"However such protests do not always represent the views of the majority."
And majority views do not always indicate a decision reasonably taken - certainly while the establishments around the world control, and often own the means where information is passed on for us to take those decisions.
The fact is that whatever people might think on any subject, it is invariably a small minority who care enough or be in the position to express their views on them - this has always been the case.
It would be totally ridiculous to assume that those who do not demonstrate are happy with the way things are, yet this argument is often used by them in charge as a claim that this is the case.
Only 35,000 of us poured into Grosvenor Square in 1968 to protest what we watched nightly in Vietnam - was this an indication that the people of Britain supported the off-loading of napalm and Agent Orange onto the heads of the Vietnamese people that we viewed on our television screens night after night - don't think so really - and demonstrations such as these on a global scale eventually helped force an end to the war (should be remembered that General Westmorland proposed that Vietnam should be "nuked back into the Stone age", and there were those who were happy to go along with him.
Mass demonstrations are a pretty accurate indication that something is 'rotten in the State of Denmark'.
" In the years I spent there I never once heard anyone refer to Israel as "terrorist" state."
I never once heard actions such as those carried out by Israel down the years - mass murder of refugees, civilians, including women and children, use of chemical and anti-personnel weapons, deliberate targeting of hospitals, schools, old people's homes, mass eviction of people from territory their ancestors have occupied for millennia to make room for a people claiming to have been "bequeathed it by God", forcible settlement of nomads onto toxic rubbish dumps, using chemical sprays and high pressure hoses...... as anything but the actions of a terrorist State.
Probably the most bizarre suggestion ever made by anyone is to claim that acts of terrorism are only such when recognised by politicians (in "decent" countries which have been known to commit such acts themselves) - and then to invent a list of countries supporting these acts.
You couldn't make it up (though Keith has)
Jim Carroll   
Not