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

*You should all be ashamed and it sickens me that you aren't*

Don't be a clumsy oaf, Vicky. Of course atrocities sicken me. All equally, like why Palestinians use suicide bombs in crowded Israeli spots because their religion says they have to pick up every last piece of the bodies to be buried. Or Israel shooting Palestinian children for throwing rocks. Or worse. All of them.

Stop trying to fit me into your own frame of reference. You take what you believe to be a fact and run with it until you develop your very own dossier of character, political beliefs and moral character of a person. All from some typed words that you either take out of context or assign your own context to.

Long ago I gave up on txt msg because it's even worse than typed exchanges. From these pages you have *absolutely* no idea of my character, my morals, my full beliefs and who I am. That you have once again managed to assign feelings to me that are totally out of context and invented, I bid you the fondest of good nights. That because I know I will sleep a deep, relaxed and innocent sleep while you (from the impression you have left here) will sleep dreaming of fantasies and imagined threats. Will Israeli soldiers shoot you in the night, Vicky? Will Satan stab you with his pitchfork? Or will you be lulled to sleep by your God, with heavenly choirs singing you to your rest?

Oh don't bother zoomer. It's just some sick game to Vicky. She doesn't really care about any one in the world. You should see the way she treats her friends who care about her. Anyone who behaves like that on a personal level, clearly has nothing but contempt really for all people.

And now, back to the serious discussion:


Maybe I'm being racist, but I've never quite understood why anyone would want to have sex with a man. a motorcycle, however . . .

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It's because I have Arab and Palestinian friends. Not that Mr Zoomer and his friends at Honest Reporting will believe me, but I have Jewish friends too, going back to childhood. But the Holocaust against the Jews happened 60 years ago, the genocide against Palestinians is happening now.

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Is there any reason why I should have? Have I mentioned the May blitz, the Gallipoli landings, Culloden, Pol Pot or the like? (Well, yes I have mentioned Culloden, but so what?)

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Why?
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From a sense of anger at what they're suffering. Simple.

I think you've gotyour knickers in a knot there. Zoomer, you're making less sense than usual.

>>Listen, I'll put it v-e-r-y s-i-m-p-l-y. You know I am not anti- Semitic. Do does Giford.

I'd always assumed not. But then you made a remark that can only be interpreted as anti-semitic. What else is it when you attribute peoples' assumed political views (which, actually, you are wholly ignorant of) to their Jewish background. Your best defence of this was to accuse me of supporting the murder of Palestinian children.

The issue here, Vicky, is not Israeli/Palestinian politics, nor your, my or anyone else's views on the matter. The issue is that you lumped together and dismissed three people on the basis of their ancestry.

Shall we chalk it up to a momentary error of judgement? You can re-examine your remark and we can move on.

>>What about the names- Francis Fukuyama, Zalmay Khalilzad, Linda Chavez, Paula Dobriansky, Charles Krauthammer, Joshua Muravchik, Michael O'Hanlon or R. James Woolsey?

I wasn't going to press it any more...but I can't resist...

What about the names Chomsky, Barenboim, Oz, Rosen...etc?

Nice try at distraction, though I don't think they'll lighten up any time soon.... Motorcycles good vibrations

Nah...we're happy to lighten up. Just as long as nobody says anything stupid and then tries to justify it.

Silly is , though.

See when you have sex with a motorcycle...don't you burn your on the exhaust pipe?

That Jewish former boyfriend of mine told me that when a lot of Russian Jews were coming to UK around turn of century, cos of pogroms, that when they arrived in Scotland they were often called, MacSki


I've never come across any MacSkis, so I presume they must have all changed their names to something silly. And I don't blame them.

*less*

Do you think anyone remembers a Phil Ochs song Love me, I'm a liberal. Please no judgements on last name origin. Sorry just to remind all that these tribal disputes have been going around for awhile. That being the case....Perhaps it is not TGD in itself that is the problem but any unsupport belief system.

Try sitting on the back of a Harley for three hours bring whole new meaning to pillion.

