I’m still unclear on this settlement thing, are the lands the Israeli’s are settling just bare land nobody wants that sort of thing. But thanks for the link it helped explain the history a little anyway.

Source:

http://www.medea.be/index.html?page=0&lang=en&doc=41

Off topic: I scanned this article fast, sounds like a nasty one brewing:

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/IH17Ae01.html

About WWII being a blip, I think that is one of the things that make it so hard for people in America, and probably Canada too to understand much of that side of the planet. They can be mad at each other for 500 years and look at it as a relatively new conflict, we have another 10 generations before our country is even that old.

I don’t understand that whole settlement thing, I guess I should read up on it more.

So true about Canada / US ball of twine, plus you’d teach us how to make money off it and we’d teach you that it really is precious because it is the only place in the world where the endangered spotted boll weavil resides.

FYI, Israeli settlements in the occupied territories is a huge land grab.

WWII until now is but a blip in mid-east time…

I know, which kind of makes my point, that politics and religion don’t mix very well. If Canada controlled a religious site, say the largest ball of twine they would let Americans come visit the site freely, if it were close to the border they would maybe even make an exclusion zone of some sort allowing Americans and Canadians to visit the Great Ball Of Twine without showing papers. A little cooperation is all it takes. It seems that Israel has offered the olive branch to the Arabs more than the Arabs have offered in return. That is a very simplistic statement since I don’t know that much about this conflict, it simply has never interested me that much. Israel is such a small state and as far as I can tell has never tried to get more land than was mandated after WWII unless they were attacked. But as you say, that mandate gave them all the cool places. Madness.

I’ve never understood why the Arab countries in the area don’t give up a little of their land and form a Palestinian state and leave the Israelis alone, that whole area is strange. This whole thing of mixing religion and public policy just doesn’t work. And I’m being as critical of the Jews as the Arabs here. Religious people can’t divorce their beliefs from policy completely, but they need to as much as possible.

I got no opinion on that article either, as it is a sketchy source. Thx for remaining reasonable & not dumping all over it because it is not verified elsewhere. Problem is, we Rarely hear of Palestinian’s mistreatment except through the lens of radically pro-Israeli dominated media, which afteer all the spin makes it sound like they deserved every bit of (mis)treatment they receive. Truth is seldom so black and white. Maybe they were offered foser care, but giving up your baby to people you hate and distrust due to years of perceived mistreatment is probably next to impossible to do.

Actually I agree with you, this is reprehensible. The Israelis should be reprimanded for this if it as it seems. Jail is no place for children, those babies should be taken from the mothers and put in foster care until they are released.

I did a little Google search on one of the women’s names and only came up with this article verbatim on a bunch of left wing blogs, that and a story on Mandela’s site. Now this is a new story so maybe people are still researching. The Mandela site said they were trying to secure the release of the WOMEN and the children, and nowhere could I find what these women are in for. Since all the sites including Mandela’s were left wing, you would assume they are anti Israeli and pro Palestinian. I would think if these women were in jail for minor infractions that would have been mentioned in the articles since that would strengthen their case. These are just observations at this point, I’m not drawing any conclusions yet.
Wouldn’t it be funny if these women have been offered to have the children placed in homes but have turned those offers down so they can use their own kids as tools to secure their release? And wouldn’t be even funnier if they were using their kids because they were in jail for blowing up someone else’s kids?

By the way, you mentioned something bad about Israel. That is not allowed. The Zionists might imprison babies without sunlight, but I’m sure your administration (or shcb) can explain that it is all for a good cause:

http://uruknet.info/?p=m35188&hd=&size=1&l=e

And to return to the thread’s origin: we have completely lost our compass if these dipshits aren’t yanked from the Army and put in Leavenworth for the rest of their days.

“We heard a few reports, in one case corroborated by photographs, that some soldiers had so lost their moral compass that they’d mocked or desecrated Iraqi corpses. One photo, among dozens turned over to The Nation during the investigation, shows an American soldier acting as if he is about to eat the spilled brains of a dead Iraqi man with his brown plastic Army-issue spoon.
“Take a picture of me and this motherfucker,” a soldier who had been in Sergeant Mejía’s squad said as he put his arm around the corpse. Sergeant Mejía recalls that the shroud covering the body fell away, revealing that the young man was wearing only his pants. There was a bullet hole in his chest.

