[extropy-chat] Conflict was: ENOUGH already

[Russell Evermore]

Harvey Newstrom writes:

> Sadly, you can switch the words "Palestinian" and "Israeli" to make the
> other side's opposing argument.

In full awareness that we are simplifying (or oversimplifying) a very
complex subject, I can see how an aversion to preemptive military doctrine
could well lead to that very conclusion.

An Israeli helicopter vaporizes a house where a suspected bomb-maker lives,
but he's out buying a bag of nails at the local hardware store at the time
and his wife runs a daycare. A bomb goes off on a packed transit bus - on
which three Israeli soldiers happen to be riding.

It ain't pretty, and it ain't clear, and it ain't going to get any better
until we face the core issues:

-You can't force a small group of people to vacate their homes in order to
make room for a much larger group, however  persecuted historically (unless
you kill every last one of the original tenants and fudge the history books
to erase their memory - not possible in the information age)

-You can't have one population on a planet running the
science/evolution/progress meme while others are still attempting to run the
superstition/creation/stasis meme. One must eventually destroy the others,
or force them to evolve and toe the line, which amounts to the same thing.
In my sadder moments, I have felt that the Earth may one day become a
hellish place, but that those who prefer to not live in hellish places may
have long since abandoned it for brighter shores.

Consider the words of the late Ayotolla Khomeini (more popular now than ever
http://www.howardbloom.net/islam.htm )

"Islam does not allow peace between... a Moslem and an infidel."

"...Moslems have no alternative... to an armed holy war against profane
governments. ...Holy war means the conquest of all non-Moslem territories.
...It will ...be the duty of every able-bodied adult male to volunteer for
this war of conquest, the final aim of which is to put Koranic law in power
from one end of the earth to the other.  "The leaders of the USSR and of
England and the president of the United States are ...infidels.... ...Every
part of the body of a non-Moslem individual is impure, even the hair on his
head and his body hair, his nails, and all the secretions of his body. Any
man or woman who denies the existence of God, or believes in His partners
[the Christian Trinity], or else does not believe in His Prophet Mohammed,
is impure (in the same way as are excrement, urine, dog, and wine)[sic]."

RE
nanowave at shaw.ca