h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

How do I decide on what tack to take on such a question? I try and look at as many different ideas as I can absorb and decide for myself. How do I find out information about something that I have no personal knowledge of? I Google!!

http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/j/justwar.htm

The very first hit on a list of many, many sites about *A Just War*. Oi! Talk about backlog! By the time I finish this one and analyse it as best I can you and then move on the the next few you will be discussing how best to maximise return from the Mars colony.

You're right. There is so much information, so many opinions based on every single human's experience with war, power and violence. Some of the opinions and emotions are handed down from our parents (WWII).
I have seen this sentence after one of the researchers' nick. "War doesn't termine who is right - war determines who is left." I'm still pondering about that one.
Basically. I'm against war. It cannot be justified, I find. The majority of people in this world only have their miserable life to hang on to. Who are we to decide who survives and who don't?

Philosophical debate is one thing, but I tend to agree with you. We can't be so naive as to say War = bad, therefore there should be no war, but I think that as a starting point it sould colour the debate.

I see war as the ultimate disenfranchisement on both sides. Obviously for the ones being attacked, but also for those citizens who on the whole do not want to go to war on the other. Imagine if war was decided democratically, with a vote determining if war was just. I think wars would be very rare.

You have a point there.
A Danish peace-activist once said. "Just imagine they declared a war. And noone showed up"

I have been discussing with my stepson and others who thought it was justified to go to war against the regime of Saddam: Because if we didn't do anything people died in prison or by torture. If we do nothing, we would have lives on our conscience anyway.

It is a point. But I think that actively taking others peoples's lives in a war - deciding who's children og mothers should die along with fathers, sons and grandparents is a very high order and needs thinking through (and yes Denmark where I live went to war.) My opinion is that the amount of billions of dollars would have been spent wiser on education og improving life-conditions and would have been a preventive action against terrorism.

And still today I don't see the motives of going to war in Iraq other than proving ones power and securing the oil. In Egypt, SaudiArabia and Turkey (a NATO country) the regime suppresses and kills people - as in South Amercan countries, the U.S.A have supported. In Northkorea they have more dangerous mass-destructive weapons than has been found in Iraq.

The North Korea situation is an irony lost on most people it would seem. The argument now seems to be *we were too late, they have weapons that could attack us already* and instead look at nations that have theoretically backed attacks on the US recently (the primary of which should be Saudi Arabia rather than Iraq, though).

As far as replacing war with education, no one has made a fortune providing textbooks instead of munitions, unfortunately.

Hi zoomer

I'm very busy at the moment. Have to finish some w*rk before I go to Estonia on Monday. So I cannot put my mind properly to the discussion. I'll be back, though. I find it a very important issue.

See you then.

I have time. Personally I have managed to damage myself a little at work, so I will be online a little more, albeit briefly and often drugged!

Damaged at w*rk . might help you to get well - other wise take a day.

Drugged! I will read around that .

Sunday morniing typing on my laptop and sitting on an exercise ball, which is the best thing for my behind at this point. Just dropping in to say hello before I go back to bed.

Hello - I'm glad you made it. Where in the world are you?