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soulcircle
Registered User
(12/24/03 12:18 am)
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DIPLMOACY / What if War Wasn't an Option?
Hello Guests and All,

In our own families, friendships, communities, on this board and in the world, what if meanness isn't an option?

What if civility is the very atmosphere of life, the heartbeat within it?

Dave

Edited by: soulcircle at: 12/24/03 12:19 am
etzchaim
Registered User
(12/24/03 7:30 pm)
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Re: DIPLMOACY / What if War Wasn't an Option?
Then you couldn't reward terrorism, dude. Think about it. It wouldn't be an option. People would like turn over the people who want to kill others over ideologies and they could be arrested before they went out and killed anyone. It would be great. We could even arrest people in the CIA.

We'd have to then sit down and negotiate at that point, and reign in the bullsh't that governments and people with power do (not just our own, y'know, which is bad enough as it is, or even the Bad Ladies, who wreak their own devestation) and figure out a better way to interact with each other on a national, organizational and cultural/religious basis and it would take a good amount of compromise on everyones part.

If you could organize this, I'd be so impressed with you that I'd even kiss your footsteps and walk in your shadow.

I'm taking slow, realistic steps, meself.

soulcircle
Registered User
(12/27/03 11:53 am)
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thanks for an excellent post etzchaim!!!!
the one lack in the world is Vision, there are no hopeless situations, only hopeless people

~~~paraphrased from Chicken Soup for the Soul for Nurses

then Yogananda has said (and I am looking for a closer representation of the real quote, the following is paraphrased.....

While men say Impossible! the pioneers steadily quietly pursue their goal proving the impossible, possible.

Yes in the joy and beauty of life the overwhelming conflicts, causes and conditions leading to violent millenia of horror are rejected out of hand, withstood and outlasted as humanity, vision guided, imagines ALL the people living in co-operation and compassion and understanding

chrisparis
Registered User
(12/29/03 1:02 pm)
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Re: thanks for an excellent post etzchaim!!!!
Dear Soul,

Neither governments nor corporations have souls. I always find it difficult to deal with anyone saying the find death counts in the millions acceptable (or in the thousands, or hundreds, for that matter), and, say, wasn't Maddy Albright a democratic appointee? Hmmmmm.

So, to ramble on a bit, only individuals have souls, and, when they band together, they have the positive responsibility of seeing to it that their government or corporation or whatever doesn't sacrifice decency toward other living things to expediency.

Here's the trouble though. Communism doesn't recognize the existence of the soul. It doesn't recognize the need for decency. It claims that it recognizes historical necessity, and, in the name of that necessity, any action, any brutality, is permissible. Read Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom" to find out why socialism inevitably leads, sooner or later, to fascism.

Now Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, and various others, have been willing to do whatever was necessary to further the revolution (one is tempted to imagine them in a sitting room with snifters of cognac saying "We will have to wade through a river of blood, but don't worry comrades, it won't be ours!" and Stalin thinking to himself, "well, it certainly won't be mine, at any rate!"). Saddam and his minions fed people feet first into plastic shredders, for God's sake, and forced the locals to watch so they would know what would happen to them if they stepped out of line.

People like that NEVER back down. They respect nothing but force. And until they have been forcibly stopped, they are a threat to their neighbors and anyone else within reach. AND their reach gets longer each day.

So, I have come to the conclusion that the US is basically well intentioned. I think we often make mistakes, and prop up dictatorships around the world, but I really believe we AREN'T out for world domination. I think we would just as soon not have to garrison troops in Iraq or Afghanistan. But I also think we, as a country, have the right and obligation to defend ourselves. My life changed on September 11th, as did many others I'm sure. I have come to believe that, just as we look with regret at having missed the opportunity to intervene in the slaughter in Europe under the Nazis, we would have looked with regret at not having intervened in Iraq, and Afghanistan. Somtimes force IS the only way, and those whom we have drawn out of tyranny and terror, I think, would agree with that.

bsjones
Registered User
(12/29/03 1:38 pm)
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ezSupporter
Re: chrisparis' comments
Well said. I will think about the points you made.

redpurusha
Registered User
(12/29/03 2:00 pm)
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Re: thanks for an excellent post etzchaim!!!!
Well said Chrisparis. It would have been great if the US helped free all the nations and people who were under the control of Moscow in the beginning, by force even, instead of letting them erode away and be puppets for nearly half a century.

soulcircle
Registered User
(12/29/03 5:35 pm)
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you might want to do a little more homework
Hi Guests and All,

you might want to do a little more homework and less watching of Disney and GE owned commercial TV news

you might want to take your points to the other countries and help our reputatiion as the most hated country in the world

immediately following 9/11 we had the goodwill and deep concern of much of the world, two years later we are despised

you all can start by reading Dark Alliance by Gary Webb, award winning former journalist, especially those of you in L.A. because, you will see detailed the rise of Freeway Ricky who the U.S. supplied handily with crack, millions and millions of doses.

denial becomes none of you, and reinforces my disdain for "spirituality" aka heads in the sand of meditation ivory castles.

as we speak the obscenely richest fresh from a tax cut, gain another trillion each year or two from your tax dollars.
