An Exchange Between Nobody and Eric

eric i shall digest your post in bites with the necessary intellectual mastication to prevent gas.

>>Instead of posting articles can you write for yourself

i could consider that statement insulting, but not after considering the source.

>> Do you find this article to speak for your views?

there is no perfect isomorphic correspondence, but there is some (some being defined as more than one but less than all) simulacrum of similitude. since each view deserves it on venue and since no view has perfect correspondence, eric will need to particularize each.

>>And do you think Israel is doing something good in Lebanon and the Occupied Territories.

i do not ascribe to the concept of 'good'

>>the situation can in some regards be mirrored. Who is to determine terrorism as opposed to militarism and is there really any difference?

we can have a could but ones needs to as should before assuming would could be should. if the presumption of mirror is granted for argument sake, then each, with its cadre of supporters would and could say the other is a 'terrorist'.

what we need is an 'operational definition' of terrorist each ascribes to.

one example is the deliberate targeting of 'innocents' for the purpose of killing them. now let us get to qanafying this:

lots of dead civilian, women/children. was that in an of itself an act of terror?

for argument i employ this:

Article 28
The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations.

www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/92.htm

and i employ this:

IDF: 150 rockets fired from Qana at Israeli cities
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yaakov Katz, Jpost staff, and AP, THE JERUSALEM POST Jul. 30, 2006

Speaking to reporters, Eshel added that Hizbullah rocket launchers were hidden in civilian buildings in the village. He proceeded to show video footage of rocket launchers being driven into the village following launches. www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite

from which i input this:
so what you have is a deliberate effort by hezbollah to draw retaliation by Israel and deliberately making an effort to have Israel target civilian areas.

now some may argue that Israel should forgo retaliating because of the civilian population. but such a scenario would promote more intense use of civilian's as shields. thus creating a situation whereby hezbollah could attack Israel with impunity. how did Israel act? Israel broadcast by various media, that the civilian population should leave because Israel was targeting the area. how did hezbollah act. it did not remove the civilian population. the human shields remained. hezbollah still attacked. Israel retaliated.>>

now i will skip to this:
<>

normally i do not answer such ignorance. but i will try. i look for internal consistency in argument. i also am of the belief that the adversarial environment is conducive to good argument.

If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. Were an opinion a personal possession of no value except to the owner; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it were simply a private injury, it would make some difference whether the injury was inflicted only on a few persons or on many. But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

if eric read the mill's quote carefully then you will understand my position. make your argument within your limits and i will make my arguments within my limits. let the armies of ideas contest reality.

and this expression >>then I'm not really sure why you are posting anything at all>> will eventually be resolved. perhaps.

The Second Coming...

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

W.B. Yeats
1920

Must Read:

The war of 2006: Report of the commission of inquiry - Haaretz - Israel News

The highlight of Annan’s visit to Beirut was his meeting on Tuesday with Nasrallah, June 20, 2000. (photo: Reuters)

from LittleGreenFootballs

Must Read Blog

http://vitalperspective.typepad.com/vital_perspective_clarity/

Hezbollah and its involvement in anti-Israel and international terrorism

Read about it here:

Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special Studies (C.S.S)

Information Bulletins and info specifically and in general relating to the Middle east, though with information about the "Global Jihad." Background.

A must-have site: http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/engsite/home/default.asp

Joe McCain: The Jews will not go quietly again

Posted: 7/12/2006
Author: Joe McCain
Source: http://www.standwithus.com

The Jews will not go quietly again.

Joe McCain, Senator John McCain's brother on The Jews & Israel.

There is a lot of worry popping up in the media just now — "Can Israel Survive?" Don't worry about it. It relates to something that Palestinians, the Arabs, and perhaps most Americans don't realize — the Jews are never going quietly again. Never. And if the world doesn't come to understand that, then millions of Arabs are going to die. It's as simple as that.

Throughout the history of the world, the most abused, kicked-around race of people have been the Jews. Not just during the holocaust of World War II, but for thousands of years. They have truly been "The Chosen People" in a terrible and tragic sense.

The Bible story of Egypt's enslavement of the Jews is not just a story, it is history, if festooned with theological legend and heroic epics. In 70 A.D. the Romans, which had for a long time tolerated the Jews — even admired them as 'superior' to other vassals — tired of their truculent demands for independence and decided on an early "Solution" to the Jewish problem. Jerusalem was sacked and reduced to near rubble, Jewish resistance was pursued and crushed by the implacable Roman War Machine — see 'Masada'. And thus began The Diaspora, the dispersal of Jews throughout the rest of the world.

