Welcome to the new home of Cothrom in 2009, a website run by myself, James Mc Laughlin. On these pages I will try to promote a number of related ideas, revolving around social/racial/religious equality, fairness, justice and peace. Much of the violence and injustice in the world arises partly because some groups of people do not treat other groups of people as their equals as human beings, do not respect their rights as human beings and indeed treat them as less than human.
It seems to be part of human nature that many people tend to be polarised into opposing camps by conflict situations, supporting just one side, rather than making an effort to see both sides of the argument, seeing the rights and wrongs on both sides, and then somehow to arrive at a personal opinion as to where equality, fairness and justice lies in the situation, and then moving to support a fair, balanced, just solution to the problem that respects the rights and freedoms of both parties to the conflict equally.
I used to run a similar website in the '90's/early '00's that tried to promote a just, balanced, fair settlement to the conflict in Northern Ireland. I recently posted those old webpages on this blog - read the early posts on this blog to see what I was writing back then. I stopped writing on the old Cothrom website in the early '00's, when it seemed that Northern Ireland was starting to move towards stability. I had been been meaning to start the site up again for several months
now, mostly to air my thoughts about other world situations that bothered me. What finally prompted me to start again (mid January 2009) is the current situation between Israel and the Palestinian Territories, particularly the conflict in Gaza.
It is not that the situations in Northern Ireland and the Middle East are exact parallels, or maybe even closely similar - one immediate difference is that the problem was to find a way in
which the two communities could live together in the same state, whereas it would seem that the challenge facing the Israelis and the Palestinians is to find a way in which an Israeli state and a Palestinian state can live side-by-side.
One parallel that I see with Northern Ireland in the early days of that conflict, is that it would seem, at least on the surface, that many people on each side see only their own point of view. Of course this is not to say that all Israelis or all Palestinians think this way. Indeed I believe most in both populations would support a just, balanced and fair solution if one were on offer. Another parallel that I see is that I do not believe that there will be peace there until a majority on both sides accept the need for a settlement that is essentially just, balanced and fair..
In the next few weeks, I will be posting my thoughts on how to see each sides point of view, what is a just settlement and so on. I will be creating a bulletin board so other people can post their views also. I will also be posting on other topics as they occur to me.
If you have comments or suggestions, please post a
comment in the blog, or on the bulletin board - see the link below.
Visit the Cothrom Bulletin
Board
View my Message Board
Free Forums by
Bravenet.com
Sign My Guestbook below
Remark: The posts relating to Northern Ireland are copies of documents from the original Cothrom site from the late '90's/early 00's, and are reproduced just to show what the original Cothrom site was like.
No comments:
Post a Comment