Imagine That -- I’m Still Anti-War

JimmyV

backseatLover12 said:

Powerful.

backseatLover12

Peace. It is a fact that peace can happen, it is not an opinion.

Byrnzie

backseatLover12 said:

Peace. It is a fact that peace can happen, it is not an opinion.

Your tax dollars are preventing peace from happening. And what are you doing about it?

PJ_Soul

Byrnzie said:

PJ_Soul said:

What are YOU doing for the people being slaughtered in Gaza?????? As far as I can tell, all you're doing is making people disengage from the topic on a rock band's message board.

I've already answered that question, about half-a dozen times.

I asked what you're doing for the people slaughtered in Gaza, not if you have sent a few useless emails to some local pro-Israeli politicians expressing your views.

mickeyrat

Byrnzie said:

mickeyrat said:

Byrnzie said:

mickeyrat said:

Byrnzie said:

backseatLover12 said:

Unfortunately, no war has ever been stopped by ignorance, apathy and inaction.

but this isnt war is it?

What do you think?

about what?
I have lots of thoughts about lots of things. Some I may be wrong on others not so much.

About what? About the question I asked you - Is it a war?

Is it a war when one military machine - the fourth largest in the World - attacks a people with no army, no navy, no air-force, and no heavy weaponry, and which consists mostly of a defenseless civilian population? Is that a war?

you asked "what do you think" by itself , but in the context of the exchange I knew what you meant.

You have repeatedly referred to this as a massacre in some posts and a war in others. So my question to YOU still stands.

IMO , it IS a war. HAMAS is/was the democratically elected leaders of Gaza, so we have two governments fighting this conflict. Weapons wise is is very one sided, one side has a trained professional Standing Army with a major backer in both cash and weapons while the other has willing citizens to stand up to the oppression who seems to be getting funding from the same source?, who I am sure have trained as well. Hamas has nothing to lose , so to speak, and that makes them more dangerous to current order. We've seen this time and again. (think mujahadeen, vietcong, etc).

What is happening to the civilians is a fucking travesty. They are trapped.

Its just words , but there has been a change in tone by the US (State Dept statement) in regards to the latest school strike. With the expected protest from Israel. But it IS a start.

My HOPE is that the tipping point has been reached. It will get uglier as it moves forward but I think we are witnessing the turning tide


As for any action I can take( seen you ask others) its election season. The man whos supposed to represent me is up for re-election. Gerrymandered districts make it near impossible to vote him out, but I will be speaking to him or his office about my general displeasure in representation.


What are you doing? Participating in any marches for free palestine movements?

righteousbabe

I was watching Bill Maher the other night and he was basically suggesting that palestine were using their dead as propaganda. That they were letting their children die as a propaganda weapon. I always liked him and most often agreed with him but "god who would want to be such an asshole".

Byrnzie

mickeyrat said:

You have repeatedly referred to this as a massacre in some posts and a war in others

Actually? I've not referred to it as a war at any time. Maybe one or two of those memes contain the word war though.

No, it's not a war. It's a massacre. Hamas has no army, no navy, no Air Force, no heavy artillery, no arm out, etc. They're being attacked by the fourthsrgest army in the World.

mickeyrat said:

What are you doing? Participating in any marches for free palestine movements?

Unfortunately there are no demo's taking place in mainland China. But I've been busy doing everything else that I can, such as writing to my MP, my representatives In the European Parliament, and about five people in the House of Lords.
That, and countering Israel's army of paid Internet bullshitters on everything from the New Yorker, FB, Youtube, Jerusalem Post, Guardian, Haaretz, etc.

brianlux

righteousbabe said:

I was watching Bill Maher the other night and he was basically suggesting that palestine were using their dead as propaganda. That they were letting their children die as a propaganda weapon. I always liked him and most often agreed with him but "god who would want to be such an asshole".

