I wasn't meaning to imply I think we're on the same level, simply that some of those arguments ring true for our country as well.

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Changin' avatars like there's no tomorrow

I just get uneasy whenever these types of comparisons are made. There's plenty to get angry about in this country, but we're so incredibly spoiled compared to most of the world I feel that attempting to draw parallels between ourselves and more troubled regions smacks of disrespect and arrogance*.

This probably has something to do with the fact I've just started re-reading Pity the Nation....

*Not for one second suggesting that's what you were doing Althea

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"Common Sense is the collection of prejudices aquired by age eighteen" - Albert Einstein

No, I understand where you're coming from! Don't worry.

I did put my foot in it a little.

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Changin' avatars like there's no tomorrow

Then Shalom and Salaam to you

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"Common Sense is the collection of prejudices aquired by age eighteen" - Albert Einstein

Oy?

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Changin' avatars like there's no tomorrow

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Sick Left-wing Zealot.

Bat Mitzvah is correct for a girl . Bar Mitzvahs are apparently only for boys, so Alan has seen his arse in the same way I did 5 minutes ago.

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I'm a nasty, violent lefty. You cunt.

I've missed your poo updates

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"Common Sense is the collection of prejudices aquired by age eighteen" - Albert Einstein

I don't think that's fair either. At the very least, it requires the caveat that a couple of millennia of relentless anti-semitism, culminating in the holocaust, have had an effect on the Israeli historical consciousness that goes far beyond any perceived victimisation felt by the Boers (let alone the Anglo South Africans). I used to have to read the Arab press for my work: even the milder papers were full of paranoid 'anti-zionist' rhetoric that might sound inflated and empty to us — but if I'd lost family in the death camps I'm not sure I'd be so sanguine.

None of which is an excuse for the occupation of the Palestinian territories or the growing discrimination you highlighted. But I think it resembles segregation more than apartheid.

You're right to point out that Boer history and Jewish history are separate. My point however was that you can see a growing similarity between how South Africa treated the Bantu population, and how Israel treats it's Arab and migrant populations.

Without wishing to get into an argument about the worthiness and motivations of Middle Eastern news reporting agencies, what I will say is that generally speaking, the Arab press to which you refer is not free, and widely not seen to be by those who read it. Israel however, cannot make that claim. With the exception of Haaretz, most Israeli news agencies are just as frothing in their support for Zionism as the Arabs are in their condemnation of it. Neither side can claim purity over the other in that respect.



This is essentially the crux of the matter isn't it. I am in no position to explore the psychology of a Holocaust survivor, in much the same way as I can never relate to the teenage girl who becomes a suicide bomber after her family are killed in an air raid. All I can say, is that there are plenty of Jews who consider what is being done in the name of the victims of the Holocaust to be a reprehensible. Some of them are survivors, others aren't.



I'm sorry but I cannot agree with that. The land ownership laws, restrictions on movement, restrictions on orange exports, restrictions on marriage and so on are not being designed to keep the communities separate. There is massive financial inequality, a wall, and a militia to do that. The aim of those policies is to herd the Palestinians into an area where they simply cannot survive, and are left with no means whatsoever to change their circumstances. The only role of the people trapped in Gaza is to die. By any definition, that is a ghetto.

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"Common Sense is the collection of prejudices aquired by age eighteen" - Albert Einstein

Fears for girl, 24, who got flesh-eating bacteria on zip-slide as she is critical condition after having her fingers and foot amputated





For the second comment.... (although why you want to diss the story of a girl who has lost her feet and fingers is beyond me)....

News of the world. To survive online, newspapers are seeking a worldwide audience

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You may say I'm a dreamer.... but I'm not the only one....

I'm wondering if the first one isn't in fact relating to the Mail usualy putting up intrusive or inapropriate photos with articles such as this, and if Tony isn't perhaps just been sarcastic.

Unless it's the same Tony from Birmingham I think I've seen elsewhere on the site, in which case he might mean it.

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"Now get those trousers off before someone dies!"

Meet the War Lady: Royal Navy appoints first ever woman commander of a frontline warship

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1vbRkq1Q9

Actually not a bad article, but THE COMMENTS! OH GOD! THE COMMENTS!



And there's more like them, all in the red thankfully. But what a bunch of misogynistic antediluvian arseholes.

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I accidentally trod on a copy of the Daily Mail. Luckily, I found some dog muck to wipe my shoe on.

I wonder if DM readers have ever met a woman who isn't a stereotype?

Power to Commander West, I say.

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Changin' avatars like there's no tomorrow

They ALL are in some way, as far as they are concerned. They will find a stereotype that a woman fits into, and if they can't they'll invent one.

You can't just be a woman, you are a woman with a chip or an agenda.

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"Now get those trousers off before someone dies!"