Israel

[The Beatles]

May be, I was just commenting on the Greek religion's demise not being so sudden. Rome was the Microsoft of ancient times in many ways.

[Gen. Volkov]

*laughs*. Well the Romans did adopt alot of the Greek god as their own, but they renamed them and created new stories around them. So in a sense, the Greek gods of Zeus and Athena and Hera and whatnot did die when they were conquered by the Romans, of course they were replaced with a very similar pantheon, but the not the same pantheon. And I like your analogy. Rome as Microsoft.

[The Beatles]

Except for the tiny detail that Rome created a brilliantly functioning empire whose precedent is still followed to this day from architecture to law and politics. Windows to date hasn't gotten a single operating system right, all of them were buggy, insecure, and a right pain to use. The only similarity is in their tactics. Thus I like Rome and dislike Microsoft.

[Gen. Volkov]

I just found it funny Beatles, and that I liked it, I didn't say if it was all that accurate. There's more problems with the analogy than just that.

[Nuclear Raunch]

Well if you want to look at religion, how about Zoroastrians? Moloch worshippers? Temples to Zeus? Don't see many of those around much anymore either. Guess why? The people who practiced those religions were all conquered by people with different beliefs. The zoroastrian Persians got wiped out by Alex the Great, Moloch worship got wiped out with the Sumerian culture was annihilated by the Sea Peoples, and the Greeks got wiped out by the Romans and then the Northern barbarians. So military action can wipe out religions.

Are too, what continent conquered most of the world? Europe. What empire owned large tracts of land in Africa? The Austro-Hungarian Empire. Or are you saying you are a hypocrit, but disagree with the America rules the world idea?

And I do agree to an extent. If an outside source still ruled them all, the conflicts would be suppressed, but not eliminated completely.

Today, the number of Zoroastrians is significantly lower than it once was, but the religion is alive and dynamic.

This despite the fact that several different militarys (including the forementioned Alexander the Great) have been trying to exterminate them for over 2,000 years.

Moloch was originally thought to have been a god the Phoenecians worshipped, however modern archaeology suggests that it was actually the name given to a type of sacrifice. I'll definately admit that it's not prevalent today, but I think that has more to do with the cultural issues surrounding sacrificing children than any military action.

The Church of Zeus wants you as a member. Warning: Ancient Greeks were big on older male/younger male relationships and todays church seems to take that part seriously. *insert gay joke here*

[Kraken]

holy lord nuke.........only you............

[Gen. Volkov]

Sacrificing children has only been seen as "bad" throughout the world for about the last 500 years. And even then you would regularly get babies sacrificed by different religions or other reasons. Even into the late Middle Ages, babies were sometimes left out in the cold in the belief it would break the cold snap.

The Zeus church is not the ancient Greek worship of the Zeusian pantheon. That religion IS gone. (It seems like a fringe religion created out of what we know of the Greek pantheon.) As is Moloch worship, which may have started with the Pheonicians, or some assert, way back with the Sumerians. In any event, that religion is also gone. So all we have is a few scattered Zoroastrians, and Zoroastrian communities, though how similar to the old religion they are, I do not know. So it is possible to wipe out a religion through military action.

[The Beatles]

That's certainly untrue. One of the great inspirations that Jesus provided was the respect of children. In the Christian world at least -- and in many other societies as well -- children have been treated with a greater respect than previously, which included not sacrificing them randomly. The cultures that did sacrifice children also typically sacrificed adults. Ancient Spartans threw children off a cliff if they were unfit.

During the Renaissance, the cult of children was again lifted high, but it was accompanied by a general rekindling of values that had been purged by the Middle Ages.

Despite these things, children were forced to work under very barbarous conditions for extreme hours for a long time in almost all of Europe; this practice did not lift until the 17th and 18th centuries.

[Kraken]

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/ ... 20,00.html

[The Beatles]

I don't see why those photos "damn" Hezbollah. Both sides have thrown out the Geneva Convention a long time ago; it's just guerilla warfare on Hezbollah's side at this point.

[Kraken]

When I was in Lebanon, in the Hezbollah heartland, I said Hezbollah must stop this cowardly blending in among women and children," he said.

hmpf, read the article you doof.

[The Beatles]

I read the article. I still think this is nothing unusual, as both sides have chosen to disregard the Geneva Convention.

[edit] There have been exceptions in the past though:
http://www.israelforum.com/board/showthread.php?p=31685

[Freenhult]

The Geneva Convention is going to be the downfall of the World Powers. We are going to need some rules, but come on. War has a different meaning now. We aren't fighting countries so to speak, just groups of people.

[The Beatles]

Country-country warfare still exists, even in the US's recent history: look at Afghanistan. Besides, it's less than 30-40 years ago that the US conducted simply massive wars in Asia, and in the past century the world has seen the most brutal warfare in its history.

Besides, disregarding all that, and to quote someone from The Long Patrol, if you fight in the same way that your opponents do, what are you really fighting for? The answer today is just your own personal selfish comfort. No, the Geneva Convention represents morality, however much nations trample it, and it should be upheld.

By the way, the United States has rejected the Fourth Geneva Convention (as well as the Kyoto Protocol -- it's as if the USA was above the law).

[Gen. Volkov]

We have ratified all the Geneva Conventions except for two 1977 protocols Beatles, what are you talking about?

There's no such thing as "above the law" in international diplomacy. The Geneva Conventions aren't laws. Treaties aren't laws. Protocols aren't laws. They are agreements.

The Kyoto protocols haven't been signed by Australia either. Also, you know perfectly well why we didn't ratify the Kyoto protocol. It has nothing to do with us being "above the law", it has to do with us being the largest consumer of fossil fuels in the world. It has to do with us having the largest infratstructure devoted to distributing said fossil fuels in the world. I admit other countries are and will have a tough time of it, but it would be ALOT worse for the US. And of course, I'm not saying we shouldn'tbe reducing our emissions and shifting over to a non-fossil fuel based economy, but a different time schedule is required.

That's certainly untrue. One of the great inspirations that Jesus provided was the respect of children. In the Christian world at least -- and in many other societies as well -- children have been treated with a greater respect than previously, which included not sacrificing them randomly. The cultures that did sacrifice children also typically sacrificed adults. Ancient Spartans threw children off a cliff if they were unfit.

Oh really, so tell me, when was the last time Christians actually followed Christ's message? More wars have been fought by Europeans in Christ's name than any other reason. The first thing invoked by both sides in most wars was, "God is on our side". Christ advocated PEACE! The Rennaisance was within the last 500 years Beatles. That's when child sacrifice was effectively done with. So to reiterate, child sacrifices happened, maybe not regularly, but did happen with some frequency, up to about 500 years ago.



About the Geneva conventions: definitely needed. Right now we are headed into the one of the most unstable, brutal, and horrific periods in world history. The further we get into this "War on Terror" the more like the terrorists we will become. The Geneva conventions are were civilization stops and pure savagery begins. They will most likely be the only thing that saves us from ourselves. You just watch, in the next ten years, we will gradually stop giving people trials, and just start executing them on the battlefield if we have video evidence of crimes against humanity. The old adage is true: You cannot fight an enemy without becoming more like that enemy. WW2 in the US under Roosevelt was the closest America ever came to being a totalitarian state.