I have to admit (and I know by posting these words I am setting myself up for a shit storm of every kind of verbal abuse) that this issue has me a bit confused. What I have read by those of you who are more informed and educated on this issue leads me to believe that the idea of the Palestinians "letting their children die as a propaganda weapon" or shield seems to be mis-information but then someone like Elie Wiesel who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 and seems very well education says they are:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/03/world/meast/elie-wiesel-hamas-ad/index.html

Please read the article before telling me to fuck off and die.

dignin

brianlux said:

righteousbabe said:

I was watching Bill Maher the other night and he was basically suggesting that palestine were using their dead as propaganda. That they were letting their children die as a propaganda weapon. I always liked him and most often agreed with him but "god who would want to be such an asshole".

I have to admit (and I know by posting these words I am setting myself up for a shit storm of every kind of verbal abuse) that this issue has me a bit confused. What I have read by those of you who are more informed and educated on this issue leads me to believe that the idea of the Palestinians "letting their children die as a propaganda weapon" or shield seems to be mis-information but then someone like Elie Wiesel who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 and seems very well education says they are:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/03/world/meast/elie-wiesel-hamas-ad/index.html

Please read the article before telling me to fuck off and die.

I read it and didn't find anything particularly compelling about it. Sounded like propaganda to me, and the fact that it is an ad campaign should tell you a lot.

But I gave it a shot.

brianlux

dignin said:

brianlux said:

righteousbabe said:

I was watching Bill Maher the other night and he was basically suggesting that palestine were using their dead as propaganda. That they were letting their children die as a propaganda weapon. I always liked him and most often agreed with him but "god who would want to be such an asshole".

I have to admit (and I know by posting these words I am setting myself up for a shit storm of every kind of verbal abuse) that this issue has me a bit confused. What I have read by those of you who are more informed and educated on this issue leads me to believe that the idea of the Palestinians "letting their children die as a propaganda weapon" or shield seems to be mis-information but then someone like Elie Wiesel who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 and seems very well education says they are:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/03/world/meast/elie-wiesel-hamas-ad/index.html

Please read the article before telling me to fuck off and die.

I read it and didn't find anything particularly compelling about it. Sounded like propaganda to me, and the fact that it is an ad campaign should tell you a lot.

But I gave it a shot.

Yeah could be and all hyperbole aside ('cause I know no one hates me that much, LOL) we do hear similar statements like this often. I can't imagine Wiesel simply spouting propaganda. So I wonder, is this really is 100% Israel fucking up or is there at least a little to be said about the Palestinians fucking up too? If so, should they also be held accountable as part of the problem? And how does this affect the possibility of peace ever being attainable? (And yes, I'm still outraged by the atrocious killing the Israeli side is responsible for. All killing is atrocious in my book.)

PLEASE!, don't stone me (with rocks- green is OK). I just hope it is acceptable to ask these questions.

backseatLover12

(“You know if you are anti war, If your anti war it doesn’t mean you are pro one side or the other in a conflict. However it does make you pro many things.” Ed sees something in the audience he likes. “What have you got here, wow. All right you came to play. We are not alone after all. Take this CNN, That’s good, that’s nice, or whomever.
Well, so anti war make you pro many things. Pro peace, pro human, pro evolution, Makes you pro communication, pro diplomacy, pro love, pro understanding, pro forgiveness. You know some people don’t understand how you can be pro soldier. If you are anti war your pro soldier because you don’t want the soldier to be put in harms way. To sacrifice himself or herself for some reason that’s not...for no good reason. I have many, many...We have many, many friends of the group and through out our lives we’ve met incredible people and in the armed forces. We have an understanding and they listen our music and they get it so I’m not sure...You know sometimes if you speak out people are going to misunderstand and they take things a certain way or another. If you don’t speak out you don’t know..If someone doesn’t like it probably means it has some kind of meaning. It’s not just bullshit. It’s not just nothing.
So this next song I always thought it was probably the most powerful song ever written. I think it is the most powerful song ever written. Which is why I have never played it. It seems like maybe there is a reason to play it. If you’d like join me or use your voices or hold a light there might be some people out there that need to know they are not alone.”)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wEnWq_AQXJY

Leezestarr313

brianlux said:

Yeah could be and all hyperbole aside ('cause I know no one hates me that much, LOL) we do hear similar statements like this often. I can't imagine Wiesel simply spouting propaganda. So I wonder, is this really is 100% Israel fucking up or is there at least a little to be said about the Palestinians fucking up too? If so, should they also be held accountable as part of the problem? And how does this affect the possibility of peace ever being attainable? (And yes, I'm still outraged by the atrocious killing the Israeli side is responsible for. All killing is atrocious in my book.)

