Israel/Lebanon: Where The Blame Really Lies

[Taxloss]

All that fighting can be blamed on this stuff:



Grass.

Sure, it looks innocent enough now, but it's caused a horrible amount of bloodshed for some 12,000-14,000 years. While wandering through what is now the Middle East, some of our ancestors discovered that the seeds that grew on the grass that was abundant in that area were a lot easier to eat if you soaked them. Plus, if you left the water they soaked in for a short while in the sun and then drank it, you would get pleasantly lightheaded, your inhibitions would fade, and then you'd keep drinking until you slept with someone unsuitable.

They had simultaneously discovered grain, grain alcohol, and the drunken fling. For reasons that may be connected to these discoveries, their population started to rise quite sharply.

After this moment, the discoveries came very quickly: agriculture first, along with settlement, then the domestication of dogs and goats, then the notion of "land ownership", swiftly followed by the invention of guard dogs. For some reason, they decided to call this "civilisation", a decision that was clearly made after too much grain alcohol.

You can see where this is heading. Meanwhile, however, the climate continued to change, because that's what it does, and the crescent of land that was so fertile they called it the "fertile crescent" got hotter and drier and less lawn-friendly. The vast grainbelts of what are now the Sahara and the Middle East shrank back.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, that's how the Levant - a very small, dusty, rocky area with precious little fertile land and fresh water - became the birthplace of civilisation, the city, agriculture, three global religions, and umpteen less successful faiths. You can't triple-book a major religious venue like that without the groupies getting violent.

In terms of human blood, the Middle East is the most expensive real estate in the world. Civilisation began there and may well end there. Regardless of the outcome of this present crisis, the Middle East will continue to be violent for the rest of our lives.

That's unless a miracle happens. And the Middle East is miracle central.

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[Tom Joad]

8. This is silly. Sorry. But i think we should be thinking about specific

policy decisions why this situation is out of control. It ain't the grass.
These policies are made in Washington and Jerusalem. The problem is military occupation.

[H2O Man]

13. I suspect

the OP is referencing the efforts to gain and hold control over the natural resources is the root of the violence in the Middle East .... and east, north, west, and south of there .... which is indeed correct.

[lvx35]

9. If grass got us in this, by God it'll have to get us out.

Your a genuis Taxloss, I can see the solution...legalize it all (including alchohol in the Islamic countries) and see what other brilliant stuff these folks come up with . :)

[Mr_Spock]

10. Is 7 consecutively deleted messages a record?

I've never seen anything like it :D

[Tom Joad]

11. Seven is a biblical number.

[Mr_Spock]

12. LMAO

Don't get me started :rofl:

[H2O Man]

14. It's a sign.

If you unseal one of the deleted messages .....

[Taxloss]

15. Well, I'd like to thank whoever it was

for kicking this thread and saving me the bother.

"We're looking for someone with no sense of pattern recognition"

/dilbert

[HamdenRice]

16. This is funny and informative

Taxloss, I usually disagree with almost everything you write, but this is both funny and informative. One thing you point out that most people don't realize -- a recent archaeological discovery -- is that beer was invented before bread. This makes sense, because all you have to do to make beer is soak grain in water and let it ferment, while bread requires a higher level of technology.

One thing I think is over emphasized, however, is ownership. That's my field of expertise. Most legal anthropologists have found that world wide, grazing cultures don't lead to land ownership as we understand it, because owners of flocks have to constantly move over vast areas that are too big to claim as individual ownership plots. But it does lead to tribal conflicts over the right to graze various ranges -- more conflicts over sovereignty that over property per se.

But of course, the ME moved from pure grazing to actual horticulture fairly early. But think of property conflicts as intra tribal and sovereignty conflicts as inter tribal.