This I more or less lifted directly out of "Putin going to Iran"

There is debate amongst the Jesuits about whether dealing with a perceived lesser evil to overcome a greater evil is morally acceptable.

The debate came up in something I was reading about deals made with lesser criminals to catch the big boys (ala FBI and plea bargains we see so often on TV but which are actaully a reality) and Speculation that some CIA forces are dealing with arms dealers in the hope of trapping Osama Bin Laden. The article was basically rubbish so I won't quote it but I want us to consider the principles involved

I am not at all sure that I agree that one should ignore or accept evil in any form. I haven't read deeply into the philosophy in this sphere and am not at all familiar with the writings of Loyola or the stands taken by the Society of Jesus.. but my gut reaction says that if one uses or consorts with evil then you yourself become contaminated.

If an innocent, or even not so innocent, person is killed or deprived of their crack of the whip that hurt is forever.. One can't just stick on a band aid and make it better.

There is that old saying (quoted by me before on this forum) that



Well then what Devils have we in Britain, and for that matter our close Allies the US, been supping with recently.. say the last 10 or 15 years.

The first I contend may not spring to everybody's mind but 'The House of Saud' For all our talk about democracy this is a monolithic despotic regime which "owns" everything. Our continued propping up of them is hypocritical to say the least.

China.. Suppresses and lies to it's own people.. occupies Tibet and another Central Asian Muslim State whose name escapes me. Yet we do deals with them and allow their petulance and ill humour rule much of our policy..

As an aside Bush has just attended a major function which awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to the Dalai Lama. About the first thing he has done in ages which rates an attaboy ..

But he did water this down by promising to attend the Olympics next year. Oh well.

North Korea.. The US appears to be making deal with them to get them to abandon their Nuclear weapon development even though that is a bust, the appear to have been selling Nuclear material to Syria (and where else I wonder), Their people are starving, and they are still holding a whole bunch (maybe 70) of Japanese citizens that they abducted 30 years ago.

The Sudanese Government. Yeah I know we condemn them but how hard? .. We have allowed the killing in Darfur to go on while we stand at the sidelines wringing our hands.. Then we approve a UN resolution which is madness.. we send in a peace keeping force when there is no peace to keep and they are not allowed to use force against any Sudanese military (which is arming the Janjaweed and supressing Darfur.

Now the EU is also sending in some troops.. just what and why is very unclear.



War as an instrument of Foreign Policy Well we all know that we were lied to which has brought us into a sorry mess in Iraq..

I have no solution to suggest and am not at all sure that British withdrawal from Basra was well advised rather than a political move by Brown (the Toad!). (Wrong, now I am lying I am absolutely positive politics was on top of his mind when he made the trip and the premature announcement.. so glad it backfired on him! (Schardenfreude Jon Naughty naughty) hihihihi)

Either way we have tried to impose a democracy where democratic processes have never existed and the citizenry are unprepared for. Furthermore the allies are embroiled in a conflict for which there is no apparent resolution (ever:- 10 years, 50 years who knows?).

The Conflict in Afghanstan largely has most people's support as the Taliban are a particularly odious bunch and the opium trade which financed them is intollerable... But this conflict is probably not winnable in even the medium term (10 to 15 years).

Now there is talk of Iran as well. I am genuinely of the belief that Iran should not get a bomb... but is every other option explored and exhausted.. How untrustworthy is Putin in his declaration yesterday.. Iran is just across the Caspian sea so he should be concerned. Do we reaally want to lock horns with the Bear again?

The Self interest which allows Israel to supress the Palestinians and steal their land.
Worthy of a full discussion of it's own.
I recognise that Israel has acquired certain rights and that the Palestinians have not been very good at advocating themselves. Nevertheless Israel has occupied huge swathes of territory, has allowed settlements to be built on occupied land and is now building a great big wall around this occupied territory which is not Israeli.. There is no apparent intention on the part of Israel ever to withdraw from these lands.

In fact it goes further than that.. Even if, as we all hope will be the case, that the Israeli Government makes peace and agrees to withdraw they will be committing political suicide as they will have a battle royal with their own citizens.. some of whose parents were born on occupied soil and who know no other..

We all know that Jerusalem will never be given back and the Golan heights too will be a major bone of contention.

Maybe fear of that battle is what ensures that Israel always seems to manage not to agree a final peace deal.

Israel in the meantime uses the whole Holocaust Guilt trip which it assidiously nurtures, along with the considerable influence provided by the financial muscle of Jewish businessmen and their stockholdings to prevent much effective criticism.


