.....said Churchill. How can anybody doubt, in our age, that negotiation is the only way forward? The rocketeers in Gaza are ineffectual and Israel's typical response is simply provocative. And it's the people who suffer - as usual. Negotiate, negotiate and negotiate - even if it doesn't work at first. It has to be the right way.

Do you get along with anybody?

Do you have a wife? You remind me of the guy who got all 'hot' on the wedding night and nothing went "Cool"...

You woke up to loud noises?

You watch your new bride drool?

It's sad if the spouse snores loud and drools.

Evict.

Leave a note?

"sorry. no excuse"

That will be good?

at dawn, change colons.

Maybe use a comma.

Well, that's a point of view, to be sure. Coherent, but laden with an unacknowledged bigotry. Ask Soviet survivors how rational the Germans were in the Battle for Berlin, to give just one example. Only if one accepts the principle that Islam makes monsters of all believers could your formulation be given any credence. This I cannot do, even as I refuse to blame the Pirke Avot for Israeli atrocities in Gaza.

This situation is not the same as that between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. No matter what you thought of the Soviets or of communism, you knew you were at least dealing with a rational actor. That's why the policy of Mutually Assured Destruction worked.

There were plenty of right wing paranoids on both sides of MAD that believed their side had to strike first because the other would eventually attack. And really, how "rational" was Stalin? The man was a fucking schizophrenic who liquified most of his officer corps as well as directing mass slaughters.

Reagan, despite the more recent canonization of him by the right was loathed for his efforts to reduce nuclear stockpiles. I have a copy of a NATO magazine called "THREAT" which included an editorial cartoon depicting a Communist vixen cooing over all the conventional arms the Soviets would be able to build with the money they saved not maintaining the nuclear arsenal. Reagan was constantly accused of being a dupe to Gorbachev.

(How rational was Reagan, suffering from Alzeheimers I leave as an excercise to the reader)

To Hamas, it is a religious duty to destroy Israel. Same is true for Hezbollah and Iran. MAD would not work in this instance, since they considered it glorious martyrdom to die fighting for their religion. They may "negotiate" to buy time or space, but in the end it will still come down to a fight to the finish.

In short, it's naive to negotiate with the likes of Hamas. It wasn't naive to negotiate with the Soviets.

This won't do. And it never works anyway. You're dehumanizing them in vastly greater numbers than is justified. Take away the substantive grievances and the supply of madmen dries up. Keep trying to kill them all and they multiply.

There are very few raving lunatics in positions of authority anywhere who are so beyond reason as to be unable to comprehend their best interests. Even Kim Jung Il and his father, despite evident meglomania have not breached the 1953 cease fire and invaded south korea or fired missiles on Japan.

The people strapping bombs to their chest aren't the ones in control. They're useful tools to those running the show, and make peace with them, and the tools get put away.

I can tell you from experience, unfortunately, that you can find people who want to eliminate another people anywhere. There is a broad range of reactionary discourse in Palestine, as there is obviously one here in the good ol' US. Words are cheap, anyway.

Don't make us into Saints, just stop killing us.

Good Celery.

To Hamas, it is a religious duty to destroy Israel. Same is true for Hezbollah and Iran. MAD would not work in this instance, since they considered it glorious martyrdom to die fighting for their religion. They may "negotiate" to buy time or space, but in the end it will still come down to a fight to the finish.

This is exactly what opponents of peace agreements with Egypt said about the Egyptians. Were they right?

In short, it's naive to negotiate with the likes of Hamas. It wasn't naive to negotiate with the Soviets.

I love how everyone tries to whitewash what was said about the Soveits back in the day to argue they were a good, kind, rational, civilized enemy and thus not comparable to the fanatical Arab hordes of today.

We were told back then that the Soviet Union was ideologically devoted to the destruction of capitalism and the West, that they would never deviate from that dogma, and that attempts to negotiate with them would be futile because they would never give up their commitment to destroying us -- exactly what you're saying about Arabs.

Don't you remember any of that? Enemies are always depicted the same way.

Sol,

I know for a fact that the translations of Irani discourse about Israel are wrong when they mistranslate the Farsi into "eliminating Israel" when a much closer, in context, rendering is that they wish "regime change" in Israel.

As I am not familiar enough with Arabic, especially that spoken in the areas around Israel, I cannot as reliably speak about, but, according to friends who do know the idioms, a similar idea is expressed. After all, Christians, Jews and Muslims are all considered "brothers" in the Koran.

There can be found, generally under rocks, clerics in all countries, the US and not just Arab/etc., who express eliminist tendencies about other peoples. Dubya, in referencing the "Crusades" implied that very thing.

The only group I've seen who speak to scattering Israelites to the four winds are Evangelical in nature, citing that action as a step to fulfilling Revelations.

sorry.

no ho.

O, hi you.

Truth has no special time of its own,

Its hour is now --- always. Albert Schweitzer

`

To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. Henry David Thoreau

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The greatest miracle is the discovery that all is miraculous. Henry Miller

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.... only a fool is scornful of the commonplace. W. Somerset Maugham

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Personal.

Pedinska.

Don't ask me questions about microbiology @ Salon?

If you do I'll ask you about the flue? Or, how is the sprain from soccer?

How would you like it if someone ask in public, "How's your sore sprained muscle groin?"

If I can find your cell phone # I'll ask your opinion about the weather in Ohio? O, ho you.