Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (98002)	5/12/2003 4:46:41 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Respond to of 281500

Tolstoy, on violence as a tool for political change: In 1909, the young Gandi wrote to Tolstoy (who was very ill, near the end of his life), asking for permission to distribute Tolstoy's "A Letter to a Hindu". cyberspacei.com There were, at the time, terrorist organizations carrying out a campaign of "targetted assassinations" of British officials, to achieve Indian independence. The British were responding with mass arrests, closing newspapers, deportations, shooting demonstrators, hanging terrorists, etc. Excerpts: You say that the English have enslaved your people and hold them in subjection because the latter have not resisted resolutely enough and have not met force by force. But the case is just the opposite. If the English have enslaved the people of India it is just because the latter recognized, and still recognize, force as the fundamental principle of the social order. In accord with that principle they submitted to their little rajahs, and on their behalf struggled against one another, fought the Europeans, the English, and are now trying to fight with them again. A commercial company enslaved a nation comprising two hundred millions. Tell this to a man free from superstition and he will fail to grasp what these words mean. What does it mean that thirty thousand people, not athletes, but rather weak and ordinary people, have enslaved two hundred millions of vigorous, clever, capable, freedom-loving people? Do not the figures make it clear that not the English, but the Indians, have enslaved themselves ? ...When the Indians complain that the English have enslaved them it is as if drunkards complained that the (winesellers) who have settled among them have enslaved them. ...The recognition that love represents the highest morality was nowhere denied or contradicted, but this truth was so interwoven everywhere with all kinds of falsehoods which distorted it, that finally nothing of it remained but words. It was taught that this highest morality was only applicable to private life-for home use, as it were-but that in public life all forms of violence-such as imprisonment, executions, and wars-might be used for the protection of the majority against a minority of evildoers, though such means were diametrically opposed to any vestige of love. ...if some men claim to decide who is to be subjected to violence of all kinds for the benefit of others, these men to whom violence is applied may, in turn, arrive at a similar conclusion with regard to those who have employed violence to them...

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (98002)	5/12/2003 7:47:29 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Respond to of 281500

Assassination, as a political tool, only works if it is carried out on a mass scale. So, if the German Generals had managed to assassinate Hitler in 1944, it would have made no difference? To put it that way shows how ridiculous this assertion is. The problem is not Arafat, it is the support Arafat has, and Arafat's methods, from the vast majority of the Palestinians Actually, Palestinian polls show low support for Arafat, about 30% at best. Observers of Palestinian politics say that there are three camps: the Old Guard - Arafat and his cronies, the Young Guard - a new generation of men like Dahlan, and the Islamists. There is little agreement between them either on means or ends. Men like Dahlan have done their share of terror, they are certainly no angels. However, they are rational enough to know when a thing is not working. Arafat could care less, just so long as he remains in power. Targetted assassinations is a half-way temporizing measure, which actually worsens the problem, and leads to further reciprocal attacks on Israelis. The considered opinion of both the US and Israeli intelligence is that well-targeted attacks concentrating on the officer corps of Hamas or Al Qaeda, have been quite effective in degrading their capacities. They may get 'mules' aplenty, but they can do little without an experienced officer corps, who are hard to replace. Beginning with the Lebanon occupation, Israelis started to refuse military service, or refuse to serve in certain areas, or do certain things. This had never happened before, in any of Israel's wars. Israelis are looking in the mirror, and they don't like what they see. I think you're looking in a mirror, Jacob. Arafat's rejection of Barak's offers solidified all but the diehard left in the opinion that Israel was once more in a war of no choice. When they called up the reserves to go into Jenin last year, the units were oversubscribed - men came up who hadn't even been called.