The Palestinians are terrorists and must be dealt with accordingly.
I guess Andy thinks that fighting terror with terror is the solution. It's this same kind of short-sighted stupidity that has made the situation what it is today.
Reports in the news today (source: Bush's "News Services") state that the Israelis have taken to looting in their quest for justice. No wonder Gorge W Terrorist and his creepy crew of thugs love to fund them so much, they're so much alike!
Welcome back, our little socialist friend. Hope all is well in your world. Sounds like the band is going well.
It's essentially unconscionable, knee-jerk apologia for Israeli colonialist expansion, and unrelenting human rights violations, combined with the same old hooey that incessantly attempts to demonize Arabs and Islamics as gratuitous, malevolent, fanatical, sub-human "terrorists"...rather than come up with the balls to admit that their chosen expressions of enmity toward both Israel and its pivotal American diplomatic, monetary and military underwriter have an understandable, imperative and unavoidable basis in Washington and Jerusalem's joint policy behavior. Â Â
Yes that's it Dennis, Everyone or anyone who thinks it's wrong to blow up kids in a pizza parlor is only doing so because Washington said so and we hate Muslim's and Arabs, nope it's got nothing to do with them purposely targeting civilians. and it also has nothing to do with them saying they wish to see us and the Isralies cease to exist, yes they sound like rational folks. And of course it's funny how you say that those who see it that way don't have the balls to admit their motives, too bad you aren't applying the same standard to yourself. Your hatred of your own country and anyone it allies themselves with is crystaline. Look around and take a breath did you see anyone claim or say Israel was 100% in the right ? Find it and post it if so.
Here's a news flash, most rational and normal people think terrorism is sick and wrong no matter what the cause behind it and it will never gain sympathy for their cause. EVER. Of course in order for one to see what most do one would have to release the hatred of ones own government and allies to do so, probably to much to ask for someone who hates so much.
Israel is said to have 3,900 tanks.
Against 50,000 Palestinian sticks and stones, give or take a dozen or two.
Wow I didn't know sticks and stones could blow up hotels, shops and resturaunts? I guess I'll have to be a bit more careful on my next walk through the woods as not to step on any exploding sticks or stones. Hmmm good thing the Palestinains don't have r.p.g's ak's and explosives. Yes and I'm quite sure that if Palestine had these items they wouldn't use them, right? okay, sure.
Funny how, when it's in Washington's propaganda interest to do so, the tank vs. rock-thrower mismatch is milked for all the sad-violin emotionalism that's conceivably possible -- as when Hungarian "freedom fighters" bounced paving stones off Stalin tanks in Budapest in 1956. Or what about that solitary Chinese dude holding up an armored column in Beijing in 1989?
Hmmm, were they blowing up crowded hotels with the sole intent on killing civilians ? Must of missed that one. An oh, yes I remember know, that guy holding up the tank in Tianamen square was trying to blow up an all you could eat buffet filled with innocent people.
But it's a whole 'nother story when the Israelis, favored beneficiaries of our fulsome support, use their armor to bulldoze entire swaths of Palestinian refugee camps into dusty rubble, with hundreds of noncombatants hideously killed in the gruesome process.
Who said it was o.k ?
And right Dennis, even though Ararat is an avowed terrorist going back to the 70's and has been the one constant through numerous American and Isralie admins and political leanings. So he is blameless and sure some op-ed piece claims Arafat didn't blow it at Oslo, funny the press you'll buy into.
If you'd been living in the Occupied Territories for the past 35 years, subject to constant, humiliating violations of your basic rights, dignity and humanhood -- as the most extreme elements of Israeli society unyieldingly and self-righteously colonized your ancestral land -- can you truthfully say that YOUR blood and atomized tissue wouldn't have been blasted against some Jewish commercial wall, long ago? Â Â
Well I don't know Dennis there have been many opressed people all over the globe for many years and most have never gone to those lenghts to make their cause heard. I don't think they will ever get much sympathy nor should they from most rational people, of course theirs always the exception isn't there. I remember a guy on the old thread who within two messages said that killing innocent civilians is wrong and then turned right around and said they (the palestinains) need to use what ever means neccesary because they were opressed.There will always be some who will apologize for terrorism and killing little kids and women as long as your guy is the underdog and it's a cause you believe in, then it's o.k to the apoligists and finger pointers. Thanks for the lesson in double standard and hypocrisy.
Yasser Arafat is the duly and massively elected, legitimate leader of his people, having won their fervent backing by devoting his entire life to their broadest, most elemental interests and aspirations.
George Bush is a popular vote loser who holds the U.S. presidency today only by what many feel was vote fraud amounting to a defacto coup. He is, unequivocally, not remotely a populist. Both he and his family are abject minions of eltist big business interests.
In the whole history of individual terrorism, it's estimated that somewhat less than 10,000 innocents have perished, by far the largest number stemming from 9/11.
In stunning contrast, official state terrorism has claimed hundreds of thousands, even millions of noncombatant lives.
Yasser Arafat is a relative moderate compared with not only Palestinian hardliners who would certainly fill the power vacuum were he removed, but with Ariel Sharon, whose military butchery is the stuff of grim legend, and with past Israeli leaders such as Begin and Shamir, who were key figures in the Irgun terrorism that played a big part in Israel's formation.
And George Bush's policy, combining the insufficiently discerning air attacks in Afghanistan (which now even kill friendly Canadians!) with the defacto blank check he's given Israel despite a nod-and-a-wink charade of appearing to protest Sharon's actions to assuage world outrage...has almost certainly topped the 10,000 mark in its toll of non-military people who clearly ought not have ever been blown to bits.
Beyond that, there are several incontestable instances of Washington policy -- state terrorism -- resulting in civilian deaths in the hundreds of thousands by themselves. Guatemala, for which Bill Clinton belatedly apologized, is but one example. CIA complicity in the 1965 Indonesian coup is another. Additionally, scholarly findings point to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings NOT having been necessary to actually defeat Japan and prevent a costly allied invasion (surrender was imminently obtainable by other means), but to essentailly demonstrate to the Soviets what a top-dog superpower the U.S. had become.
So, if "nobody" should negotiate or even "deal" with terrorists, why should anyone engage in talk or contact with US, being that we're unquestionably the greatest state terrorists of all time, as a bloody trail running from Korea to the Phillipines to Chile, from Iraq to Southeast Asia, plainly verifies?
Enough baseless sanctimony and outrageous hypocrisy!
The past month has seen a huge erosion in global standing for both Israel and the U.S., stemming not from "Islamic extremism" in the absrtact, but from the camel's back breaking straw that the combined Occupied Territories invasion and insane, announced plans to attack Iraq has brought into play.
Forget the massive, militant protests throughout the Arab and Muslim world, or in Europe. Take it from someone with decades of experience in street protest. It is a basic, paradigm-shifting phenomenon of scarcely comprehensible power that 50,000 people would spiritedly rally in D.C. (and another huge contingent in San Francisco) to INSIST on Palestinian rights and statehood, while linking that issue to other major causes. What transpired was a progressive coalition builder's organizational dream, and it spells disaster for Bush unless he and his conservative cronies come around to some right -- that is to say "left" -- thinking.
Sure, some conservatives are simply silly goofs.
But others are realists.
They now have to see that the ground has moved beneath their feet, creating a dramatically different political landscape...
Yasser Arafat is the duly and massively elected, legitimate leader of his people, having won their fervent backing by devoting his entire life to their broadest, most elemental interests and aspirations.
So Is Sharon, so is Bush , even though you went on a sour grapes binge about it. But just because someone is an elected leader it somehow makes them more right ? Apparently it is to you only if you believe in that leaders cause. If you don't then they are thugs etc. You claim Bush and Sharon are wrong even though they were elected. But claim righteousness for Arafat because he was. Sure no double standard there.
having won their fervent backing by devoting his entire life to their broadest, most elemental interests and aspirations.
Yes he sure does doesn't he ? like wanting Israel to not even exist. declaring those who walk into a passover celebration and kill kids, women men and children martyrs. Sure, what wonderful people. And how did he come to power? What tactics has he used over the years ? No not terrorism, not our Yassir, nope nothing to see here, move along now. The mere fact you make no mention of Arafat or his tactics is proof of your bias and or belief in their cause or a better indicator of your sympathy towards people who would use terror as a weapon. Actually it's just more proof of it.
In the whole history of individual terrorism, it's estimated that somewhat less than 10,000 innocents have perished, by far the largest number stemming from 9/11. Â Â
The socialist left has been spewing this line for about 3 months now, of course they can't confirm it but even if they could it still is incomparible. So if it had been less that would be o.k ? Of course you will never see the difference. The terrorists aim to kill civilians purposefully and with malice.
with the defacto blank check he's given Israel despite a nod-and-a-wink charade of appearing to protest Sharon's actions to assuage world outrage...has almost certainly topped the 10,000 mark in its toll of non-military people who clearly ought not have ever been blown to bits.
Oh you mean like Ararat's practice of condeming blowing up hotels and disco's and saying he can't control them, all the while handing them 100 dollars and some c-4 ? He's the master at wink wink nudge nudge politics. After the last attacks he said he would have to decide wether or not to condem the attacks.....yes, hmmmm, murder, let me think about that, i'll get back to you on it being wrong.
But it's o.k to you and your ilk if civilians are getting killed because the cause is just and yet you constantly get on your perch and bemoan others being killed just as long as those doing the killing arent as powerful or still have that underdog status then it's o.k. Apologism for terrorism is sad, Who was that on the other board who said they should use "whatever means neccesary ?" So really it's o.k to blow up civilians because that's apparently the only means they have, oh yes and sticks and stones, don't forget them. Knock, Knock, Who's there..It's me yassir.....Blam.
Enough baseless sanctimony and outrageous hypocrisy!
Yes so please cut it out, it's really getting old.
Personally Dennis I really feel that the Palestinains have some legitimate complaints, claims and have had wrong done to them. I really used to question our being allied with Israel. I still do in some ways. There are no absolutes and no black and white. But when one uses terror as a weapon and or main weapon it gives less and less creedence or sympathy to their cause. No matter how just. When one walks into a pizzaria at dinner time or a crowded buss and kills people with malice, premeditation, hatred and disregard for anyone it's murder. It's not collateral damage when the ones targeted ARE the civilians and not the military. They have been doing it for far too long. Every time I see this as most rational people do they lose support not gain it, except for the fanatics and blind zealots they lose support from those who might just be willing to listen or even help with thier plea. With every bomb on a bus and a little girl in pieces, dead or orphaned killed by a terrorist who blew themselves up to get the ifidel or jew off their land another brick is knocked from their foundation. They will like I said gain some support ie: you and others who are blinded by hatred of this country or Israel and see killing women at a bus stop as a noble endeavor. Shame on them.
Is Israel 100% right or without sin ? Heavens no. Of course not, is one more right or righteous than the other ? I don't know, I do know that blowing up yourself and others on purpose with no military target intended is wrong. And premeditated murder. Those who would apologize for it are the worst species of hypocrite on the globe.
