DebateGate
General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: Michael Tee on November 30, 2006, 09:59:56 AM
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This opinion piece by a former editor of the Toronto Star's editorial page ties it all together nicely - - the bastards can't get away with that shit any more. The writing's on the wall.
Harper looking at obsolete vision of world [Harper is Stephen Harper, the dip-shit Conservative Prime Minister of Canada, elected through a fluke because of financial scandal involving our former Liberal government]
Nov. 30, 2006. 01:00 AM
HAROON SIDDIQUI
As Stephen Harper takes satisfaction in the NATO decision to free up a few more troops for deployment in southern Afghanistan, Canada seems oblivious to a major reassessment underway in Washington and elsewhere away from the military and cultural confrontations with the Muslim world.
The Pope is making amends in Turkey, dropping his long-standing opposition to its entry into the European Union.
George W. Bush is in Jordan to try and find a political way out of Iraq, where the U.S. military engagement has now lasted longer than it did inWorld War II.
His host in Amman, King Abdullah, wants him to help avert a potential civil war in Lebanon, as well as the humanitarian crisis in the Israeli Occupied Territories. The same message was conveyed to Dick Cheney Saturday by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who said the Arab-Israeli dispute is "the core issue" in the Middle East.
On all three fronts, Washington needs the help of Syria and Iran — something the Iraqi government already understands. Baghdad has just normalized relations with Damascus after a 24-year break, and has been paying heed to Tehran.
All this is the exact opposite of what the Bush neo-cons had in mind in launching their war of choice on Iraq. A major oil producer and developed Arab state would be in American hands.
Arabs, Palestinians in particular, would be more amenable to American and Israeli dictates, as would Iran and Syria, the patrons of Hezbollah, Hamas and other anti-Israel militias.
Lebanon, too, now represents the opposite of what Israel had envisaged in invading and pulverizing it last summer. The pro-Western Siniora government is teetering, pushed by the pro-Syrian, pro-Iranian Hezbollah, which is also said to be training Shiite militias in Iraq.
It is these failed American-Israeli policies that Harper has committed Canada to. While he took pride in boarding Bush's sinking ship, the president is being counselled to bail out, and quickly.
A bipartisan Congressional commission, co-chaired by Jim Baker, the veteran diplomat and Republican troubleshooter, is likely to recommend that Bush enlist regional help in managing the crises roiling the Middle East.
Jimmy Carter has already called for the same.
In interviews for his latest book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, the former president is also rejecting the accepted wisdom (endorsed by Harper as well as the main Liberal leadership candidates) that it's the Palestinians — Hamas, in particular — who are to blame for the lack of progress.
"There hasn't been one day of substantive peace negotiations in the last six years," Carter said in one interview. "You can't say the election of Hamas interferes with the peace efforts, because no peace effort has been going on."
He noted that Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestine interlocutor favoured by both Israel and the U.S., was not called upon to negotiate when he was prime minister nor has he been since being elected president.
"The oppression of the Palestinians by Israeli forces in the Occupied Territories is horrendous," Carter said. "It is one of the worst cases of oppression that I know of now in the world.
"The Palestinians' land has been taken away from them. They now have an encapsulating or an imprisonment wall being built around what's left of the little tiny part of the holy land that is in the West Bank. Gaza is surrounded by a high wall. There's only two openings in it, one into Israel, which is mostly closed, the other into Egypt. The people there are encapsulated. And the deprivation of basic human rights among the Palestinians is really horrendous."
In another interview, Carter said:
"A minority of Israelis are perpetrating apartheid on the Palestinian people. It's not based on race. It's not a racist inclination. It is a desire for Palestinian land. Contrary to the United Nations resolutions, contrary to the official policy of the U.S., contrary to the Quartet's so-called road map, contrary to a majority of Israeli people's opinion, this occupation and confiscation and colonization of land in the West Bank is the prime cause of the continuation of violence."
Meanwhile, the United Church of Canada is urging Harper to condemn the killing of almost 500 Palestinian civilians since July, and to call for an end to the siege of Gaza. And Italy, Spain and France last week urged a ceasefire and the resumption of Arab-Israeli talks.
The ceasefire has since come about and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has wisely signalled his willingness to negotiate.
To summarize: A consensus is emerging that:
The Israelis cannot beat the Palestinians into abject surrender, nor stop the Iranians and Syrians from aiding Hamas and others.
The U.S. does not have enough troops to fix Iraq, and that even if it did, the time is well past a military solution.
NATO cannot defeat the Taliban by force alone, as the United Nations top official in Afghanistan said recently and Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf had concluded earlier.
