Kingal86

Welcome to my brand new ID. (Acquired 2004-06-11 ca. 16:30 UTC or 17:30 British Summer Time)

My name's Alex and I'm a 25-year-old public sector clerical worker in Birmingham, Central England, and previously studied International Relations at university.

I'm of favour of just settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - leaning towards the Palestinian definition of a "just settlement" - though cynical following Hamas' take-over of Gaza and Netanyahu's policies on settlements which risk burying the two state solution leaving only a one state solution. I'm amazed by the recent revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, and supported the Libyan rebels in their efforts to overthrow Gaddafi - in the hope they would be less evil than him (we'll see). Whilst considering Bashar al-Assad a brutal tyrant, I'm now more ambivalent about Syria, as it has collapsed into a vicious civil war including sectarian attacks that has devastated much of that country - and as Al Qaeda-affiliated insurgents flood in, and Western nations show the fluidity of their definitions of "terrorists" as opposed to "freedom fighters".

I completely condemn all attacks on civilians and other war crimes, and particularly despair of the massacres of thousands of civilians committed by Western democracies in their wars - whilst recognising the West is hardly alone in this, either now or throughout history. For example, in 1999 US President Clinton, British PM Blair and International Development Secretary Clare Short--who apparently condemned the war on Iraq--claimed a Belgrade TV station was a military target, and it was legal to murder 16 journalists just to keep it off the air for a few hours. I'm sure they wouldn't consider CNN, FoxNews and the BBC military targets.

I have also discovered a new-found anxiety of Russia's apparent renewal of expansionist polices in Eastern Europe following the war in Georgia, and find it interesting that many columnists opposed to US imperialism (e.g. in The Guardian) also try to blame NATO or the USA for the Russian invasion: the first attack on another internationally recognised country by the Russian Federation.

Russia is especially hypocrytical about if you consider Chechnya. And the West has problems getting on a moral high horse given Kosovo, and that since the end of the Cold War the US has invaded Grenada, Panama, Haiti, Iraq, Afghanistan and has bombed Sudan, Pakistan and Libya whilst Russia has invaded only Chechnya--internationally considered part of Russian territory, and now Georgia (although "peacekeepers" were deployed to South Ossetia and Abkhazi in early 1990s).

Despite my disagreements with what I consider aggressive wars or other questionable acts by "the West" or "us", I am very worried that all we can do to the Russians is complain loudly, and have changed my view of NATO - realising that (like it or not), Europe's security against potential rivals does depend on the United States, and without the overwhelming power of their armed forces, Europe would be far more vulnerable.

I speak quite a bit of German (I studied German for A-level and as part of my degree, and did an exchange near Berlin in Frankfurt an der Oder ) and I have also done GCSE (English secondary school leaving) exams in French and Spanish. I managed to memorise most of the Russian Cyrillic and Greek alphabets without that much effort, although I don't know many words. I keep meaning to learn some Esperanto but never get round to it.

Dual Licensing

I agree to multi-license all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

My website (includes one page in French and soon some in German and Spanish)

H2G2 Personal Space My name: Alex(ander) Wright

Russian: Александр Давидович Райт

Greek (I think): Αλεξάνδρσς Ράητ

Esperanto: Aleksander Rajt (Transcription) or Aleksandro (Translation)

Your question about Lebanese terrorists

I don't know what pro-Israeli Wikipedians would revert. You might ask one. Incidentally, this debate belongs here. – Quadell ^{(talk) (help)}[[]] 21:06, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC)

happy birthday

Happy Birthday, Kingal86, from the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! Have a great day!