PLEASE!, don't stone me (with rocks- green is OK). I just hope it is acceptable to ask these questions.

These are all questions that I ask myself too. Isn't it crazy that as an outstander, you have to apologize before you actually utter these words? I have read up a little bit on things on German media mainly. And there is quite a discussion raging, like here too. Probably everywhere. People are being accused of coming off as anti-Semitic when they critisize Israel, people feeling the need to apologize before they criticize Palestine. people criticising the media for being one-sided, others saying the opposite. Honestly, I do not know what to believe anymore. The only thing that I know I would want for the people who are living amidst this nightmare situation is a break, peace, a normal life.

brianlux

backseatLover12 said:

(“You know if you are anti war, If your anti war it doesn’t mean you are pro one side or the other in a conflict. However it does make you pro many things.” Ed sees something in the audience he likes. “What have you got here, wow. All right you came to play. We are not alone after all. Take this CNN, That’s good, that’s nice, or whomever.
Well, so anti war make you pro many things. Pro peace, pro human, pro evolution, Makes you pro communication, pro diplomacy, pro love, pro understanding, pro forgiveness. You know some people don’t understand how you can be pro soldier. If you are anti war your pro soldier because you don’t want the soldier to be put in harms way. To sacrifice himself or herself for some reason that’s not...for no good reason. I have many, many...We have many, many friends of the group and through out our lives we’ve met incredible people and in the armed forces. We have an understanding and they listen our music and they get it so I’m not sure...You know sometimes if you speak out people are going to misunderstand and they take things a certain way or another. If you don’t speak out you don’t know..If someone doesn’t like it probably means it has some kind of meaning. It’s not just bullshit. It’s not just nothing.
So this next song I always thought it was probably the most powerful song ever written. I think it is the most powerful song ever written. Which is why I have never played it. It seems like maybe there is a reason to play it. If you’d like join me or use your voices or hold a light there might be some people out there that need to know they are not alone.”)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wEnWq_AQXJY

I've always so respected Ed for being anti-war and pro peace and pro soldiers.

We have many, many friends of the group and through out our lives we’ve met incredible people and in the armed forces.

Yep, I get that. I have friends and family in (or were in) the armed forces for whom I care for greatly and I am very anti-war, pro-peace.

Good man, that Ed Vedder.

Leezestarr313

Here's another interesting article.

"What do groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda and even Hamas want? They want to impose their religious views on the rest of humanity. They want stifle every freedom that decent, educated, secular people care about. This is not a trivial difference. And yet judging from the level of condemnation that Israel now receives, you would think the difference ran the other way.

This kind of confusion puts all of us in danger. This is the great story of our time. For the rest of our lives, and the lives of our children, we are going to be confronted by people who don’t want to live peacefully in a secular, pluralistic world, because they are desperate to get to Paradise, and they are willing to destroy the very possibility of human happiness along the way. The truth is, we are all living in Israel. It’s just that some of us haven’t realized it yet."
http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/180808/sam-harris-why-dont-i-criticize-israel#undefined

backseatLover12

brianlux said:

dignin said:

brianlux said:

righteousbabe said:

I was watching Bill Maher the other night and he was basically suggesting that palestine were using their dead as propaganda. That they were letting their children die as a propaganda weapon. I always liked him and most often agreed with him but "god who would want to be such an asshole".

I have to admit (and I know by posting these words I am setting myself up for a shit storm of every kind of verbal abuse) that this issue has me a bit confused. What I have read by those of you who are more informed and educated on this issue leads me to believe that the idea of the Palestinians "letting their children die as a propaganda weapon" or shield seems to be mis-information but then someone like Elie Wiesel who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 and seems very well education says they are:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/03/world/meast/elie-wiesel-hamas-ad/index.html

Please read the article before telling me to fuck off and die.

I read it and didn't find anything particularly compelling about it. Sounded like propaganda to me, and the fact that it is an ad campaign should tell you a lot.