Those whose retrograde politics and self-serving economic activity are responsible for the oppression/repression of others have no right -- no defensible moral authority -- to attempt to define or dictate the "proper" means by which the resultingly chronically downtrodden "ought" to resist.
The only credible ethical response from Americans or Israelis regarding their joint thwarting of Palestinian independent sovereignty, under the leadership and direction of the Palestinians' own free choosing...is to STOP it.
Which is exactly what the most conscientious souls in both the U.S. and Israel are striving to do.
Saturday's demonstrations in behalf of Palestinian freedom were supported by many Jewish groups and individuals who do not subscribe to the reactionary, supremacist, exclusionary Zionism of Sharon and others of his hardline, brutal ilk.
The underlying problem in the Middle East is Israel's 35-year-old occupation of Palestinian territory, under conditions of liberty denial so sharp and unrelenting -- with absolutely no chance EVER having been given by Tel Aviv to the Palestinians to gain redress of their excruciating grievances by ANY means -- that it's entirely understandable why the profoundly desperate tactic of suicide bombing has become the method not of choice, but of absolute last resort, for a people who've NEVER been offered democratic space or remedial possibilities that would have created moderate politicians and public servants with realistic hopes or options, rather than enraged battlers committed to liberation by, yes, "any means necessary".
Those who make peaceful reform impossible make violent revolution inevitable.
And, once stubborn adherence to power and profit at other human being's expense boils over into justified rebellion, with all the horrors that revolutions always entail...who do the greedy, myopic precipitators of it all think they are to complain?!
If my political views and stock portfolio took crass priority over other people's basic rights and dignity -- and indeed were the CAUSE of their sustained suffering -- I would have no basis whatever for expressing terrified shock if some of them broke into my bedroom at night and began hacking me to pieces with machetes.
I could and should have lived my life in non-exploitative, unselfish ways, actually aligning myself with such dispossessed people in common cause.
Israel has long employed terror, assassination, arbitrary confiscations and seizures, deportations, mass arrests, bullying and badgering of myriad kinds...all for the outrageous purpose of sweeping Palestianian interests into the dust to allow for a proliferation of Jewish settlements on another race's sacred, ancestral land.
Under the premise that Jews are God's chosen people, and that Palestinians are...something substantially less.
Scarcely worth noting.
Well, up against the wall with that neo-Nazism!
It's sad in the extreme that a group which endured such great, grave historical discrimination has become so much like its own former persecutors -- forcing right and wrong to trade places.
Jews did not arise from the death camps of Europe to become mass victimizers in Nablus and Jenin!
That's what progressive Jewry itself is shouting out, along with all of progressive humanity.
Those whose retrograde politics and self-serving economic activity are responsible for the oppression/repression of others have no right -- no defensible moral authority -- to attempt to define or dictate the "proper" means by which the resultingly chronically downtrodden "ought" to resist.
I think that's what Mc Viegh said right before he blew up the Murrow building in OK city.
Yes it's o.k to kill women and children intentionally if you are opressed or if YOU feel it's justified. Yes those poor sinless Palestinains and their oh so peaceful leader who in 30 years has brought them such prosperity. It's all Israel's fault.
-- that it's entirely understandable why the profoundly desperate tactic of suicide bombing has become the method not of choice, but of absolute last resort, for a people who've NEVER been offered democratic space or remedial possibilities that would have created moderate politicians and public servants with realistic hopes or options, rather than enraged battlers committed to liberation by, yes, "any means necessary".
Hmmm They have NEVER been offered anything or a state huh. So those any means include mangling a 4 year old girl, killing a mother of 4 killing a father of 3, killing a son a brother, a daughter, whose only sin was eating a pizza on the wrong day. Yes it's o.k though in your eyes cuz they're opressed. And the infidel walks on their land and you've proclaimed to see them cease to exist. It's ok to murder civilians INTENTIONALLY because they were wronged or percieved to be. So use those "by any means neccesary", blow up kids intentionally and see how much respect and creedence given to you by MOST people. Oh you'll attract a few zealots, heck, some right here who weren't even sure what the protest was about. But your cause is only weakened in the eyes of the majority. But keep fighting for thier cause your hyporisy and apologism for murder make that same majority more concrete in their posistion.
But hey at least we know that those who have always claimed to be so superior in preaching peace are exposed to be the true hypocrites they are and always have been because if it's a cause you believe in it is o.k. Then killing innocent people with premeditation is alright in their book. So keep apologizing and justifying premeditated murder of civilians, sleep well.
last week, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein said that suicide bombings are "a legitimate means used by a people whose land is being occupied."
Looks like you're in good company Dennis. And such a voice of reason and all around good guy to boot. You and Sadamn Hussein apologists for murder and terrorism. Dennis And Saddam, two peas in a pod.
The blatantly partisan, manipulative moral selectiveness of conservatives would be laughable were it not so pathetic.
The children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, engaged in happy play one instant.
And horrifically being incinerated into nothing but shadows on the sidewalk and walls the next.
Where were you when their world stopped spinning?
What about the children of North Korea, killed and wounded by the multitudes as U.S. airmen, with dominance of the sky, were told to bomb all structures of two stories or more to be found above the 38th parallel? (This in addition to ground massacres before and during the Korean War.)
Rightwingers, where was your teary-eyed compassion when napalm, white phosphorus, Agent Orange, and anti-personnel weapons of murderously destructive fury fell on South Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian kids?
Where you at peace with Jesus when residential districts of Hanoi and Haiphong were carpet bombed by B-52's during Christmas, 1972?
Did you know that the decidedly terroristic targeting priority of Ronald Reagan's secret and illegal contra war in Central America was the schools and clinics that reform-minded governments and/or movements had built to combat pervasive illiteracy and illness?
Did you ever look into the brown eyes of a little girl with an arm missing, and her prospect to learn to read...gone?
Ten years of bombing and economically squeezing Iraq has resulted in a ghost army of dead children pointing their fingers at Washington.
Yugoslavia. Whoops! A little "collateral damage" here and there...and there, and there, and there. Why is that small child crying?
And then there's Afghanistan, where we took revenge for 3,000 innocents slaughtered on Sept. 11 by killing far more Afghan noncombatants, a large proportion of whom were teens, toddlers, infants. (Previously, during our support for the reactionaries who would later become the Taliban, the same destruction of schools and clinics as in Central America is what our tax dollars paid for.)
Israel? The lopsidedness of the Middle East's terror, made possible by U.S. supplied arms, money and diplomatic support (over decades), is a moral travesty. There can be no equating the unrelentingly vicious repression of an occupying colonial power and the desperate means its daily victims must resort to to strike back, for freedom.
Have you seen the al-Qaida recruiting video where a little Palestinian boy is shot dead, beside his horrified and anguished father, by Isreali soldiers?
We must realize the consequences of our policy.
It's time we cleaned up OUR self-serving, imperialist act, the root basis of so much of the world's misery and resulting anger.
OUR prior state terrorism, vastly more victimizing than anything done in response, is why rebellious, enraged individual terror has risen to become such a problem.
WE need to take the remedial first steps, because it very definitely all begins with US.
The first excerpt from your "article" or wrtiing is oh so sad and yet predictibly telling.
There were opponents of the War on Terrorism from the very start. Principled pacifists invoked their faith in the core teachings of Christ, Gandhi and King,
Yes the teaching of those whom you invoke when convienient. But have no problem turning away from and spitting on them when you suddenly feel the cause of the Palestinains is so justified that you would apologize or give legitimacy to premeditated murder. "By any means necessary" So killing civilians is o.k only when you decide it is. Only when you feel it's o.k but then claim to be a pacifist and a student of Christ, Ghandi or King when it suits you. Nope, no hypocrisy there. LOL.
Then again your quotes are similar to Sadamn Hussein's so it's good to hear you have such reasonable voices among your ranks and so much in common with your bretheren in Iraq and Hammas. Nothing like being on the same page with ol' Saddam. Another voice or reason heard from in the oh so righteous terrorists.
But oppressed people will strive to liberate themselves, by any means necessary.
Would you consent to having your oppressor place limits on how you should struggle to become free -- if you'd been living for several decades with your face in the dust, under his hobnailed boot?
Furthermore, it isn't up to armchair observers and sanctimonious moralists (or malicious, partisan demagogues) far from an exploited people's harsh reality to make judgments on what constitutes "necessity" in their fight for freedom.
That has to be their own determination, based on the existence or absence of OPTIONS that would negate having to use the most extreme methods.
The main responsibility of Americans with ethical concerns about all this is to first study our own country's policies, to see exactly how and why so many people in so many global locales view us with such intense hatred.
Next, we're obligated to examine the grossly lopsided relationships that allow some to rule with such an iron hand -- tanks, jets, helicopter gunships -- while others, generally speaking, have access to little more than sticks and stones.
When one side engages in constant state terrorism against a whole populace -- physically through brutal repression, and spiritually via a panoply of everyday deprivations and denials -- isn't that a situation under which some of the victimized would inevitably begin looking at their tormentors as an undifferentiated, evil mass?
The distinction between soldier and civilian becomes moot, and they strike at either, out of what no one can logically deny is desperation.
Again, the time-proven historical axiom: Those who make peaceful reform impossible make violent revolution inevitable.
Terrorists are made, not born.
Sure, there are kooks and malicious misanthropes who become bombers.
Examine the motivation of a typical terrorist from a destitute, downtrodden place and you can trace his or her descent to murderous extremism to a politics and economy, almost invariably foreign in origin, that has no compunction against profiting or gaining "hegemony" at the terrorists' native culture's lethal expense.
Everyone in the Middle East understands, for example, that Israeli territorial expansion and American oil lust (kept carefully hidden in our propaganda) are the real reasons for which they are being sacrificed.
A terrorist is someone radicalized sufficiently by unrelenting injustice to become a human bomb.
What makes him or her such is the standard operating procedure of those who have neither feeling hearts nor conscientious minds, but "blood money" in their wallets that's the end all and be all of their mercenary existence. Profiteers. Power brokers. Imperialists.
Who'll run roughshod over entire nations and races in their obscene worship of the Almighty Dollar, invoking God only to demagogically try to demonize those from which native wealth (or land) has been stolen, who are rising up angry to try to get it back. Or battling to win the most basic of key liberties.
So, if it bothers you that there's a proliferation of people pissed off enough to do something that all the saints, angels and inner voices within us tell us is abjectly wrong (terrorism)...our first obligation is not to viciously condemn them, wildly, out of all objective context, but to determine precisely what's gotten them so riled.
Then, if honest assessment reveals that OUR foreign behavior is the underlying cause, we have a Godly responsibility to change. To become friends and benefactors of the wretched of the earth, not their despised, predacious bane.
One way we could do this...
Are we willing to divest stock that we may own to facilitate implementing justice, so that terrorism might be prevented? Or boycott particular companies with histories relating to Third World resentment?