The fragile nature of Lebanon requires a regional consensus.
The only way forward to a new world order is to abandon the recklessness of the last five years, which has caused much havoc and harmed Israeli and American interests. Harper, and hence Canada, would be ill-served by an ideological loyalty to a vision of the world that may already be obsolete.
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Haroon Siddiqui, the Star's editorial page editor emeritus, appears Thursday and Sunday. hsiddiq@thestar.ca.
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One can only wonder of Condaleeza Rice will observe the segregation that exists in Palestine, which is worse than anything that ever existed in Birmingham.
In Birmingham, the Blacks boycotted the busses to be able to ride with the Whites. In Palestine, there are separate highways for the Israelis, which the Palestinians may not use or even cross.
The White folks in Birmingham never even thought of walling off the Blacks with a 40-foot wall, and making them go through 2 hour checkpoint delays twice a day.
The West Bank 2006 makes 1954 Birmingham look almost idyllic.
I wonder if she can notice this and tell "hubby" what he has refused to hear. Will he listen, or will he send her shoe-shopping?
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http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAlynching.htm
I think you are both full of shit. I am sure that many of those that were lynched or just disappeared would have been quite happy to be behind a 40' wall.
I love how both of you use your own hatred for the United States to give worth to your jaded opinions.
It is fine to hate 'whitey' qualified as is a conservative American but making less of blacks suffering is not.
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<<I think you are both full of shit. I am sure that many of those that were lynched or just disappeared would have been quite happy to be behind a 40' wall.>>
Well, there's no doubt about that. I am sure that many of the Palestinians blown apart by the Israelis, including that family of 19 in Gaza a few weeks ago, would be equally happy to be behind a 40' wall. Unfortunately, this is not an option that the Israelis offer to their victims. It's been pretty much either-or up to now, but soon they'll be lucky enough to have BOTH options - - live behind a 40' wall AND have their ass blown off by the Jews with their new American weapons.
<<I love how both of you use your own hatred for the United States to give worth to your jaded opinions.>>
That's funny I love how you use an alleged "hatred of the United States" to avoid dealing seriously with any fact or argument that shows the U.S. in a bad light. Probably because you're too mentally bankrupt to formulate an intelligent rebuttal.
<<It is fine to hate 'whitey' qualified as is a conservative American but making less of blacks suffering is not.>>
If you could explain that last incoherent thought to me, I might be able to tell you if I agree with it or not.
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One can only wonder of Condaleeza Rice will observe the segregation that exists in Palestine, which is worse than anything that ever existed in Birmingham.
In Birmingham, the Blacks boycotted the busses to be able to ride with the Whites. In Palestine, there are separate highways for the Israelis, which the Palestinians may not use or even cross.
The White folks in Birmingham never even thought of walling off the Blacks with a 40-foot wall, and making them go through 2 hour checkpoint delays twice a day.
The West Bank 2006 makes 1954 Birmingham look almost idyllic.
I wonder if she can notice this and tell "hubby" what he has refused to hear. Will he listen, or will he send her shoe-shopping?
Really good point.
The Black people of Birmingham had to put up with a lot of guff includeing having their leaders jailed and their innocents killed.
But they chose to respond with nonviolence and the trend swung twards improvement .
At about the same time Palestinians were starting to think that violence might cause improvement ,yet not only has a fantastic amount of violence in the years since caused no improvement at all , it has caused further misery and a trend twards further repression.
I think that Gandi was on to something , or was he not?
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The Death of American Imperialism
Perhaps, but I doubt it. At the very least, the desire for American hegemony is still robust.
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I am sure that many of those that were lynched or just disappeared would have been quite happy to be behind a 40' wall.
Wow. I'm not even sure how to respond to that.
But they chose to respond with nonviolence and the trend swung twards improvement .
Would it have improved any if the Federal Government had fully supported the state governments of Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and made justifications for their segregationist policies? Would it have improved if the Congress held votes to fully support the Birmingham police with outcomes of 425 - 8 in support?
At about the same time Palestinians were starting to think that violence might cause improvement ,yet not only has a fantastic amount of violence in the years since caused no improvement at all , it has caused further misery and a trend twards further repression.
Yet violence worked for the Israelis, didn't it? And it still does. They obliterated Christian and Muslim villages in 1948. They destroy Lebanese villages to this very day. They bombed British buildings, killed civilians. There are still Christians who want their land back after 1948, but are still refused - same with Muslims. They were violently removed. They have segregationist/apartheid policies that South African Jews have compared to apartheid - yet the United States and the "christian" public completely supports that.