“Damn, they really fucked you up, didn’t they?” the soldier laughed.

The scene, Sergeant Mejía said, was witnessed by the dead man’s brothers and cousins.”

Hey rwnj, why don’t you go ask those folks how they feel about the desecration of that man’s body. Much less his murder. Oh, right. Shit happens! no biggee right?

If you have the balls, go read this http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070730/hedges I am sure tv and shcb will wave their magic wand and dismiss this as a couple bad apples blah blah blah glory Evil Dims blah blah glory! FREEDOM™®©!!!. btw - these are noncombatants

I think The Gaurdian had a similar article a few weeks back. We don’t hear this because the Ministry of Propaganda won’t sully Duhmerkkkah’s beaoooteeful mind with such trivial details.

The death of anyone in this conflict is a personal tragedy, it is too bad the RINJs started it and continue to push us to doing what must be done. If they would stop the innocents in Iraq could enjoy peace. We certainly don’t target civilians.

Right Wing Nut Jobs or rwnjs

These two groups depend on one another for ‘validation’ of their skewed and sick world views. Shoot first (and then just keep shooting) seems to be the MO of the worst president in US history. Tens or hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis dead (o yeah and a few thousand rinjs as well). How many of those innocents had families? Do you think the death of their father or mother or siblings makes them pro-US or anti-US?

I can see rwnjs answer already: kill em all and let Gawd sort em out

Rational people would have to say this collateral damage is making things worse for the US (and the west in general)

The “go somewhere to kill Muslims” was as much a taunt as anything, guilty as charged boys don’t grow up we just get more expensive toys. I’ve asked a couple times if is there was a term folks here liked better to describe the people we are fighting, you are the first to offer a substitute. Yours doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but neither does Islamofascists. The problem I have with the term fascism is when I have looked it up in various dictionaries it can cover so many competing groups depending whether you are talking about economics or social values, the roll of government in everyday lives etc. to the point you can call almost anyone a fascist. How about Jihadists? Or we could use the acronym of your suggestion RIT, RITs, RITists. I am not all that happy with “terrorists” either, terror is a military tactic in this case. But I am resigned to the term.

By the way, I pretty much agree with your first four paragraphs, to a point. I think you are exaggerating a bit, kind of like I did with the “we had to go somewhere” remark.

I don’t have a lot of use for organized religion either.

George W. Bush, a born-again Christian, (The worst kind. Kind of like the ex-smoker who preaches all day to his smoking friends about how smoking is bad for you.) is responsible for tens of thousands of deaths, many of them innocent civilians.

Of course there are many more examples.

So if there is a heaven/paradise and these two assholes get in just because they “say” they are believers, I’m pretty sure we’ll all get in.

I have to say though, shcb, it seems you have toned down your religious rhetoric. At least you are trying to separate “terrorists” from “Muslims”.
After all, you’re the one that said, “We had to go somewhere and kill Muslims (after 9/11)”. Which I’m sure you realized soon after typing was a pretty dumb thing to say. I mean, after the Oklahoma or abortion clinic bombings would it be alright for me to say, “We had to go somewhere and kill stupid right-wing white men”?

Also, I would stay away from the Fox News invented term “Islamofacism”. It just sounds stupid and was created and used, unsuccessfully, to attempt to draw a parallel between Hitler and terrorists. Well, counting you, I guess a couple people bought into it.

I actually prefer the term “Radical Islamic Terrorists”.

I’ll respond in order. I guess I did miss the angle you saw. I just saw her as a Ron Paul /911 conspiracy supporter who was there for the sole purpose of tripping up Thompson for a sound bite and a mention on CNN or wherever they can get the attention. I’m not sure where to place Paul, but he has hooked up with the conspiracy folks, I don’t know if he really believes 911 was an inside job or just sees it as an unrepresented constituency he can exploit, doesn’t really matter. The anarchists on the left and the total libertarians on the right kind of intermingle around the back side of the left to right political continuum. This is where the conspiracy theorists live. So while she is telling Fred he isn’t conservative enough, there is someone else that holds 90% of her views telling Hillary she isn’t liberal enough. CNN being left center is just looking to help out the Democratic candidates and will show anything in a slightly biased to the left way to help that cause, just as Fox News will do the same to help out Republican candidates. Bias plus bias equals balance.