As was done in connection with South African apartheid.
I would agree if it's done intentionally ie: suiside bombers going into a seder celebration at a crowded hotel loaded full of women children. But apparently your willing to let it slide.
But oppressed people will strive to liberate themselves, by any means necessary.
Yes they will, but does it make them righteous or even justified especially when they target civilians directly ? It seems to for you when YOU decide it is.
Would you consent to having your oppressor place limits on how you should struggle to become free -- if you'd been living for several decades with your face in the dust, under his hobnailed boot?
If they are using suicide bombers as a tactic I don't think they obviously give a rip about what limits or tactics the opposition wishes to employ.
I am trying to see through your contradiction or at least the appearance of hypocrisy. On one hand you decry our actions in Afghanistan and the civilians that were sadly killed. They were not killed intentionally, even friendlies have been killed accidentally it is a sad part of war a war that we didn't ask for. All that aside you still feel we shouldn't be doing what we are doing, o.k fine that's your posistion so be it. You claim to be a pacifist and quote King, Ghandi, Jesus etc. All men of peace. Then you turn around and say how bad Israel and your own country is and try to tell us again how it's all about oil. O.k fine you believe that. Would any of those men you sighted be in favor of intentionally targeting civilians ?
During the rally in Washington I didn't hear one, not one of those misinformed in the gaggle of various causes call for Palestine to stop their brand of murder. NOT ONCE Dennis and I watched quite a bit on C-span until I had to go wretch from the lies and misinformation, and pro-murder Palestinian propoganda B.S I had all I could take.
The blatantly partisan, manipulative moral selectiveness of conservatives would be laughable were it not so pathetic
As is yours, the only time you speak up or cry foul is if it's something your own nation has done. or one that we might support.You cozy up and support those who purposely and with malice plan and execute murder of innocent civilians. I re-read your posting of your protest invitation or whatever you call it but not once in there nor anywhere have I heard you NOT ONCE call on the Palestinains to stop there murder. NOT ONCE and you talk about moral selectiveness, you seem to be a shining example of it.
Furthermore, it isn't up to armchair observers and sanctimonious moralists (or malicious, partisan demagogues) far from an exploited people's harsh reality to make judgments on what constitutes "necessity" in their fight for freedom.
HOLY MOLY ROCKY !!!! You've never had a problem telling everyone in your mind what constitutes "necessity" in the war on terror. Dennis you've been airmchair quarterbacking our efforts to stop terrorism since day one. Talk about sanctimonius partisan demogauging. WOW ! you sir are the friggin master, the grand poobah, the big cohone, the chief, the big cheese at it, no one holds a candle to you in that category, I'm surprised you can even see from that moral high ground you pretend to enjoy.
Partisan demogauging ? No Dennis, it's not because most from the right and left have actually agreed that we need to do what we are doing. The last time that an issue crossed party lines this much is probably WW2. So it's not partisan, it's common sense. But if they disagree with you, only then are they partisan in your book. Talk about sanctimonius clap trap. You have never had a problem deciding what's best for our or other nations, c'mon down from the mouintain.
Examine the motivation of a typical terrorist from a destitute, downtrodden place and you can trace his or her descent to murderous extremism to a politics and economy, almost invariably foreign in origin, that has no compunction against profiting or gaining "hegemony" at the terrorists' native culture's lethal expense.
B.S,B.S, and more B.S Dennis,
The attackers of 9-11 were almost all upper middle class to wealthy well educated well traveled zealots. Bin Laden is a millionaire, he's supported by millionaries. They aren't doing it for some noble cause, they are doing it as a desire to see us and Israel CEASE to EXIST. They don't only want us out of the middle east they want you me and your family gone from the face of the earth. They do it out of a twisted religious desire to remove the "infidel" and kill in Allah's name.
Everyone in the Middle East understands, for example, that Israeli territorial expansion and American oil lust (kept carefully hidden in our propaganda) are the real reasons for which they are being sacrificed.
Right we want all that oil in Israel yes Israel what a huge oil nation. ppffftt. Of course you sighted our real motives for being in Afghanistan oil as well and implied that our admin knew of it or had knowledge, right.
What makes him or her such is the standard operating procedure of those who have neither feeling hearts nor conscientious minds, but "blood money  Â
Yes the terrorists are such great people.
Who'll run roughshod over entire nations and races in their obscene worship of the Almighty Dollar, invoking God only to demagogically try to demonize those from which native wealth (or land) has been stolen, who are rising up angry to try to get it back. Or battling to win the most basic of key liberties.
Dennis, THEY are the ones invoking the name of God or Allah.
Are we willing to divest stock that we may own to facilitate implementing justice, so that terrorism might be prevented? Or boycott particular companies with histories relating to Third World resentment?
As was done in connection with South African apartheid.
Quite possibly so, but until they stop killing kids at a pizza palce they 'll get zero sympathy for thier cause. until the blind hatred of the far left stops supporting thier cause only then will most people try to help. I have no stock to sell but if I did I wouldn't until the aforementioned happen. They will never get mainstream or majority support for their cause, no matter how just until they stop premeditated suicidal murder of innocent civilains. Then their cause will be heard and probably advanced.
Do you find it odd at all that your quotes are almost verbatim with Sadam Hussien ? Doens't that give you pause ?
Dennis, I also noticed on your "piece" that you wrote that you included this.
Bill Fold you'll love this one.
"The coalition is making six demands of Congress and the Administration: 1. A U.S. foreign policy based upon social and economic justice, not military oppression; 2. Government funding for victims of the 9/11 attacks and the recession; 3. An end to racial profiling and military recruitment targeting youth of color and working class youth; 4. An end to the degrading and secret imprisonment of immigrants; 5. Full disclosure of military contracts with universities; 6. Increased funding for non-military-based financial aid for education. Â Â
This one was my favorite
3. An end to racial profiling and military recruitment targeting youth of color and working class youth;
That is amazing. I didn't know we forced all the working class and youth of color into the armed forces. Yes what a horrid thing that people who might otherwise have little chance to advance and get a good education, have structure to their life, provide an income and learn about dignity, honor and courage. Yes by all means end it now. I was actually one of those mentioned and I can tell you many others as well. The best part is that I don't ever recall seeing any racist incidents in the service. of course there were racists i'm sure, there is anywhere but I don't recall seeing it. In fact I can tell you that the people whom you serve with become closer than brothers. Especially those who are in combat together, they are closer than any bond you can imagine. the military is a great option for many poor and minority people it gives them all a very good opportunity. Why they are against that is ridiculous.
But then again many of the so called "protestors" had no idea why they were there. They lumped about 135 different issues into a rally.
I noticed this at the bottom.
Dennis Rahkonen is based in Superior, Wisconsin. He is a contributing writer for Liberal Slant
Although I hate war and have passionately resisted several, I am not a pacifist.
I'm an anti-imperialist -- a proletarian internationalist -- who emphatically supports the right of oppressed peoples to wage wars of national liberation, as a last resort.
America's campaign against Afghanistan, contrary to artful myth that continues to have many citizens snowed, is a classic case of imperialist aggression.
It's being pursued for oil-related U.S. hegemonistic objectives.
We've killed more innocent Afghans than the number of our citizens who died in the terror attacks of Sept. 11.
Long before the first U.S. bombs fell on Afghanistan, I posted repeatedly that exactly such civilian carnage would surely ensue.
And I never bought into the blithely dismissive "accidents happen" crap the Pentagon always spoonfeeds us. Even if one accepts the claim that we don't deliberately target civilians (which is dubious at best, since we have a long record of systematic attacks on civilian infrastructure in our various interventions), there is still the troubling factor of how our racism places lesser value on Third World lives than on our own, leading us to be lax in target differentiation, which becomes especially blurred when our pilots move beyond pre-determined attack sites and go on to "targets of opportunity".
Some 10,000 Afghans with absolutely no connective responsibility for 9/11 have been blown to bits by our forces, for a policy that's secretly about getting our hands on Central Asian oil.
That's a sinful abomination.
As for the Middle East, the problem is unequivocally Israel's absolutely terrible, tyrannical rule -- for painful decades -- NOT the means, however extreme some of them may be, that the Palestinians are forced by circumstance to employ in resistance.
Far more Palestinains have died over time at Israeli hands than vice versa. Far more have suffered abject terrorism.
Ariel Sharon, just one of many prominent Israelis of a reactionary, Zionist bent who are dripping with terrorism's blood, is an infinitely greater killer than Yasser Arafat.
Israel is a nation which I admire on many levels, not the least of which is that it's very successfully socialistic in certain key ways (agricultural collectivization, broad safety net provision, etc.), but it's saddled with a unique form of extreme nationalism, Zionism, that's a fairly recent adjunct to Jewish tradition...and one that countless progressive Jews do not subscribe to. They correctly feel that the oppression Zionism inflicts on the Palestinians is both morally unacceptable and an ultimate detriment to Jewry, since it gives a warranted basis for animosity toward Jews -- who have been hated far too long for unwarranted, prejudical reason. Zionism fosters anti-Semitism, causing only more problems for the Jewish race.
As for the military recruiting issue:
Muhammad Ali, in resisting Vietnam, very cogently and forcefully made clear what's wrong with systematically impoverished, racistly discriminated against American people of color becoming cannon fodder for The Man in trying to kill other poor, non-white people half a world away. "No Viet Cong ever called me nigger!"
Yes, there's some prospect for "opportunity" in the military for both minorities and the poor, but that opportunity could and should exist in general civilian life, on a fair par with what majority whites enjoy, and not as an exedient for those needing bodies to wage dirty little wars designed not to make the world safe for democracy, as propaganda contends, but to make the world's human and natural resources readily and cheaply available to U.S. multinational-corporate interests.
You seem to steadfastly resist the religious component to this whole issue. Do you think one exists?
Are the young Palistinians not recruited, in many ways like the young African Americans you mention for the military, to be, as you say, cannon fodder? And aren't the recruiters indeed Muslim clerics? Picking kids out of poor villages and sending them out to do their dirty work?
And I'd be disappointed if you blithly passed off the questions.
Doesn't this have all the earmarks of a Suicide Cult?
When thinking about these kids that strap bombs to themselves at the behest of Muslim cleric leaders the first thing that comes to mind for me is that this is a Suicide Cult.
Most of the talk here seems to center around the politics of the region. But this is religious. The leaders of Hamas and the other groups are doing what they always did -- going into poor sections of the city, filling the kids' head full of jihad passion and sending them out to do their dirty work.
Everyone recognizes that the Palistinians have had a tough go of it. They have few friends in the Arab world. I understand the neighboring Lebonese treat them terribly.
But in carrying out these suicide bombing missions they risk losing a large chunk of their humanity. Through the Holacaust, the Jews never lost their humanity. They didn't become like their oppressors. And if the Suicide Bombing stopped for good they wouldn't be carrying out the military operations they are doing now.
To me that seems to be the dividing line for me. That defines what is a military operation and what is simple, foul, terrorism aimed at innocent civilians.
