dballance
dballance's JournalAs long as extremists on both sides have an "ALL-OR-NOTHING" attitude we will see no peace.
From the very limited view I see on social media, the news, and web I want to desperately believe that the vast majority of both Israelis and Palestinians do not wish to be continually at war.
I believe that if anyone objectively looks into it the vast majority of the Palestinian people are not shooting rockets at Israel and don't want to. It is some political extremists in Hamas firing rockets. I believe that the vast majority of Palestinians would love to just have a stable country where they can own businesses, import and export, travel freely, have clean water and electricity. Unfortunately, the extremists who used to do the frequent terrorism by crossing out of Gaza and the West Bank and committing terrorism like suicide bombings, bus bombings, car bombings, etc. ruined it for all the Palestinians. I'm not saying those people had no valid grievances. I'm pretty sure they did/do. I take umbrage with the manner in which they dealt with these grievances.
Just like I'd be willing to be the vast majority of Israeli's would be more than happy for all this to be over as well. There are certainly extremists in Israel, the Likud, who I think, will not rest until they push the Palestinians into the seas or into other Arab nations. Of course, during the establishment of Israel there was no shortage of terrorists acts by the Israelis in defense of their cause. Menachem Begin was, infamously, one who committed what could be called terrorist acts in the name of Zionism and establishment of the Jewish state.
On Edit:
As with most conflicts there is no clear right vs. wrong/good vs. evil here. (The Nazis are an exception to that for certain when it comes to conflicts). There are varying opinions and political ideologies at play. Until BOTH sides agree to compromise on points they hold as inviolable then we'll get no where.
Note: I really tried to walk the fine line here and be fair. If I have offended anyone please educate me in a manner that will make me less ignorant in the future. Please don't just pillory me for being wrong or naive or too simplistic. Educate me. Please.
Rockets and Revenge
I've been watching a series of reports on Vice called "Rockets and Revenge" by reporter Danny Gold. In the series he spends time in Gaza and in Israel and does his best to present both sides in an unvarnished manner.
What I have learned from watching the series is that religion is evil, evil, evil.
On the one side of the conflict we have a religious group that lays claim to all the land because their God told them it was all theirs and that is recorded in their religious texts written thousands of years ago. On the other side of the conflict we have a religious group that lived on that land for generations before being exiled to set up a country defined by the UN.
The one constant you will hear from BOTH sides is that "God is with us." This actually does happen to be the exact same God of Abraham that both parties are claiming BTW. Not two different gods. Both sides claim it is God's will that they do what they do. It is sickening to hear so many atrocities being committed and people absolving themselves of those atrocities because it is "God's will."
Here is a link to the latest installment. I suggest watching the whole series.
https://news.vice.com/video/rockets-and-revenge-dispatch-7
I just subscribed to LINUX Journal - Hear that NSA?
Since the NSA thinks the LINUX Journal is a subversive site whose members need to be monitored I thought I'd go ahead and make sure they have another piece of straw in their haystack. Of course, being a subscriber to DU I was probably already on their fecal roster.
But hey, I'm actually quite a tech geek and use LINUX in my work and home so it actually makes sense for me to subscribe to LINUX Journal.
CO GOP Governor Candidate just as Bad as Romney.
Here's that 47% thing again.
On Wednesday, as Republican gubernatorial nominee Bob Beauprez toured Colorado to "build unity," a video surfaced that Democrats say shows his divisiveness.
The video shows Beauprez in a speech to the Denver Rotary Club in 2010 making comments that echo those that hurt Mitt Romney's challenge to President Barack Obama two years later.
"I see something that frankly doesn't surprise me, having been on Ways and Means Committee: 47 percent of all Americans pay no federal income tax," Beauprez said in the video. "I'm guessing that most of you in this room are not in that 47 percent — God bless you — but what that tells me is that we've got almost half the population perfectly happy that somebody else is paying the bill, and most of that half is you all."
---snip---
In September 2012, Mother Jones magazine released a secretly recorded video of Romney — who is endorsing Beauprez this year — talking to a group of Republican donors. When Romney visited Colorado in 2012, Beauprez often stumped for the former Massachusetts governor.
"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what," Romney said. "All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it — that that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them."
Fact-checkers found problems with Romney's remarks. While it's true that nearly 47 percent of Americans have enough deductions to pay no federal income tax, they pay other federal, state and local taxes, and many of those who do not pay federal income taxes and don't depend on the government: senior citizens, the working poor and, because of deductions, more than 21,000 Americans who earned more than $200,000 in 2009.
Americans who pay no taxes at all amount to less than 10 percent of the population, according to The Washington Post, which gave Romney three Pinocchios out of four in its Fact Checker column.
----end
More at link: http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_26078290/video-shows-beauprez-saying-47-percent-dependant-government
If you have an actual issue to present please do so.
Otherwise please stop clogging the Jury System.
I just served on a jury where the alerter did not bother to provide an explanation of why he or she alerted. Not a single word about why he or she found a post offensive.
It was obviously easy, very easy for him or her to click on buttons of disapproval.
Unfortunately A lot more difficult to actually explain that disapproval. Yep, it actually does take some time to make an argument and explain one's self.
The alerter must have clicked on the alert button and the submit buttons with wild abandon.
Unfortunately the alerter didn't take the time to explain in the rather large text box what he found objectionable.
That is correct. The alerter didn't provide the least bit of explanation for why he might have been offended.
When I clicked through to the original complaint there was nothing, nothing at all explaining why he was offended and alerted. NOTHING!
If you wish for me to hide a post you'd better give me an argument that is a lot more than NOTHING.
Profile Information
Name: DaveGender: Male
Hometown: Gallatin, TN
Home country: USA
Current location: Portland, OR
Member since: Mon Nov 6, 2006, 03:59 PM
Number of posts: 5,756