Ok these are serious but:-
There are other devils as well:
Dishonesty for the sake of political expediency No commentary required.. I believe lying to Parliament should constitute Treason.

Social engineering attempts based on envy No commentary required.

Debasement of our education system Deny the young the chance of achieving their talents and one damages them forever. By debasing our schools and universities this has happened over the last 10 years.

Political Correctness This goes hand in hand with deceipt.. perpetuating something untrue in the fear of offending somebody is a lie. Rather just don't say anything.. The evils of PC talk are wide and varied.

Corrupting our (unwritten) Constitution The obscene grab for absolute power on the part of the Labour Government and it's security forces is a terrible wrong which must be fought with all the political will we can muster.


Anything else.. Please contribute and debate Should we be messing with these.

Alarm bells have been ringing about China for years - and I mean the threat from China's skyrocketing industrial growth. Isn't anyone in Whitehall listening? Why are we stoking and fuelling it?

Brilliant Jeremy Vine Show yeaterday (Radio 2) in which he had his female listeners stripping starkers and inspecting their blouses and knickers for dreaded 'Made in China' labels. Me, I won't knowingly buy anything made in China or Israel or made by a firm that invests in these countries. Same now goes for companies/brands involved in Burma, and I'm beginning to boycott US products with certain exceptions that are old favourites (like Kodak).

This Benazir Bhutto woman seems to be supping with not just one devil but two. She's in bed with the US administration and doing deals with a military dictator in order to get her mits on the levers of power. A dangerous game which can only result in a sea of blood.

I wonder if she's as bright as everyone makes out. She knew of an assassination attempt and so did the Pakistani authorities. She warned the leaders of her party to stay away from the bus-top cavalcade for safety's sake but went ahead with her triumphalist homecoming parade, apparently careless of how many adoring supporters might be killed.

A great start to a come-back. The woman seems an ambition freak and bonkers to boot. But then I'm not Pakistani.

As for the vile House of Saud, jonjii... we're still supping with the devil there. Here's this morning's report in Al Jazeera...

George Bush, the US president, has renewed Saudi Arabia as a key anti-terrorism ally, amid concerns that the oil-rich kingdom is exporting "extremist ideology".

In a memorandum to Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, Bush said on Friday that Riyadh was co-operating with efforts to combat international terrorism.

The decision comes while the authorities consider a proposal to close down a Saudi-backed school outside Washington for alleged religious intolerance.

It also comes after a senior US treasury official criticised the kingdom's record on combating terrorism.

Stuart Levey, the US Treasury under-secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said that Saudi Arabia had failed to prosecute the financiers of so-called terror groups.

Levey also claims that not a single individual identified by the United States or the UN as a terror financier had been prosecuted by Saudi Arabia.

He said: "If I could somehow snap my fingers and cut off the funding from one country, it would be Saudi Arabia."

Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, dismissed the criticism, saying Levey's public criticism was at odds with private praise from US officials.

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom, asked Rice to close the Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA), in Northern Virginia, unless it could prove it was not teaching religious intolerance.

Members of the commission, appointed by Bush and congress leaders, had cited in a report "significant concerns" over teachings at the ISA, which it said could "adversely" affect US interests.

The commission also complained about Saudi Arabia's "exportation of extremist ideology and intolerance in education material" and wanted the school closed until the textbooks the school used were made available for "comprehensive public examination".

Jeepers creepers. How that bunch deserve each other.

There is a disturbance in the force and I hope those who are considering a massive last ditch show of force in Iraq will move back from those thoughts for it is too late. Way too late.

Mid East Peace push dead in the water reckons Gwynne Dyer.. Quoted here in the Japan Times Syndicated Report

Sadly but realistically pessimistic. Reckons the rise of Islamist parties and inflluence throughout the Middle East could kibosh any prospect of peace at least until 2020...

Also noticeable she hasn't played a blame game... there are 2 sides to every story and Israel has some justification for the paranoia it displays.. but realistically it is still pretty brutal.

Notice she does not even mention our erstwhile PM so what the hell is he doing? I don't believe the spoon he has used has been long enough and I do not believe he (TB) has had any influence at all.

Well judging by the speech he made in the US the other day (people still queue to listen to him over there!!!) he has again torpedoed himself as a peace broker.

Naturally he sups with the Devil because he's family.

Not only Queue but pay plenty.

I did not pick up on the sppech Yorkie.. what did he say?

