I'm Going To Stop You There, Mr. Galloway

They equally share a right to exist.
They equally share a right to co-exist peacefully.
They equally share a right to defend themselves from aggressors who threaten their co-existence.

...Yes, they're equals.

I guess, as always - I have to make it clear that Israel far, far, far outperforms Hezbollah's act of terrorism.

Israel has broken far more international laws of warfare - they've bombed ambulances for pete's sake!

Israel's killed more people. Period.

Israel's capable of killing far more people, in a long an terribly unbalanced future.

...dude, I could go on.

Hezbollah are also terrorists - they're just really shitty at terrorism, compared to Israel. If you don't believe me, you probably think Noam Chomsky is an infidel... you probably don't understand much about warfare - each side is 100% EQUALLY RESPONSIBLE for the war that they sit in. War is a choice made by two sides, not a victimless suasion of one righteous side - neither side deserves "victory" here - they're both, Israel and Hezbollah - complicit in the same grievous acts of murder and terrorism. Neither should be allowed to "win" this, and thus break free of the responsibility they have to make amends for the terrible crime they have commited... in "victory" all such crimes of war are forgotten... somehow these masters of war are forgiven... we need a new way out...

monkey spanker wrote:

what is hard to understand. israel wants to exist as a free state, radical islam wants them to NOT exist as a free state. its pretty simple.

Nope.

...there is a dicotomy between religion and the politics of the polis...

Israel does want to exist as a free state. Good for them.

"Radical Islam" wants to eradicate every Jew in the world. Shame.

Hezbollah, are a political organization, first and foremost their objective is to rid Lebanon of Israeli invasion. Hezbollah are not Islam.

Hezbollah are yes, indeed a political organization with a right to sovereignty. Just like N. America, just like Israel - they too have a military and a religious division.

All sides involved are political states wich have both military and religious influence.

Israel wants to invade Lebanon. They have.

Israel does not want Lebanon to exist as a free state. (remember the two sides of the same story thing I was getting at?)

Radical Israeli warfare - politics split between military and religion - does not want Lebanon to exist as a free-state - this is a fact since 1982 when Israeli forces invaded and every day since have used excessive force and terrorist manipulation to breech their sovereignty and take over Lebanon.

Hezbollah are just a political reaction to an aggressive Israeli act.

HENCE...

Hezbollah are the counter-terrorist (reaction) force in this conflict... Israeli armed forces are the terrorist (initial action) force...

Without going too far off topic - IF YOU HAVE ANY DOUBTS ABOUT THESE STATEMENTS, JUST ASK. I'll try to support what I can, obviously a lot of the above are simply personal opinions - but the other half of the above is fact.

fact:
Israel did invade - thus struck first. Started this conflict.

fact:
Thus Hezbollah are the "defender" or reaction or counter-terror operation, as a result of Israeli aggression.

fact:
Radical Islam may want Israel wiped off the map - but Hezbollah, simply want Israel off Lebanese land. There is an inherent dichotomy between the two.

(The two, meaning - Hezbollah the political organization with an international reputation to uphold - and Islam the rather insane religious organization hell bent on raising hell to appease their rather non-existent, unjustifiable, intolerant, obsessively egotistical, xenophobic, abhorrent God).

monkey spanker wrote:

i'm not afraid to dream, i have the same dreams as you. i have a beautiful wife, a wonderful daughter, a nice house in a great neighborhood, good health for my family....i want everyone in the world to be able to have the same thing. but outside of dreams, there is also a reality. there are people that don't want the same things for the world as you and I. that is where the conflict begins. i feel we need to support those people that share our dreams, against those that wish for our destruction.

This is almost a tear-jerker...

"This is where the conflict begins."

Let me go find my copy of 1984, I know it's near...

"Chapter I

Ignorance is Strength

Throughout recorded time, and probably since the end of the Neolithic Age, there have been three kinds of people in the world, the High, the Middle, and the Low. They have been subdivided in many ways, they have borne countless different names, and their relative numbers, as well as their attitude towards one another, have varied from age to age: but the essential structure of society has never altered. Even after enormous upheavals and seemingly irrevocable changes, the same pattern has always reasserted itself, just as a gyroscope will always return to equilibrium, however far it is pushed one way or the other.