and some of you are without health insurance. the one payer system of Canada's health insurance would save those of us who are covered and our emploters $800/yr and that savings can insure everyone not insured......get real

the "welfare" of socialism and communism is one thing
the welfare to the corporations and billionaires is not to be beaten by any "welfare queen." And to keep feeding the obscenely rich their annual or biannual trillion is the sole purpose of democrats and republicans alike

and is the driving force that exposes our youth to their death and illnesses in numerous foreign countries

those of you who like me have a teen or two will be faced with universal service and the draft soon

you all don't even realize that general motors and U.S. politicians built up Hitler (our on the scene point man against the Soviets) and Roosevelt remained fond of him up til two years before war, and Prescott Bush did his banking and supplying (Hitler's) even after Dec 7th 1941

and please if any of you realized the following please let me know:

Germans very concerned with the rise of the Nazis in Germany
very concerned, came to Washington for years before WW II. There concerns fell on deaf ears

There is one book that is a, or THE, must read, The People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. Every unpleasant word of it is a must read. The publisher's only experience of a book selling more each year over its 21 years, and reaching 1,000,000 in sales without a marketing program.

A new thread is being opened for those who have read this book carefully.

Oh what a delusion, oh what a good discussion

Dave

chrisparis
Registered User
(12/30/03 8:08 am)
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Re: you might want to do a little more homework
Dear Dave,

Why don't YOU do a little homework? How about reading Fredrich Hayek's short but masterful "The Road to Serfdom" which explains, from the point of view of an economist, why socialism leads invariably to fascism? Hayek new what he was talking about, having fled from nazism, and having watched the attempt to import socialism into Great Britain in the years folowing WWII.
How about taking a look at "Witness" by Whittaker Chambers, in which he discusses his involvement, as a member of the communist underground, in the recruiting of highly placed members of the US Government into soviet intelligence apparati run by the 4th directorate of soviet military intelligence? This is information now verified by the declassified Venona transcripts of intercepted soviet intelligence traffic, and by documnents released from the KGB archives after the collapse of the Soviet Union. How about reading "Radical Son" by David Horowitz, where he describes his life as a member of the communist party and infiltrator of the campus radical movements of the '60's with the aim of aligning them more closely with marxist ideology?
I pointed out in my earlier posts that we should all regret that we didn't involve ourselves earlier to stop the slaughter in nazi Germany. The left liberals of today would certainly agree that this was a deplorable lapse in our government's foreign policy, but then turn right around and deplore our interference when we stop the slaughter in Iraq. You can't have it both ways Dave. Nor can you expect to be taken seriously when you extol the writings of a guy who rights glowingly of the dictatorship in Cuba, as Zinn does.
"Historical" writers who take the side of socialism/communism are a dime a dozen these days, Dave, and many are highly paid high ranking academics on American college campuses (isn't it funny how so many who support the revolution of the proletariat are so F'ing wealthy that the only time they even see the proletariate is when they need their toilets unstopped or their beemers repaired?). But just because you can find 10 "credentialed historians" who say that zionism equals imperialism or that capitalism equals repression of the workers doesn't mean it's true. Look at germany in the 1930's (again). The only "history" being taught under the nazis included a firm belief in the historicity of the ages of Fire and Ice.
Oh, and the draft? Do you want to try to tell me there was no conscription in the USSR? Do you want to tell me there was no conscription in any of these Arab states you seem to have such boundless sympathy for? Get real, man!
Sorry if a touch of hostility has crept in here, Dave, but I have become well and truly disgusted with the whole "America sucks, American policy is imperialistic expansionism, Arabs are goods, Jews are bad" line of turd. Life here in the US is vastly superior to life most other places, that's why people are willing to risk there lives just to get here. Life here is freer, and even our very poor are better off than many peole living in other parts of the world. If you don't believe that, try going to live somewhere else. And, although it is true that many parts of the earth are hell-holes teeming with poverty and ignorance and disease, the answer isn't to make the US an equal hell-hole (or a socialist workers paradise, as such hell-holes are often called). The answer is to help them draw themselves up to the point where their standard of living is as good as ours. Even PY said this.

Edited by: chrisparis at: 12/30/03 2:40 pm
bsjones
Registered User
(12/30/03 10:23 am)
Reply
ezSupporter
Re: you might want to do a little more homework
i admit i don't know a whole lot about this stuff, compared say to soulcircle and chriparis, but i will venture to say that:

there are two sides to this issue.

:)

Ringbearer7
Registered User
(12/30/03 11:37 am)
Reply
Re: you might want to do a little more homework
"you might want to do a little more homework and less watching of Disney and GE owned commercial TV news"

And you might want to don your tin-foil cap and cancel your subscription to World Workers Party Daily.

"There is one book that is a, or THE, must read, The People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. Every unpleasant word of it is a must read. The publisher's only experience of a book selling more each year over its 21 years, and reaching 1,000,000 in sales without a marketing program."

Perhaps because it was required reading for students in the Soviet Union? Zinn is by no means an unbiased source of historical information.

"Oh what a delusion, oh what a good discussion"

Perhaps you are living under a few delusions yourself?


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