I disagree Neela. The story between Israel and Palestine today is about religion but it started when jews were forced out of their home and onto other people's properties. This is a battle over territory, and religion does not play that big a role as much as it's just a vehivle from which this conflict is played. The conflict here is very simple to understand. The Palestines had their land. The super powers stole their land and stuck the Jews there, and let those two people quabble it out. Whether or not the Israelites or Palestines think they're the chosen people is not really the concern, it may offer a little resistance but I for on believe most human beings are prone to compromise and they can yield their religious beliefs to peace.

But the conflict is much greater than just a small group of misplaced people trying to recover their land because of the religious overtones. It draws in almost all other countries of the world because of it. For example: The Kurds in northern Iraq are as equally displaced and are fighting for their lands back from Iraq, Turkey, and Iran, but we hear next to nothing of their conflicts because they are all generally of the same religion. Other Islamic/Muslim countries back the Palestinians because they share similar beliefs. They provide funding/encouragement to continue the fight. The US and western countries back Israel in much the same way. I think it is because of these outside forces putting pressure on both sides that the conflict will be nearly impossible to resolve. To be honest the land dispute won't be settled until Israel and Palestinian leaders get the chance to talk without these outside pressures interfering.

But you have conflict between the two of them because each believe the land is there's and neither has a right to it. The only way we're going to resolve this problem is if all parties involved are willing to compromise and that means despite what role religion plays people need to realize their adversaries are people just like them trying to survive who have right to land.

This brings up a question for Channler. Let's say, Channler, that about 45 devil-worshippers, as in people who worshipped Satan, came to your home town and lived in it. Would you be able to coexist with them? Share your schools, and your community with them? I have little doubt you would, but I hear stories all the time of so much negativity caused by people who have no idea what they're doing. For instance today in my class there was a girl who happened to mention she hated Christians, and I was deeply offended. I'm not Christian, and two years ago I would have said right on, but I realized somewhere along the line that alienation is the cause of most of the problems today. My teacher, who I consider to be a great progressive thinker was making a joke in class today about his friends who told their kids, "You can bring home anyone, be it someone of the same sex, of a huge age difference, of any religion or ethnicity, just don't bring home a republican." he added, "I told my kids the same tihng only I said 'Don't bring home a republican or a democrat." I don't know, it's weird how many double-standards I see these days. People see themselves so high above these narrow-minded religious folk and they don't seem to realize that as soon as you put someone in a class, you're no longer marking them as human, but as a member of that class. You no longer empathize with them. They are, "The others" or the opposition, and maybe it's even more subtle than that. I really just wish before anyone would make judgments they'd sit for a second and recall the phrase, "I share a pulse with that person."

I think we are overlooking the fact that the city of jerusalem is holy to the three abrahmic religion, as such all want to be in possession of it. historically speaking the land of isreal was in fact that of the jews before it belonged to the palestines. However, the land was taken and the jewish diaspora began. after the second diaspora(WW2) since the jews had been so abused, were given a country of their own, their original homeland was given to them, meaning the palestinians had to move from what had been their home for several thousand years. they fought back for their land, and also becuase as Muslims they saw Jerusalem as holyground. as it stand the holy land is divided by the three religions, and hostilities are not bound to end until one of them has the entire city for themselves.


Also Islam is a peaceful religion, their view on the other two abrahmic reigions is nowhere as warped as the christian and jewish view of Islam. Islam accepts the existence of Jesus as a prophet, the Jews deny him, and the Christians call him messiah. as such Islam views the other two religions as older versions of their religion, that either ignored the true messiah, or followed a poser. But nowadays, radicals have changed the world view.

I heard my name ring from the bowels of W4O! And here the bell is.. located.. err.. yea..

Anyways, about them Satanists..

I really don't hate or purposely shun anyone.. I may openly disagree with them and at times threaten there life, but after a while I cool down and carry on with my life. (Doomed = Prime Example )

But, while I don't really like the idea of satanism, as long as they treat me with the same respect that any individual SHOULD deserve. I'll return it, and even be friends with them.

I know one satanist that I'm friends with, hes cool.. sometimes.. creepy all the time.. but his personality and mine were so similiar before he became "one of them" that theres no way in hell () that I couldn't consider him a friend. However I wish he wouldn't be like that, because I do think that some of their practices are odd(under statement) and I personally think its wrong what they do. I am not going to shove my beliefs down his throat, I share my opinion and thats it. And I think he respects me for that.

But anyways, back to COD2.. got to defeat hitler and get those jews back to the holy land

EDIT: Now that I just looked at that article I think that Iran is way over stepping its political bounds now..

Reminds me of the one proffesor from NC that said all whites (or something) should be eradicated..