Neo-con simply means someone was once a liberal and now they are a conservative, David Horowitz is a prime example, he was raised by radical liberal parents, became a radical liberal in college, and then saw the light and became a conservative. There are also neo-liberals. Present day neo-cons tend to be Jewish or at least the more famous ones. For some reason the Jewish population has traditionally voted Democrat while being fiscally conservative. As the Democratic party has moved to the left, they lost these fiscally conservative, socially liberal Jews. These folks grudging moved to the Republican party and then became full fledged conservatives after seeing the view from the other side. Reagan helped a lot too, he was so good at verbalizing the conservative philosophy.

This term was co-opted by the left during this administration as a pejorative. Bush has a number of neo-cons in his administration who championed the war from the beginning. Now I don’t know if Bush actively recruited these neo-cons because they were neo-cons or it was just a coincidence. I can see it being deliberate, when someone has a mid life philosophy change they tend to more passionate about it. Then you have the Jewish factor. Here is a group of incredibly intelligent individuals that would traditionally be on your side switching teams in mid game which naturally pissed the liberals in the media off. So the term neo-con became the catch all term for anyone pro war in this administration. It’s a cute term, short, rolls off the tongue, has the word con in it, perfect. But by all means, keep using the term, it has came to represent what it represents, I who you are referring to.

All religions say they are peaceful. But as in any organization, they are populated by individuals that have many different agendas, some peaceful, some not. I personally don’t believe in organized religion because I find they all become corrupt by preying on people’s fears of the unknown. What we are doing by calling the militant faction of the religion Islamofascists is to single out that group of individuals from the others, nothing more sinister than that.

As to Islam being a peaceful religion, I’m not that religious, so it doesn’t interest me enough to research this much. As I understand, the Christian religion was of course brutal and aggressive in the times of the crusades, forcing their beliefs at the point of a sword. Then the reformation came where church doctrine was changed to a more peaceful method of getting people to convert. Several speakers I have heard, have said the religion of Islam has not gone through this reformation yet, so they are still trying to convert people at the point of sword. Or at least a faction on the religion is. This is the faction we are fighting, and will have to continue fighting until this reformation occurs. Do you know more about this?

NEO-CON
I agree neo-con is a silly term, and I don’t exactly know what it means so perhaps I should stop using it. What do I mean by the neo-cons? Mostly just those people who signed the PNAC, you know, many of the same people who Ray McGovern said most people laughed at in the 1980’s because they were such obvious nutjobs that they could never be considered as a serious political force. Wow was he ever wrong about them being too wacked-out to ever become a serious force and Wow was he ever right about them having wacky ideas for using the US military to effect a pax Americana for corporate gain.

ISLAMO-FASCIST
shcb says “the peace loving faction of Islam”??? Which particular faction would you mean by that??? Islam refers to the way of God, aka peace. If it is not peace it is not part of Islam. Therefore those who espouse violence to further Islam are NOT a part of Islam, they are an abomonation of the religion.

Similarly, conducting war in the name of Jesus is not in any way shape or form consistant with Christianity. Both are corruptions by the state or by other power-hungry individuals (neo-cons?).

Using your logic: due to your definition of the oxymoronic “Islamofascist” term, you have ipso facto also defined most of America as being “Christo-fascists”.

Islamofascist is a well thought out term that accurately describes our enemy while separating them from the peace loving faction of Islam. It is probably more accurate than neo-con, a term that has come to mean anyone in the Bush administration that is not opposed to this war, whether they were once a liberal or not.

NL, pissing match with skunk? exactly. Sometimes also like a barfing match with an elephant.

shcb, it is clear that the neo-cons have made the world more dangerous. Besides their inherent ridiculousness, labels such as islamo-fascists reflect more on the peanut minds of those who use such terms than they contribute to any understanding of the issues.

And NL is right, people are getting stupider, but the media has a large role in that. For example, here’s an interesting little edit by CNN to make sure their viewers get a misquoted message that Senator Thompson “is not conservative enough” rather than the real story that unfolded (a questioner at a Thompson event was forcibly removed because she was identified as belonging to a particular group not favoured by the event organizers. (Further description preceeds the video)
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=bb8_1185451469