I am a great believer in bringing down barriers. If you put up fences you only ever create enemies on the other side.
Football is a good example of this. Segregation in the crowd creates tribal feelings which leads to violence. Rugby on the other hand (a proper mans game by the way) has no segregation and therefore no violence. I have long thought that this 'goldfish bowl' example would work outside of sport.
Quote: Marc P @ June 19 2008, 1:12 PM BSTPolitcal gain equals power. Power equals Money. Money equals power.
Maintaining power equals more money for the ruling classes. The argentian junta wanted to stay in power so invaded The Falklands - the Thatcher Junta wanted to stay in power so responded big time. Seemed to work for her too.
Bush is now talking about getting Oil from Alaska which they said they wouldn't do. Keep your eyes peeled on the Falklands and thereabouts. There's oil in them there hills!
I think it's naive to boil all wars down to money. Sure, it plays a part, but there are other factors tied in. The Iraq war certainly has an oil dimension, but don't forget the Neocons in the American government also hold very fundamentalist Christian beliefs, which undoubtedly influenced their desire to go to war.
Quote: Pete @ June 19 2008, 1:11 PM BSTyour average footie fan who, if caught committing whatever retarded act they have been coaxed into doing by their peers, will loose their job, family and access to a lovely way of life in the UK.
Heh, yeah, right. More like celebrated once they get out of the pub following the two minutes community service. 
Quote: Sofa_Matt @ June 19 2008, 1:16 PM BSTSegregation in the crowd creates tribal feelings which leads to violence.
I also point you to multiculturalism. Total failure, an abhorrent idea and principle.
Quote: chipolata @ June 19 2008, 1:16 PM BSTI think it's naive to boil all wars down to money. Sure, it plays a part, but there are other factors tied in. The Iraq war certainly has an oil dimension, but don't forget the Neocons in the American government also hold very fundamentalist Christian beliefs, which undoubtedly influenced their desire to go to war.
Naive in the sense of simple??? 'absence of complexity, artifice, pretentiousness, or dissimulation'
Then yes.
All wars are to do with money. Fact.
I think you are mistaking why people fight wars who are in them and why people create them who create them.
Quote: Marc P @ June 19 2008, 1:24 PM BSTAll wars are to do with money. Fact.
Try not to use Brentisms. It looks naff. Fact.
I accept your acknowledgement of my point with good grace then. And I moved out of Middlesex many years ago.
Most religions are adaptive when they arise but lose their functionality over time. Mosiac proscriptions on food groups have for instance been made redundant by the refrigerator. All the major world religions are now basically in a fossil state and have little relevance to modern life. But the problem is not so much religion as ideology, whether religious, nationalist or political.
The problem arises when adherence to ideology over-rides personal conscience.
All ideology is in my opinion dangerous and to be treated with profound suspicion. There has never been a jihad by apathetic agnostics.
As a Jihad is an Islamic holy war, no shit, Sherlock!
jihad, crusade, pogrom, whatever.
My favourite progrom is Battle Star Galactica at the moment. But what the hell is this mid series break all about!! 
Yes but all ideologies eventually become redundant and corrupted
look at democracry in this country 3 parties fighting over the middle ground with no principles, and no interest beyond placating property owners and home owners.
80 years ago in the mid east it was Arab Nationalism, now it's pseudo Islam, and already it's becoming faux democracy.
Ideologies, religion are used by evil men as a sugar glaze on their shit cake.
I also point you to multiculturalism. Total failure, an abhorrent idea and principle.
[/quote]
I'm intrigued how so?
Quote: Marc P @ June 19 2008, 1:40 PM BSTMy favourite progrom is Battle Star Galactica at the moment.
I'm an athiest, so I'm stuck up enough to know all religions are wrong...
Quote: sootyj @ June 19 2008, 1:41 PM BSTI'm intrigued how so?
See the quote to which I was replying.
Quote: sootyj @ June 19 2008, 1:11 PM BSTbut Stalin Hitler and Polpott aetheists one and all.
Yes, but they weren't arseholes BECAUSE they were atheists. I don't think Hitler was anyway.
And as Richard Dawkins (legend) has pointed out, Hitler and Stalin both had moustaches - does that mean that their facial hair drove them to evil in the same way that their atheism supposedly did?