But I gave it a shot.

Yeah could be and all hyperbole aside ('cause I know no one hates me that much, LOL) we do hear similar statements like this often. I can't imagine Wiesel simply spouting propaganda. So I wonder, is this really is 100% Israel fucking up or is there at least a little to be said about the Palestinians fucking up too? If so, should they also be held accountable as part of the problem? And how does this affect the possibility of peace ever being attainable? (And yes, I'm still outraged by the atrocious killing the Israeli side is responsible for. All killing is atrocious in my book.)

PLEASE!, don't stone me (with rocks- green is OK). I just hope it is acceptable to ask these questions.

Both sides are to blame. That said, does it really matter anymore? This has been going on for over a half a century. It is time to cease-fire. Both sides. No one is winning, everyone is losing.

brianlux

I totally agree, BSL

backseatLover12 said:

brianlux said:

dignin said:

brianlux said:

righteousbabe said:

I was watching Bill Maher the other night and he was basically suggesting that palestine were using their dead as propaganda. That they were letting their children die as a propaganda weapon. I always liked him and most often agreed with him but "god who would want to be such an asshole".

I have to admit (and I know by posting these words I am setting myself up for a shit storm of every kind of verbal abuse) that this issue has me a bit confused. What I have read by those of you who are more informed and educated on this issue leads me to believe that the idea of the Palestinians "letting their children die as a propaganda weapon" or shield seems to be mis-information but then someone like Elie Wiesel who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 and seems very well education says they are:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/03/world/meast/elie-wiesel-hamas-ad/index.html

Please read the article before telling me to fuck off and die.

I read it and didn't find anything particularly compelling about it. Sounded like propaganda to me, and the fact that it is an ad campaign should tell you a lot.

But I gave it a shot.

Yeah could be and all hyperbole aside ('cause I know no one hates me that much, LOL) we do hear similar statements like this often. I can't imagine Wiesel simply spouting propaganda. So I wonder, is this really is 100% Israel fucking up or is there at least a little to be said about the Palestinians fucking up too? If so, should they also be held accountable as part of the problem? And how does this affect the possibility of peace ever being attainable? (And yes, I'm still outraged by the atrocious killing the Israeli side is responsible for. All killing is atrocious in my book.)

PLEASE!, don't stone me (with rocks- green is OK). I just hope it is acceptable to ask these questions.

Both sides are to blame. That said, does it really matter anymore? This has been going on for over a half a century. It is time to cease-fire. Both sides. No one is winning, everyone is losing.

It sure seems that way to me as well (and I say that realizing there are others here who have studies this particular conflict more than I have so I make no claims to have the final word.) One of the difficulties that I've read about elsewhere is that these are people who think and see things quite differently than we do in the western world. Add to that the fact that many of those involved on both sides are heavily fundamentalist in their religions, then the possibility of peaceful settlement becomes even more difficult. If we knew how to convince people to keep their religious philosophies reined in we might have at least half the answer. Ultimately, peace is the answer that makes sense to me (not that everybody here care what I think, of course) but how that can be attained seems like a huge question.

JC29856

Will the real Sam Harris please stand up, please stand up.
Last year Glenn Greenwald wrote that Sam Harris is a military hawk. And Murtaza Hussain wrote that he is a bigot. If the latest buffoonery of Harris is any measure, they were being excessively generous. He’s got a podcast titled “Why Don’t I Criticize Israel?”on his website about the war on Gaza. It says what he’s been saying for the past ten years: Netanyahu has the moral high ground. The IDF is brutalised by the Palestinians. And sympathy for their cause is a “moral illusion”. Like his hero Alan Dershowitz whose arguments he retails, and who beat him to the atheist lecture circuit by four years, Harris is shrewd enough to oppose the concept of a religion-based Jewish state because theology is the one fraud that he can see through. But the crimes and predations of secular Israel commands his full support. “I’m a great supporter of Israel” he told us on the book tour for The End of Faith, and his faith in militarism is one without end.

