Is it useful to think and question without creating a solution ?

With the news this morning that GM - perhaps the most poorly managed of the big three auto manufacturers - is being allowed, in fact, encouraged to double dip into the tax payers pocket, with an additional "endowment" of $6B to help GMAC increase lending, I rolled my eyes. Apparently we have not yet learned "one" lesson from the sub prime mortgage bazaar. The idea as stated by Paulsen and team, is to make lending more accessible, and flexible, so that GM can finance more cars. I am floored. So in addition to defaults on mortgages, we will create a flurry of defaults on car loans. Good move..

I am growing weary of the financial crises, and switching to Israel.

Can anyone, please, help me understand why virtually all of the regions surrounding Israel want to brutally destroy it? Remove it, completely. I read a great piece by Benny Morris today in the NYT, which explains why Israel feels threatened. I learned, finally - that much of the Arab and Islamic nations do not and likely will not ever accept "the existence of Israel."

Although it goes back much further - centuries in fact, Morris explained the conflict in 1967, in which Israel retaliated against Egypt, Syria and Jordan, who isolated Israel and moved in several troops, armored and infantry divisions to Israel's border on the West bank. Arab nations, at that time, publicly declared a commitment to the destruction of Israel. Iran (to the East), known to have nuclear weapons, continues to make public threats to Israel, with a promise to destroy it. The Lebanese (to the North)- specifically the Hezbollah organization is closely tied to Iran and Syria, has a common aggression to destroy Israel. And the current conflict from the Islamist Hamas movement on the Gaza Strip (to the south) - arbitrarily launched rockets into Israel to mark the end of the weak, and tenuous 6 month peace treaty.

I know too, of the recurring conflicts between Palestine and Israel. The blame for these conflicts seems to be leaning more convincingly toward Israel. Within Israel itself, the Arab citizen base is embracing Palestinian "national aims". And the demography of the Israeli state is changing. More Arab-Israeli families are emerging, than are Israeli Jewish families. So, the conflicts soon will be internal as well as external.

Do the Israeli Jews deserve all of this hatred? I can't imagine that any human being, with even the slightest sensitivity could honestly answer that question with a "yes". No matter what your belief structure, at some point don't we all have an obligation to figure out how to co-exist? I was raised a Catholic. I married a Jew. I have a dear friend who was born in Germany. You can forgive mistakes from the past, or at least not hold hatred in modern times, to atrocities that happened in ancient times. We don't have to agree. We don't have to govern alike. We can argue. We can fight, and we should defend freedom. But at some point, we need to commit to resolution and stop short of killing massively. Throughout history, each race, faction, religious sect, secular sect, has fought and killed over something. In some situations, a case can be made for the sacrifice. But when violent conflicts go on for centuries, with no real momentum to resolution, should we not stop, at least long enough to question?

So violent, senseless,chaos continues in the Middle East...Are these people literally fighting over dirt, or are there deeply rooted religious issues that are driving this violence? They are not fighting for freedom, because if it was freedom they were after, they would stop killing, and let people worship and live as they please. Is the fictitious God of the Palestinians, Egyptians, Syrians, Jordanians, Iranians, Islamists all that different from the fictitious God of the Jews in Israel?

This is one of the reasons why religion is so distasteful to me. How do people justify killing, in the name of "A God"...! How can "religion" be so powerful a force that it literally takes over a person's intellect with an emotional belief structure that is strong enough to make them "kill"? This is amazing to me.. and profoundly sad.

Aside from religion, I wonder what would happen if we started to distribute maps, without lines or boundaries. Just continents, countries, states and city names? Maybe it would help people visualize unity and come to realize that war is completely irrational, destructive and so painfully wasteful. Maybe a map without boundaries would help people cross the line without realizing they are in enemy territory, and allow them to acknowledge the peaceful feeling they have in their hearts, as they look at that child, or man, or woman on the "other side" that looks and feels just like they do .. If you take away the boundaries, the confusion might lead to compassion..Perhaps that is the religion they have all been seeking for centuries...

Ok - now I am pontificating... but I've got to say, as hard as I try, I just don't get it, which makes me want to ignore it. And that is dangerous, because people are suffering. People are dying.