He was preaching to the converted of course, praising the Iraq war and saying it was the right thing to do, no need to apologise, etc. At which point I turned it off. I shouldn't think that guff went down well in Ramallah or Gaza or Tehran or Damascus...

That kind of rules him out as a neutral Arbiter. Sadly it appears, for the naughties at least, to be more of the same... No peace but an endless grinding conflict which could easily escalate into a global conflagration.

He never was and never intended to be. I'm convinced he was appointed by the Quartet to keep the pot boiling. Note that the UN rapporteur on Human Rights in the Middle East, John Dugard, is urging the EU to quit the Quartet (another supping-with-the-Devil scenario) for its own good.

Bhutto situation worries me Yorker - 'sea of blood' is correct, but lurking on the horizon is US efforts (in my opinion) to encourage insurgent ties with so called Al-Qaeda terrorists in Iraq. I believe shortly we will see the same 'blood bath' in aerial strikes on Iraqi civilians accussed of harbouring fighters.

Jonjii, at the heart of your critique is whether evil exists, so I guess we have to deal with that first. For me, evil, hell, saintliness, heaven, are concepts invented by religion, and I treat them the same way as the Tooth Fairy.

What we do have is humanity, warts and all. Our view of the world can be shaped by misinformation, bad information, theories, and the occasional fact. Throw in where we were born, to whom, our education, friends, enemies, etc, and thus our views are formed and apt to change as the above parameters change.

I tend not to write about the M East and the US in the same post. Some people have entrenched views, some have had their views shaped over a comparative few years. There are a lot more chapters still to be written and I do not support one side over another today; much damage has been inflicted by greed, insecurity, and manipulation from all sides.

A short point on Ms Bhutto: she was not a likeable person when she studied here, very manipulative. And on Putin: well, his manipulation of the Russian process speaks for itself, plus it seems like he's going through the male menopause.

The other points you raise are more short-term, hopefully, since they are directly related to the dogma of our gvt today. However, I don't believe a gvt of a different colour would have acted any differently with regards to the changes in security since 9/11.

In summary, I don't find this gvt to be 'evil' though it's not one I admire. Oh yes, democracy - don't make me laugh.

Hi Tizzy,

Thanks I think it is easier to believe in an evil force than a benign or positively good one.. There is evidence of evil everyday. (Naked greed, mindless violence, indifference to suffering, the infliction of suffering , corruption and so on ....and I am just thinking of Africa. Darfur in specific.)

Even if one rejects the existence of a God and a Devil there are certain codes that we all tend to live by which gives us a sense of "right" and "wrong".

I also don't necessarily believe that the government is evil per se.. it is just that they have to make some very harsh choices as part of the 'Real politik'.. These choices often involve dealing with a "Malevalent" party and as such are morally suspect.

The Buddhists preach about karma.. about each individual's own profit and loss account that stays with his spark of life through the countless cycles until he/she achieves enlightenment and godhead.

What I say is that many of the deals that the British Government has been making will negatively impact on the Karma of the individuals involved as they have necessarily been made with a malevalent party and will thus taint them for years to come... hense TB seeking private audiences with the Pope (trying to find out what he must do to get absolution) (I mentioned this speculation somewhere else).

Even if we do cut out any discussion of the US and the Middle East there are many aspects to what is going on that seem to involve less that straight dealing..

Springing to mind is the Deal on Europe and the Constitution,, He won't even discuss it and the challenges to the RED LINES are stone walled. What deal has he made that seems to insist he can sell out our birthright

Secondly the deceipt that went about those absolutely transparent put up "terrorist attacks" in the first week as PM.. A grab for power was obvious.

All deals with China are tainted.

and so on

And yes I accept that a Tory Government too will have to make it's own dirty deals.. It is just that I bemoan the fact that such are necessary.

Shame about that. Perhaps our next Government ought to set a new trend, show some backbone and only do clean deals. That would make a nice change.

Yes Yorkie This goes back to the Jesuitical argument or conundrum with which I started this thread..

The greater good for the greater number.. or, as is more often the case, the lesser of 2 evils...

But is it acceptable to commit and evil act if your aim is for a positive outcome???

I contend, as I said above... mess round with the dirty stuff and become tainted.

Do you think DC as PM could refuse to shake hand with Putin, or the US Pres, or the head of the Sudanese government..

Have you ever read Tom Clancy? He invented a boy scout character Played in the movie by Han Solo) and put him in the White House... (No movie of that yet thank heavens) because it couldn't happen... it is only done through subterfuge)

Anyway this said boy scout has to try and govern keeping his conscience clear,,, difficult Can you imagine...