Ask yourself, would peaceful demonstration have worked for the Civil Rights movement (which wasn't completely peaceful if you recall) if the American public overwhelmingly supported Southern segregationists?
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JS, I have been laboring for sometime under the notion that the "equities" in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict may be revealed by understanding, beyond the effect of the Holocaust and the energy of Zionism, the actual dynamic -- the "truth" -- of the Palestinian exodus from the land they previously inhabited. You seem to think they were violently ejected, which would seem to support their claim for redress, but that characterization of their leaving is disputed, as I understand it. Can you refer me to any literature (books) that deal comprehensively and intelligently with the matter? I have decided to buy Benny Morris's book on this very subject from Amazon, but haven't done so yet. Are there any other works you can suggest? Also, what do you think of attributing "great" significance to the "truth" of the ouster? Is it a sound method for analysis, or does it obscure larger themes from a larger picture?
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Why don't you start with Yigal Allon's memoirs? Allon was an Israeli general who personally expelled 70,000 Arabs in a single operation by rounding them up at gunpoint, trucking them to the Jordanian border and dumping them there in the dead of night. Without (according to him) killing a single one of them. Presumably how he cleaned out his sector was not much different than how other Israeli generals cleaned out theirs. The only difference was that he developed a conscience and later wrote about it.
Why don't you read "A Soldier With the Arabs," by John Glubb, the British commander of the Jordanian Arab Legion at the time? Glubb gives an excellent account of the beginnings of the conflict from the time of the British departure. He was later summarily fired by the King of Jordan under nationalist pressure, so presumably had little loyalty left to the Legion or to Jordan at the time he wrote his memoir, which was friendly and affectionate with regard to the Legion and as far as I could tell dispassionate and even-handed in describing the land-grab that brought the Legion into the struggle.
You might want to read up about Deir Yassin, an entire village massacred by Jewish forces in 1948 to set an example to the others as to what could happen to them if they continued to infest the Promised Land with their unwelcome presence. Not that Deir Yassin was the only village massacred by the Israelis, but it was the biggest and the Israelis did try to minimize the bloodshed, hoping that just a few examples would suffice. There are web sites devoted to Deir Yassin and its role in sparking the Palestinian exodus.
For years afterwards the Israeli government tried to distance itself from the massacre but the issue boiled over when the participants in the massacre tried to claim Israeli government pensions for their "service" and some members of the Opposition objected in the Israeli parliament, the "Knesset." In the end, the bastards got their pensions.
Or you might figure out for yourself what would you do in 1948 if the British Army pulled out and the Jews had an organized fighting force (the Haganah) and your own people had none, but were surrounded by "brother Arab" countries whose armies were confidently expected to pour over the borders and throw the Jews into the ocean. The obvious answer to me is, avoid the fate of Deir Yassin, get yourself and your family the hell out of there and wait for your brother Arabs to pour over the border and anihilate the Jews.
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But they chose to respond with nonviolence and the trend swung twards improvement .
Would it have improved any if the Federal Government had fully supported the state governments of Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and made justifications for their segregationist policies? Would it have improved if the Congress held votes to fully support the Birmingham police with outcomes of 425 - 8 in support?
At about the same time Palestinians were starting to think that violence might cause improvement ,yet not only has a fantastic amount of violence in the years since caused no improvement at all , it has caused further misery and a trend twards further repression.
Yet violence worked for the Israelis, didn't it? And it still does. They obliterated Christian and Muslim villages in 1948. They destroy Lebanese villages to this very day. They bombed British buildings, killed civilians. There are still Christians who want their land back after 1948, but are still refused - same with Muslims. They were violently removed. They have segregationist/apartheid policies that South African Jews have compared to apartheid - yet the United States and the "christian" public completely supports that.
Ask yourself, would peaceful demonstration have worked for the Civil Rights movement (which wasn't completely peaceful if you recall) if the American public overwhelmingly supported Southern segregationists?
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Yes of course , the violent part of the Civil Rights movement was just another obsticle for the accomplishment of Civil rights , violence costs you the supporters on the other side of the fense that arre always there , but that can be sut up with just a little blood.
Strength works really well for the strong , how much do I need to defend this statement?
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<<Strength works really well for the strong >>
The converse - - meekness works really well for the weak - - would have been illustrated by Gandhi's confrontational tactics with the British Raj?
I won't take issue with your statement, plane. But what happens when the arrogant overestimate their own strength? How does "strength" work for them in the long run?
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<<Strength works really well for the strong >>
The converse - - meekness works really well for the weak - - would have been illustrated by Gandhi's confrontational tactics with the British Raj?