Wow, Dennis. You sure do have a thing for these Jews. Much like the French...
"In order to pressure Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to show more flexibility, the EU should try to whittle away at American Jewry's support for the prime minister, French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine saidin a closed meeting Monday."
Maybe you should round them all up into camps so they can be controlled better. Wait a minute, wasn't that tried once before by another socialist?
A MESSAGE TO TROOPS, WOULD-BE TROOPS, AND OTHER YOUTH
By Jeff Paterson, YellowTimes.org Guest Columnist (United States)
(YellowTimes.org) – Do you know anyone in the military, or thinking about signing up soon? Pass this along to them. They may or may not appreciate it, but they deserve a heads up.
In August of 1990, I was an active duty U.S. Marine Corps Corporal. I was ordered to the Middle East; we were on the verge of the Gulf War. Four years prior, thinking I had nothing better to do with my life, I had walked into the Salinas, California recruiting station and told them to "put me where I was most needed."
"What am I going to do with my life?" has always been a huge question for young people. Today, in the wake of the horror and tragedy of September 11th, this question has increased in importance for millions of young people.
No one who has seen the images will ever forget them. In a scene as unreal as the Matrix, a conflict reached into American reality in an unthinkable way. From copy clerks to administrative assistants, restaurant workers to firefighters, thousands of lives were ripped away from friends and family as those hijacked planes flew into the World Trade Center. Now the television shouts, "revenge," "infinite justice," and "something must be done!" America continues to wave red, white and blue flag to ease the sorrow; to declare, "We're not going to take it."
If it weren't for those four years in the Marine Corps, I might be like the youth who are walking to the U.S. military recruiters right now, wanting to fight for their country. During my four years, most of the time my unit trained to fight a war against peasants who dared struggle against "American interests" in their homelands, specifically Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala.
I saw dire poverty in the Philippines; U.S. government- sanctioned prostitution rings to service the U.S. Armed Forces in South Korea; and unbridled racism towards the people of Okinawa and Japan, where the standard response to a child waving a "peace sign" at us with his fingers was "yea, ha, ha; two bombs little gook."
I began to understand why billions of people around the world really do hate the United States – specifically its war machine, covert "contra" wars, and the whole system of economic globalization that replaces hope with 12-hour days locked in sweatshops producing "Designed in the USA" exports.
Faced with this reality, I began the process of becoming un- American; meaning, the interests of the people of the world began to weigh heavier than my self-interest.
When the U.S. launched the Gulf War, I realized that the world did not need or want another U.S. troop deployment. Although they did not look much like me, I found that I had more in common with the common peoples of the Middle East than I did with those who were ordering me to kill them. My Battalion Commander's reassurance that "if anything goes wrong we'll nuke the rag-heads until they all glow" was not reassuring.
Up against that, I publicly stated I would not be a pawn in America's power plays for profits, oil, and domination of the Middle East. I pledged to resist, and I pledged that if I were dragged out into the Saudi desert, I would refuse to fight.
A few weeks later, I sat down on an airstrip as hundreds of Marines, many of whom I had lived with for years, filed past me and boarded the plane. I fought the Gulf War from a military brig, and after worldwide anti-war protesters helped spring me, we fought the war in the streets.
But back then we failed to stop the war. Since 1990 over 1.5 million Iraqi people have died, not mainly from the massive U.S. bombing which continues from the sky, but from a decade of economic sanctions. All the while the U.S. government has coldly declared that these Iraqi deaths are "worth it"...to achieve strategic regional objectives. So today, as the U.S. government demands the world mourn with us for our loss, we in turn are expected to ignore the suffering our nation produces.
Every time the U.S. war machine is kicked into high gear, acknowledgements are made about past "mistakes" such as: Gulf War sickness, Agent Orange and napalm in Vietnam, massacres of refugees in Korea, U.S. troops used as nuclear exposure guinea pigs after World War II, internment camps for Japanese-Americans during World War II. Yet after this acknowledgement comes: "Trust us, this time it will be different." But it never is.
One need not be a pacifist, a communist, a Quaker, or a humanist to oppose this current "War on Terrorism." However, it certainly helps to be an internationalist, realizing that our collective future is bound up with the majority of humanity, and not with those who are taking this horrific opportunity to wage war.
For the women and men in uniform, you have to make a choice. Silence is what your "superiors" expect of you, but the interests of humanity expect more. Think. Speak out. And if you make the choice to resist, there are hundreds of thousands who will support you – many of whom have already taken to the streets to oppose this war.
Like his father before him, Bush Jr. has drawn a line in the sand: "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." Simply put, the rulers of the U.S. see much unfinished business for their "New World Order." While we grieve, they announce that "the normal rules no longer apply" (translation: now is the time to settle our scores), and we have "a blank check to act, the nation is united" (translation: dissent will be ignored, or suppressed, as required). Now, more than ever, the people of the world, along with American citizens, are not safe from the U.S. government.
I will not wave the red, white and blue flag; instead, I will wear a green ribbon in solidarity with immigrants and Arab-Americans facing increased racist attacks.
Stop the War. Support U.S. troops who refuse to fight.
Let's dedicate our live to changing this situation.
Yes, there's some prospect for "opportunity" in the military for both minorities and the poor, but that opportunity could and should exist in general civilian life, on a fair par with what majority whites enjoy, and not as an exedient for those needing bodies to wage dirty little wars designed not to make the world safe for democracy, as propaganda contends, but to make the world's human and natural resources readily and cheaply available to U.S. multinational-corporate interests.
Oh yes I forgot, only blacks died in Vietnam and the Gulf. Pffft. Ever hear of Colin Powell ? He seemed to do o.k for himself. Are they forced into it ? No. And I can tell you that there is no racism or atheists in combat. They are truly your brothers, your life is dependant upon them and vica versa. There is a love and bond that time can't break, some have even said you love them more than family, it's a hard thing to explain. Does racism & racists exist in the service ? Sure it does. It was a problem many years ago as well but in todays forces it's almost a colorblind society. As long as that person is doing there job it doesn't matter. There will always be racism probably but frankly comparitively quite a bit less than anywhere in the U.S I have seen. A majority of my commanding officers were of different ethnicities mainly Black and Hispanicand with the exception of one, I would follow any of them into battle again. I could probably count on one hand the times I heard the "n" word used or other derogatory remarks. I am sure they were there no doubt but it's a completely different culture. As for the supposed "Marine" who wrote that story he's no Marine, he's a traitor and a coward and hypocrite who joined never guessing he'd have to fight and when his time came suddenly he objected. He could ahve signed as a C.O but After he'd gotten what he wanted. He turned his back on his brothers and broke his oath. He should still be in the brig in Leavenworth making pebbles out of rocks.
It's being pursued for oil-related U.S. hegemonistic objectives.
Yes it has nothing to do with terrorism Right and as you said before the admin knew of 9-11 too right ? Sure, look out for black helicopters Dennis.
We've killed more innocent Afghans than the number of our citizens who died in the terror attacks of Sept. 11.
You don't know that but hey, you've never let facts get in the way so why start now. But hey it's o.k if it's the poor Palestinains doing it.
Long before the first U.S. bombs fell on Afghanistan, I posted repeatedly that exactly such civilian carnage would surely ensue.
Wow what a bold prediction that civilians would die in a war gee that's never happened before. All hail the great Karnac !
Some 10,000 Afghans with absolutely no connective responsibility for 9/11 have been blown to bits by our forces, for a policy that's secretly about getting our hands on Central Asian oil.
That's a sinful abomination.
It's also a lie But it's o.k if the Palestinans do it, after all it's their last resort. So it's o.k when you target civilians intentionally.
Then again you and Sadamn seem to be quoting eachother. Such voices of reason.
The protest in Washington was a farce. Like many recent protests it ran the gamut of issues. Half of them didn't even seem to know why they were or the reasons considering there were so many listed, no wonder why they "claim" to have 100,000 hell you get enough issues and gripes and you can get a bunch of people together, in fact next week there will be an animal rights, free speech, save the rainforest, welfare rights, gay lesbian and transgender rights, anti nuclear, tax protest, anti gun, m.a.a.d, rally down at the capitol, make sure you swing by, we're expecting a large number of people.
Now I'm sure there were many there who legitimatley are concerned with the plight of the Palestinian people, that's fine, but many there I don't think really give a rats ass about the Palestinans in general. It's simply another excuse to further their own socialist political agenda or spew the lies and hatred they have of their own country and its process. And knowing that it would be hard to ever get the agenda through that way you need to do it i others ie: hopping on whatever bandwagon you can to circumvent actual debate.
Next week it will be something else that they claim to care oh so much about and show once again how naughty we all really are. The biggest lie is that it is somehow racist. A word that has been hollowed out like an old rotting tree by mainly the far left. It's funny they champion (or pretend)Palestine's cause and make no mention of the racism displayed by the Palestinians themselves.
They made no mention of the teachings of the Palestinains that the Jew and American are infidels and that they wish and pray to no longer have us exist because we somehow defile the land they walk on. If one here said the same of another they would rightly be denounced as racsits, or zenophobes, but if it's a cause that fits your political agenda they are now for the moment, the opressed and given cart blanche' to do and say as they see fit.
And again not once did they call for Palestine to end their violence and racism, for it's o.k in their hypocrite world to call yourself peacefull and support murderers, terrorists and racsits, as long as they fit your political motivation for the moment. As wrong as some of the things Israel has done turning a blind eye to the horrid acts commited by the other side and not denouince it is just as wrong and is no less than supporting mass premeditated murder. And a sad lame and weak attempt to justify it.
Rick as far as your mentioning the religious aspect of all this I would agree that it is a major if not largest factor. Good luck in getting some to admit it. the racism is on BOTH sides. It's Not just in Palestine but in other countries as well they are taught from day one by their clerics that we and the Jew are inferior and all evil. How do you talk or negotiate with someone who from the age of 5 has been told by a highly regarded religious figure that an entire race of people is bad or subhuman?
Like all racism it's generally taught. We have all seen the 4 and 5 year olds repeating what they have been taught. That Jews and Americans are bad, evil, infidels. We have seen the pictures of the parents who dress their 5 year olds up as soilders with the suiide bomb holder pockets sewn in. They are taught much of this hate in the Mosques and do it all in the name of Allah with that big reward if you wipe out some Isralies or Americans, they have twisted their own religion so much that it really is unrecognizable from the true Islam which is a peacefull religion. Sadly they have highjacked it just as they did our planes.
Anyone who would encourage a teenager to blow himself up and take as many innocent people as possible with him, has no authority to call anyone subhuman.
Anyone who would encourage a teenager to blow himself up and take as many innocent people as possible with him, has no authority to call anyone subhuman.
Bingo ! short, sweet, to the point and oh so poignant ! Amen.
