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

As US Secretary of State Colin Powell arrived in Israel in a bid to start crucial ceasefire talks today (12/4/02), President George W Bush maintained Ariel Sharon "is a man of peace" - while a Saudi princess donated her Rolls-Royce, a woman gave up her dowry and other Saudis poured millions of dollars into a fund in aid of families of Palestinian martyrs.

When will this lunacy end?

I think the loonacy will end when people stop agreeing when the US government decides what is wrong or right, good or evil.

Where does an 800 pound gorilla sit?

In it's cage where it occasionally attacks what it doesn't unterstand. Then it runs back to the familiar saftey of it's cage and tries to look innocent again.

Hee That made me laugh Until later....
BCNU - Crescent

Well, I guess that lines the US up with the genocidal Israeli's pretty well.
A plague on both their houses.

Let's face it, neither country cares about the genocide.
Sharon has been wanted by the International Courts for years for what he did in the Lebanon. He is a truly evil man.
The American government is just continuing its foreign policy, which basically consists of bankrolling other people to do its own dirty work, so it doesn't look like the bullying, hypocritical bunch of imperialists that they really are.

Not that this whole thing makes me feel angry, defeated or anything like that of course.
Especially when our reporters tell us that instead of attempting to stop this lunacy, our leader seems more concerned with David Beckham's foot. Oh what a wonderful world we live in.

Who was it who said that satire was dead when Kissenger got the Nobel Peace Prize?

Bush is busy dancing on its grave, not only with the above remark but with his criticisms of the Zimbabwe election as "flawed". (He's quite right, of course.....)

TTFN

Otto

There can be no doubt that Sharon is a despicable man who has caused a huge amount of damage the the stability of the Middle East, with tremors around the world. But genocide is not the kind of word you can use lightly. Do you have any evidence that it is being committed against the Palestinians?

Hey, he only meant it was 'flawed' because Mugabe got caught...

Well that's half the problem isn't it. No-one has been allowed anywhere near the place, and the lack of respect for human life the Israeli army showed when they gunned down foreign protestors doesn't lead me to believe that they have been very restrained on their enemy.
You're right Mr Naples, that you shouldn't use that sort of thing lightly, but from what I've seen/read, it honestly suggests that this has been at least attempted.
Just looked up the definition in the OED, and it said 'The mass extermination of human beings, esp. of a particular race or nation'.
I'm sure you've seen the reports, and we are are pro-Israeli country, so our press are bound to give the reports a slightly biased perspective. So what do you reckon - is it too stronger word to describe what's happened?

*goes to see what John Pilger has to say*

Can't get onto John Pilger's site. I can't say I know much about Israeli persecution of Palestians, Lettuce. For some reason I got it into my head to play devil's advocate here - 'do you have evidence?' was more overbearing than I would have liked. (that's a sheepish grin, for those who haven't guessed)

No, as I said before, you're probably right. To label it genocide is a bit strong I suppose. It just sickens me what is going on over there, and to have the leaders of the so-called 'civilised' Western world stand by and watch or even support the perpetrators makes me very angry, then I make generalisations.
So it's good to have someone to stop me ranting and raving as if what I say is set in stone.

Warning: rant follows.

And, as usual, not a word about the fact that when the Arabs start playing hardball with their own people, or when they use the Palestinians to provoke the Israelis, they are the ones who get to slink back into their cages and claim innocence.
This is not a game.
This is war.
It has been since Chaim Weizman stepped off the boat in Palestine.
You can talk about martyrs all you want. It's fun, I know.
You can talk about genocide all you want. It's fun, I know.
But the holy war is coming from the side that keeps sending it's own teenagers to immolate themselves, the Arabs and the Muslims.
The Israelis are Jews. When they don't fight, they're called cowards.
When they do fight, they're called cowards.
Well, Sharon told Arafat where to go and he's been telling Bush where to go, too.
I believe the above Bush comment was taken out of context, because as much as I dislike the man, he's not as stupid as you want him to be.

