Interesting mate. When I first enterd the forum I forcast most of these issues before they would happen, I am very worldly and take in a lot from the world around me and experiences. I also worked for Nato for three years having spent 12 years in the RAF. Everything that the goverments and the powers that be do reflect on culture lifestyle and the arts across the world and in deed We in the Western world have been going trigger how destroying culture and vsluable art in other areas of the world over the last few years and beyond.
If you do this sort of thing constantly it is bound to come back to you eventualy, it is a very arrogant ideal that says anthing else.
I get knocked for telling people to respect and care for each other. And try to understand each others diffrences, this creates a richer world environment, its governments and people in high power that go to war and are quite often very out of touch with reality.
I would like to go across the world taking pictures on humanitarian grounds.
You are right to talk about this, it is all relevent to the issue of art, culture and lifestyle. Unless the studio thinks difrently, this is just my view.
Sept 11 was a very bad thing to happen , but before attacking other narions for doing it, we should be looking at the real causes behind the situationt and what the American government and British Government where doing leading up to the event, if villages in other Coutries where being attacked by us , then how can we condone others for for doing the same to us. ( hope I dont get thrown out for these views)

I am very sad about this being a muslim myself I do like to see the westen world in battles with most muslim countries. Beautiful mosques are being destroyed and buildings I do not bare a grudge on any one in particular but the situation is that if you take someones property and declare it as yours and take things from that country then people/govenments will retaliate the Muslims and and Jews in the East will hate each other for more years to come and nothing in the westen world will be able to change that. We are scared of of what we do not understand and we elliminate and distroy things to gain power and riches, all I can say is you reep what you sow, every one gets their come uppance in the end. The day when there is no vioence is the day when Hell freezes over! The only thing we can do is to set an example to them and understand and be patient with each other.

God, the level of polemic discussion! I am sure you won't get thrown out of the forum for saying you felt that the US & Britain are hypocritical warmongers. It certainly isn't a niche view!

The conflict in the Middle East at the moment is scary, not least because of the exaggerated attacks on Lebanon by Israel, but also the implication of Syria & Iran's (potential) involvement in the matter. The problem(s) in the Middle East are so incessantly ingrined in either sides’ cultures - Jewish vs. Muslim - that I don't really see a way out, if I am being honest. It's an ideological battle that manifests itself brutally, and diplomacy doesn't seem to help matters. The way Bush dichotomised the current environment as "the terrorists" versus "ambassadors of peace," does little to comprehend the way forward, it but only agitates matters further. But then again, he has a monopoly on incitive rhetoric.

Western involvement usurps the issue in a very simplistic way through the imposition of democracy as being transcendental to religion. Any way forward needs to integrate the theocratic nature of either societies & be able to understand how religion can operate within some sort of hybrid democratic system.

i've been following the middle east news closely for the last few days and am very curious to see what happens next. obviously the israelies are preparing for WW3, and probably have their nukes on standby already. they're paranoid like that. i think syria and iran definitely have their fingers in it, after all we know that iran supplies hezbollah with their vintage WWII katyusha rockets.
[the katyusha system has been in use ever since the days of stalingrad... isn't that interesting? 60 years old and still in use.]

essentially, this is iran's way of punishing the U.S. for trying to pressure iran out of its nuclear development program.

but really hezbollah doesn't have a chance. the IDF outnumbers them and outguns them, and is prepared to fight every nation in the middle east, simultaneously.

The fact that Isreal pulled out of Lebanon SIX YEARS AGO yet they still attacked Israel...Palestine electing a government that refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist...Iran going ahead with their nuclear 'power plant' (which virtually nobody believes)...and Israel's only reaction ever seems to be to strike back tenfold...it's all an incredibly frightening scenario.

I read an interview with the leader of Iran and he doesn't seem like a reasonable person. He was flat-out denying the holocaust and every question put to him was twisted into how Israel should be destroyed.

I almost hope that these politicians are cynically using religion to influence their uneducated population to hate the West; it seems the lesser of two evils, I'd rather that then these politicians actually BEING fundamentalist and actually believing that God wants them to subjugate the rest of the world to their medieval beliefs at all costs.

The only way to break the cycle it seems to me is to communicate with the populations of the middle east more - get a dialogue going, because without that all they have to go on regarding the west is the idiotic foreign policy of the last five years and the vulgar, lowest common denominator culture that makes its way over there. And I don't mean 'communicate' as in some naive, 'let's all just love each other and get along' sentiment. I mean actually communicating with them, help to modernize their culture, bring them into the modern world. But it could be decades before their anger over Iraq subsides.