In fact, as one reads the transcript that accompanies the podcast, one realises that in spite of appearances to the contrary, his comments are not so much about Gaza, the three murdered Israeli teens for whose recovery Israel said it went to war, and whether Hamas was responsible for the abduction, over which there is much controversy, so much as why Israel is in the front lines of a global war between Islam and the West. He brings in topics that have no bearing on the matter at all such as international terrorist movements like al-Qaeda and ISIS. It’s all part of the same fight against Islam.

He wheels out the same worn arguments. Hamas, and Muslims generally, we are given to understand, hide behind civilians, and that accounts for the high death toll. Proof? None. That’s just what crazy Arabs do. They love shooting rockets out of their baby’s pram. But don’t you worry, he says, in spite of the fact that Muslims take cover behind their children, Israel is deterred by their use of human shields. Presumably when it’s not using them itself.

He argues the Hamas’s charter calls for the extinction of Israel. You would think its charter is the only document Hamas has ever published. Maybe they ran out of printers. It is a widely reported fact that Hamas accepts a two state solution on the 1967 borders. By a delightful inversion of morality, words on a paper outrage him more than bombing schools and hospitals and civilian infrastructure, more than the massacre of eight hundred civilians at the time of writing. He caricatures Gazans as a bunch of crazed Islamists when in fact the Palestinian resistance was secular until Israel began supporting Hamas as a counterweight to the PLO precisely because it did not want to make peace.

And in true Dershowitz form, Harris argues that Israel has exercised more restraint in its wars than America or Europe have in any of theirs. Plainly he’s never heard of Nicaragua, Cuba, Haiti, or the dozens of other victims of US aggression who did not set off bombs in America.

He claims that Israel’s neighbours harbour genocidal intentions towards Jews. That will surprise the 20,000 Jews who live in Iran, the 17,000 in Turkey and the 15,000 in Azerbaijan. How Palestinians without an army, navy or air force can commit genocide against a nuclear power at all even if they wanted to is not explained. Harris plays on the idea of lonesome Israel encircled by a sea of enemies. As Murray Rothbard noted, in fact Israel is a modern European power that does battle with third world enemies. It is true that anti-semitism is rife in Muslim countries, as is anti-Americanism, and this evil should be denounced, but it would be confined to the lunatic fringe if not for the aggressive posture of the United States and Israel.

There is nothing in his commentary about the economic blockade of Gaza by air, land, and sea, and nothing about the land grabs in the West Bank, except to note that whilst he condemns Jewish extremists, by which, like Dershowitz, he means religious extremists, the only kind who exist in the world naturally, “Israel’s continued appropriation of land has more than a little to do with her security concerns”. So not about expansionism then. Only Muslims do that.

It’s all about the Islamic threat to the West: We must stand with Israel because they are the enemies of our enemies. “The truth is”, he says, “we are all living in Israel. It’s just that some of us haven’t realized that yet”.

Harris talks like it’s still 9/11. Back then he was indignant with the left for criticising the Bush administration’s war in Iraq because “there are millions of people in the Muslim world who are far scarier than Dick Cheney”, and now he’s angry that people should condemn mass murder. Here he is saying that the Iraq war was a reasonable position that intelligent people can support and that it should have been waged with multilateral backing–to defeat the Muslim threat:

“Intelligent people could disagree about whether it was the right thing to do to go into Iraq. But one thing is pretty clear, going in we should have gone in with everybody. We need a truly international effort. We need to convince civilised democracies everywhere that civilisation itself has genuine enemies. These totalitarian, theocratic, tribal eruptions on many parts of the globe on a hundred fronts. Many if not most of them are Muslims.”

He is most happy when he can frame the discussion of war in religious terms. Israel is post-religious and the Palestinians are not. Therefore secularists should side with Israel. America is post-religious and Muslims are not. Therefore secularists ought to side with America. And because Muslims often use religious language to discuss political matters, because they say “jihad” instead of “let’s fight back”, and because they call their dead “martyrs” instead of “fallen heroes”, their concerns are not territorial at all, they are irrational superstition about which there can be no prospects for dialogue.

