Soi, you're OK with social groups forcing their morals on other social groups, as long as they don't use the governemnt to do so? YOu believe in oppression by mobs, rather than government?
Should the government step in?
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Soi, you're OK with social groups forcing their morals on other social groups, as long as they don't use the governemnt to do so? YOu believe in oppression by mobs, rather than government?
I guess I question anything I read in the media, as a sort of mission in life. I'd hate the dogs on top in any fight, because I ultimately value the right the be different more than anything else.
Are you one of Obama's cadre of community organizers, so much so that you have to win every point in this game?
If I'm carrying a gun, and wearing leather leggings, padded arm protectors, and steel-toed boots, struttin' down the street in my ghetto, I really just don't need to kick every dog that barks. Obama is a fascist controlled by the Chicago mob, with it's Las Vegas lines of influence which dovetail with our militarist neocons including Bush and the whole Goldman-Sachs group of financiers. If you can't see something wrong with an America like that, you're truely despicable. But because you've bought the whole context of lies and sincerely believe you're in the right, I'd like to give you the benefit of the doubt.
What tells the story here is that our present "government" does have all the weopons, and all the protections of law, and the use of schools for disseminating a stinking pile of propaganda. . . . and they still feel they have to kick dogs like me who just yap.
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Well the media is always supect to some degree or another. However in this case I see it as the minority not allowing/wanting anyone to be different from them.
The greater population is not forcing this sect of Judaism to conform to their beliefs. They are just trying to prevent this sect from enforcing their views on everyone else.
I'm just aqsking you to face the consequences of your positions. I suppose it is hard to do.
OK, so I was off enlarging my rant while you posted this. You and GoJazz are hitting a sweet spot with me if you're saying the force of government is actually coming down on the side diminishing human liberty, with a government-favored sect getting a lot of room for harassing a kid on the street who is "different". I have seen some situations where the media was giving coverage like this, but from what I saw I thought it was being reported all wrong. But, in the larger context, I believe the government of Israel feels it's being squeezed at peril of it's very existence, and a lot of the people over there just have to cope with the extreme things being done by all the contentious factions somehow.
The thing that really sticks out in my mind was the day an Israeli friend took me into the Arab Quarter of Jerusalem with a group of tourists. I wandered over into an area called "The Pinnacle of the Temple", really just a section of the old city wall of Jerusalem that had a corner about two hundred feet high jutting out into a steep ravine, just opposite the old city cemetery. I guess I wasn't supposed to go there, I stepped over some barricades, but nobody else was around, and I got up on that wall. Then the Palestinian police saw me, and while I wandered off into a clump of olive trees and went down some stairs to take a close look at the Eastern Gate, I heard a lot of radios crackling. I poked my head up, and saw about forty cops all running over to where I had just been. I stepped across those barricades once again and went into the crowd over by the Dome of the Rock. All this in less than say about one football field. I really just don't like cops or governments anywhere, I suppose, but I realize now that I would have been taken in and held for a good long time by those police for my audacity of actually enjoying the best Jerusalem has to offer to a tourist.
But a few minutes later, back with my group, I was buying some carved olive items from a prospering Palestinian merchant, who asked me who I was with. Like an idiot, I said I had an Israeli guide, and to my horror I saw a murderous grin cross his face, while he picked him out, and several Palestinians started towards my friend. My friend saw what was happening, and realized immediately what was going on, and ran for his life. I saw a bunch of Palestinians chasing after him down the narrow street.
He escaped, and lived to try to tell me that while Israel does have so-called civil liberty and human rights, it's just a mistake to assume anything. Translation: In places where people are scrapping over every inch of rock/dirt/air for their very survival, it's really a war, and the high ideals of peaceful, secure governance are just pipe dreams. In places like that, you're doing good if you can survive somehow, and if you survive for the duration you're lucky.
But where were those Palestinian cops who had forty walkie-talkies crackling over the stray tourist an hour earlier? I didn't hear one peep of any effort to protect the Iraeli guide, who indeed was not wearing his identifiable customary clothing to go shopping. I rather got the impression they would have joined in the murder in the streets in broad daylight.
Just try to wrap your mind around a scene like that. There was no gratitude for the guide who brought in the customers, no effort at being considerate of others, or respectful.
Yep, I call that "war", and if I went there today I'd dress to the local custom if I went shopping. Or to school.
Babe that is the problem. I don't think what this sect wants is the local custom. From all reports (and again it could be bad reporting but who knows) the sect doing the perdecuting is moving into a new area and trying to take over that community. They are the ones who are different. They have EVERY right to be. What they do not have the right to do is make others exactly like them.
As for in a war zone, if I felt I lived in a war zone than yes I would probably have to have a nice hard think on my views and what fights I am willing to have. However this is not palestinians and Isrealis. This is Isreali/Isreali violence. I actually have first hand experience in being persecuted and assaulted because I am different. I applaud them for standing strong and refusing to be told how they can live by a hardline sect of their own religion.
As for in a war zone, if I felt I lived in a war zone than yes I would probably have to have a nice hard think on my views and what fights I am willing to have. However this is not palestinians and Isrealis. This is Isreali/Isreali violence. I actually have first hand experience in being persecuted and assaulted because I am different. I applaud them for standing strong and refusing to be told how they can live by a hardline sect of their own religion.
Are you saying they should not get that room?
This little girl is not traveling through the Palestinian quarter, she's walking down her own street. Her religious group is supposedly not at war with those of the harrassers.
You seem to be reflexively opposed to the notion that government can act to preserve freedom. That's as much based on faith, and counter to evidence, as belief that the sun orbits the earth or that the earth is flat. As with most faith-based positions, it leads you into difficult territory when facing real-life situations, because you are relying on a disprovable view of the world. I firmly believe that the actions of governments need to be more accountable to people, but they are necessary, and will be as long as we are human.