When it comes to coverage on the issues, I had a tough time finding the "opposing" view. These sites definately provide only one side of the story, but there's surely some really horrifying truth to it. Truth that is currently being fairly ignored in the mainstream media. I hope you guys take some time to look at some of these websites to get an idea of the other end of the spectrum.

http://www.palsolidarity.org/
http://electronicintifada.net/
http://www.stopthewall.org.il/
http://www.telrumeidaproject.org
http://www.balatacamp.net/
http://www.btselem.org
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/
http://www.machsomwatch.org/

AND I HIGHLY RECOMMEND:

http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/

My original search on all this began when I discovered Iraqi blogs [Baghdad Burning, Iraqi Screen, Healing Iraq to name a few], from various people within Iraq, which were providing a different story than that of what mainstream media was reporting.

I think for me, the humanitarian issue is the most important as ultimately it is the core and central component of the root of many of the issues that are going on.

The horrifying thing is trying to trace back my experience with these issues in the past, and realizing how limited my knowledge really was.

Another thing which I should mention. In the midst of my research I've come across various commentators on these Palestinian and Iraqi blogs, obvioiusly Westerners, who were providing such unbelievably narrow-minded and racist viewpoint that I had to question the integrity of a population who themselves was only recently exposed to the sort of radicalism that can evolve from these issues. A population that I am a part of.

Anyway, before I begin to sound like a hippy, I just want to add that I think it is our responsibility as Westerners to wade through the shit and try to make a logical and realistic observation of the causes and effects of current affairs as ultimately they will end up affecting us in one way or another.

The above mentioned links are courtesy of Katie Miranda, a Jewish American Human Rights Worker and artist currently living in the Hebron who is providing a non-violent solution to some of the human rights violations happening in Palestine. Her blog can be found at http://moomin13.livejournal.com/ and you can see her art at http://www.theopticnerve.com/. I encourage you to view her video and picture entries. They often speak much more than just words.

She provides a good and fairly clean Western perspective. It's a good start.

Looking forward to hearing more from you guys.

i think it's important to note that israel takes many more lives in self defence than it loses. for example, 8 israelies die in haifa, and 45 lebanese are killed in retaliation. on the other hand, simply being anti-semitic is simple minded. remember that the arabs have always started these wars, all the way back since 1947.

Right now, Israeli officials are urging the Lebanese to flee. Where do they flee? How do they flee? Israel in its first days blew up major roads and bridges. Not only that it has also recently destroyed and killed the passengers of a civilian van attempting to do just that, flee. No one can feel safe on the roads. It's just backwards logic.

The humanitarian situation in Gaza is horrible. Lebanon is going to soon follow suit with hospitals incapable of providing medical care due to lack of electricity. People dying from not being able to receive the most basic needs. Pre-term babies and anyone on life-support is the first to go. How is this not against the Geneva Convention? And most importantly why is it taking the rest of the world almost three weeks to do anything...

Also, saying that being against Israeli policy is anti-Jewish [Semitic can be also used for Arabs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semite] is like saying that being aginst the American policy is being anti-Christian. Don't know when a specific religion became a big part of Democracy, maybe someone can explain.

Anyway, this just angers me. Especially since brown-noser with minority government Stephen Harper who I didn't vote for is saying some stupid shit attempting to represent me and the rest of the country. What ever happened to polite and nice Canada?

Dont forget that there is two sides to every war, it is said that arms where being sold by british and americans to Iraque and afganistan which where used to attack our Countries, it was the same in the Falklands.Thatcher went to war in the Falklands whilst her son aledgedly went arms dealing to these nations following him mum.
The British banks had to right of a lot of Money to Argentina during the conflict, money which was used for arms.
In all these cases we are talking about, inocent lives, valuable culture and art, bering taken away by governors of nations, politics seems to be a cover for, so called legalised murder of inocent people, every life is as valuable as another it is not up to culturaly and socialy conditioned peopl;e to take away the life of another human being becouse of race, religion, or sexuall orientation, in a 21 century civilised world, we should be fighting the war on poverty, AIDS and other health issues as well as planting trees and taking the planted back to its natural state in order to save it.
All relevent to culture fashion and the arts, guys and girls.
A few years ago I took the worlderness experience in Canada and how lucky you are Konrad to be living in such a diverce and beautifull Country.