This post has been edited by Channler: Nov 5 2005, 05:55 PM

My view on the matter is as follows:

I do not believe that any country has the right to be formed solely for the purpose of the protection of the people of one religion, or ethnicity, or any other difference that sets the people of the world apart. Nor do I believe that any nation has the right to restrict immigration or settlement depending on ones religion. Now that Israel does exist however, I believe it has the right to do so. It is too late to go back and allow the Jews and Muslims to live side by side, to integrate them into one society (like other nations around the world, particularly in Asia), but we can at least strive to solve the problem at hand today. I do not think that the solution to this problem would be to eradicate a country from the planet, which I believe to be an insanely idiotic proposition in the first place. What we need to do now is to allow for the creation of a state of Palestine, and make sure that both Israel and Palestine can live in peace as neighbors in a national sense. As to the fact that the upholders of the religion of Judaism having settled on the land of Israel first, to this I agree, but I cannot agree with anyone who says that since their ancestors settled there first, that the land belongs to them. Land of any kind belongs to all the people of the earth, and if we cannot put religion behind us and focus more on just plain PEOPLE as PEOPLE and not label them as one religious sect or another, then we cannot solve this problem.

You do realize, that instead of seeing the conglomeration of nations, we seeing mroe of a break down due to cultural differences. Nation-states, function much better than a state in which more than one nation resides, the reason being that a nation-state is more homogenous and you have no other nation with which to disagree with. The revolutionary wars in Africa are a prime example of nations trying to break free from the superimposed boundaries that the europeans laid on them. As was the conflict in Yugoslavia. There would be far less conflict to have a nation-state than it would be to ahve a state of many nations.

New topic:

Tonight at midnight they will be executing Stanley T Williams. For those not familiar, Stanley T Williams was founder the Crips, charged for the murder of 4 people. There's a rather good wiki article on him actually.

I don't even think I want to hear opinions because I'm so fundamentally against the death penalty. Anyway, what do you guys thinks?

I think Shwartzennegger has no balls at all. Too many steroids shrunk them into raisins. He's too much of a coward to allow a guy to survive even if every inch of evidence has pointed that he deserves to live.

I support the death penalty but I still undecided about Mr. Williams.

He used to be a bad man, but now I think hes seen the error of his ways. However this doesn't account for the criminal group he started up.

(and yes doomed, I do think that the founders of the KKK should of been hung too. )

I'm undecided about the death penalty, because while I don't like the idea of people being killed as punishment for their crimes, I don't like the idea of murderers and the like alive either.



I don't know enough about mr. Williams other than his founding of the crips. SO, I guesss I don't have an opinion about that either.

Well according to numerous sources (and himself too) hes reformed and even preached out against the gang life.. Which is a good thing, but does that make it right the wrongs that he commited?

Am I for or against the death penalty.... Kind of Both actually.
The current form of death penalty is completely and totally pointless. If it takes 20-40 years after conviction to finally execute the sentence the whole point to killing them is mute. So yes currently I believe the death penalty to be wrong, since the only real benefits to having a death penalty would be to deter other wouldbe killers from their crimes and to allow the family of those murdered to have a sense of justice and move on with their lives. Our current way of dealing with it does not deter anyone. However, If after conviction and a quick number of limited appeals(say within two years) the sentence was carried out... it might make a difference to a few people. I realize this opinion will be opposed by many of you... but I believe it to be justice when a person has taken the lives of multiple people with cruel and deliberate intention is finally put to death. It means that all those possibly hundreds of people whose lives were impacted by the murders can have a bit of closure and start to move on again. As to Mr. Williams... I do not know enough about the case to really comment. I don't think just because he was the founder of a gang or just because he "believes himself reformed" should have any bearing on the outcome. The fact is that those four people are dead and to me nothing like that is forgivable.

This post has been edited by Neela: Dec 13 2005, 06:46 AM

Dantrag, I'd hate to get like this but...

Your against abortion because to you its unethical to kill something that will eventually become a human being, and yet you're undecided about executing things that already are human beings... sounds like a double standard.

Anyway, this is my opinion on the death penalty, later I will be giving my opinion on Tookie.

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind," - Ghandi.

That is to say, that the only way to really stop a cycle of violence is to end it yourself, not with revenge but with peace, and you have to take all the compassion you'll getting for it in stride.

An example - Months ago I was on the TES chat and got into an argument with someone over australian native people. I could have kept arguing but I got sick of it, so I just let the other person keep spewing great compassion until they got bored. It's something that's close to my heart, and I felt horribly disheveled by the racism I was hearing, and yet all the argument was doing was causing unrest in the chatroom, and pissing off the other person, so despite the fact that I had to take a bunch of great compassion for ten minutes in the end it didn't mean anything to me, and I stopped a cycle of unrest.