Let us go back to the question then,,,, what deals have recently been done in the British peoples name by Her Majesty`s government that don't seem to shape up in your eyes?

Probably not, because the diplomatic courtesies have to be observed. But he could avoid the more odious ones and not be swayed by any of them.

The current evil act is to deny a referendum on a matter that is outside the scope of normal government - i.e. the question of our sovereignty and national integrity. No elected government has a mandate to tinker with this.

Disreputable deals include taking us to war in Iraq to suit the neocon Z-men that control the White House, and the hostile stance being adopted towards Iran to appease the same nutters. I also believe our foreign policy is shaped by the pro-Israel lobby simply because influence by a foreign military power is apparently welcomed by MPs instead of being outlawed and punished.

There's the Saudi arms deal with bribery attached. There's our gutless deal with the Quartet which will do anything to prolong the Arab-Israel conflict and therefore the Palestinians' suffering. I particularly abhore HMG's part in the conspiracy to crush democratically-elected Hamas by collectively punishing and blockading the people of Gaza.

Double standards abound, they are the norm. I could go on, but frankly this government (and, I suspect, the next one) makes me sick.

I wonder what it is that extracts the humanity out of world leaders once they are in a position of power? Is it necessary to think of us simply as components of Venn diagrams in order for them to believe in 'the greater good'?

The world of the political 'elite' is very blinkered and insular, I suspect, where reality is filtered out by the executive. Information is similarly filtered and sanitised.

yorker
i find the words political and elite a contidiction these days
and your next point that Information is similarly filtered and sanitised.
this is another way of aaying they are lies.i agree

Not necessarily lies, phyz, just that uncomfortable truths are withheld.

Yorkie May I just say that I wish you would quit using the jargon, slogans and shibboleths of '70s type rabble rousing rallies.

The name calling mostly detracts from your arguments which are usually strong enough to stand on their own.

Now as to your points

Mostly I agree.. The deals that TB and Now GB are doing in Europe have an awful smell about them.

The whole Iraq/and Israel-Palestinian stuff leaves generates huge concern as I cannot see an up side

Afghanistan is a mess and this time we , I think, are one the side of the angels.

I believe King Abdullah is coming to Downing Street.. why is he welcome?

(And the question is... would DC invite him in... much as I deplore it I think he probably would)

Yup Politics is a dirty game and those playing it tend to plumb for what they perceive is in the best (and usually short term) interests of the governing party at the time.

Tizzy I think your example of a Venn diagram is probably Apt

Consider.. Send our soldiers out to fight in Iraq.. keep a civil war brewing there so all their money and energy is devoted to killing their own over there. (down side that we lose a few soldiers and the war costs huge amounts)

Or don't;- and risk the very real prospect of them devoting their energy and money on causing havoc in the great cities of the world a la 9/11. This would or could meltdown the stock markets and financial holdings throughout the West. No intelligence service can remotely hope to prevent another
major attack happening again.. (Down side.. incalculable!!)

Which of those deals do you, as head of HM Government, take?

'70s rabble-rousing Yorkie here...

At least I don't go on about kicking the Toad in the Nuts. That's not polite at all.

Of course DC would invite King Abdullah, with kiss-kiss on cheek etc. He knows which side his bread is buttered on. Anyone who lets himself be photographed warmly shaking the hand of Olmert....

Point taken... I think. I was being complimentary. You have plenty of good points without weakening them and switching off your potentially anatagonistic readers by name calling

The perpetual use of "Neocon Z-men" etc really has no meaning except to indicate to us the readers is that you have a closed mind.

And so back to the thread,,

Deals with a devil... yes I am afraid I agree that the Tory could not avoid doing deals with the Saudis, The Chinese and the Russians...

Neither realistically could they avoid dealing in Europe.

That being the case what can we do or suggest to "Sanitise" or avoid becoming "tainted" or corrupted by such.. How can the Tory PM avoid selling his soul... how can we provide a spoon long enough.

Neocon Z-men, meaning neo-conservative Zionists, are a specific dangerous group who manipulate the Bush administration's foreign policy and US government spending for non-US purposes. The have led us into all sorts of trouble... as you well know, jonjii. Google the term and see what you get. They have a lot to answer for.

So the essential answer lies in foreign policy not treating any state as evil, or the devil.

Name-calling in its simplest form, whether by Bush or a forum member, makes otherwise reasonable people enforce their stance rather than listen.

