What do you do when a bully moves into your neighborhood?

[liberal N proud]

What would you do...
Your family has lived in the same house for generations, you live in harmony with the neighbors and peace was easy. Suddenly you are forced to give up half your land so people who forced from other places could build and set up their own way of life. You were unhappy about giving up your land and there were problems between you and these new neighbors from the very start.
Periodically, you would have fights with them over things like where the lot line is and them coming over to your place without invitation.
There were periods of relative calm as well, not peace but you did live without tearing each others head off. Others in the neighborhood had trouble with these people as well. This all went on for a few years with intervention from the people down the street always poking their noses into your business making sure you are not provoking your new neighbors.
From time to time your cats would wander across into their yard but they always came home again. At some point you notice your cats have wandered off and have not returned. You discover that your neighbor is holding them and will not return them unless give them more land. This escalates and one day two of their dogs wander onto your property, you seize them.
This provokes your neighbor and he takes out his shot gun and starts blasting at you and your family. He shoots the window out of your house, your cars. The shooting becomes dynamite and he starts by blowing up your garage and then the side of your house is blown off and your children are inside.
Where does this all lead? The destruction of either you and your family or your neighbor?


Does this sound familiar?

[jonnyblitz]

1. fight back. nt

[bryant69]

2. Clearly, that bully should be driven out of the neighborhood

by any means necessary. If he will go peacefully, so be it. But if not, he should pay the price for his evil ways, up to and including eliminating him and his family.

But no this story doesn't sound familiar. What is it in reference too?

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[bleedingheart]

3. Can I ask a really naive question?

For all the money poured into Israel for defense...

What if that money had been used to pay the Palestinians for their land...let us say really fair and perhaps padded prices? What if the nations who wanted to create Israel had just paid off all the Palestinians...??? Could it have avoided the 60 years of conflict?

Maybe I am just an idealist...but perhaps it all could have been done differently...

[liberal N proud]

7. For all the money in the world that has been spent on wars

what good could that money have done?
Yes maybe there would be peace in the middle east if the Palestinians had been paid and paid fairly for the land rather than driven from it.

We could have used all the monies spent on wars for good, like solving world hunger, alternative energy, and curing disease. But with tyrants that rule the world, this is what we get.

[hoboken123]

34. "What if"?

The Israelis bought most of the land they occupy.

Add to that the large number of arabs who left Israel on there own volition, anticipating Israel's destruction by the overwhelming arab armies.

Now, why the people who left in 1948 still make claims on the land is beyond me.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

4. Neighborhood Bully- Bob Dylan

Well, the neighborhood bully, he's just one man,
His enemies say he's on their land.
They got him outnumbered about a million to one,
He got no place to escape to, no place to run.
He's the neighborhood bully.

The neighborhood bully just lives to survive,
He's criticized and condemned for being alive.
He's not supposed to fight back, he's supposed to have thick skin,
He's supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in.
He's the neighborhood bully.

The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land,
He's wandered the earth an exiled man.
Seen his family scattered, his people hounded and torn,
He's always on trial for just being born.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Well, he knocked out a lynch mob, he was criticized,
Old women condemned him, said he should apologize.
Then he destroyed a bomb factory, nobody was glad.
The bombs were meant for him.
He was supposed to feel bad.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Well, the chances are against it and the odds are slim
That he'll live by the rules that the world makes for him,
'Cause there's a noose at his neck and a gun at his back
And a license to kill him is given out to every maniac.
He's the neighborhood bully.

He got no allies to really speak of.
What he gets he must pay for, he don't get it out of love.
He buys obsolete weapons and he won't be denied
But no one sends flesh and blood to fight by his side.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Well, he's surrounded by pacifists who all want peace,
They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease.
Now, they wouldn't hurt a fly.
To hurt one they would weep.
They lay and they wait for this bully to fall asleep.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Every empire that's enslaved him is gone,
Egypt and Rome, even the great Babylon.
He's made a garden of paradise in the desert sand,
In bed with nobody, under no one's command.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Now his holiest books have been trampled upon,
No contract he signed was worth what it was written on.
He took the crumbs of the world and he turned it into wealth,
Took sickness and disease and he turned it into health.
He's the neighborhood bully.

What's anybody indebted to him for?
Nothin', they say.
He just likes to cause war.
Pride and prejudice and superstition indeed,
They wait for this bully like a dog waits to feed.
He's the neighborhood bully.

What has he done to wear so many scars?
Does he change the course of rivers?
Does he pollute the moon and stars?
Neighborhood bully, standing on the hill,
Running out the clock, time standing still,
Neighborhood bully.



Copyright © 1983 Special Rider Music

[seabeyond]

5. i wouldnt go to the neighbor across the street and shoot them down

to address the bully neighbor next door

[madokie]

6. I was bullied as a kid and when I finally stood up for myself it stopped

50 years later I still stand up for me and mine. Don't ever let a bully start, get right back in their face right by gawd now not after a while.