The aims of these groups are entirely irreconcilable...
.

Winston stopped reading, chiefly in order to appreciate the fact that he was reading..."

You say you want everybody to have the same dream? To achieve the same status as you - that would usurp the class system we so obviously still live in... Did you know that? The American Dream... Communism? Surely not - we all know Communism is largely a lie, it's just Capitalism with a lot more rhetoric and lying to the people about what's really going on. So what then? Are you cognizant of being a cog?

"But the problems of perpetuating a hierarchical society go deeper than this. There are only four ways in which a ruling group can fall from power. Either it is conquered from without, or it governs so inefficiently that the masses are stirred to revolt, or it allows a strong and discontented Middle group to come into being, or it loses its own self-confidence and willingness to govern. These causes do not operate singly, and as a rule all four of them are present in some degree. A ruling class which could guard against all of them would remain in power permanently. Ultimately the determining factor is the mental attitude of the ruling class itself."

This power structure - apart from the fiction presented to sort of provide a quick summary of it - in real life, the party, the system, it's all what we call the Military-Industrial Complex. It's been ruling for quite sometime, since man began inventing tools - the Neolithic Age, still this power struggle continues because it is willfully sustained... conscientiously:

"All past oligarchies have fallen from power either because they ossified or because they grew soft. Either they became stupid and arrogant, failed to adjust themselves to changing circumstances, and were overthrown; or they became liberal and cowardly, made concessions when they should have used force, and once again were overthrown. They fell, that is to say, either through consciousness or through unconsciousness. It is the achievement of the Party to have produced a system of thought in which both conditions can exist simultaneously. And upon no other intellectual basis could the dominion of the Party be made permanent. If one is to rule, and to continue ruling, one must be able to dislocate the sense of reality. For the secret of rulership is to combine a belief in one's own infallibility with the Power to learn from past mistakes.

It need hardly be said that the subtlest practitioners of doublethink are those who invented doublethink and know that it is a vast system of mental cheating. In our society, those who have the best knowledge of what is happening are also those who are furthest from seeing the world as it is. In general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion; the more intelligent, the less sane. One clear illustration of this is the fact that war hysteria increases in intensity as one rises in the social scale. Those whose attitude towards the war is most nearly rational are the subject peoples of the disputed territories. To these people the war is simply a continuous calamity which sweeps to and fro over their bodies like a tidal wave. Which side is winning is a matter of complete indifference to them. They are aware that a change of overlordship means simply that they will be doing the same work as before for new masters who treat them in the same manner as the old ones. The slightly more favoured workers whom we call 'the proles' are only intermittently conscious of the war. When it is necessary they can be prodded into frenzies of fear and hatred, but when left to themselves they are capable of forgetting for long periods that the war is happening. It is in the ranks of the Party, and above all of the Inner Party, that the true war enthusiasm is found. World-conquest is believed in most firmly by those who know it to be impossible. This peculiar linking-together of opposites -- knowledge with ignorance, cynicism with fanaticism -- is one of the chief distinguishing marks of Oceanic society. The official ideology abounds with contradictions even when there is no practical reason for them. Thus, the Party rejects and vilifies every principle for which the Socialist movement originally stood, and it chooses to do this in the name of Socialism. It preaches a contempt for the working class unexampled for centuries past, and it dresses its members in a uniform which was at one time peculiar to manual workers and was adopted for that reason. It systematically undermines the solidarity of the family, and it calls its leader by a name which is a direct appeal to the sentiment of family loyalty. Even the names of the four Ministries by which we are governed exhibit a sort of impudence in their deliberate reversal of the facts. The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy; they are deliberate exercises in doublethink. For it is only by reconciling contradictions that power can be retained indefinitely. In no other way could the ancient cycle be broken. If human equality is to be for ever averted -- if the High, as we have called them, are to keep their places permanently -- then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity.

But there is one question which until this moment we have almost ignored. It is; why should human equality be averted? Supposing that the mechanics of the process have been rightly described, what is the motive for this huge, accurately planned effort to freeze history at a particular moment of time?