Granted, I love conflict, I just hate violence, but anyway, here's some more stuff about incarceration in general...

We live in a society that discriminates against black people, it's not the fault of every human being, we're simply participants in an unbalanced society. Poor people commit more crime, and more poor people are black. Poverty is one of the hardest things to get out of in this society, but if we could practice equality instead of this master and slave capitalist society we currently live in, then poverty wouldn't exist to that deep a level, and crime would go down. The majority of the people on death row are gangsters like Tookie, but joining a gang is a result of a lot of things, the only fault to the actual member being that they didn't take responsibility of their actions in the beginning. Joining a gang is the result of a poor kid in a poor neighborhood who wants A. a familiy and B. power.

So again I stress, it is the unbalanced, rat-race society we live in which is the heart of gang violence. Rich white guys don't even seem the realize it but every moment they exploit the poorer part of society, they are supporting gang violence. Most gangsters who end up killing people when they're older are the result of the circumstances from which they were born in.

You can argue that any guy who kills someone is simply a bad person, but there is a psychological feel that people growing up in hard neighborhoods are conditioned with from the moment they're born. They're taught they have to be hard in order to survive, even if it's never said it's unconsciously ingrained in their system simply from living in those neighborhoods. They see people around them shooting guns, so they don't think it means much when they pull the trigger, then once they do there is a moment of shock to see what they did but it wears off, and after that they're changed.

So, I think we need a rehabilitation system, instead of a revenge system. Prison only really puts people into the cycle. You have to be really hard to survive prison, so its like an accelerated program to breed gangsters. That's what really pisses me off about justice. To tell you the truth, I think justice is just one guy's way of making himself feel pure after comitting revenge. Truth is, once you take life you're a honoured user, and all human beings are bastards because all humans have to eat food. Justice is trying to purify an action that commits a wrong against somebody who comitted a wrong, and there is no difference to me.

Now onto Tookie.

When the Crips first started, mostly all gangs were just 12-30 thugs who decided to take over neighborhoods so if shop owners and people living around paid them off, they'd stop them from getting robbed, basically. Tookie and his friend started the crips which sort of conglomerated a bunch of smaller gangs and protected the neighborhood, but did so in a bloody way. If one of their members was killed the find and kill the killer's family. They'd rob and burglarize, and all that stuff. Again I stress they were all products of a poverty stricken society, and that's what naturally happens to poor people in poor neighborhoods.

Tookie went to prison for murdering four people in two different robberies, and maintained his innocence. Thoughout the entire 20 years he was on death row if he admitted to the murders of those four people he would have gotten clemency, but he said he'd rather die than give into a corrupt system and make something up. I can see why, it was exactly like the red scare, or the inquisition. You say you're not a heretic, we'll drown you, you admit you are and we'll burn you, and those were his options.

Shwartzenegger said that he never redeemed himself because there was no apology, but there was. Here is the transcript.



So Shwartzenegger's real claim was that because he never admitted to murdering the four people he was convicted for, he obviously never reached redemption, but...

* There was no physical evidence he comitted those crimes
*All witnesses that testified against him had something to gain
*He was not judged by a jury of his peers
*There was evidence he was sedated during his trial
*1980s legal systems were unapologetically racist, with 4/5 incarcerated people being young minorities.

In closing I'd like to say this: The number 1 argument I hear from people is that he comitted the crime and he can't expect to get off just because he claims he reached redemption.

1. If it was just a CLAIM he would have also admitted to murdering those four people, but redemption was not just a ploy to get off detah row, he could have lied to get off death row any time he wanted.

2. It's a sad thought that redemption means nothing to people, and that people must still suffer the backlash from who they used to be instead of who they are now. He decided to seek justice. I will repeat, he decided to seek justice of the life he lead and wrongs he comitted, and the way in doing so was to encourage young poverty stricken kids to get educations. He reached gang members all over the country, and he spoke on the level, not as some harvard graduated NAACP respresentative, but as a former member, he spoke to them as one of them, and they got his message, not someone elses. He decided that was the purpose of his life, and that to me is justice.

I am most certainly for the death penalty. But against life in prison. A murderer needs to be dealth with, they took someone's LIFE. They need to be punished, why should they get away when they were caught, for killing someone? They deserve it, which is why i don't think how countries like Singapore, and Saudi arabia, deal with murders is so bad.

