Two Stars For Peace

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Two Stars For Peace
The Case for Using U.S. Statehood to Achieve Lasting Peace in the Middle East

by	KurzweilAI.net

World order is essential to reducing the time to the Singularity, says author Martine Rothblatt, citing Ray Kurzweil's observation that increased order (and lowered chaos) reduces the interval between salient events in time. In a new book, she suggests an imaginative solution to one major threat to world order: the explosive Palestine/Israeli conflict.

"A young person in Palestine and Israel today looks forward to future with depression and with fear," says author Martine Rothblatt in an interview on the "iUniverse" show on Sirius satellite radio, profiling Rothblatt's new book, "Two Stars for Peace: The Case for Using U.S. Statehood to Achieve Lasting Peace in the Middle East."

"But with Two Stars for Peace, the young people of Israel and Palestine can look forward to a future when they can travel freely throughout the United States, get their education in any part of the United States, or they can travel back and forth between Israel and Palestine. They can look forward to a future of instead of warring armies, everybody is part of a single United States army. The young people have no vested interest in the past of bickering and hostility. It's depressing. But Two Stars for Peace gives them a way to have a good life."

Click here to hear Martine Rothblatt's appearance on Sirius satellite radio. (2.8 MB MP3 file,
3 minutes)

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Mind·X Discussion About This Article:


	Immigration disrupts cultures posted on 01/26/2005 3:36 PM by Patrick	[Top] [Mind·X] [Reply to this post]
More mass immigration into the United States is not welcome. Immigration is a foreign aid program paid for by the politically and economically weak U.S. natives. The affordable housing catastrophe in America is ASTOUNDING. Palestinians have ENORMOUS Third-World families, and Israel was founded by European immigrants who don't belong in the Middle East.


	Re: Immigration disrupts cultures posted on 01/27/2005 1:37 AM by Marcel	[Top] [Mind·X] [Reply to this post]
But you should never forget that all Americans (except the Indians) are immigrants. Without mass immigration in the past (and present) America would not be the diverse and creative country it is today.


	Re: Immigration disrupts cultures posted on 01/27/2005 12:34 PM by Patrick	[Top] [Mind·X] [Reply to this post]
That's my point. Mass immigration wiped out 10,000 years of American Indian culture. BTW, we don't have "cultural diversity" today in the United States; we just have different shopping habits.


	Re: Immigration disrupts cultures posted on 01/28/2005 1:35 AM by Marcel	[Top] [Mind·X] [Reply to this post]
The Indian culture was only wiped out because the Immigrants from Europe had superior weapons and technologies (and because they wanted to wipe them out). Todays America has almost 300 million people, the most modern technologies and is exceedingly wealthy. I don't think another 5 million immigrants would change that. (as I'm not an American I have to accept your notion that there is no real diversity; you'll know better)


	Re: Immigration disrupts cultures posted on 01/31/2005 3:47 PM by billmerit	[Top] [Mind·X] [Reply to this post]
Over 70% of the Indians were wiped out by diseases imported from Europe, for which they had no immunity. I'm not minimizing the genocide, BTW. That happened as well.


	Re: Immigration disrupts cultures posted on 01/28/2005 12:32 PM by Cyprian	[Top] [Mind·X] [Reply to this post]
The American Indians were, indeed, immigrants. In my home state of Wisconsin, the Indians settled here just a few generations prior to the Europeans. What about the native buffalo and the other wildlife? The Indians stole their land, and their lives!


	Wisconsin Indians posted on 01/28/2005 12:48 PM by Patrick	[Top] [Mind·X] [Reply to this post]
Hey, Cyprean, On, Wisconsin! I spoke with a local public school administrator about getting the Ho-Chunk tribal language taught to pre-school kids in the Lake Winnebago area. "Ethno-botanist" Wade Davis says LANGUAGE preservation is closely related to bio-diversity. We ought to resurrect the Wisconsin Indian languages and keep the foreigners OUT of the U.S. If you're a janitor or a Wal-Mart serf, finding affordable housing is a BITCH. The Mexicans live 6 to 10 people in a one-bedroom apartment and bust service-industry unions. Millions of high breeding Third-World Palestinians would do the same


	Re: Two Stars For Peace posted on 01/31/2005 9:25 AM by alberg	[Top] [Mind·X] [Reply to this post]
I would venture that 2 * is a nice joke. Only an American would consider it seriously. It goes nicely with the current US view of an Imperialist nation. That somehow they are "fixing" the world, when in fact, everything that they touch they seem to break. They can't even fix the immigration problems on their own southern border. As the US becomes more awash in debt, and the war in the middle east drags them down, their currency will continue to plummet. They are currently sort of like Canadians in the US, when it comes to the dollar when they want to buy things overseas. They can no more afford annexing Israel than rebuilding Faluja.