Their homeland destroyed, their culture crushed, they looked desperately for the few niches in a hostile world where they could be safe. That safety was fragile, and often subject to the whims of moody hosts. The words 'pogrom', 'ghetto', and 'anti-Semitism' come from this treatment of the first mono-theistic people. Throughout Europe, changing times meant sometimes tolerance, sometimes even warmth for the Jews, but eventually it meant hostility, then malevolence. There is not a country in Europe or Western Asia that at one time or another has not decided to lash out against the children of Moses, sometimes by whim, sometimes by manipulation.

Winston Churchill calls Edward I one of England's very greatest kings. It was under his rule in the late 1200's that Wales and Cornwall were hammered into the British crown, and Scotland and Ireland were invaded and occupied. He was also the first European monarch to set up a really effective administrative bureaucracy, surveyed and censused his kingdom, established laws and political divisions. But he also embraced the Jews. Actually Edward didn't embrace Jews so much as he embraced their money. For the English Jews had acquired wealth — understandable, because this people that could not own land or office, could not join most of the trades and professions, soon found out that money was a very good thing to accumulate. Much harder to take away than land or a store, was a hidden sock of gold and silver coins. Ever resourceful, Edward found a way — he borrowed money from the Jews to finance imperial ambitions in Europe, especially France. The loans were almost certainly not made gladly, but how do you refuse your King? Especially when he is 'Edward the Hammer'. Then, rather than pay back the debt, Edward simply expelled the Jews. Edward was especially inventive — he did this twice. After a time, he invited the Jews back to their English homeland, borrowed more money, then expelled them again.

Most people do not know that Spain was one of the early entrants into The Renaissance. People from all over the world came to Spain in the late medieval period. All were welcome — Arabs, Jews, other Europeans. The University of Salamanca was one of the great centers of learning in the world — scholars of all nations, all fields came to Salamanca to share their knowledge and their ideas. But in 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella, having driven the last of Moors from the Spanish Shield, were persuaded by the righteous fundamentalists of the time to announce "The Act of Purification". A series of steps were taken in which all Jews and Arabs and other non-Christians were expelled from the country, or would face the tools and the torches of The Inquisition. From this 'cleansing' come the Sephardic Jews — as opposed to the Ashkenazis of Eastern Europe. In Eastern Europe, the sporadic violence and brutality against Jews are common knowledge. 'Fiddler' without the music and the folksy humor. At times of fury, no accommodation by the Jew was good enough, no profile low enough, no village poor enough or distant enough.

From these come the near-steady flow of Jews to the United States. And despite the disdain of the Jews by most 'American' Americans, they came to grab the American Dream with both hands, and contributed everything from new ideas of enterprise in retail and entertainment to becoming some of our finest physicians and lawyers. The modern United States, in spite of itself, IS The United States in part because of its Jewish blood.

Then the Nazi Holocaust — the corralling, sorting, orderly eradication of millions of the people of Moses. Not something that other realms in other times didn't try to do, by the way, the Germans were just more organized and had better murder technology.

I stood in the center of Dachau for an entire day, about 15 years ago, trying to comprehend how this could have happened. I had gone there on a side trip from Munich, vaguely curious about this Dachau. I soon became engulfed in the enormity of what had occurred there nestled in this middle and working class neighborhood.

How could human beings do this to other human beings, hear their cries, their pleas, their terror, their pain, and continue without apparently even wincing? I no longer wonder. At some times, some places, ANY sect of the human race is capable of horrors against their fellow man, whether a member of the Waffen SS, a Serbian sniper, a Turkish policeman in 1920's Armenia, a Mississippi Klansman. Because even in the United States not all was a Rose Garden. For a long time Jews had quotas in our universities and graduate schools. Only so many Jews could be in a medical or law school at one time. Jews were disparaged widely. I remember as a kid Jewish jokes told without a wince - "Why do Jews have such big noses?"

Well, now the Jews have a homeland again. A place that is theirs. And that's the point. It doesn't matter how many times the United States and European powers try to rein in Israel, if it comes down to survival of its nation, its people, they will fight like no lioness has ever fought to save her cubs. They will fight with a ferocity, a determination, and a skill, that will astound us.

And many will die, mostly their attackers, I believe. If there were a macabre historical betting parlor, my money would be on the Israelis to be standing at the end. As we killed the kamikazes and the Wehrmacht soldaten of World War II, so will the Israelis kill their suicidal attackers, until there are not enough to torment them.

The irony goes unnoticed — while we are hammering away to punish those who brought the horrors of last September here, we restrain the Israelis from the same retaliation. Not the same thing, of course — We are We, They are They. While we mourn and seethe at September 11th, we don't notice that Israel has a September 11th sometimes every day.

We may not notice, but it doesn't make any difference. And it doesn't make any difference whether you are pro-Israeli or you think Israel is the bully of the Middle East. If it comes to where a new holocaust looms — with or without the concurrence of the United States and Europe — Israel will lash out without pause or restraint at those who would try to annihilate their country.

The Jews will not go quietly again.

Joe McCain

thank you, Mr McCain, for your kind understanding.