Q. What is the proper response regarding Palestinian suicide bombings?
A. Killing noncombatants in any fashion is ethically indefensible. Additionally, individual terrorism is harmful to the Palestinian cause. A fair, democratic resolution of the Middle East crisis calls for a forward-looking political program that both Arabs and Jews can unite around, with assured security and safety. Terrorism thwarts that unity. We should not, however, join with those who cry crocodile tears and opportunistically "condemn" such acts in order to justify Israeli war crimes against the Palestinian masses, by Sharon, with pivotal U.S. backing.
Q. Aren't the suicide attacks worse than what Israel is doing in the West Bank and Gaza?
A. No. Although tragic, such bombings can't rationally be equated with the systematic, bloody repression of the entire Palestinian populace, in densely populated areas, where indiscriminate bombings and shellings occur, along with political assassinations. Desperate young people striking back against a brutal occupation by a powerful military that's garnered an infamous human rights record for its mistreatment of Palestinians over decades...can't be compared to that repression itself. Remember, this is a battle between subjugatee and subjugator, a distinction that carries with it many other distinctions as well, which we need to not overlook as Sharon's propaganda tries to shift attention from Israel's harsh, illegal occupation, by besmirching its resisting victims.
Q. Isn't Yasser Arafat an exponent of terrorism?
A. Previous terrorism from the Palestinian side was quite rare and almost always originated with Islamist groups, not with organizations under PLO jurisdiction, which generally disagreed with the terrorist tactic. That we've suddenly seen a spate of suicide bombings coming from all sectors is a reflection of a changed reality on the ground --i.e., an intensification of Israeli abuses during the immediate period -- and pervasive belief particulalry among Palestinian youth that old methods haven't been successful in bringing relief from unrelenting Israeli repression, with its decisive, bipartisan backing from Washington.
A. To answer that question, look to the Israelis, not Palestinians. The present Intifada resulted from Ariel Sharon and a retinue of 1,000 troops provocatively marching to Al-Haram al-Sharif in East Jerusalem, in Sept., 2000. Following Sharon's election some months later, he embarked on a policy of calculated destruction of Palestinian infrastructure, replete with gangster-style "hits" on Palestinian leaders, which triggered a mass Palestinian uprising, including the suicide-bomber phenomenon. In recent weeks we've seen the Israeli army hurl missiles into civilian neighborhoods, destroying water, electrical and sewage facilities, rounding up thousands of Palestinian men, and forcing them to be stamped with Nazi-style ID numbers. They've shot at journalists to stifle exposure of what Sharon's forces have wantonly done in towns like Nablus and Jenin.
Beyond that, there is both an ancient and modern history of Jewish terrorism. The Old Testament tells us that Moses, Joshua, Samson and others murdered tens of thousands in furtherance of Jewish liberation. The Maccabees, as Israeli writer Uri Avnery observes, “were terrorists who went around killing Hellenized Jews.” Latter-day "Zionists" put bombs in the Arab markets in Jaffa and Haifa, blew up the King David Hotel, and shot up Arab public transit.
Ariel Sharon's career is infamous for atrocities against Palestinian civilians, from the 1953 massacre in Qibya, in the West Bank, to the 1982 invasion of Lebanon and siege of Beirut, which saw the massacre of hundreds of Palestinian refugees at Sabra and Shatilla. That war crime eventually led to Sharon’s removal as Israeli defense minister.
Q. Didn't the Oslo agreement give "peace a chance"?
A. Not at all. The whole “peace process” was a crude and callous sham, calculated to turn the PLO into a police force for beating down the Palestinian people, while Israel went on building its settlements, assuring that any eventual Palestinian state would simply be a controlled Israeli protectorate. This became clear at Camp David, in 2000, when Bill Clinton informed Arafat that the U.S., echoing basic Israeli intent, would not acquiesce to a return of Palestinian refugees to their homes, or the creation of a viable, unified state under free, independent, Palestinian sovereignty, with Arab Jerusalem as its capital.
Sharon's Al-Haram al-Sharif outrage followed shortly thereafter, and the rest is an unconscionable, authoritarian Israeli prelude to the bloody situation that now exists.
Q. What's Israel's interest in permitting a Palestinian homeland?
A. The Jewish people have been subjected to perniciously anti-Semitic discrimination throughout the centuries. They've been horribly persecuted based on groundless stereotypes and demonizing myths. The oppressive ultra nationalism of Zionism gives everyone, including blatant anti-Semites, warranted reason for criticizing Jews. Jews have a decided interest in doing right and fostering good, rather than appearing much like contemporary equivalents of the fascists at whose hands they suffered during the Holocaust. Working toward a truly just solution to the "Palestinian question", with mutal protective assurances for all parties involved, can only redeem tarnished Jewish prestige.
Q. So what needs to be done?
A. The legitimate aspiration of the Palestinians for a homeland of their own is perhaps the greatest political/moral imperative of our time. Despite vicious propaganda emanating from various reactionary sources aimed at obfuscating that fact, world opinion has clearly seen the issue in central truth and is overwhelming in its support for precisely such a homeland. Whatever pressure the global community can bring to bear to assure that Palestinians receive elemental justice must now be emphatically manifested, as is already being partially done, via street protests, diplomatic initiatives and resolutions, etc.
The long-denied dream of Palestinian freedom is closer than ever before.
It will soon be won, through the Palestinians' own heroic struggle, and our ongoing, firm solidarity.
Years ago, before he went wildly haywire himself and consequently negated every good thing he'd previously said or done, Eldridge Cleaver noted: "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem."
Well, buckaroos, we're THE problem.
Let's look at it from an uncharacteristic perspective:
Alan Jackson's "Where Were You When the World Stopped Spinning?" is a very good, emotionally-impactive song.
Or is it?
Consider the bridge, where he talks about being a simple man who listens to CNN and can't really tell the difference between Iraq and Iran.
Isn't that precisely why we're in such trouble today?
While we may not be stupid, we're definitely gullible and apathetic, and consequently uninformed/misled about harsh truths in faraway places where people have powerfully compelling grievances against what's routinely done in America's name and interest, about which we're essentially oblivious.
A couple posts back Rick made what he, I'm sure, felt was a morally-rooted, constructive comment about Palestinians.
But a Palestinian reading it would undoubtedly feel an even greater compulsion to possibly become a suicide bomber:
"Arrogant Yankee Christian! How dare you judge us, in our oppression and misery, from your position of privileged comfort, half a world away! What do you know of our pained reality, or what we supposedly teach our children? What gives you the right to even think of imposing your religion's 'values' -- the religion of pedophile priests and hypocrites who invoke Jesus' blessings on the bombing missions that murder our brothers and sisters, in Afghanistan and many other places -- on we who have our own, sovereign, sacred faith? What insufferable hubris! How can you call us 'terrorists' when you cavalierly dropped atomic bombs on hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in Japan, and dumped more lethally explosive ordnance on Southeast Asia during the Vietnam era than was used in all theatres of World War II? How many haggard ghosts shake their heads in total dismay? Two million? Three? Four?!"
We're so damned convinced that we're right -- in politics, economy, religion and other aspects which are actually, obviously quite corrupt on even cursory examination -- and we're so overbearingly insistent that EVERYBODY on the planet live in accordance with our objectively flawed 'model'...that we make enemies right and left, many of whom are increasingly resorting to a violence born of certitude that, if wicked America could just be gotten rid of, humnaity would benefit.
We've already seen hijacked airliners turned into murderous missiles.
And teenagers with explosives strapped to their stomachs.
What's next?
Perhaps smallpox infecting our money, tainted as it is already, by the sickness of evil, exploitative superprofiteering that makes Wall Street richer and the world's common masses poorer.
Stop watching just CNN, or its equally-biased counterparts. Broaden your outlook, and understanding. Walk a few miles in the bare feet of the wretched of the earth, made and kept such by our selfish economic one-sidedness.
Learn, and then right what we're doing horribly wrong.
Otherwise, as Bob told us...a hard rain's gonna fall.
One of the things Bob Dylan said in the long rambling song is the line "I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children."
"Arrogant Yankee Christian! How dare you judge us, in our oppression and misery, from your position of privileged comfort, half a world away!"
Our Palistinian reader missed my point. The world is judging him. And from all indications he's falling short of nobility in most eyes.
I've been to the Middle East, just once. I don't know if he's been to the United States, but he seems to demand that I understand him. At the same time he refuses to reciprocate. The acts of war he describes could no way be compared to what takes place with the blessing of Hamas. The Suicide Bombers are only "commandos" in the language of Al Jazeera, the Arabic-speaking news network. Perhaps he should peruse some other media as well.
If the Palistinian reader decks himself out in C4 and nails he does three terrible things: He kills himself, innocent people like the 5-year-old who died yesterday, and chips away at the soul of the Palistinian people who he undoubtedly loves.
He sows the seeds of distruction. The time for an end to this mindless fury has passed, but let's hope it's not too late. Because in the end, it's going to be radical Islam, not market capitalism, that will end up getting crushed.
And there's nothing to be happy about in any of it.
What is the difference between state terrorism and individual terrorist acts? If we understand this difference, we'll understand also the evil nature of U.S. policies in the Middle East and the forthcoming disasters. When Yassir Arafat was put under siege in his offices and kept hostage by the Israeli occupation forces, he was constantly pressed into condemning terror and combating terrorism. Israel's state terrorism is defined by U.S. officials as "self-defense," while individual suicide bombers are called terrorists.
The only "small" difference is that Israeli aggression is the direct responsibility of Ariel Sharon, Benjamin Ben Eliezer, Shimon Peres and Shaul Mofaz, while the individual terrorist acts are done by individuals in despair, usually against Arafat's will. One hour after Arafat declared his support of a cease fire and wished the Jews a Happy Passover feast, a suicide bomber exploded himself in an hotel in Netanya, killing 22 innocent Jews celebrating Passover. Arafat was blamed as responsible for this act, and the present IDF offensive has been justified through this accusation.
At the same time, Sharon's responsibility for Israeli war crimes is being completely ignored. Who should be arrested for the targeted killing of almost 100 Palestinians? Who will be sent to jail for the killing of more than 120 Palestinian paramedics? Who will be sentenced for the killing of more than 1,200 Palestinians and for the collective punishment of more than 3,000,000 civilians during the last 18 months? And who will face the International Tribunal for the illegal settlement of occupied Palestinian Lands, and the disobedience of UN decisions for more than 35 years?
Suicide bombs killing innocent citizens must be unequivocally condemned; they are immoral acts, and their perpetrators should be sent to jail. But they cannot be compared to state terrorism carried out by the Israeli Government. The former are individual acts of despair of a people that sees no future, vastly ignored by an unfair and distorted international public opinion. The latter are cold and "rational" decisions of a State and a military apparatus of occupation, well equipped, financed and backed by the only superpower in the world.
Yet in the public debate, state terrorism and individual suicide bombs are not even considered as comparable cases of terrorism. The State terror and war crimes perpetrated by the Israeli Government are legitimized as "self-defense," while Arafat, even under siege, is demanded to arrest "terrorists."