Here, it doesn't matter to anyone what I think or say though other members may tag me as a friend or foe, so to speak. Foreign policy is a tad more sophisticated but there are similar elements. The success of state policy depends on how many it can convince to be on its side of the argument.

Did the 'axis of evil' catchphrase help to focus our attention first on those states or their potential nuclear ambitions? I'd say their potential ambitions, which then made us focus on the states.

The ultimate danger is assigning name-tags to a state, surely?

It's my impression that the Z-neocons vilify the states they want eliminated and get the US administration to proscribe them as terror states. After that, the task of bringing them to their knees is easy - in theory. The shame is that we aid and abet them in their dirty work, and innocent blood ends up on our hands too.

Blix, speaking about the so-called threat of a possible Iranian nuclear weapons capability in the distant future, gives an insight into the 'smear' technique. He touches on the prospect of an Iranian capability neutralising the Israeli nuclear arsenal and altering the balance of power in the region... and there we have it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ju_3XI4YMfw

The Al-Qaeda attacks are the fractions that exist in my Venn diagram Jonjii. Why no indictment for failure to protect? How many times do I have to repeat the historical fact we created the monsters for our own 'devil deals'.

We are on course for WWW III if some governments continue their selfish quest for world dominance.

If that happens we will have to rely on the predictions of Astrology to re-build everything lost to arrogance.

Yorker's vision of 'tagging' states as Tizzy suggests to vilify them is the reality. Reading through the IAEA contracts brought together by the great powers tells us Iran has the right to pursue the nuclear cycle; if fact they have the right to assistance from member states.

I believe the IAEA has been strengthened by the damning politicising of normal technological exchanges. The IAEA must now be more resilient and immune from coercion.

It's interesting how Blix remarked that the west (i.e. the US)would not welcome any evidence indicating that Iran has no plans for a nuclear weapons programme as this would undermine the case for crushing sanctions... hence the US's (and Bonzo Brown's) unseemly rush to apply them.

In Iran's case Yorker, according to an Iranian nuclear physics post-graduate from one of our Uni's is not the capability of extracting highly enriched uranium, but one of knowledge acquired from Khan and China to initiate and sustain a critical mass.

Such knowledge was leaked years ago and drawings passed to Russia, China, India and Pakistan. But dissemination amongst scientist to further their careers is well known.

The only course of action is for Israel to declare it's nuclear arsenal and join the Proliferation Treaty. Then work can be done to eliminate this ghastly menace.

Scrubbs I accept that many deals and treaties done by the UK over time do not stand up to any modern code of morality.

The National Hero Churchill knew that the deal he and Rooseveldt made with Uncle Joe at Yalta condemned much of Eastern Europe to the misery of Soviet domination for years to come.

The Partitioning of India as another case in point. Deals done in what appeared at the time to be in the best interest but is nevertheless tainted by all sorts of other things.

The creation of the State of Israel and the allocation of Iran to Pavlevi all seem to be mixes of supreme arrogance and empty ethical codes with regard to the peoples reaping the results and having to live with them go.

Iraq is another horror... And where is there an upside?

But let us, as an exercize, grant an amnesty,.... no recriminations, forget justice for past misdeeds. Accept that there are a plethora of messes and we have an opportunity to impose a solution which will have to be honoured by all sides. (Such a deal was achieved in Northern Ireland by the coersion of the British and the fact that US funding for Sinn Fein and the IRA dried up)

The settlements we reach must be based on the current reality. In addition they should, as far as possible be fair to all sides and the long term objective should be the greatest good for the greatest number of peoples involved.

So where would you start? What settlements could there be that would mollify the various sides in the multitudes of conflicts brought about by one party or another having been ignored?

Think about it. I am and not finding any easy answers.

"the allocation of Iran to Pavlevi..." Such quaint language, jonjii.

I have just come across the following:

In November 1978, President Carter named the Bilderberg group’s George Ball, another member of the Trilateral Commission, to head a special White House Iran task force under the National Security Council’s Brzezinski. Ball recommended that Washington drop support for the Shah of Iran and support the fundamentalist Islamic opposition of Ayotollah Khomeini.

Their scheme was based on a detailed study of the phenomenon of Islamic fundamentalism, as presented by British Islamic expert, Dr. Bernard Lewis … Lewis’s scheme was unveiled at the May 1979 Bilderberg meeting in Austria, endorsed the radical Muslim Brotherhood movement behind Khomeini, in order to promote balkanisation of the entire Muslim Near East along tribal and religious lines… The chaos would spread in what he termed an ‘Arc of Crisis,’ which would spill over into the Muslim regions of the Soviet Union.

