I think you're reading what I said the way you want to. Fact of the matter is that the way Israel has behaved has been appauling, and that is a fact. Morality does not work on a 'lowest common denominator' basis, the actions of others is NOT a defence for the immorality of the actions of oneself. As it's not a defence, it must be a deflection, and I am not going to play that game with you.

"why would you say "Israel" in scare quotes and say you feel dirty but not "Syria" as well?"

Your deflection is most disingenuous. I can't put a word in quotes in I didn't even use that word, can I? So your problem is that I talked about one country, and you think that I can only talk about one country if I talk about every other country in the world as well, otherwise it's "not fair"... gonna complain that I haven't talked about Egypt or Jordan as well? Well I'm flattered that an opinion of mine isn't enough and you just need to hear more from me about surrounding areas as well, but I do suggest instead that you grow up.

I would say the USA was taken over rather than occupied... occupied implies that the previous inhabitants were left alive, and that's hardly the case. And no, I'm not an American, nor would I want to visit such a country.

I do also know that "negotiate" has a rather special meaning for Israel.

Oh no, I must have read part of it and missed a couple of words, I'm sorry for not going back and checking the exact bits that I must have read... oh wait, no I'm not.

My concern is of the mistreatment of people, wherever that may be. I think the way the land was just divided up was wrong, but mostly because of that primary concern: the way people were treated by the process.

Wow, you really need things spelt out for you huh.

You're absolutely correct about GH, I didn't read the article enough to see where abouts in "Israel" it was supposed to be. I feel slightly dirty now. Thanks for the correction.

No, this story's from Israel, you're thinking of Soviet Russia.

Yes... but... maybe she was genuinly kept in the dark, maybe she was more in on it than she says (I wouldn't be surprised, but I have no reason to believe that she was) but if you look at the whole thing surrounding Scooter Libby et al, you see that there were quite blatent cover ups, and that it wasn't purely a case of mistaken intelligence as she believes or at least claims to believe.

Err... I've seen a bunch of her interviews where she talks a lot of this before, but this is quite lengthy so might be missing what you're refering to. Wanna give me a search string to jump to?

I was wondering the same about the last lot too. It seems to be that the US government has no credibility left with the whole WMD fiasco. At the moment, I don't think the administration particularly wants to go to war with Iran, but I think there are definitely at least elements that want the option to, and want it to be known that there is the option to. So, as practically everybody is questioning the credibility of the US government, but practically nobody is questioning the credibility of the leaks, they would be the perfect "soft power" tool for shaping the minds of people, because nobody's questioning their authenticity... just... oh look, lots of people want to go to war with Iran... almost reminds me of a... coalition of the willing... hmm...

Does certainly make me wonder if there were any controlling elements behind the leaks.

Then I shall too! Mine's gonna be "RubberLeaks".

Crap, he's already done that one too :-/

"He purposely takes a world view of the issue"

An very incomplete one though, I don't think it can really be called "a world view".

You sound like you're stuck in a bubble. Try looking outside your bubble at other countries in the world, that's the only way you can draw a comparison.

But our ability to survive is affected by ability to attribute cause to effect, and I already listed a few visible effects of this. You may think that not understanding the sun has no effect, that it still rises and sets every day, but that's simply not true. At the basic level, understanding long term climate effects helps to increase crop yields, which has a direct effect on the amount of life that can be supported. At the more advanced end, we have the SOHO and SDO satellites trained on the sun to learn more about it, helping us protect our electricity delivery grids and communication systems against solar storms. A group of people who do not employ the scientific method of understanding will fail in the greater world amongst others who will do. Economies will go elsewhere, they will experience brain-drains, and they will collapse to be replaced by a more modern society. You can't stay backwards forever when the rest of the world is moving forwards.

We don't really need to do anything. Our survival stems from our evolved ability to correctly attribute cause to effect, and therefore be able to control effects by controlling causes. As soon as you remove this ability (by claiming simply that the cause is "god dun it") you remove the ability to control reality, which means removing the ability of self preservation. This is why countries where religion isn't rampant are able to run themselves in a more sustained way, right across the board, you'll tend to find fewer boom/bust cycles, fewer wars, fewer enemies, more renewable energy sources. This is because you can't expect somebody to be irrational only when it comes to their religion; their ability to believe things without reason infects their entire decision making process, as does the ability to escape personal responsibility (submitting to "god's will" rather than exercising ones own will to solve problems).

"If you can't be bothered to follow the process"

You're assuming everybody knows the process, which might stand if you had posters along the border fences with all the details on in languages people know and a button to read it out to people who can't read. Some people are just hungry, and have nothing, and think "over there it will be better". It's not scheming and devious. It's desperation. You're thinking that they're all people like you, who've had what you've had, and so know what you know. They're not. What about all the people who have just escaped from somewhere they knew was bad, they're just scared of being sent back, and they suffer because of it. Anyone who's scared of something can have that thing used against them.