I want to ask: Who will arrest Sharon, the person directly responsible for the orders to kill Palestinians? When is he going to be defined a terrorist too? How long will the world ignore the Palestinian cry that all they want is freedom and independence? When will it stop neglecting the fact that the goal of the Israeli Government is not security, but the continued occupation and subjugation of the Palestinian people?
As Israelis in the opposition, we are fighting against our government, but the international support that Sharon receives is constantly jeopardizing our struggle. The whole international public opinion must be reverted, and the UN must deploy intervention forces in order to stop the bloodshed and the imminent deterioration. Israelis and Palestinians desperately need the awakening of the international community's public opinion and a reversal in the global attitude. These are needed both in order to save our lives (literally), and preserve our hope in a better future.
--Dr. Lev Grinberg is a political sociologist, and Director of the Humphrey Institute for Social Research at Ben Gurion University
I guess Andy thinks that fighting terror with terror is the solution. It's this same kind of short-sighted stupidity that has made the situation what it is today.
Reports in the news today (source: Bush's "News Services") state that the Israelis have taken to looting in their quest for justice. No wonder Gorge W Terrorist and his creepy crew of thugs love to fund them so much, they're so much alike!
Well Duane I know you are very familiar with stupidity. By the way, who is Andy?
Dennis,
Welcome back, our little socialist friend. Hope all is well in your world. Sounds like the band is going well.
Yes that's it Dennis, Everyone or anyone who thinks it's wrong to blow up kids in a pizza parlor is only doing so because Washington said so and we hate Muslim's and Arabs, nope it's got nothing to do with them purposely targeting civilians. and it also has nothing to do with them saying they wish to see us and the Isralies cease to exist, yes they sound like rational folks. And of course it's funny how you say that those who see it that way don't have the balls to admit their motives, too bad you aren't applying the same standard to yourself. Your hatred of your own country and anyone it allies themselves with is crystaline. Look around and take a breath did you see anyone claim or say Israel was 100% in the right ? Find it and post it if so.
Here's a news flash, most rational and normal people think terrorism is sick and wrong no matter what the cause behind it and it will never gain sympathy for their cause. EVER. Of course in order for one to see what most do one would have to release the hatred of ones own government and allies to do so, probably to much to ask for someone who hates so much.
Wow I didn't know sticks and stones could blow up hotels, shops and resturaunts? I guess I'll have to be a bit more careful on my next walk through the woods as not to step on any exploding sticks or stones. Hmmm good thing the Palestinains don't have r.p.g's ak's and explosives. Yes and I'm quite sure that if Palestine had these items they wouldn't use them, right? okay, sure.
Hmmm, were they blowing up crowded hotels with the sole intent on killing civilians ? Must of missed that one. An oh, yes I remember know, that guy holding up the tank in Tianamen square was trying to blow up an all you could eat buffet filled with innocent people.
Who said it was o.k ?
And right Dennis, even though Ararat is an avowed terrorist going back to the 70's and has been the one constant through numerous American and Isralie admins and political leanings. So he is blameless and sure some op-ed piece claims Arafat didn't blow it at Oslo, funny the press you'll buy into.
Well I don't know Dennis there have been many opressed people all over the globe for many years and most have never gone to those lenghts to make their cause heard. I don't think they will ever get much sympathy nor should they from most rational people, of course theirs always the exception isn't there. I remember a guy on the old thread who within two messages said that killing innocent civilians is wrong and then turned right around and said they (the palestinains) need to use what ever means neccesary because they were opressed.There will always be some who will apologize for terrorism and killing little kids and women as long as your guy is the underdog and it's a cause you believe in, then it's o.k to the apoligists and finger pointers. Thanks for the lesson in double standard and hypocrisy.
And oh, welcome back.
Yasser Arafat is the duly and massively elected, legitimate leader of his people, having won their fervent backing by devoting his entire life to their broadest, most elemental interests and aspirations.
George Bush is a popular vote loser who holds the U.S. presidency today only by what many feel was vote fraud amounting to a defacto coup. He is, unequivocally, not remotely a populist. Both he and his family are abject minions of eltist big business interests.
In the whole history of individual terrorism, it's estimated that somewhat less than 10,000
innocents have perished, by far the largest number stemming from 9/11.
In stunning contrast, official state terrorism has claimed hundreds of thousands, even millions of noncombatant lives.
Yasser Arafat is a relative moderate compared with not only Palestinian hardliners who would certainly fill the power vacuum were he removed, but with Ariel Sharon, whose
military butchery is the stuff of grim legend, and with past Israeli leaders such as Begin and Shamir, who were key figures in the Irgun terrorism that played a big part in Israel's formation.
And George Bush's policy, combining the insufficiently discerning air attacks in Afghanistan (which now even kill friendly Canadians!) with the defacto blank check he's given Israel despite a nod-and-a-wink charade of appearing to protest Sharon's actions to assuage world outrage...has almost certainly topped the 10,000 mark in its toll of non-military people who clearly ought not have ever been blown to bits.
Beyond that, there are several incontestable instances of Washington policy -- state terrorism -- resulting in civilian deaths in the hundreds of thousands by themselves.
Guatemala, for which Bill Clinton belatedly apologized, is but one example. CIA complicity in the 1965 Indonesian coup is another. Additionally, scholarly findings point to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings NOT having been necessary to actually defeat Japan and prevent a costly allied invasion (surrender was imminently obtainable by other means), but to essentailly demonstrate to the Soviets what a top-dog superpower the U.S. had become.
So, if "nobody" should negotiate or even "deal" with terrorists, why should anyone
engage in talk or contact with US, being that we're unquestionably the greatest state terrorists of all time, as a bloody trail running from Korea to the Phillipines to Chile, from Iraq to Southeast Asia, plainly verifies?
Enough baseless sanctimony and outrageous hypocrisy!
The past month has seen a huge erosion in global standing for both Israel and the U.S., stemming not from "Islamic extremism" in the absrtact, but from the camel's back breaking straw that the combined Occupied Territories invasion and insane, announced plans to
attack Iraq has brought into play.
Forget the massive, militant protests throughout the Arab and Muslim world, or in Europe.
Take it from someone with decades of experience in street protest. It is a basic, paradigm-shifting phenomenon of scarcely comprehensible power that 50,000 people would spiritedly rally in D.C. (and another huge contingent in San Francisco) to INSIST on Palestinian rights and statehood, while linking that issue to other major causes. What transpired was a progressive coalition builder's organizational dream, and it spells disaster for Bush unless he and his conservative cronies come around to some right -- that is to say "left" -- thinking.
Sure, some conservatives are simply silly goofs.
But others are realists.
They now have to see that the ground has moved beneath their feet, creating a dramatically different political landscape...
Yasser Arafat is the duly and massively elected, legitimate leader of his people, hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah.........
idiots
100,000 MARCH FOR PALESTINE!
April 20 in Washington DC
Is it a coincidence that they chose Hitler's birthday for the march?
Is it a coincidence that they chose Hitler's birthday for the march?
Does it matter?
Dennis,
So Is Sharon, so is Bush , even though you went on a sour grapes binge about it. But just because someone is an elected leader it somehow makes them more right ? Apparently it is to you only if you believe in that leaders cause. If you don't then they are thugs etc. You claim Bush and Sharon are wrong even though they were elected. But claim righteousness for Arafat because he was. Sure no double standard there.
Yes he sure does doesn't he ? like wanting Israel to not even exist.
declaring those who walk into a passover celebration and kill kids, women men and children martyrs. Sure, what wonderful people.
And how did he come to power? What tactics has he used over the years ? No not terrorism, not our Yassir, nope nothing to see here, move along now.
The mere fact you make no mention of Arafat or his tactics is proof of your bias and or belief in their cause or a better indicator of your sympathy towards people who would use terror as a weapon. Actually it's just more proof of it.
The socialist left has been spewing this line for about 3 months now, of course they can't confirm it but even if they could it still is incomparible.
So if it had been less that would be o.k ?
Of course you will never see the difference. The terrorists aim to kill civilians purposefully and with malice.
Oh you mean like Ararat's practice of condeming blowing up hotels and disco's and saying he can't control them, all the while handing them 100 dollars and some c-4 ? He's the master at wink wink nudge nudge politics. After the last attacks he said he would have to decide wether or not to condem the attacks.....yes, hmmmm, murder, let me think about that, i'll get back to you on it being wrong.
But it's o.k to you and your ilk if civilians are getting killed because the cause is just and yet you constantly get on your perch and bemoan others being killed just as long as those doing the killing arent as powerful or still have that underdog status then it's o.k. Apologism for terrorism is sad, Who was that on the other board who said they should use "whatever means neccesary ?" So really it's o.k to blow up civilians because that's apparently the only means they have, oh yes and sticks and stones, don't forget them. Knock, Knock, Who's there..It's me yassir.....Blam.
Yes so please cut it out, it's really getting old.
Personally Dennis I really feel that the Palestinains have some legitimate complaints, claims and have had wrong done to them. I really used to question our being allied with Israel. I still do in some ways. There are no absolutes and no black and white. But when one uses terror as a weapon and or main weapon it gives less and less creedence or sympathy to their cause. No matter how just. When one walks into a pizzaria at dinner time or a crowded buss and kills people with malice, premeditation, hatred and disregard for anyone it's murder. It's not collateral damage when the ones targeted ARE the civilians and not the military. They have been doing it for far too long. Every time I see this as most rational people do they lose support not gain it, except for the fanatics and blind zealots they lose support from those who might just be willing to listen or even help with thier plea. With every bomb on a bus and a little girl in pieces, dead or orphaned killed by a terrorist who blew themselves up to get the ifidel or jew off their land another brick is knocked from their foundation. They will like I said gain some support ie: you and others who are blinded by hatred of this country or Israel and see killing women at a bus stop as a noble endeavor. Shame on them.
Is Israel 100% right or without sin ? Heavens no. Of course not, is one more right or righteous than the other ? I don't know, I do know that blowing up yourself and others on purpose with no military target intended is wrong. And premeditated murder. Those who would apologize for it are the worst species of hypocrite on the globe.
Those whose retrograde politics and self-serving economic activity are responsible for the oppression/repression of others have no right -- no defensible moral authority -- to attempt to define or dictate the "proper" means by which the resultingly chronically downtrodden "ought" to resist.
The only credible ethical response from Americans or Israelis regarding their joint thwarting of Palestinian independent sovereignty, under the leadership and direction of the Palestinians' own free choosing...is to STOP it.
Which is exactly what the most conscientious souls in both the U.S. and Israel are striving to do.
Saturday's demonstrations in behalf of Palestinian freedom were supported by many Jewish groups and individuals who do not subscribe to the reactionary, supremacist, exclusionary Zionism of Sharon and others of his hardline, brutal ilk.