The coup against the Shah, like that against Mossadegh in 1953, was run by British and American intelligence, with the bombastic American, Brzezinski, taking public ‘credit’ for getting rid of the ‘corrupt’ Shah, while the British characteristically remained safely in the background.[2]

The major reason for removing the Shah was the oil. During 1978 negotiations were underway between British Petroleum and the Shah to renew the 25-year old extraction contract, negotiations which collapsed and with the collapse, Iran was for the first time since 1953, once more in control of its oil resources. Cross the imperium and experience their wrath.

For full article see
http://www.williambowles.info/ini/2006/0206/ini-0392.html

You might persuade the armchair theorists to forget past misdeeds, but the reality on the ground is that justice must first be done and even then the perpetrators are unlikely to be trusted ever again.

I think we have discussed this before Yorkie.. and yes maybe it is armchair theorising but please consider the following 2 hard realities:-

1. The State of Israel is a fact... backed by Jewish money and lobbying in the US and Europe (France eg has a huge Jewish population) And with the successful propaganda which is generally anti Islam... very much aided by the Palestinians themselves, I am sad to say, Israel doesn't look like it is ever going to back down and withdraw to pre 67 lines Not including Jerusalem and Golan heights both of which aren't even on the table. Decry that all you like but that is the way it is.

2. Iraq was invaded to rid the world of Saddam and to ostensibly establish a democratic regime.. There is a mess there now and it would be nice to leave some sort of order behind.

Play the blame game all you like.. the thing we need is some form of settlement and then we can try and redress some of the wrongs.. Insisting on the wrongs being redressed before settlement can be contemplated is an exercize in futility as far as I am concerned.

Let us try and stop the killing and the deprivation and intimidation first.

It is all a pipe dream anyway

Jewish population of france is 491,500,
This is 3.8 % of the french population .
Rich ,yes,influential,yes but not huge .

Iraq was invaded because of lies about WMDs
Saddam got caught in the flack ,when the
americans jackbooted there way in for the OIL

Iraq is now 3 seperate states .Sunni,Shiite,Kurd.
Nothing will ever put it back together,(broken egg)

To leave is the most humane thing we can do.

Is it???.. I am not so sure. We would certainly be condemning all Iraqis to being rapidly dominated by a fundamentalist radical revolutionary army. So bang goes any human rights and freedoms that the may tenuously be enjoying.

This new regime will then have the motivation to plot and plan to wreak havoc in their enemies (our) home countries.

None of the options to me seem easy or nice but think it though.

Jonjii, you are the eternal optimist if you think the Arabs will ever legitimise the theft of their lands and water by 'accepting' Israel's refusal to withdraw to pre-1967 borders.

Fortunately a large number of Jews in the US and Europe are uncomfortable with Israel's conduct and think it unsustainable. The western world is beginning to wake up to what's going on and why.

Here's a not so nice video for you on the subject...
see this

[fundamentalist radical revolutionary army. ]
Thats just what we need
How come they get all the good ideas :)

[home countries. ]
What there going to come and attack wales?
Beautifull though it is , not exactly of strategic
importance is it.

Yorkie. No where did I say legitimise... I just said find a way to stop the killing so that, like was accomplished by some massive armtwisting in Northern Ireland, We can get these seemingly intractable enemies to sit down and find a way of living together.

(Take away Israel's excuse for backing away from any deal)

As I said a pipe dream for an arm chair theorist but nevertheless..

OK, You don't want to play that game... too bad.

But please come up with a realistic suggestion for breaking out of this vicious circle of international and violent tit for tat.

Howabout we stop electing Hitler wanna bees an Nazi dictators
then we could talk to them.

We surrendered in Ireland,the only solution,

We are hiding at the airport in Iraq,looks like
another strategic retreat coming up ,sooner the better.
We cannot win.Tiz immpossible.

No, I meant that the act of accepting a deal that didn't require Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories would legitimise the land theft. It's no use relying on Israel's good nature to do the the right thing afterwards.....

I doubt if we'll see any "breaking out". This is a very long game, a war of attrition, which Israel will try to drag the west into.

"Come up with a realistic suggestion"? I thought that was what Blair's being paid handsomely for, though he can't be giving the job much time if he's touring the US lecture circuit.

I have no answer to that... as far as I know Blair has done next to nothing but then again there might be huge unpublicised efforts going on... He took the credit for pulling it off in Belfast (Although in truth much of the effort was started by the Tories before his time and even Clinton (Although I hate to acknowledge him) had some input there)