philosophy
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Joined: 2/15/2004
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.......fair enough, i'll avoid the [ quote ][ /quote ] style of discourse. i've been asked by other posters (Merc) to use just such a format in order to thoroughly address their remarks, but to each their own.....
i see the plague as a part of the environment that a human has to navigate. Which is not to say that in another context it isn't the ship...but as we're talking about humans it'll have to be content to be the sea, or maybe a reef. So yes, in that strict semantic sense it is a source of terror to humanity.......and arguably an ally to one tribe if it decimates it's enemy's tribe. However, it is an unwieldy weapon, or an untrustworthy ally as, with a gust of wind or an errant rat it bites the other way at will.
However, terrorism seems to me to be a different kettle of fish. It aims. It selects a target......the bubonic plague is far more catholic in its tastes and will as readily eat a protestent as a papist. It does have an abiltiy to bite its own arse though, as i provokes response, retaliation.......but this is where plague and terrorism parts company. Show a plague an antibiotic, its nemesis, and it is defeated. Retaliate against terrorism and it gorws stronger. The retaliation becomes what the terrorost claimed initially as a cause. As it rallies troops, drafts recruits it distorts cause and effect. Eventually time blurs and it becomes always thus.........time locked and stalemated, terrorism creates continual warfare. And that is what it wants. for without the retaliation, without the overwhelming response it has nothing to feed on. A few die hards still bluster and posture. They may blow up the odd boat. But their lifeblood is stilled, and as they die so does their cause.
Now we come to Ulster and a shameful fact. The terrorists (both catholic and protestant) ran out of money. Why? Because Clinton stopped the flow of cash from sympathetic Irish Americans. Something Reagan, despite Thatcher most impassioned pleas, refused to do. Without that ready cash the conditions where peace could begin would have been reached a decade earlier. Hundreds died in Ulster so US politicians could secure the vote of Irish-Americans. Not a fair trade in my view, but i digress. And so the terrorism slowed to a stalemate....just insensible hate from a few die hards keeping it going.......and then, a miracle, a UK government began to talk to the terrorists.
Overwhelming force against the catholics would have brought other catholic countries into the fray.....such intemperate actions start world wars. And what was a nasty but local war would have become a nasty and uncontained war.
You are right though......discussion can only succeed in certain circumstances, but those circumstances do not include the point of a gun. Only when we become weary of fighting do we try to stop.......so, i say, become wearier earlier. Do not tolerate those who say, just one more accurate bullet.....just one more and bigger bomb. Cut them off, fight them, not in their terms, but on ground they do not know. Reduce them to the absurdities they most certainly are......and then make peace. Only by making peace do we truly defeat terrorism.......
....as for chess, well the world is replete with examples of pursuits born in one place but mastered in another. Cricket for instance, damn the Aussies....and Rugby, blasted Kiwis........Football, sodding Brazilians........Chess?
Oh, i swim well...........
Last point.......it has been said that fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity. But only if we use conventional weaponry. Attack the enemy where is unprepared and appear where you are not expected. i'm sure you recognise the reference....and a terrorist does not expect us at the discussion table. If i have seemed confrontational to you, then.......well, i have been in a sense. But only because your eloquence makes you a worthy target.....and our discourse may serve as an interesting spectacle to others..........and who knows what ideas that may give rise to?
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RE: back to Somalia? - 
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