A whole younger generation of Israeli, soldiers and civilians, is standing up to Sharon and the remains of the British Mandate generation and saying,"When will this end?"
A whole younger generation of "Palestinians" is trying to stand up to their elders, like that imposter Arafat and the Islamic Jihad, and saying,"When will this end?"
Get the old guys to go play checkers together and let the young people do the talking.

And don't give me that guff about dowries and Rolls-royces.
The Arab world commmunity has had fifty years to donate something they won't give even now: assimilation for the Palestinians and peace to Israel.
Do your homework. The Kuwaitis made life very difficult for the Palestinians in their country after the Gulf War. Now, Kuwait is kissing and making up with Iraq, the very people they accused the Palestinians of collaborating with. Little bit of a double standard there.



end of rant.

I think the Kuwaiti kissing and making up with Saddam is a little more to do with threatened US aggression in the Middle East, as is the Iranian peace treaty with Iraq of recent months.
I think they are all figuring that the enemy (Iraq) of my enemy (the US) is my friend.
Cut this cake anyway you want, TR, the US isn't popular in the Moslem world. In fact, it appears to be less popular than Saddam in many places. Soon it'll only be your old mate Ghaddaffi who isn't in bed with Saddam.

It is a ghastly fact that a genuine Israeli man of peace, Yitzhak Rabin, was murdered by a Jewish extremist a few years ago. One of the worst acts of intransigent treachery, up there with Mahatma Gandhi almost.

Tonsil, what about the latest peace proposal that the Saudis knocked up? It was aimed directly at Israelis, straight over Sharon's head. So you're right, it really is up to the Israeli people to decide - they made the wrong choice last time.

The settlements are negotiable, the Golan Heights are not.
The Arabs are in no position to make up peace settlements for territory that they lost when they went to war.
See, they lost. Remember?
One itty bitty Israel, seven Arab nations, and Israel won.
Everybody seems to forget that.
So the Palestinians and the Arab League cheat. They are the one's who abrogate treaties.
They want Israel gone.
No tolerance.
No peace.
No fun.

The Moslem world, when you are not paying attention to it, is busy scratching at it's contituent members. There is Islam lite, Islam medium, Islam extra crispy, and classic Islam. They've got kingdoms rubber-stamped on the map for them by the British and the French, in some cases as recently as 1962, that encompass a whole universe of diverse cultures, religions and languages that didn't get to rule or form leagues or have their religious leaders on international television. A civilized Muslim country, like Turkey, is one that uses a clean sword for executions.
The Moslem world is not as united as it seems, as shown by the two recent conclaves, the Saudi one and the Malaysian one. Afghanistan is not the only place to have glorified warlords.

end of second rant.

Jack - I remember being deeply depressed when Rabin was murdered, because progress seemed to have been made and things were finally moving. After that it seemed fairly clear that all hell would break loose. It has.

I don't think it is fair to say that nobody says anything when the Palestinians are bombing Israelis. I shake my head and wish for peace after every atrocity. It is really not possible to attribute blame, we are too far down the road for that. The only useful thing to do is to find a peaceful diplomatic solution. It is a mammoth task agaisnt the backdrop of terrorist activity and retalliation. I don't have the answer for how to acheive it, except to say that genuine peacemongers are needed in power. Sharon doesn't seem to be one of them. For that matter, neither does Arafat.

On radio 4 this morning there were some eyewitness reports from (I think) the red cross who were pointing out that ambulances were being targeted. Bodies were being buried in mass graves and even transported away from the area to be disposed of elsewhere. I cannot vouch for the veracity and lack of bias of the BBC, but if this really was an eyewitness report then it sounds like genocide to me.


k in sombre mood.

>he's [Bush] not as stupid as you want him to be.<
WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG
He's not as SMART as I'd like him to be.
'And to the C students, I say you to can be president of the United States!'* I find his stupidity not comforting, not a sign that he is one of us, but very scary in very real way.
Dubya went to Yale and Princeton, yet when he came to power he couldn't name the leaders of Pakistan or India, two of the seven countires with access to atomic weapons!
Not as dumb as I'd like him to be...sheesh.

*From his inaugural speech.