Israel and Syria officially confirm indirect talks

No, Pizzaman. I also want to speak about the WMD thread. When they were talking about WMD, the first thing I thought of is that I would protect my family however I needed to. I cannot think of any realistic scenario in which I would use nuclear weapons. Logically, if you are defending your own family, you are doing that directly with the aggressor attacking you, so there should not be any innocent civilians. In the WMD thread my response should have probably just been "No". It is just in certain areas, I am a little shaky on how I would handle it. I don't want to argue with anyone, I'll be the first to admit, I don't always have all the right answers.

Let's say, what if you had absolute intelligence that another country was planning a nuclear strike on America in one hour. Not President Bush intelligence, but you knew without a doubt they were sending over a massive bomb that would kill 75% of the people in America. You knew the nuclear bomb was coming from a certain city, but not precise location. Let's just say there were no other options on the table, would you drop a nuclear bomb on that city to save America? I'm not saying that it would be morally correct, but would you consider it?

Let's take for example, true story in which there was an Israeli operation in which they caught and killed a terrorist. They did a magnificient job, took all the precautions they could, and no civilians were hurt. This particular terrorist had killed many innocent civilians and would have killed more. What if operation didn't go as planned and they accidently killed a civilian? Would it have been better to let the terrorist go, and allow him to kill 10 more innocent civilians on his own?

Let's pretend that somehow you had absolute knowledge of 911 before it happened. I know this is unrealistic scenario, but just go with it. Let's say the 19 hijackers were in a building with one innocent civilian. Let's say that the only way to stop 911 from happening would be to blow up entire building with the one innocent civilian. I think this would not be right, because of the innocent civilian, but what about the other 3000?

What if you are fighting a war in which people want to kill you, and they are constantly using civilians as shields? Should you fight back and take the chance that you could kill innocent civilians? Should you just raise the white flag, lay down and die? What do you do?

I don't know Pizzaman, I am not saying I have the answers to any of these questions.

 

What i truely find disgusting is 4000 of our solsiers deal and more then 150,000 innocent iraqi civilians, but i guess this issue is nothing because it is something that billyboy oreilly says is patriotic and morale boosting lol.

 

Only a moralizing statist would argue that a crime can exist without a victim.

If the shoe fits...

I'm still not seeing where I posted that I support child porn. For the 3rd, or 4th time, care to reference that?

The absence of proof, is not proof. That is a logical fallacy. It's called arguing a negative.

Yes, it musn't stand. NorthPointMan is here to save the day! Copying and Pasting to protect humanity! Up Up and Away!

Actually, if you go back and read my post, I was asking Rebecca about who has consent. I haven't determined that kids do or do not have consent. As stated in the polygamy thread, it is very difficult to find intelligent discourse on this subject, particularly on this board.

Back to victimless crimes, what sort of moron thinks a crime can exist without a victim?

Mary Ruwart's position on child porn is that it is like prohibiting drugs or prostitution. If you criminalize possession, you drive it underground into secret and dangerous places. You create an economic incentive that could lead to children being kidnapped to be forced to create it, or for poor parents to sell photos of their own children. If I understand her position correctly, she's not saying make it legal, she's saying decriminalize it.

At the end of the day, people somewhere are going to make crack, whore themselves and make kiddie porn. Somewhere someone is going to kill someone, or smash their car into a tree drunk driving. These are unfortunate, wrong and preventable, but life is not perfect, and just because someone makes a law about something, doesn't cease to make it exist. And Ruwart's position is pretty consistent with radical libertarian thinking, that there are numerous reasons why people do illegal things, and economic incentives are one of those reasons. You remove the economic incentive (or dumb it down) and time and time again, it has shown to reduce the level and criminality (use of coercion or force) to create it.

So no, Ruwart's position won't end child porn. But apparently neither has law. But based on numerous examples in other criminalized industries, her position might save one kid a year. Or 10. or 100.

Libertarians generally seek to uncomplicate things. Recently, the Hannah Montana star did a photo spread that some considered kiddie porn. She did it in a professional role as an entertainer, it was artsy and (I thought) fairly classy. But because of her age, people are claiming that it was exploitative.

Your position of absolute statist authoritarianism and tyranny would probably prefer she be locked up in jail? Or would you make exceptions?

Because the libertarian position says there aren't a lot of needs for exceptions, if you deal with negative rights instead of positive rights (obligations).

She consented, she did it, and she reaped a ton of publicity and notoriety for it. But if I follow your line of thinking, it's a crime.

Just log off. Or put me on ignore. It's not that hard. Take some personal responsibility for yourself!

 

Ah, yes, Guerilla's game; repeated rounds and rounds and rounds of avoidance and distortion until it just proves exhaustive. It comes down to this.