Here we reach the central secret. As we have seen, the mystique of the Party, and above all of the Inner Party, depends upon doublethink. But deeper than this lies the original motive, the never-questioned instinct that first led to the seizure of power and brought doublethink, the Thought Police, continuous warfare, and all the other necessary paraphernalia into existence afterwards. This motive really consists...
.

Winston became aware of silence, as one becomes aware of a new sound."

This motive... unexplained in the book - at this point in the excerpt Winston and Julia are arrested by the Thought Police...

Unconditional war. They fuel war.

How...

The enemy must surely exist. Whether it be famine or fatah. There are always conditions being created to provide an enemy.

In ancient Egypt the "enemy" was drought, which caused famine and thus fears and anxiety in the populace. So they obeyed their rulers - who could by all means have used their wisdom and strength to properly control the food supply and thus cure those fears and anxiety that thus drove their populace - improper control of food production gave the "rulers," the Pharoes control of the people. It was really mismanagement of the Pharoes that was the problem, not the drought - the drought couldn't be averted anyway.

In present day Middle East, the problem isn't only drought. The present day rulers of the ME wish to control all facets, oil production, water sources, land, property, every microcosmic part of everyone's lives. So a new enemy is formed, to blame for the mismanagement of the regions resources - the Fattah/Hezbollah, resistance movements - and foreigners can't help but fear these terrorists, because that's exactly what they're told to do, fear them, or obliterate them.

Oligarchy, hierarchy - know them. They are not of your promised democracy or your cherished freedoms - yet they rule. And the enemy is always anew to renew your distraction from the loss of what was once promised...

"But when war becomes literally continuous, it also ceases to be dangerous. When war is continuous there is no such thing as military necessity. Technical progress can cease and the most palpable facts can be denied or disregarded. As we have seen, researches that could be called scientific are still carried out for the purposes of war, but they are essentially a kind of daydreaming, and their failure to show results is not important. Efficiency, even military efficiency, is no longer needed. Nothing is efficient in Oceania except the Thought Police. Since each of the three super-states is unconquerable, each is in effect a separate universe within which almost any perversion of thought can be safely practised. Reality only exerts its pressure through the needs of everyday life -- the need to eat and drink, to get shelter and clothing, to avoid swallowing poison or stepping out of top-storey windows, and the like. Between life and death, and between physical pleasure and physical pain, there is still a distinction, but that is all. Cut off from contact with the outer world, and with the past, the citizen of Oceania is like a man in interstellar space, who has no way of knowing which direction is up and which is down. The rulers of such a state are absolute, as the Pharaohs or the Caesars could not be. They are obliged to prevent their followers from starving to death in numbers large enough to be inconvenient, and they are obliged to remain at the same low level of military technique as their rivals; but once that minimum is achieved, they can twist reality into whatever shape they choose.

The war, therefore, if we judge it by the standards of previous wars, is merely an imposture. It is like the battles between certain ruminant animals whose horns are set at such an angle that they are incapable of hurting one another. But though it is unreal it is not meaningless. It eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs. War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact. The very word 'war', therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist. The peculiar pressure that it exerted on human beings between the Neolithic Age and the early twentieth century has disappeared and been replaced by something quite different. The effect would be much the same if the three super-states, instead of fighting one another, should agree to live in perpetual peace, each inviolate within its own boundaries. For in that case each would still be a self-contained universe, freed for ever from the sobering influence of external danger. A peace that was truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war. This -- although the vast majority of Party members understand it only in a shallower sense -- is the inner meaning of the Party slogan: War is Peace.
.

Winston stopped reading for a moment. Somewhere in remote distance a rocket bomb thundered."

I still say cease-fire is the only true rebellion to warfare.

"Two monstrous women with brick-red forearms folded across their aprons were talking outside a doorway. Winston caught scraps of conversation as he approached.

'"Yes," I says to 'er, "that's all very well," I says. "But if you'd of been in my place you'd of done the same as what I done. It's easy to criticize," I says, "but you ain't got the same problems as what I got."'

'Ah,' said the other, 'that's jest it. That's jest where it is.'"

We justify our wars on the belief that others are not equal. Our violence, our sovereignty, and our sympathy - are all equal.