	Re: Two Stars For Peace posted on 01/31/2005 4:07 PM by billmerit	[Top] [Mind·X] [Reply to this post]
Maybe they should add Saudi Arabia as well. Hey, why not all of the Opec countries?


	Re: Two Stars For Peace posted on 01/31/2005 9:37 PM by Mobius	[Top] [Mind·X] [Reply to this post]
OMG. Please tell me this is a joke? This guy must know less than me - and I know virtually nothing! Look, Palestine (sic) is a place where muslims detest and despise the USA and everything she stands for. Now he's saying "make it a state"? In my drug-crazed state of mind even I couldn't come up with something as stupid as that idea. Look, here's a better idea: I live in New Zealand, make US a state! Holy Moly, Kiwi's wouldn't do that in a million years - and we LIKE America and Americans.


	Re: Two Stars For Peace posted on 02/02/2005 1:04 PM by Patrick	[Top] [Mind·X] [Reply to this post]
Kiwi, can you recommend an illustrated Children's Book about Maori folktales?


	Re: Two Stars For Peace posted on 02/22/2005 2:39 PM by Mediterranean	[Top] [Mind·X] [Reply to this post]
It's an innovative and radical suggestion , I liked the way the author thinks. But it's certainly impossible to become a real solution when you think about the cultural values of the middle east poeple. I think half of Palestineans would prefer to die instead of being a US citizen :) (Just like many other countries) What I liked in this plan is that, it tries not to solve the problems of the nations but of the single individuals in them who want to live in higher conditions in an honorable way. I think the real solutions of the next years will be the solutions of the single citizens not of the nations around them.


	Re: Two Stars For Peace posted on 08/29/2005 11:23 AM by Arthur	[Top] [Mind·X] [Reply to this post]
Two Stars for Peace is unusually ahistorical, even by Techno-Optimist/pro-Singularity standards. Israelis and the overwhelming majority of Jews outside Israel would reject it out-of-hand. For Jews, Israel is about Jewish political, economic, social and religious self-determination. In addition, many, many Jews also fervently believe that Israel is the only place in the world where it is possible to live a truly authentic Jewish life. Israel will never surrender its national sovereignty in exchange for American statehood. Even if that surrender was the only way to bring lasting peace to the Middle East. The overwhelming majority of Palestinians would also reject it out-of-hand. They want political, economic, social and religious self-determination in an independent country of their own. They don't want American statehood, even if American statehood was the only way to bring lasting peace to the Middle East. Finally, the overwhelming majority of Americans would also reject it out-of-hand. The last thing the American people want is to internalize the ferocious, nearly 60 year old Israeli-Palestinian conflict by formally absorbing Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip into the U.S. and granting them statehood. Two Stars for Peace is a non-starter, I'm afraid.


	Re: Two Stars For Peace posted on 03/31/2006 1:44 PM by Henry Farmer	[Top] [Mind·X] [Reply to this post]
I thought LSD was out of style! Where in the hell did she come up with the idea that Palestinians wanted to be American citizens. Many want to kill us not vote with us. I don't think any Palestinian mullah would back the US constitution. There's just too much freedom here. Henry


	Re: Two Stars For Peace posted on 06/07/2006 8:50 PM by mlorrey	[Top] [Mind·X] [Reply to this post]
This proposal is simultaneously both the most innovative and possibly the most naive and irresponsible proposal I've ever heard for the Isreal/Palestine issue. It blithely ignores the very simple fact that, as the recent Hamas victory in Palestinian elections demonstrates, a significant minority, if not a majority, of Palestinians still live under the savagely primitive belief that the only solution to the "occupation" is the extermination of every Jew in the mid-east. Western media claims that the Hamas victory was to do with Fatah corruption are entirely false regurgitations of islamist apologists propaganda in our press. It stems from a naive belief that all people around the world are reasonable, rational beings who automatically recognise their best rational long term self interest is the most peaceful solution. While I am a big proponent of the idea that all people are capable of being trustworthy and reasonable, I would never say that they are inherently this way. Most must be led to it primarily by education. Nor is any given persons best rational long term self interest inherently peaceful when there are bad actors in the world. So long as there are evildoers in the world doing evil to innocents, the use of force in self defense will remain in many situations the only way to solve problems.

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