OK Teribus, I'm certainly not the one pussyfooting round anything. As you know whenever people put questions to me or critique what I write, I do my best to reply in detail. I could juts fire off a one-or-two sentence answer along the lines of "No, you're wrong and I'm right" as I often see on these threads, but I prefer to give people the courtesy of a considered response. That means nothing to Slag, all she can do is mock my style by saying 'gee...how tedious' Calling someone 'tedious' is a personal attack, it has nothing to do with the validity of the argument. She then proceeds to call me 'irrational' by saying that "she and other rational people...." (i.e I'm not in that group). She repeats her 'tedious' remark by saying "the BULK (and I do mean the BULK) of your post" Again, this is not an argument, but a personal comment. She continues by trying to make me and my arguments look foolish with a kind of semantic trick "ASSumption" (i.e you make an ASS of yourself when you say these things). But it doesn't make my arguments or me look foolish, as it is not an argument in itself. It is simply trying to say "you are an ASShole if you believe this" Well, I think that speaks for itself. The only ASShole is the one who has to resort to insults in order to try and bolster a weak argument. Ok, maybe it's a typo and she hasn't yet learned to manage upper and lower case letters or has the SHIFT button on half the time.....I doubt it.

Perhaps you're right and 'itentify' a typo, and she wants to 'identify' me. If so, it's an interesting comment in itself. If she wants to identify me it means she likes labels and wants to try and fit me in some category where things can be tidied up into neater shapes in her mind. She finds her category soon enough when she adds "Listen to all the little Seig Heilers cry FOUL!" So she is saying in effect that those who believe Posada is a terrorist (myself included, and she already knows this) are little Nazis. This is a personal attack. Originally a Nazi was someone who followed the Nazi ideology or was a member of that party. (I don't need to state, I hope, that following the Nazi ideology entailed genocide, racism, warmongering etc., etc., ) It no longer simply means a member of the Nazi party (which strictly speaking is the actual meaning) Now it has come to be a general term of abuse with a wide range of meaning, including 'racist, supremacist, intolerant, authoritarian, fascist, inhumane, narrow minded etc., etc., None of which is intended as a compliment, not surprisingly of course. Well, I am none of these things. Calling someone a Nazi doesn't win you the argument either, it just means you've run out of argument. It means Slag hates my ideas, and now she hates me, and her post reveals a level of Redneck chauvanism. If she could she would probably fly over, drop a bomb on me so she wouldn't be obliged to interact with my ideas anymore. She would think she had won the argument because I would be dead and no longer answering, and without the least sense of irony she would convince herself that I"M the fascist!

There are other insults such as 'when you open your cyber-mouth'. What's that supposed to mean? It is intended as an insult, as it is gratuituous and pointless. She also compares me to a poisonous snake, as a way of suggesting that I am one. She is the stereotype of the person who can't cope with people thinking differently to her and would prefer they didn't exist so there wopuld be no one to challenge her comfortable assumptions. She doesn't even read my posts properly. She says that 'I deny a people the rigth to exist' What total bollox. She doesn't specify which people, but you can bet she doesn't mean the Palestinians who are being forced out of their own land this very day, ethnically cleansed, in fact. I'll go out on a limb here and say she probably means 'Jewish people'. Go back and see if you can find anywhere where I said 'Jewish people' don't have the right to exist.

In relation to Posada, she challenges me to go out and bring him to jusice. She adds a gratuitous insult "it'll give you something to do, focus your energikes" She doesn't even know me. I have plenty to do, but trying to make me look like the idle tosser she is doesn't win her the argument. No, I challenge HER to do so, for all her talk about patriotism and terrorism. It would be interesting to see just how far she'll get with that in the Land of the Brave and Free, where there are 'Good terrorists' and 'Bad terrorists'. She says it all when she says he is a 'minor blip'. As you woould say, Teribus, this comment beggars belief. Posada is wanted for blowing up a Cuban airliner, for killing civilians in bombing hotels and resorts etc., Now if he'd done all that in the USA on behalf of Al-Qaeda, far from calling him a 'minor blip' Slag would be screaming about yet another example of "The Free World's enemies" (my emphasis). She is wrong about Israel, out of whose ass she thinks the sun shines. It is NOT simply 'my opinion' that Israel has a deplorable human rights record, it is also the opinion of Amnesty International, and Israeli Human Rights Watch (a group operating inside Israel). And before you say it, I know Amnesty has criticsed Hizbullah for its rocket attacks, and I agree - targeting civilians has become a nasty effect of modern warfare (though they were never titally immune from involvement - since war started, it has almost always touched civilian life, but now we are supposed to have rules, which is some progress at least). I would add Saudi Arabia to the deplorable Human Rights statement. But Saudi is a US ally, so they don't come in from any criticism from the White House. Despite the fact that most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi and Saudi money funds a lot of terrorism , there was no question of invading or bombing Saudi Arabia. This is right up Slag's street, as I said there are 'Good terrorists' and 'Bad terrorists'. As Nicole Kidman put it in the movie, "The Others" 'your daddy was fighting on the side of the English, and so on the side of the Goodies'. All black and white. Since this is principally a folk forum, I might add Slag might benefit from listening to Bob Dylan's "With God on our side"

So, no, Slag is not 'totally innocent' as you put it, her post was a half-hearted reply to my previous posts and answer to her, but also a personal attack where she attacked the writer and not the ideas. Not the end of the world, of course, but since you suggested otherwise... But I think there is no point in me discussing any of this further with Slag, and I stand by that. The real waste of time is that I have to spend half an hour explaining the obvious - that Slag resorts to personal attack when she doesn't like your opinion - instead of having time to deal with the actual issues. So I hope this will be the last time I have to do so.

As regard your own posts, I will get back to answering asap, but being Xmas season, it's very busy here.