[cgrindley]

8. That's a terrible analogy

I suppose you meant it to relate to Israel and Lebanon, but if that was your intent, then it makes no sense, whatsoever. I guess it could relate to Israel and Palestinians, but then it would go something like this...

You and your family are squatting on someone else's ancestral lands. They return to claim merely half of what is rightfully theirs and you respond by poisoning their pets and planting nail boards in their driveway. They phone the cops on you, and slap a protection from abuse order on you. You, of course, ignore this order and turn the music up every Sunday night to like 11, just cranking up old REO Speedwagon tunes. They get more pissed off at you and put up a privacy fence. Unfair, you say, since you can no longer raid their vegetable garden. They phone Social Services on you and you're welfare is cancelled. So you throw rocks at their kids when they're heading to the school bus, and now, when they and their friends come over and kick the living shit out of you, your all surprised.

[liberal N proud]

9. Did I mention any nations?

Must be pretty close to the situation in the Mid East if you could relate!

[cgrindley]

11. We're on a political discussion board

and it seems natural that discussions on said board might be political.

It was a terrible analogy, but just because I could spot the generalities of what you were trying to do, doesn't mean that it made any sense. Sort of like a Sylvester Stalone movie. Pretty obvious what it's supposed to be, but it's kind of incoherent all the same.

[phillinweird247]

12. Ancestrial lands?

So the american indians should forcefully remove us from the land we are currently squatting on?

[liberal N proud]

13. Oh - but that is different - Israel has been promised that land

And the Indians never owned any land until we forced them to own the reservations.

:sarcasm:

[cgrindley]

16. Well, the First Nations in Canada

Certainly had a concept of land ownership, at least through their individual nations. The Haida had their lands, the Coast Salish their lands, the Tlingit their lands and so on. Each group was fiercely independent and often waged violent wars between each other over territory.

[cgrindley]

15. Certainly they should if they have valid claims

And we should negotiate with them for suitable treaties to address those claims, if that is, no pre-existing treaties exist. Look at the example from British Columbia with the Nisga'a Nation.

[laura888]

28. Ancestral lands, indeed

What a lame and conceited argument.

[Ravenseye]

20. Yours is just as bad

You and your family own some property. You inherited it from your father, and he from his, and so on, for hundreds of years. Your property is about half farmland, which you use to support yourself, and half arid which you don't use all that much. One day a representative from the city hall comes and tells you that they're giving half your land to another family, who claim to be the descendents of people who were illegally removed from the land more than a thousand years ago. The people are given most of the arable land on your property, while you are mostly forced onto the arid section. Your home is taken, and you are forced to live in tents in the arid area. You decide to fight these people, damn what city hall says, because it's your land, and you attack the new family. The new family is tenatious and determined (themselves having much of their extended family recently killed in another town just for being who they are...one of the reasons city hall finally gave in on their claim to your land) and also well armed. They fight you off, and now control all the arable land, and half the desert.

In the span of a year you've gone from having land, a job, a home, and a family, and now are living in a building made up of canvas and plywood in a small arid corner of the property you once owned. Your son died in the fighting, and your two year old granddaughter was killed when the new family bombed your shack, attempting to kill your son, and putting the blame on him for hiding behind civilians.

The new family sends you a message saying that all they want is to live together in peace. Your cousin, whose wife and daughter were killed in the fighting is blinded by rage though, and now that he has nothing...no job, no family, no hope...gives up and straps a bomb to his chest runs into the new families home and blows himself up, taking some of them with him. The new family takes back their peace offer. They take the tractor from their land and bulldoze your home, killing another one of your children in the process.

And so on....and so forth...

"Squatting on Ancestral Lands"..."What is rightfully theirs"

Please...

[cgrindley]

27. That was kind of my point

It's retarded to discuss these sorts of issues through the screen of asinine analogies. Simplifying the problems and the history of this troubled region, is a big bucket of pointless.

[Ravenseye]

32. agreed

[Sapere aude]

30. "someone else's ancestral lands" Give me a fucking break!

That is the lamest excuse to kill people I have ever heard!

No one can claim title to land because their ancestors use to live there. That can't be proved.

[cgrindley]

39. So you're saying

that my analogy was a stupid one? Absolutely. That's why we should discuss issues and not use pointless analogies.

But you also said that ancestry and place cannot be proven? That's just simply incorrect. For example, through DNA testing, for example, it has been demonstrated beyond any doubt that Scandinavian populations have been living in the Shetlands for over 1000 years. Likewise, I'm sure that it is beyond any sort of doubt that the Haida have been living on Queen Charlotte Island for at least as long as there have been hot dinners served in London.

[gratuitous]

10. It wasn't a bully but a crack house

Well, maybe not crack, but definitely drug dealing. We assembled our neighbors and had meetings, including the neighborhood liaison officer from the police bureau. We talked to ACORN, but didn't care for the course they recommended. We continued to meet, and continued to involve the police. We called the city bureau that regulates nuisance homes, and became a bit of a nuisance ourselves. The police finally took direct action and confronted the homeowner. When the homeowner blew off the cop just like she had blown off her neighbors, the cop reported to us that "now it was personal."