This habit of always angling for the religious dimension of a conflict, or projecting religion into it where it does not exist, is a consistent pattern of his thought. Even when he has no tribal attachment to the warring sides, he does not ask “Who is the aggressor?”, but “Who is more religious?”. For instance, he mentions the Iran-Iraq war in this debate with Chris Hedges. To most people, that was a straightforward case of aggression by Saddam Hussein against Iran. But Harris does not see that. He is more outraged by the fact Iran used suicide volunteers to clear minefields. “The war between Iran and Iraq was characterised on the Iranian side by this massive campaign of suicide bombing where teenagers were just goaded out to clear minefields by their parents” he says. That is the real problem: Muslims and their martyrdom cult. Not the half a million dead, not Saddam’s use of chemical weapons, not the American support for his invasion in which Harris says “We weren’t involved”. No, the true problem is Iranians defending themselves by suicidal means.

Even when the “martyr” kills nobody but himself in order to clear mines, he is the object of horror and condemnation. When asked by Robert Scheer, the debate’s moderator, what is the difference fundamentally between a suicide bomber and a fighter bomber in Vietnam or the atomic bombers on Japan, he simply evades the question, saying that he doesn’t want to defend the Vietnam war.


http://mondoweiss.net/2014/08/defends-silence-slaughter.html

Byrnzie

backseatLover12 said:

Both sides are to blame.

Really? Can you please explain to me how the Palestinians are to blame for being illegally occupied for the past 47 years?
Can you also explain to me how the Palestinians are to blame for having 80% of their original homeland stolen from them?

Thanks.

JC29856

Please stand up please stand up...In fact, in The End of Faith, Harris argues that Vietnam illustrates the humanity of America because Americans were horrified by My Lai, a response that much of the world is incapable of. After describing the massacre in detail, he says:

This is about as bad as human beings are capable of behaving. But what distinguishes us from many of our enemies is that this indiscriminate violence appalls us. The massacre at My Lai is remembered as a signature moment of shame for the American military. Even at the time, US soldiers were dumbstruck with horror by the behaviour of their comrades. One helicopter pilot who arrived on the scene ordered his subordinates to use their machine guns against their own troops if they did not stop killing villagers. As a culture we have clearly outgrown our tolerance for the deliberate torture and murder of innocents. We would do well to realize that much of the world has not.

(The End of Faith, Page 144)

What kind of charlatan holds up a war that slaughtered two million Vietnamese civilians as an example of America’s compassion? The only thing wrong with Vietnam was My Lai, you appreciate. The use of Agent Orange and depleted uranium, the widespread torture, Nixon’s readiness to deploy nuclear weapons, the 150,000 children born with birth defects– these had no effect on the conscience of America. But My Lai, well, that was a freak aberration.

Again, when he talks about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in this debate with Robert Wright he is alarmed not by the over one million Afghans killed by the invasion, and not by the fall of the socially-liberal if autocratic communists of the PDPA who upheld women’s rights to the Islamists, thanks to American support, but by what he claims is Afghan fighters setting up encampments in the field of fire so they could be bombed and thereby martyred. Ignore the fact that no fighting force could have defeated Russia if that was indeed their military strategy, what is striking here is that he considers suicidal actions more alarming than aggressive wars that destroy a nation. You can bomb whatever you like, just don’t kill yourself in the process: such is the cutting edge philosophy of our deep thinker.

And it is a popular philosophy. His post has garnered close to 140 thousand Facebook likes. There is a kind of atheist who is impressed by this grotesquery, who thinks religion is the only consideration that should inform morality. Ayn Rand, grand dame of another generation of atheists, declared the Palestinians savages. Now Harris declares them barbarians. Atheism used to be represented by high toned thinkers like Carl Sagan and A J Ayer. Today it’s been hijacked by cheap demagogues without sense or decency.

Byrnzie

brianlux said:

Ultimately, peace is the answer that makes sense to me (not that everybody here care what I think, of course) but how that can be attained seems like a huge question

It can be attained by forcing Israel to comply with its obligations under international law, including ending the illegal occupation and evacuating the illegal settlements.
It can be achieved by implementing the international consensus, which calls for a two-state settlement of the conflict based on U.N Resolution 242. The whole World supports this, including Hamas.
The only thing preventing it is the U.S government.