Many people might think that building
peace between implacable enemies is a long and difficult task, but as Trump
showed yesterday, it’s incredibly easy for a ‘stable genius’. All you need to do is sit down with one side
to the dispute, ask them what they want, write it all down, call it a peace
plan, present it to the other side, and tell them that they must agree to it or
else. What could possibly go wrong? It’s so simple that I simply can’t imagine
why no-one has thought of it before...
Posts
Ministers seek EU negotiator to lead reset talks
-
UK Government ministers are hiring a new EU negotiator as Sir Keir Starmer
seeks to reset Britain’s relationship with Europe. The post, worth at least
£1...
8 hours ago
6 comments:
I think this is pretty much what happened between England and Wales.
The larger could ahniliate the smaller at any time, the smaller eventually comes to accept and admire the sheer humanity of the larger (because it allows the smaller to continue to exist). This is known as civilisation and it's what seperates us from the animal kingdom.
I'm surprised you don't get it.
I almost thought you were serious for a moment, but then I realised it was just parody.
Actually I was being serious. Didn't you fight as a kid with your younger brother?
Life is just a variant of this sort of behaviour. It's just what happens at work. Or at home amongst the family. It's why the citizens of the US are allowed to bear arms. It's a fundamental fact of life.
It may not be the best, whatever the best is, but it is how it is for the moment. Just the same as our electoral system and almost everything else we prize and value.
Isn't this rather what the REMAINERS tried to do to the BREXITEERS ... tried to show them how things should be, kept suggesting they we're mislead, wanted another vote but rigged in their favour.
It's called life. Make the best of it!
I'm not sure whether Anon 13:25 and Anon 14:56 are the same person or not; that's a problem in allowing anonymous comments. But the basic idea expressed seems to be the same, and it underlines a major philosophical disagreement between us. You seem to be saying that life is as it is, and we must accept current reality and work within it - so the powerful win and the weak lose; the disadvantaged must accept their position in life; inequality and war are natural so we must just live with them. There are some of us who believe that we can make things different if we want to. Is human nature fixed and immutable, as some argue, or is it the product of particular social and economic relations at a particular period in time? You seem to fall into the first camp; I'm very firmly in the second.
John you are trying to persuade arch conservative (small and big 'c') thinkers that there is merit in managing change in an orderly fashion as opposed to "enabling" change only as an outcome of armed conflict. This latter route could possibly involve not only the immediate parties but also their entourage of backers. That's called escalation into global conflict, although it might remain regional by proxy. Whichever way the immediate parties would definitely feel the pain.
Way back in time (1970's) a saner US President got Israel and Egypt to a solid stage 1 of building a peace. Sadly some major events in 1979 served to initiate a long period of destabilisation and endless conflicts which has served to polarise, indeed fragment positions in the Middle East and wider region. It is arguable that the revolution in Iran, the attack on the Great Mosque by Saudi fundementalists, and the invasion of Afghanistan by USSR, which all took place in 79 were triggers to an array of events and processes which have all contributed to the cumulative mess we have today.
To draw parallels between the consequences of these and other events with our little mickey mouse squabble in Europe is a grotesque overstatement. To put it bluntly Mr or Mrs Anon should get out of his /her shell more often or stay in and shut the f**k up!
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