>>I've never come across any MacSkis

Nor me. He was pulling your - er - plonker.


Actually, I live in Glasgow's Jewish area. My street is named after a 1920's incident when the RN left a ship taking Russian Jews to Palestine to be torpedoed.

I used to live in what *used* to be the more downmarket Jewish area. Now it's a vibrant community with many Muslims (mostly Pakistani). When I first moved in, I was working away a lot and would have to take a lot of early morning taxis. I used to get fed up with conversations that would always go like this:
'What do you think of this area, then?'
'Yeah - I've just movd in - but I really like it!'
'Oh. Mind you...lot's of Pakis here.'
I'd grit my teeth:
'Yes. That's one of the best things.'

One morning I was picked up by this one guy.
'Oh - Hi! You must have moved in quite recently. I've lived around here all my life and I don't recognise you.'
'Aye - I'm new - but I like it here.'
'Oh, good. Mind you - you know what some people say about 'round here...'
Teeth gritted:
'I think I know what you're about to say.'
'Aye! And that's the kind of petty-minded bigotry I can't stand!'

Respect, Albie! He was a Jewish Socialist of the old school whose hobby was visiting his relatives who'd moved out to the suburbs to escape the Asians and winding them up over dinner. We became good friends.

He had a Jewish name. I can assure you, he was an ardent anti-Zionist.

>>Sorry just to remind all that these tribal disputes have been going around for awhile.

As an unreconstructed Marxist, i'll happily make the case that Israeli/Palestinian tribalism is the effect, not the cause of the conflict.

How so? The conflict by whatever name the present factions now goes by has been going on since recorded time and before. Tribes vieing for the same resources are/were in conflict. Until their world view becomes inclusive of the other tribe and enlightened selfinterest kicks in ie. we are going to endanger our primarry trbe to extinction causes and effect are irrelevent, and I think a distracton or an excuse for being/doing killers.

>>How so? The conflict by whatever name the present factions now goes by has been going on since recorded time and before.

Really?

As far as I recall from my reading of history, tribal conflict in the region was not a significant factor throughout most of the last millenium, up until the 20thC.

I seem to recall periods of superpower occupation - the Romans, The Arabs (who, by and large, were not in conflict with the Jews), The West Europeans, The Ottomans.

Then in the 20thC, Western Europe started to try to assuage its guilt for centuries of pogrom for supporting a Jewish homeland in an area that was now empty of Turks, but inconveniently still contained Palestinians. This wasn't much of a problem initially - early Zionism was egalitarian and coexisted peacefully with the native Palestinians. But post-WWII, Western Europe tried to solve its 'Jewish Problem' by clearing some more space. Thereafter, and up until the present day, Israel has become a pawn in a game of geopolitics.

Israeli/Palestinian is tribalism is a creation of the late 20thC/ early 21stC global oil economy. Isn't it?

To say 'Ooh! It's just tribalism! Is the standard cop-out for not having to think of the underlying structural issues. It's what we did in India, Rwanda, Bosnia...etc.

Apology, reductionist at heart. Tribalism was not ment as a copout, I'm familar with the history of the area and was not discounting the current/past political underpinnings. Just trying to point out that it seems to be more a case of human nature. IT seems to me the list of areas of conflict and precieved injustices can go on adinfinitum. That said I'm curious as to why it continues to happen at a costs to all involved that is so conterproductive to the survival of us all.

>>just trying to point out that it seems to be more a case of human nature.

Now define human nature, please? We, presumably, have the same nature as the Israelis and Palestinians, yet we are not, by and large, attacking our immediate neighbours with sophisticated Black Hawk helicopters or makeshift rockets. Could it perhaps be that tribal behaviour - and conflict in general - arise from the politico-economic environment that people find themselves in? In the case of Palestine, that environment is strongly dictated by the political exigencies of the oil economy. The combatants themselves don't stand to gain from the conflict, but the resultant instability is politically useful to codependent relationship between oil producers and consumers.

I warned you I'm an unreconstructed Marxist.