Guerilla had this to say about Mary Ruwart:

I read Guerilla's praise of Ms. Ruwart's philosophy, read Ms. Ruwart's position on child porn; and felt this way about it:

And it shouldn't require the Code of Hammurabi to know how to say, WHAT? But rather than condemning it, Guerilla praised Ruwart's position. This is in line with his philosophy respecting young teens being impregnated by middle aged men: so long as it's consensual, it's "victimless," and, in his words, "who are we to stand in the way?"

Let's just cut through the crap.

Should child pornography, utilizing children who are not "coerced," be illegal?

 

You already claim to have my answer on this. Please provide proof or retract your claim.

 

The question wasn't to you, since we all know how you feel. Again:

And this is but one reply made in support of your view. So, to the question, should child porn be illegal, despite your volumes of chaff, the answer in your case appears to be, "no."

And as much as reading and responding to your bilious nonsense is [note: sarcasm ON] eminently pleasurable [note: sarcasm OFF], the question is therefore posed to others. Should child porn be outlawed?

 

How do you "all know how I feel"? Have you polled the entire forum? Do you have the quote that backs up your claim of what "I feel"?

How did I say no? I never replied to the question with an authoritative yes or no. So I am curious to know how you make the claim that you know what I feel or think.

This is a good example of what I am talking about when I say that this argument cannot be argued intelligently on this forum.

I think you will find a great many, if not all people believe child pornography to be evil and disgusting. But that doesn't address how we deal with it. Outlawing something has never eliminated it. You can make laws until you are blue in the face, and crime will still continue to occur. People will still want porn and child porn.

The question is how do we address opportunities and incentives to create child porn, not how we retroactively punish people who create or hold it, and then get caught.

You want to punish people who do wrong and get caught.

Dr. Ruwart is talking about stopping people from doing wrong in the first place, by addressing human nature (good and bad).

As far as your grandstanding, slander, false accusations, canards and other rhetorical tools, I just explained to a friend how you purposely have exploited emotional arguments to make me look like I favor child abuse, and how desperate and pathetic that makes you. That your obsession on this forum for the last several weeks in particular, is to charge me with supporting the most evil of acts, only because of your personal vendetta with me, and your incapacity to argue outside your limited perspective.

Continue to climb on your little soapbox and demand everyone in this forum denounce child abuse, porn, rape etc until you are satisfied. Of course, we know you will never be satisfied, because then you won't have an excuse to pursue other posters relentlessly attributing false positions to them, and hounding them into submission.

You chafed at the suggestion that you have emotional problems. Well, what do you call someone who claims he doesn't want to argue, or that he gives up, or that he is sick of arguing, but then continues to come on this forum, day after day to continue the argument and the harassment of one or two posters?

Your obsession with me is disturbing to say the least. At least I am capable of discussing a variety of topics, instead of seeking out every post you make and then wasting endless hours weekly searching, cutting and pasting.

Get a life. For your own sake.

 

what happened to Syria/Israel talks?

 

Uh, Guerilla, being preached to to get a life by a guy who appears to have no job and is on this forum more than any others I know of - virtually 24/7 - is tragic, actually, not even laughably so.

The rest, I'll have to leave it up to others to respond to, as the links to the comments, the comments themselves, have been provided in spades. As I said, by my unfortunate experience with you, your game is to exhaust others from continuing the reply, by all manner of bad faith means, and in this, at least for now, you've succeeded.

 

You are right here as well. I apologize for continuing the off-topic.

 

can you two stick to the topic. israeli-syria is a lot more intresting than NPT-G

 

Please see the above post. I do apologize for continuing this off-topic.

 

I can stick to topic. I doubt my friend can though. He's not here to talk about foreign policy, just to stalk me.

The Berkley socialists have derailed any chance of peace by obsessively forum stalking.

I'm not the guy stalking at 7:00 AM PST. LOL

I actually make a very nice living online, I thought you were teaching karate to cops? Where do you find all of this internet time each day?

Uhm, so you back down from your false claims, and I win again.

Hey guys, this can get back on track now that NorthPointStalkMe is willing to relent. My apologies. But I'm warning you, the stalker can resurface at anytime, so it may happen again.

 

Uh, yeah.

Guerilla: Total Posts: 7,247 (17.34 posts per day)
NPT: Total Posts: 4,457 (4.95 posts per day)

At any rate, to reality, Imad and Pizzaman have both rightfully asked myself and Guerilla to keep to topic. Despite Guerilla's obvious continued baiting, I do not wish to participate in walking the road he wishes to continue paving in bad faith. Anyone interested in what we are discussing has ample material to make their own evaluation.

Paul

 

Imad, Pizzaman: Nice call.

Since posting early in this thread I've made a point of staying away.

The attacks within this thread early on, speak to the difficulty of achieving peace through some kind of talks sponsored or assisted in Turkey.

My experience is that in the goal to achieve some kind of furthering of a peace effort....the sides look to areas of mutual benefit.

I guess peace everywhere is the big one.

The disputes are quite obvious. Somehow in an effort to craft a "deal" or an agreement the weight of the issues that are of mutual benefit have to outweigh the more obvious distrust and anger at one another.

