correct one. History has proven again and again that whenever mankind interferes with a less developed civilization, no matter how well intentioned that interference may be, the results are invariably disastrous."


Red_Dragon

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Location: Dumbf*ckistan


Posted: Jul 25, 2014 - 9:34am

 cc_rider wrote:

We're all stuck on this big blue ball, for the time being anyway.

Good points made though. I like to imagine if aliens came to exterminate us like vermin, we would stick together, but history proves that's an unrealistic thought.

 
Even if your wild optimism played out and we united to repel the invaders, as soon as they were gone we'd go right back to slaughtering each other.
cc_rider

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Location: Bastrop
Gender: Male


Posted: Jul 25, 2014 - 9:32am

 sirdroseph wrote:
We all may be in this together, but we are all not in this equally.  Ergo; no justice, no peace is met with more killing.
 
We're all stuck on this big blue ball, for the time being anyway.

Good points made though. I like to imagine if aliens came to exterminate us like vermin, we would stick together, but history proves that's an unrealistic thought.
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