The underlying problem in the Middle East is Israel's 35-year-old occupation of Palestinian territory, under conditions of liberty denial so sharp and unrelenting -- with absolutely no
chance EVER having been given by Tel Aviv to the Palestinians to gain redress of their excruciating grievances by ANY means -- that it's entirely understandable why the profoundly desperate tactic of suicide bombing has become the method not of choice, but of absolute last resort, for a people who've NEVER been offered democratic space or remedial possibilities that would have created moderate politicians and public servants with realistic hopes or options, rather than enraged battlers committed to liberation by, yes, "any means necessary".
Those who make peaceful reform impossible make violent revolution inevitable.
And, once stubborn adherence to power and profit at other human being's expense boils over into justified rebellion, with all the horrors that revolutions always entail...who do the greedy, myopic precipitators of it all think they are to complain?!
If my political views and stock portfolio took crass priority over other people's basic rights and dignity -- and indeed were the CAUSE
of their sustained suffering -- I would have no basis whatever for expressing terrified shock if some of them broke into my bedroom at night and began hacking me to pieces with machetes.
I could and should have lived my life in non-exploitative, unselfish ways, actually aligning myself with such dispossessed people in common cause.
Israel has long employed terror, assassination, arbitrary confiscations and seizures, deportations, mass arrests, bullying and badgering of myriad kinds...all for the outrageous purpose of sweeping Palestianian interests into the dust to allow for a proliferation of Jewish settlements on another race's sacred, ancestral land.
Under the premise that Jews are God's chosen people, and that Palestinians are...something substantially less.
Scarcely worth noting.
Well, up against the wall with that neo-Nazism!
It's sad in the extreme that a group which endured such great, grave historical discrimination has become so much like its own former persecutors -- forcing right and wrong to trade places.
Jews did not arise from the death camps of Europe to become mass victimizers in Nablus and Jenin!
That's what progressive Jewry itself is shouting out, along with all of progressive humanity.
I think that's what Mc Viegh said right before he blew up the Murrow building in OK city.
Yes it's o.k to kill women and children intentionally if you are opressed or if YOU feel it's justified. Yes those poor sinless Palestinains and their oh so peaceful leader who in 30 years has brought them such prosperity. It's all Israel's fault.
Hmmm They have NEVER been offered anything or a state huh. So those any means include mangling a 4 year old girl, killing a mother of 4 killing a father of 3, killing a son a brother, a daughter, whose only sin was eating a pizza on the wrong day. Yes it's o.k though in your eyes cuz they're opressed. And the infidel walks on their land and you've proclaimed to see them cease to exist. It's ok to murder civilians INTENTIONALLY because they were wronged or percieved to be. So use those "by any means neccesary", blow up kids intentionally and see how much respect and creedence given to you by MOST people. Oh you'll attract a few zealots, heck, some right here who weren't even sure what the protest was about. But your cause is only weakened in the eyes of the majority. But keep fighting for thier cause your hyporisy and apologism for murder make that same majority more concrete in their posistion.
But hey at least we know that those who have always claimed to be so superior in preaching peace are exposed to be the true hypocrites they are and always have been because if it's a cause you believe in it is o.k. Then killing innocent people with premeditation is alright in their book. So keep apologizing and justifying premeditated murder of civilians, sleep well.
From a Star Trib Article
Looks like you're in good company Dennis. And such a voice of reason and all around good guy to boot. You and Sadamn Hussein apologists for murder and terrorism. Dennis And Saddam, two peas in a pod.
http://www.yourmailinglistprovider.com/pubarchive.php?haney+719
Were you surprised by last Saturday's huge
protest in D.C.?
I wasn't.
Fact is, I was involved, in a small way, in promoting it.
Here's something I wrote exactly one month earlier.
http://www.angelfire.com/ia/palestinefoever/differnttypesofzionsts.html
The bloody record of Jewish/Israeli terrorism...
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0151/vest.php
If the foregoing is too biased for your taste, here's another site confirming much of what
it asserts.
The blatantly partisan, manipulative moral selectiveness of conservatives would be laughable were it not so pathetic.
The children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, engaged in happy play one instant.
And horrifically being incinerated into nothing but shadows on the sidewalk and walls the next.
Where were you when their world stopped spinning?
What about the children of North Korea, killed and wounded by the multitudes as U.S. airmen, with dominance of the sky, were told to bomb all structures of two stories or more to be found above the 38th parallel? (This in addition to ground massacres before and during the Korean War.)
Rightwingers, where was your teary-eyed compassion when napalm, white phosphorus, Agent Orange, and anti-personnel weapons of murderously destructive fury fell on South Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian kids?
Where you at peace with Jesus when residential districts of Hanoi and Haiphong were carpet bombed by B-52's during Christmas, 1972?
Did you know that the decidedly terroristic targeting priority of Ronald Reagan's secret and illegal contra war in Central America was the schools and clinics that reform-minded governments and/or movements had built to combat pervasive illiteracy and illness?
Did you ever look into the brown eyes of a little girl with an arm missing, and her prospect to learn to read...gone?
Ten years of bombing and economically squeezing Iraq has resulted in a ghost army of
dead children pointing their fingers at Washington.
Yugoslavia. Whoops! A little "collateral damage" here and there...and there, and there, and there. Why is that small child crying?
And then there's Afghanistan, where we took revenge for 3,000 innocents slaughtered on Sept. 11 by killing far more Afghan noncombatants, a large proportion of whom were
teens, toddlers, infants. (Previously, during our support for the reactionaries who would later become the Taliban, the same destruction of schools and clinics as in Central America is what our tax dollars paid for.)
Israel? The lopsidedness of the Middle East's terror, made possible by U.S. supplied arms, money and diplomatic support (over decades), is a moral travesty. There can be no equating the unrelentingly vicious repression of an occupying colonial power and the desperate means its daily victims must resort to to strike back, for freedom.
Have you seen the al-Qaida recruiting video where a little Palestinian boy is shot dead, beside his horrified and anguished father, by Isreali soldiers?
We must realize the consequences of our policy.
It's time we cleaned up OUR self-serving, imperialist act, the root basis of so much of the world's misery and resulting anger.
OUR prior state terrorism, vastly more victimizing than anything done in response, is why
rebellious, enraged individual terror has risen to become such a problem.
WE need to take the remedial first steps, because it very definitely all begins with US.
Good to see you Dennis. I've missed our resident Communist. :-)
Dennis,
The first excerpt from your "article" or wrtiing is oh so sad and yet predictibly telling.
Yes the teaching of those whom you invoke when convienient. But have no problem turning away from and spitting on them when you suddenly feel the cause of the Palestinains is so justified that you would apologize or give legitimacy to premeditated murder. "By any means necessary" So killing civilians is o.k only when you decide it is. Only when you feel it's o.k but then claim to be a pacifist and a student of Christ, Ghandi or King when it suits you. Nope, no hypocrisy there. LOL.
Then again your quotes are similar to Sadamn Hussein's so it's good to hear you have such reasonable voices among your ranks and so much in common with your bretheren in Iraq and Hammas. Nothing like being on the same page with ol' Saddam. Another voice or reason heard from in the oh so righteous terrorists.
Killing civilians is NEVER okay.
But oppressed people will strive to liberate themselves, by any means necessary.
Would you consent to having your oppressor place limits on how you should struggle to become free -- if you'd been living for several decades with your face in the dust, under his hobnailed boot?
Furthermore, it isn't up to armchair observers and sanctimonious moralists (or malicious, partisan demagogues) far from an exploited people's harsh reality to make judgments on what constitutes "necessity" in their fight for freedom.
That has to be their own determination, based on the existence or absence of OPTIONS that would negate having to use the most extreme methods.
The main responsibility of Americans with ethical concerns about all this is to first study our own country's policies, to see exactly how and why so many people in so many global locales view us with such intense hatred.
Next, we're obligated to examine the grossly lopsided relationships that allow some to rule with such an iron hand -- tanks, jets, helicopter gunships -- while others, generally speaking, have access to little more than sticks and stones.
When one side engages in constant state terrorism against a whole populace -- physically through brutal repression, and spiritually via a panoply of everyday deprivations and denials -- isn't that a situation under which some of the victimized would inevitably begin looking at their tormentors as an undifferentiated, evil mass?
The distinction between soldier and civilian becomes moot, and they strike at either, out of what no one can logically deny is desperation.
Again, the time-proven historical axiom: Those who make peaceful reform impossible make violent revolution inevitable.
Terrorists are made, not born.
Sure, there are kooks and malicious misanthropes who become bombers.
They're in the minority, though.
Examine the motivation of a typical terrorist from a destitute, downtrodden place and you can trace his or her descent to murderous extremism to a politics and economy, almost invariably foreign in origin, that has no compunction against profiting or gaining "hegemony" at the terrorists' native culture's lethal expense.
Everyone in the Middle East understands, for example, that Israeli territorial expansion and American oil lust (kept carefully hidden in our propaganda) are the real reasons for which they are being sacrificed.
A terrorist is someone radicalized sufficiently by unrelenting injustice to become a human bomb.
What makes him or her such is the standard operating procedure of those who have neither
feeling hearts nor conscientious minds, but "blood money" in their wallets that's the end all and be all of their mercenary existence. Profiteers. Power brokers. Imperialists.
Who'll run roughshod over entire nations and races in their obscene worship of the Almighty Dollar, invoking God only to demagogically try to demonize those from which native wealth (or land) has been stolen, who are rising up angry to try to get it back. Or battling to win the most basic of key liberties.
So, if it bothers you that there's a proliferation of people pissed off enough to do something that all the saints, angels and inner voices within us tell us is abjectly wrong (terrorism)...our first obligation is not to viciously condemn them, wildly, out of all objective context, but to determine precisely what's gotten them so riled.
Then, if honest assessment reveals that OUR foreign behavior is the underlying cause, we
have a Godly responsibility to change. To become friends and benefactors of the wretched of the earth, not their despised, predacious bane.
One way we could do this...
Are we willing to divest stock that we may own to facilitate implementing justice, so that terrorism might be prevented? Or boycott particular companies with histories relating to Third World resentment?
As was done in connection with South African apartheid.
Dennis,
I would agree if it's done intentionally ie: suiside bombers going into a seder celebration at a crowded hotel loaded full of women children.
But apparently your willing to let it slide.
Yes they will, but does it make them righteous or even justified especially when they target civilians directly ? It seems to for you when YOU decide it is.
If they are using suicide bombers as a tactic I don't think they obviously give a rip about what limits or tactics the opposition wishes to employ.
I am trying to see through your contradiction or at least the appearance of hypocrisy. On one hand you decry our actions in Afghanistan and the civilians that were sadly killed. They were not killed intentionally, even friendlies have been killed accidentally it is a sad part of war a war that we didn't ask for. All that aside you still feel we shouldn't be doing what we are doing, o.k fine that's your posistion so be it. You claim to be a pacifist and quote King, Ghandi, Jesus etc. All men of peace. Then you turn around and say how bad Israel and your own country is and try to tell us again how it's all about oil. O.k fine you believe that. Would any of those men you sighted be in favor of intentionally targeting civilians ?
