bbcrackmonkey:
"Arabs would never name a place Palestine, as they have no "P" sound in their alphabet, and most native Palestinians cannot pronounce the name of their country, calling it "Balestin"."

Actually, no. They call it Fil-lis-tin. So they CAN pronounce the name of their country and can say the letter "P", even though that sound is not an offical "letter" in the Arabic alphabet. The language is fairly adaptable; foreign words that use the letter P or V are written in Arabic the same as "b" and "f", but both with the addition of an additional 2 dots.

You're welcome for the language lesson.

Nik Hatha/bbcrackmonkey: There was a group of Greeks that lived among the Canaanites, who were known as Philistines.

The Romans named the region Palestine, after the Philistines, when they showed up later in the game and crushed the place.

Palestinians are just Arabs with political and geographic leverage. Israelis are warmongering, intolerant racists who are rapidly fomenting their own brand of "Stoopid Fresh Nazi-Apartheid" (tm).

abdul, the Romans named it Judea, and called it that for hundreds of years. It was only named Palastina when the Romans got sick of Jewish revolts and tried to crush the Jewish identification with the area. Yes they named it after the Philistines, but the area was never ruled nor dominated by them.

I'm not sure if you are being sarcastic about your intolerant racist nazi comment, but just so you know, the Palestinians are extremely tolerant of Jews and are totally averse to ethnic cleansing... yup.

Nik Hatha, thanks for the language lesson. Always useful to know more useless facts :-)

Hmmm, Americans commenting on Israeli actions and policy;

USA/Israel

Invade and occupy foreign land - check
Holding prisoners without charge - check.
Torture/abuse of prisoners (by whatever definition) - check
Killing of civilians (on purpose or otherwise) - check

Pot.kettle.black?

prowler8 - Sins of the father, eh? How progressive.

bbcrackmonkey:
"Nik Hatha, thanks for the language lesson. Always useful to know more useless facts :-)"

Hey, just CORRECTING the bogus information that you passed off as "facts". And now that you're called out as a mo-ron (and, for some reason, you're arrogant to boot) all of a sudden are "useless" to you...useless, but at least correct.

Abdul - Nice try, but a bit obvious, isn't it, troll?

Nik Hatha, so you're calling me out as a moron, and I'm arrogant? I get it.

For all intents and purposes all these facts we are debating are useless, I was just making a little quip about the futility of it all. I was actually genuinely grateful for you correcting me, as I am never above being corrected, that is until you started flinging ad-hominems around and started talking shiat. *sigh*

I guess I can thank you instead for totally overreacting to my post and interpreting petty insults where there were none, then one-upping my supposed slight against you. Congratulations. You win. Somebody pass out the cookies. My self-esteem has been shattered and my manhood debased, and now I will quietly cry myself to sleep while cursing your superior ability to fling poo at me.

Sorry about the damage to your manhood, bbcrackmonkey...don't cry too hard, and make mine Oreo cookies-the double cream variety.

Nik Hatha, an apology would have been ok too, or maybe a "oh my bad, I did get a little out of line because I thought you were insulting me and so I get defensive".

No cookies for you.

Here's a spoon you can eat my ass with

Apology for what? Pointing out that you're an arrogant know-it-all who, in fact, DOESN'T know it all? Keep your spoon-I'm not that kind of guy, not that there's anything wrong with that...

Scrotar:

"sins of the father"? If you are referring to the original colonisation of the U.S. well, I wasn't - thought hadn't even occurred to me.But now you mention it...........
I was talking about Iraq - the big deserty place with oil etc

Israelis are mean. (The ones with guns)

George Foreman is a real nice guy, and a great griller by the way.

Not like most of you farks.

Israel has nice beaches, why doesn't anyone mention the beaches!

Did anyone else get hungry reading that article?

Kudos for the Israelis on trying to get them to eat.

Keep in mind that the 'Palestinians' were never actually thrown out of Israel until after the Arabs attacked in 1948. All the Arab countries had plenty of space to take the refugees in but decided to let them rot in order to foster hatred of the Jews.

Also, Israel is the first country to ever actually propose a Palestinian state. They promised Arafat almost all the land he wanted at Camp David, but he wouldn't take yes for an answer, and walked out. Then he gets celebrated as "standing up against America" or something.

Its a shame that Israel is always being condemned for defending itself. If some punk kid is throwing rocks from the temple mount onto Jews praying at the Western Wall(thats at least 60ft high) and some cop shoots him, the BBC reports it as some innocent kid getting killed. If I were to condemn a society, it would be the one that teaches its children to become martyrs instead of encouraging them to become doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, etc.

Or the Jews could have just stayed out of Palestine... but NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

2004-08-16 05:45:34 PM Yahweh
"The Prisons Service said it would draw on tactics used in hunger strikes by jailed Northern Irish militants in the 1970s and 1980s, such as withholding basic amenities"

And we all know how successful that tactic was...

For those that don't, the IRA/INLA hunger strikers that died became Republican 'saints', it heralded an upsurge in IRA activity and membership, the leader of the hunger-strike (Bobby Sands) got elected to the British parliament a month before he starved to death (a major symbolic and moral boosting victory for the Republican movement), and the British ended up giving in to all their demands.

"Those who don't learn from past mistakes are condemned to repeat them"

I would just advertise heavily - "We are giving them food if they want it" - also, I would make sure that they had food in their cell every day, and then videotape/log giving the food to the prisoners. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. If they want to *KILL THEMSELVES*, I would be OK with that.

I would also point out, if these were Catholics that killed themselves by refusing food, that they probably chose the only way to kill themselves possible where they would still get Prayer For the Sick (Last Rites to those pre-Vatican-II people) before they officially died.

However -- if they did a full-on hunger strike, could they take communion? A *LOT* of it ? If they didn't take communion, could they have the last rites? If they didn't have their last rites, they go straight to hell - and I don't remember any Cardinal or Pope giving them special dispensation to kill themselves.

Does Islam work this way? Can you kill yourself and still go to Heaven if you're not killing "the unfaithful" at the same time? I mean, if you just decide to kill yourself for no other reason than life is sucking, or you're in a Jewish prison because you tried to kill other Semites, and you decide to starve yourself to death, is that considered a Martyr's death, or does it buy you face time with Iblis ?

/confused, but appreciating the irony of Ieue talking with Yahweh on religious issues

Nik Hatha: Well, let's see, I was only pointing out a few things. I don't recall directly trying to elicit your reaction. Truth be told, I wouldn't have wanted to hear your opinion to begin with. Do you know what troll even means?