I won't take issue with your statement, plane. But what happens when the arrogant overestimate their own strength? How does "strength" work for them in the long run?
What manner of underestimation is it to adjudge the Palestinians to be weak?
Or the Negros of America?
Starting from fifty years ago the diffrent choices have yealded differing results , in the form of an experiment I would say that the nonviolent resistance works better.
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<<I would say that the nonviolent resistance works better>>
So from the occupation of the West Bank beginning in 1967 till the outbreak of the First Intifada of 1987, how well do you think that nonviolent resistance worked for the Palestinians?
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<<I would say that the nonviolent resistance works better>>
So from the occupation of the West Bank beginning in 1967 till the outbreak of the First Intifada of 1987, how well do you think that nonviolent resistance worked for the Palestinians?
I think that they should have tried some.
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<<I think that they should have tried some. [non-violent resistance]>>
I think they tried way too much.
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<<I think that they should have tried some. [non-violent resistance]>>
I think they tried way too much.
I don't think that they were useing the method in the way that it works , if they had sent a few guys to learn the tecnique they might have gotten somewhere.
There used to be jobs for them and the walls used to be a lot smaller, the progress of their failure and the increaseing violence of their movement are coincidental.
Lately the Hezbollah has settled for looseing only ten times as many men in battle as constituting a major victory , this is the weak useing strength against the strong.
Strength works better for the strong.
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<<I don't think that they were useing the method in the way that it works , if they had sent a few guys to learn the tecnique they might have gotten somewhere.>>
Well, in the twenty years from 1967 to 1987 (the start of the First Intifada) how could their non-violence have been better practiced? What were they doing wrong before they turned to the Intifada in 1987? what bad non-violence practices were they using that resulted in a twenty-year armed occupation and the gradual build-up of Israeli settlements all around them?
<<There used to be jobs for them and the walls used to be a lot smaller, the progress of their failure and the increaseing violence of their movement are coincidental.>>
So are you saying that in the twenty years that intervened between the start of the occupation of the West Bank and the start of the First Intifada, their condition under the occupation was slowly improving?
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<<I don't think that they were useing the method in the way that it works , if they had sent a few guys to learn the tecnique they might have gotten somewhere.>>
Well, in the twenty years from 1967 to 1987 (the start of the First Intifada) how could their non-violence have been better practiced? What were they doing wrong before they turned to the Intifada in 1987? what bad non-violence practices were they using that resulted in a twenty-year armed occupation and the gradual build-up of Israeli settlements all around them?
<<There used to be jobs for them and the walls used to be a lot smaller, the progress of their failure and the increaseing violence of their movement are coincidental.>>
So are you saying that in the twenty years that intervened between the start of the occupation of the West Bank and the start of the First Intifada, their condition under the occupation was slowly improving?
This is such a long story that I feel unequal to the telling.
But their bad situation was worsened by violence and I kinda expect this to be a consistant result.
Ghandi says- “Whenever you have truth it must be given with love, or the message and the messenger will be rejectedâ€
http://thinkexist.com/quotes/mahatma_gandhi/
In the threat and fight and conquer mode you have to win to get what you want , it is a zero sum game . If I wanted the money in your wallet and attacked you for it you might fight me even if you and I both knew that you owed it to me.
The Palestinians never were non-violent they were just from time to time less violent, and that is very diffrent .
A conqured people that simply throws in the towel to stop being killed is not now non violent they are subdued .
About three hundred years ago Slaves in the USA had a very hard life about two hundred years ago Nat Turner made it worse .
The Civil war was a conflict that did not even include them as participants at first but near the end there were hundreds who demonstrated that they were not deficient in courage.
The Improvement imposed from without is very simular to President Bushes intention in Iraq (I am not buying the "controll " of Oil stuff).
The result was an improvement in their condition , but how much?
Leo knew the reason,-All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do.
Leo Tolstoy http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/l/leo_tolstoy.html
Then we find Dr. Martin Luther King Junior who has studied non-violence as a tecnique for change a method developed over the pervious two generations.
It is not just lieing there with a boot on your neck , it is protesting effectively impressing on your brothers who are wearing those boots how they will survive the ceaseing to do you wrong.
Thomas Jefferson would have liked a good talk with Henry David Thoreau , Leo Tolstoy , Ghandi , and MLKJr. but he was too early , he didn't have this worked out , he said of Slavery that it was a bad situation something like holding a wolf by the ears , he didn't expect that a released Negro population would behave diffrently than Nat Turner or Denmark Vessey, he might have been right untill the leadership learns non-violence they do not know how to credit it as real.