Within the govts. of Syria and Israel there will be individuals or groups that don't want peace....and of course there are groups outside of Israel and Syria that don't want peace.

It will be incredibly tough.

I think the tone of posts above in this thread speak to how incredibly tough it will be.

 

I think they already have an agreement otherwise they would not announce this. They are probably very close.
The opposition to peace is in a few direction
a-there are groups that oppose peace because of fear for their security
b-the are groups that peace will reduce their power
c-there are groups that see the chance for peace as hopeless
d-there are groups that want to expand and are not satisfied with the amount of land that they are going to get.
Here are my strategy
a-we must show people in group an all the steps to be taken to guarantee their security.
b-we must provide the people on group b a new way to keep their political power and defeat them [politically] if they are not willing to make the adjustments
c-these are the majority on both side and we must give them hope and support them
d-these people will lose.
There are examples of all groups on both sides and also from inside and outside.
As I have been saying for about a year, I think most of the issues are resolved and now they are trying to prepare the general public
it is shameful that making peace has become a liability for the politicians on both side. What I would like to remind both sides is that there is no other alternative. They have tried their ideas for 60 years.

 

i break this in two groups
if there is no other alternative and the treat is Immanent then it is self defense.
if the treat is not immanent then i have to do whatever to save the innocent people.
using an f16 to kill a person is overdoing it in all target killing and there is no
way around that.
and nobody using their children as a shield. how do the pilot knows from f16 cockpit anyway.
and if you accept it from one side then you have to accept it from both side.

 

I believe there won't be real peace in the Middle East, without solving the real core problem which is the conflict between Palestinians/Israeli, when the Arabs fought Israel in its first days, it was in reply for the Zionists aggression, and stealing Palestine, and in solidarity with Palestinians, separated peace contracts, with Egypt, then Jordan, and maybe other will join later, are mainly to isolate Palestinians from their Arabian, and Islamic depth, such contracts are achievable, as happened between Israel and the Governments of both Jordan and Egypt, but a natural peace, between Israel and the people of these countries does not really exist, because, the strong bonds that connect Palestinians to other Arabs is much more stronger than nationalities.

A natural peace, is very hard to achieve and I won't be exaggerating if I said its close to impossible, not because the nature of Arabs are against peace, but because Israel is not natural, the way it was established, and the years since it was established till this moment, says so, its a regime, that depends heavily on force in its existence since day 1 of its existence, and even before, violence breeds violence, and without violence, Israel would not have existed,

in addition for being a foreign entity in a different medium, right in the Middle of the two wings of the Arabian nation, the African, and Asian wings.

 

Imad , i hope there is peace between the palestinians and the isrealis. If that happens i hope they will also appologize to the lebanese for what the plo did to lebanon. It seems like no one from the middle east is able to acknowledge or talk about this but in the 1970's the plo started setting up illegal checkpoints all over beirut and were killing anyone that wasnt for their cause or was shiit or christian. This is what started the lebanese civil war of 30 years and allowed syria to get a foothold into lebanon, but i think that they will forget about that.


I agree with guerilla on this issue. You can outlaw drugs but it wont stop the a certain entity from bringing it into the country to break up the black panthers would it?

By the way who was this powerful entity?

 

There were some who believed as you do, and some others who have 100% different views, to be fair, both should been heard. Lebanon, have different parties, and many political leaders, these days, there were no PLO there, yet they were very close to another civil war, some argue, that its Hizballah now, and Syria, some others say its the other parties, and USA, and we have seen, how USA pushed its destroyer to close to the Lebanese coasts.. and so on. Its without the interfere of Arabs, at the very last moment before it turn to a civil war ( some fights took place already), else we would have witnessed another civil war in Lebanon, you could argue and said its Hizballah this time.

Palestinians are not Lebanese, and when they are "forced" on Lebanon, of course it created sensitivity, same as what happened in Jordan, I m not very familiar in the Lebanese civil war, for sure I need to look more into it and study it, I only have watched parts of the documentary "Lebanese War" and I have seen some Lebanese who lived the war, and been parts of it saying something different, one of them was George Hawi who been assassinated recently, he witnessed that Yasser Arafat was trying to get the opposite parties closer, and for long he tried to keep the PLO out and not support one side on the account of another, even if that side has supportive views to the Palestinians,

in Lebanon, Palestinians felt they are not safe, and that there are hands cooperating with the Israelis to attack their camps there, it was proven right, directly after Palestinians fighters withdraw, the Kata'ib, cooperated with Israel, committed one of the ugliest massacres in the history of the conflict against Palestinians civilians in Sabra and Shatilla.

btw, did they know who assassinated Elie Hobeika? or did they know even who assassinated Bashar Al-Jmayel?

and did it bring "peace" to the Israeli Northern borders, as the Israelis been saying that time, its the "Palestinians terrorists" there who launch attacks, and if they kicked out of Lebanon, there will be peace.