HAMAS a terror group based on extreme religious views and hate.
ISREAL a fascist government led by religious extremists and hate.
Decades of suppression. Decades of religious fanaticism. Decades of brainwashing. Decades of arrogance. Decades of abuse. Decades of violence. Decades of robbery.
War death and terror!!
When will these idiots ever sit down and work out a sensible solution?? Seventy odd years of stupidity and arrogance, intransigence and nasty racist crap requires intelligence, compassion and understanding; requires compromise and understanding.
Politics is the problem, Opher. Get rid of politics – and the political state, its facilitator – and you will get rid of war. And bad political policies, and heavy taxes, and injustices, and a whole lot more. And the political classes and their cronies, that like to do these things to ordinary people.
I don’t think you can get rid of politics Neil, you anachist you. Politics is life. Things do need organising and structure otherwise it’s chaos. Even bad politics is better than chaos. I think we see the results of that in failed states like Libya, Syria and Iraq, plus numerous Africa places. If you don’t have a state you get warlords and robber barons, carpet baggers and multyinationals.
Opher, you say “things need organising and structure,” but a structure such as the political state is a big negative to everyone except those at the top of it. The “sovereign” has moral privileges over everyone else. It can make laws to bind the people, but exclude its cronies from having to obey them. It can make wars at will. It can issue and de-base the currency. It can tax the people, but exclude its cronies from having to pay. Moreover, it isn’t bound by the laws it makes, and is unaccountable for the damage it causes. All the bad things we suffer under today – bad laws and political policies, wars, inflation, heavy taxes, contracts for cronies, dishonesty, arrogance, hypocrisy, unaccountability – are all baked in to the political state by its very nature.
I’ll grant you that some kind of government is necessary to provide justice, just as a referee is necessary to a football match. But it should not be based on the 16th-century system of sovereignty, that is the main cause of our problems today. That is why I have been working, in my various rants, towards a system of governance that does not include a state.
I think your analogy of a football match requiring a referee is spot on. A huge edifice of billions, that human civilisation has become, requires a massive organisation to sustain it. That requires decisions and rules, policing and organising. That is global and cannot be local.
How to do that without corruption, incompetence, nepotism and elitism is the art.
Yes, I agree. At present the system does not work. Corruption rules.
My solution is to produce a system of complete open scrutiny with severe sanctions for corrupt ways. But we do need rulers (democratically appointed) and we do need a powerful, powerful enough to control the terrorists, polluters and abusers who operate on a global setting.
Scrutiny and acountability are essential. Watch them closely and make them pay for their crimes!
But Opher, your “massive organization” that should help to sustain human civilization does not have to be centralized. Indeed, in any given place, it ought to be as localized as possible. Like the Internet, not like a political state.
The way I see things, the basic system of rules that we all should keep to is common to all; because it is founded on human nature, which is the same for all human beings. But that’s the one thing that has to be global. Everything else can be handled as far as possible at the local level. That will give many different “flavours” of communities for people to live in as they wish.
I agree that the current system does not work, at any level – local, national, global. That’s because it is based on top-down politics. Which inevitably produces dishonesty, deviousness, arrogance, hypocrisy, corruption, violations of rights, recklessness, lack of accountability and all the rest of the behaviours that characterize political ruling classes. And I agree that these behaviours ought to be seen as the crimes they are, and punished appropriately.
But I’m not at all sure that we need rulers – like kings, archbishops or other figureheads. So-called “great” leaders in history have almost always turned active, and made life hell for those around them. Nor do I see “democracy” as an appropriate way to appoint such rulers. As long as people stick to the basic system of rules, they should be able to live, both as individuals and as communities, in whatever way suits them best.
So these Isrealis have a little Kibbutz near to Gaza. They live how they like, not threatening anyone, not needing anything but some electricity and water. They grow everything. Next door to them lives HAMAS who regard them as dirty Jewish robbers.
There’s a nice little community in the South of England who work as a collective. They are self-contained. They live, work and play locally. A multinational buy up the land and decide it’s a great place to make money by setting up a nuclear dump. As there is no regulation from any government because there is no government, just local council, they dump all the radioactive material in corroding barrels that leak, because that is cheap and they just want to make money.
England is now a loosely connected group of local ‘council’. Somebody wants to build a motorway/airport/HS7. A. Who’s to stop them? B. Who puts in the money for infrastructure. C. Do we go back to horse and cart?
A multinational sets up a massive chemical plant on the banks of the Humber. It costs money to dispose of dangerous chemicals so they dump them in the estuary which poisons the water, kills all the fish, finds its way into drinking water and kills off the fishing industry. There are no overarching rules and regs because there is no central government. There is no opposition big enough to stop them. There aren’t any health and safety rules. Bopal comes to mind.
On so many levels we need a central, powerful government to unify, make decisions and control things.
We’ve seen far too much of ‘human nature’ at work in the Middle East and Ukraine, Syrial, Libya, Nigeria, Iraq,, Iran. Unfortunately violence, greed and power-madness control human behaviour.
Israel avoids making a hasty reactionary invasion of Gaza. The regime change war against Hamas, a much larger war which includes Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria.
The Hamas attack on Chag Shemini Atzeret, a feint to conceal a Hezbollah invasion from Lebanon and Syria. Flooding the Gaza tunnels learns from the Egyptian breaching of the Bar Lev Line by means of water cannons. Israeli, the Will of the Jewish people: Hamas must unconditionally surrender to the IDF.
In this regime change war, why has Israel delayed its invasion of Gaza? Answer: Israeli intelligence got burned on the 1st day of the war. If Israel commits to Gaza, maybe the Hamas attack a feint to conceal the main thrust from Lebanon.
Clearly Gaza lacks the muscle to defeat the IDF. Hezbollah Hezbollah Hezbollah. In this regime change war, why has Israel delayed its invasion of Gaza? Answer: Maybe the Hamas attack, simply a feint to conceal the main thrust from Lebanon.
Hezbollah, whose “army” has trained extensively in Syria’s Civil War, a threat that simply cannot be ignored. If Israel commits its troops to this possible Hamas feint, it opens itself to another surprise attack from Hezbollah! Hence Israel recognizes the need to gather extensive intelligence from the North, which includes Syria!
Remembering Operation Cast Lead, Olmert FUBAR. That utterly incompetent Brandan Prime Minister failed to achieve the total surrender of Hamas to Israel. An invasion of Gaza must never duplicate that utterly failed attempt to up-root Hamas.
The Ventriloquist puppet UN made vile accusations of war-crimes against the IDF. A repetition of foreign intervention which prevented a Hamas total and complete surrender to Israel, Bibi must avoid at all costs.
The Cast Lead Olmert blunder: witnessed the entrance of the Obozo the Clown enemy, who seized the Office of President of the United States. That incompetent Brandan fool passed UN Resolution 2334 prior to vacating POTUS. To achieve the unconditional surrender of Hamas, the Bibi government must negate the influence of both the EU and UN.
Well Moshe, looks like what I said is coming to pass. Until you settle the Palestinian situation you are at war.
What Hamas did was a despicable piece of barbaric terrorism. The years of suppression and persecution are no excuse.
Hopefully Isreal will respond with force to destroy Hamas without committing equally bad war crimes against the Palestinian people.
A cycle of hate and vengeance needs to be broken.
I just hope this does not escalate as it so easily could.