Someone was just murdered in my town, it has been over fifty years since the last murder, everyone knew this poor woman. She was the councilor at the middle school. She was out for a jog and someone hit her with their car, took her into a barn and rapped and killed her. Now my friend dylan is motherless. I do not think the person who killed this woman is worth anything, why should he have life and not Dylan's mom, it's not fair. And saying life isn't fair won't work, because even if it isn't people need to try and do whatever they can to make it fair.

However life in prison is cruel. This is 10X worse then the death penalty, at least with the death penalty you only have to live life in hell (prison) for about twenty years. If a eighteen year old murders someone and he gets life in prison he could have 50-60 years in prison

I would rather have life in prison than the death penalty if I was given a choice. Living is less cruel than dying.

This post has been edited by Dantrag: Dec 17 2005, 10:27 PM

Doomed, what you are saying (or at least what is understood) is that Anarchy is the way to go.

hamster, if you murder someone, the hell with it. Hell, why not just kill them back!? Oh wait, now we disrupt the balance.

You are promoting violence by not dealing with it.

-=-

And please do not even bring the race issue up. That arguement is getting rather old considering the fact that so many black students will get government help to go to a college, while a white student of the same poverty level, same grades, and same number of family is told that there income level is to high to get finacial aid.

Oh, but encourage gangs! They give young black males a sense of family! They give them a place where they will be respected.

Horse compassion. Why don't we start making people (Note I said people, not black, asian, or indifferent) be accountable for themselves? Why don't we start helping parents with there kids instead of throwing money at the damned problem?

I'm apart of the local after-school program for middle school kids. ALL the kids that come there are black, and they all have some sort of gang influence. I can proudly say, that helping them, that teaching them, has caused almost every student that I've talked to "shape-up". I showed them the law, and I showed them respect. However, what I showed most of though is love.

And thats what I get in return, respect and love. All because I cared, not because I threw money at it, and told them to go talk to their parents. It was because several other 14-19 year old middle class people, decided that without a figured head, these kids would be looked down upon.

Help the people, don't sit on a internet board and complain about the problem. That makes you just as bad as a murder in my opinion.

You're the same; You're against killing murderes, but you don't mind seeing unborn children killed.

Sounds like a double standard to me as well.

This post has been edited by Dantrag: Dec 17 2005, 10:59 PM

I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.
-Abraham Lincoln

Taking into consideration both sides of this issue, I have one thing to say, but I'm going to say it very clearly.

The taking of a human life, is in every way, wrong. I find it relatively strange that the leaders of the American nation, my nation, can approve the taking of a HUMAN life. Whether it be through war, justice, or crime. The death penalty is simply put, a horrendous practice that occurs far too often. It is a breach of Human rights to purposely take a life. Sure, murderers are at fault as well, but it doesn't do justice to in turn murder the murderer.

Dwell upon that.

-Gamer10

This post has been edited by gamer10: Dec 17 2005, 11:15 PM

Hmm...I´m against abortion....and so is my hubbie, death-penalty is not ocurring here in sweden and hasn´t been for a loong time..but I must say...I would gladly hang someone who abuses or kill an innocent child for instans....

Channler - No, let me give my definition of justice more clearly:

Everytime an action is committed, it starts a ripple effect, or hastens a ripple effect already in progress. It starts or is a catalyst for cycles, and not every cycle is good in the social sense.

For instance, I am fundamentally against violence, therefore when a violent cycle begins, I consider the action that started it to be wrong, I consder the person who committed it to have committed a wrong.

Justice is when the cycle is stopped. Justice, to me, is stopping a murderer from murdering again, but not by killing them, by sending them to prison, and not a prison that can train them to be better, stronger killers like ours do today, but one that rehabilitates them. Tookie, for instance, sought redemption, he sought to end gang violence, to not only finish his life with his previous actions that helped increase gang violence accounted for, but also with gang violence heavily damaged by his work, like a surplus of peace.

Also, please don't use the "better things to do than complain on an internet forum" I get that all the time by the various people I argue with over different things, but it's more productive than you think. For one, I have 24 hours a day I can spend doing whatever I like, writing an argument on the internet takes like 10 minutes. The other thing is it sort of works like quality control for my arguments, so I get better at holding my position, I weed at my bad stances, and occasionally I change my mind on an issue. I've been arguing on forums since I was like 13, and since then I've become champion of my schools debate team and leads us to the state finals, and I'm generally just better at arguing with people without getting defeisive or throwing fallacies at them. So then, you must be asking, what's the point at being good at arguing? Well, it also just makes me better at talking to people, and Cesar Chaves (Cofounder of the farmworkers union) has said the only successful way he was ever able to organize people is by talking to one person, then talking to another person, then talking to another person.

So that's why I debate over the internet, and not instead of anything, I do plenty of other stuff for my various causes as well.