>>>>> "S" == Stephen D Williams <sdw@lig.net> writes:
S> A) Which religion is it that can claim no foul actions in its
S> past?  Certainly not Christianity, Islam, etc.
Rastafari.
That is, if you concede that of the two founding branches, only the
one founded by the Nyabingi were legit and the others were
thinly-veneered anti-colonial hooligans.
There is also Vietnamese Buddhism, unless you count setting fire to
oneself as a "foul action".
S> C) Many splinter Christianity religions have 'clean hands' but
S> they also aren't 'found in the wild'.
You'd have to explain "found in the wild".  For example, I know of
no violence perpetrated by the South Pacific "Cargo Cults" outside
of a pretty darn /mean/ game of cricket.
S> D) The Northern Ireland Protestant vs. Catholic feud, recently
S> more or less concluded, is not completely unlike this kind of
S> friction generated by splitting society too much along
S> religious lines.  One Post article pointed out that the problem
S> basically stemmed from the vertical integration of areas along
S> religious lines all the way to schools, government, political
S> party, etc.  (Of course both cases have a heritage of British
S> conquest, but who doesn't?)
When we launched the Native Net in 1989, one of the first things we
noticed on networking aboriginal groups around the world is that the
British Army, with the US Army as a proxy by extension, were the
common thread.  Where neither was present (physically or through
influence) there /tended/ to be less violence.
The issue in Ireland is complex, but rest assured that religious
aspects are only a co-incidence of the invader/colonials being
predominantly members of the Royal-headed Anglicans and the aboriginal
population being predominantly members of the Pope-headed Catholics.
The conflict itself has nothing to do with ideology or practice, since
the Anglican Church is a near-identical clone of Catholicism.
(now I bet that's going to attract some healthy debate ;)
S> .. most Protestants are unionists who want the
S> province to remain part of Britain.
Mebst. Mebst.  It's the other way around.  Most Unionists are protestants.
It's their _Unionism_ that is the source of the conflict, not their
sacriments.
S> ... Police records and historians agree that the most lethal
S> group by far was the IRA, fighting on the Catholic side with a
S> goal of a united Ireland
And which side of the colonial fence do you suppose the Police and
Historians sit?  If the Russians had invaded the USA as feared in
episodes such as the Bay of Pigs, would the Americans have organized
to become a "lethal force", or would they have just said, "Oh well,
there goes /that/ democracy!" and settle in under communist rule?
Just wondering.
>> 2. The US is trying to avoid making war on the Muslim religion.
It is interesting to me that the Canadian media is trying to paint
Chretien as some sort of buffoon for saying that 3rd-world poverty was
a major contributor to 9-11.  If they'd /watch/ his now-infamous
interview, they'd see that it's still us-against-hooligans, but his
point is that the hooligans would not be able to find friendly states
so easily if those states were not so bled-dry by the west.
The same is true of street-gangs: When people are disenfranchised,
it's easier to offer them the Triad as a new family.  You get
cellphones, cars, a dry place to live.  Triad, biker gangs, mafia, the
IRA, Al Queda ... we've been fighting the War on Terrorism for as long
as there's been commerce, so you'd think we'd /realize/ that
escalation of violence is not a solution.
--
Gary Lawrence Murphy - garym@teledyn.com - TeleDynamics Communications
- blog: http://www.auracom.com/~teledyn - biz: http://teledyn.com/ -
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." (Picasso)