We kept up the pressure through the police and the housing bureau, and I even informed one of the guests at the problem house that the choice was theirs: Shape up or get shut down (I had to walk by the property twice a day to get on the bus to go to work). It took several months, almost a year, but the house was finally abandoned, then sold to satisfy the city fines. The remaining husk of a house was used as a practice burn by the fire department, then demolished. A new duplex was built on the site this year, and "For Rent" signs are up.

Nobody had to shoot at anyone. Nobody used violence or threatened violence. Neighborhood scrutiny and insistence on conforming to community standards finally caused the problem to decide to go elsewhere of its own volition.

[Igel]

14. Yes, you fight back.

But that went very, very badly, and we didn't get most of the land back that he took from us. Some, in a few places around the periphery, and a postage-stamp near the middle. And we managed to temporarily knock him for a loop.

Seems he wants more now, and is pissed that he was out of commission for a while.

But you're so right, there's a bully and he really needs to be taken care of.

[slackmaster]

17. Sounds like what happened to the suburb I grew up in

La Jolla, a coastal community of San Diego, California.

Beginning in the mid 1960s the place was "discovered", overrun and ransacked by East Coast developers.

Then in the '70s came the uber-wealthy Iranians and Japanese and Saudis. And more dickhead New Yorkers.

By 1980 you could hardly recognize the place my family came to in 1962.

[theboss]

22. Everybody should stay where they are forever

If you will pardon me, I'm moving back to Calabria. I don't know the language and am not even sure where it is.

But, darn it, my great grandfather should have stayed there and starved.

[slackmaster]

33. Likewise I want my family farm in Germany returned to me ASAP

Bastards!

[treestar]

18. Exactly, this is why Palestinians could be against the existence of

Israel without having to be labeled "anti-Semitic." Anything they say along those lines is fall-out rather than the original cause. Who wouldn't oppose Israel's existence in the shoes of the Palestinians?

Then in Lebanon, they get leaflets telling them to leave or they will be bombed? WTF? Like that's so kind. Then destroying the home so there is nothing to return to.

I have debated in the past why the Palestinians (who are said to have left voluntarily in 1948, in the hope the Arab armies would drive the Israelis out) were not allowed to return home when the crisis was over. The only answers I ever get are indirectly stating that opposing the existence of Israel, in 1948, if you are Palestinian, was punishable by losing your home.

[Taxloss]

19. I would blow up his kids school bus. n/t

[theboss]

21. Obviously, it's the fault of the Jews

They should have just kept on wandering and wandering.

How dare they move into a hellhole and build a modern successful democracy.

[liberal N proud]

23. Actually, I would blame the British!

[theboss]

24. So, this is about Israel

You sly dog, you.

[liberal N proud]

25. Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding,

We have a winner

To me that is what this whole crisis sounds like.

[jonnyblitz]

26. a modern successfull democracy? is that why when i visited

Haifa when I was in the navy everybody was carrying UZI's at the dance club?

I am sure the Palestinians held hostage in APARTHEID like conditions under illegal military occupation beg to differ in regards to the "successful democracy" comment. I forget, your ilk don't think they count.

[laura888]

31. Well said. Thanks. n/t

[LanternWaste]

29. I get myself and my family out as quickly as possible and call the cops

All other things being equal, I get myself and my family out as quickly and as safely as possible and call the authorities. Seems like commons sense to me... (but then, I'm answering the question posed rather than the inferred analogy)

[noonwitch]

35. If he's shooting at your house, the police need to be involved

I would advise against retaliating with your own shotgun, unless he is shooting at you directly and not your property.

He kidnapped your cats! Bastard! Only a wuss strikes out at people's defenseless cats. Call the cops, get your kitties home and never let them out of the house again.

[liberal N proud]

36. But the cops helped him establish his property and are on his side

The bully has bigger bullies with more powerful weapons

[hoboken123]

37. Man that's an awful analogy

Why didn't you start with something at least related to the subject? How about:


'This group of people keep moving into the area, buying large sections of land. I don't like it, even though it's legal. Once the police leave me and my like-minded friends are going to solve this problem once and for all.'

[theboss]

38. Better, yet...

All these back people keep moving into my neighborhood. And they are affluent, hard-working black people at that. And they are raising the property values. And making it harder for the rest of the poor white people to stay. And did I mention they were black? And when someone misses their house payment and loses the house, they buy that house too. And they bought so many houses that they formed a corporation. And then the city helped them acquire more land by eminent domain. And they built a huge hi-rise apartment building on that land. But there are still some poor white people living around the big skyscraper. And they keep throwing rocks at it. So the owners hired a private security company to guard it. And the security guards may cross the line sometimes.

That seems more accurate.

[deaniac21]

40. No.

:shrug: