the butter has all gone

replying to the inevitable; oh those facts of contrition

'...*. We appreciate your more measured and professional tone. It would have been more constructive and a nicer experience if you had employed that throughout. We always meet terseness with terseness, but prefer to engage upon more respectful ground. Weird to us that you, calling yourself *, are nonetheless myspacing under the name, *. We're assuming you have his sanction, of course; but, until you signed your third (was it?) message with your actual name, we were not sure and could not be sure, who you were. Use of the name, *, hardly helps things, we realise; but it does at least introduce the idea that you might not be *. Sorry, but once again you seem to be making assumptions about us, and employing them in your arguments and reactions. We are nice people; it is just that we are committed to debate; we are made that way. Practicality does not come into it for us. We see what we regard as illogic etc. and we engage. It was you who propelled the exchanges, we would say - insofar as you kept coming back to us, even though we said we were not interested in * and do not like what he stands for. By this, we do not mean his stance on military spending or current government policy. We mean his duplicity. You might argue he is a best hope figure; better than some. But we are not charmed by the politics of pragmatism and utility, you see. If * really is opposed to what he says he is opposed to, he needs to get his moral house in order, we feel. If you do not, as you say, have 'the time and resources to respond in due measure to each of [our] comments', then why keep coming back to us with partial and underexplained utterances? Better to make one point in meaningful fashion. We, too, have lots of things we must do. But we are idealistic enough to engage in debate where and when it occurs and we are respectful enough to give those prompting debate our time and efforts. Madness we know. Regarding reading list - great that you appreciate the suggestions. But all we were saying is read around the subject. We are now supposing you might be at university, doing a degree in political science or some such like. If so, good luck. No sinister insult intended if you are not at university. We are all still learning. Books do not have all the answers - as is obvious. But one can lose sight of that. We have found more warmth of humanity and more ideas in a great novel than in most text books. But that is our experience. You must find your own. A great man said to us once - it is important to have suppleness of mind. Exactly so. Your comment viz the 4th World War was aimed satirically at us. But let us let the point go. We agree - we said we agreed; it is an apocalyptic time, we are in some kind of war, yes. That old easily-understandable binary - hot war / cold war - has fallen away. People prefer black and white, of course. But it's all grey now; and that is so much weirder and more frightening. It's complex - but, to cut to the chase, the enemy is still the old enemy: that corpus of exploitation, self-interest, lies, expediency etc. called business, or capitalism, whatever, take your pick. There are those who are willing to do this nasty, shadowy stuff to others for personal gain. They might dress it up in fancy institutions, give it fancy names, make conspicuous donations to charities, dress the right way, go to the right parties, etc., but they are just people who are willing to exploit, lie, murder, etc. We cannot enter that game and will not enter it. As far as one can in UK, the West, under capitalism etc. we live a good life of not hurting others, of being kind, helpful, of not taking too much, of not being indulgent and excessive in our habits. Our central point remains, * - in advocating *, what are you really advocating? Politics is a dirty business. Take care....'.