During the rally in Washington I didn't hear one, not one of those misinformed in the gaggle of various causes call for Palestine to stop their brand of murder. NOT ONCE Dennis and I watched quite a bit on C-span until I had to go wretch from the lies and misinformation, and pro-murder Palestinian propoganda B.S I had all I could take.
As is yours, the only time you speak up or cry foul is if it's something your own nation has done. or one that we might support.You cozy up and support those who purposely and with malice plan and execute murder of innocent civilians.
I re-read your posting of your protest invitation or whatever you call it but not once in there nor anywhere have I heard you NOT ONCE call on the Palestinains to stop there murder. NOT ONCE and you talk about moral selectiveness, you seem to be a shining example of it.
HOLY MOLY ROCKY !!!! You've never had a problem telling everyone in your mind what constitutes "necessity" in the war on terror. Dennis you've been airmchair quarterbacking our efforts to stop terrorism since day one. Talk about sanctimonius partisan demogauging. WOW ! you sir are the friggin master, the grand poobah, the big cohone, the chief, the big cheese at it, no one holds a candle to you in that category, I'm surprised you can even see from that moral high ground you pretend to enjoy.
Partisan demogauging ? No Dennis, it's not because most from the right and left have actually agreed that we need to do what we are doing. The last time that an issue crossed party lines this much is probably WW2. So it's not partisan, it's common sense. But if they disagree with you, only then are they partisan in your book. Talk about sanctimonius clap trap. You have never had a problem deciding what's best for our or other nations, c'mon down from the mouintain.
Dennis,
B.S,B.S, and more B.S Dennis,
The attackers of 9-11 were almost all upper middle class to wealthy well educated well traveled zealots. Bin Laden is a millionaire, he's supported by millionaries. They aren't doing it for some noble cause, they are doing it as a desire to see us and Israel CEASE to EXIST. They don't only want us out of the middle east they want you me and your family gone from the face of the earth. They do it out of a twisted religious desire to remove the "infidel" and kill in Allah's name.
Right we want all that oil in Israel yes Israel what a huge oil nation. ppffftt. Of course you sighted our real motives for being in Afghanistan oil as well and implied that our admin knew of it or had knowledge, right.
Yes the terrorists are such great people.
Dennis, THEY are the ones invoking the name of God or Allah.
Quite possibly so, but until they stop killing kids at a pizza palce they 'll get zero sympathy for thier cause. until the blind hatred of the far left stops supporting thier cause only then will most people try to help. I have no stock to sell but if I did I wouldn't until the aforementioned happen. They will never get mainstream or majority support for their cause, no matter how just until they stop premeditated suicidal murder of innocent civilains. Then their cause will be heard and probably advanced.
Do you find it odd at all that your quotes are almost verbatim with Sadam Hussien ? Doens't that give you pause ?
Dennis, I also noticed on your "piece" that you wrote that you included this.
Bill Fold you'll love this one.
This one was my favorite
That is amazing. I didn't know we forced all the working class and youth of color into the armed forces. Yes what a horrid thing that people who might otherwise have little chance to advance and get a good education, have structure to their life, provide an income and learn about dignity, honor and courage. Yes by all means end it now. I was actually one of those mentioned and I can tell you many others as well. The best part is that I don't ever recall seeing any racist incidents in the service. of course there were racists i'm sure, there is anywhere but I don't recall seeing it. In fact I can tell you that the people whom you serve with become closer than brothers. Especially those who are in combat together, they are closer than any bond you can imagine. the military is a great option for many poor and minority people it gives them all a very good opportunity. Why they are against that is ridiculous.
But then again many of the so called "protestors"
had no idea why they were there. They lumped about 135 different issues into a rally.
I noticed this at the bottom.
Good thing I was sitting down when I read that.
Although I hate war and have passionately resisted several, I am not a pacifist.
I'm an anti-imperialist -- a proletarian internationalist -- who emphatically supports the right of oppressed peoples to wage wars of national liberation, as a last resort.
America's campaign against Afghanistan, contrary to artful myth that continues to have many citizens snowed, is a classic case of imperialist aggression.
It's being pursued for oil-related U.S. hegemonistic objectives.
We've killed more innocent Afghans than the number of our citizens who died in the terror attacks of Sept. 11.
Long before the first U.S. bombs fell on Afghanistan, I posted repeatedly that exactly such civilian carnage would surely ensue.
And I never bought into the blithely dismissive "accidents happen" crap the Pentagon always spoonfeeds us. Even if one accepts the claim that we don't deliberately target civilians (which is dubious at best, since we have a long record of systematic attacks on civilian infrastructure in our various interventions), there is still the troubling factor of how our racism places lesser value on Third World lives than on our own, leading us to be lax in target differentiation, which becomes especially blurred when our pilots move beyond pre-determined attack sites and go on to "targets of opportunity".
Some 10,000 Afghans with absolutely no connective responsibility for 9/11 have been blown to bits by our forces, for a policy that's secretly about getting our hands on Central Asian oil.
That's a sinful abomination.
As for the Middle East, the problem is unequivocally Israel's absolutely terrible, tyrannical rule -- for painful decades -- NOT the means, however extreme some of them may be, that the Palestinians are forced by circumstance to employ in resistance.
Far more Palestinains have died over time at Israeli hands than vice versa. Far more have suffered abject terrorism.
Ariel Sharon, just one of many prominent Israelis
of a reactionary, Zionist bent who are dripping with terrorism's blood, is an infinitely greater killer than Yasser Arafat.
Israel is a nation which I admire on many levels, not the least of which is that it's very successfully socialistic in certain key ways (agricultural collectivization, broad safety net provision, etc.), but it's saddled with a unique form of extreme nationalism, Zionism, that's a fairly recent adjunct to Jewish tradition...and one that countless progressive Jews do not subscribe to. They correctly feel that the oppression Zionism inflicts on the Palestinians is both morally unacceptable and an ultimate detriment to Jewry, since it gives a warranted basis for animosity toward Jews -- who have been hated far too long for unwarranted, prejudical reason. Zionism fosters anti-Semitism, causing only more problems for the Jewish race.
As for the military recruiting issue:
Muhammad Ali, in resisting Vietnam, very cogently and forcefully made clear what's wrong with systematically impoverished, racistly
discriminated against American people of color becoming cannon fodder for The Man in trying to kill other poor, non-white people half a world away. "No Viet Cong ever called me nigger!"
Yes, there's some prospect for "opportunity" in the military for both minorities and the poor, but that opportunity could and should exist in general civilian life, on a fair par with what majority whites enjoy, and not as an exedient for those needing bodies to wage dirty little wars designed not to make the world safe for democracy, as propaganda contends, but to make the world's human and natural resources readily and cheaply available to U.S. multinational-corporate interests.
Fight for justice at home, not injustice abroad!
Dennis:
You seem to steadfastly resist the religious component to this whole issue. Do you think one exists?
Are the young Palistinians not recruited, in many ways like the young African Americans you mention for the military, to be, as you say, cannon fodder? And aren't the recruiters indeed Muslim clerics? Picking kids out of poor villages and sending them out to do their dirty work?
And I'd be disappointed if you blithly passed off the questions.
Doesn't this have all the earmarks of a Suicide Cult?
When thinking about these kids that strap bombs to themselves at the behest of Muslim cleric leaders the first thing that comes to mind for me is that this is a Suicide Cult.
Most of the talk here seems to center around the politics of the region. But this is religious. The leaders of Hamas and the other groups are doing what they always did -- going into poor sections of the city, filling the kids' head full of jihad passion and sending them out to do their dirty work.
Everyone recognizes that the Palistinians have had a tough go of it. They have few friends in the Arab world. I understand the neighboring Lebonese treat them terribly.
But in carrying out these suicide bombing missions they risk losing a large chunk of their humanity. Through the Holacaust, the Jews never lost their humanity. They didn't become like their oppressors. And if the Suicide Bombing stopped for good they wouldn't be carrying out the military operations they are doing now.
To me that seems to be the dividing line for me. That defines what is a military operation and what is simple, foul, terrorism aimed at innocent civilians.
Sorry about missing the above post, Rick. I thought you were taken care of so I haven't been checking the "Moderated" as often lately.
Wow, Dennis. You sure do have a thing for these Jews. Much like the French...
"In order to pressure Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to show more flexibility, the EU should try to whittle away at American Jewry's support for the prime minister, French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine saidin a closed meeting Monday."
Maybe you should round them all up into camps so they can be controlled better. Wait a minute, wasn't that tried once before by another socialist?
A MESSAGE TO TROOPS, WOULD-BE TROOPS, AND OTHER YOUTH
By Jeff Paterson, YellowTimes.org Guest Columnist (United States)
(YellowTimes.org) – Do you know anyone in the military, or thinking about signing up soon? Pass this along to them. They may or may not appreciate it, but they deserve a heads up.
In August of 1990, I was an active duty U.S. Marine Corps Corporal. I was ordered to the Middle East; we were on the verge of the Gulf War. Four years prior, thinking I had nothing better to do with my life, I had walked into the Salinas, California recruiting station and told them to "put me where I was most needed."
"What am I going to do with my life?" has always been a huge question for young people. Today, in the wake of the horror and tragedy of September 11th, this question has increased in importance for millions of young people.
No one who has seen the images will ever forget them. In a scene as unreal as the Matrix, a conflict reached into American reality in an unthinkable way. From copy clerks to administrative assistants, restaurant workers to firefighters, thousands of lives were ripped away from friends and family as those hijacked planes flew into the World Trade Center. Now the television shouts, "revenge," "infinite justice," and "something must be done!" America continues to wave red, white and blue flag to ease the sorrow; to declare, "We're not going to take it."
If it weren't for those four years in the Marine Corps, I might be like the youth who are walking to the U.S. military recruiters right now, wanting to fight for their country. During my four years, most of the time my unit trained to fight a war against peasants who dared struggle against "American interests" in their homelands, specifically Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala.
I saw dire poverty in the Philippines; U.S. government- sanctioned prostitution rings to service the U.S. Armed Forces in South Korea; and unbridled racism towards the people of Okinawa and Japan, where the standard response to a child waving a "peace sign" at us with his fingers was "yea, ha, ha; two bombs little gook."
I began to understand why billions of people around the world really do hate the United States – specifically its war machine, covert "contra" wars, and the whole system of economic globalization that replaces hope with 12-hour days locked in sweatshops producing "Designed in the USA" exports.
Faced with this reality, I began the process of becoming un- American; meaning, the interests of the people of the world began to weigh heavier than my self-interest.
When the U.S. launched the Gulf War, I realized that the world did not need or want another U.S. troop deployment. Although they did not look much like me, I found that I had more in common with the common peoples of the Middle East than I did with those who were ordering me to kill them. My Battalion Commander's reassurance that "if anything goes wrong we'll nuke the rag-heads until they all glow" was not reassuring.
Up against that, I publicly stated I would not be a pawn in America's power plays for profits, oil, and domination of the Middle East. I pledged to resist, and I pledged that if I were dragged out into the Saudi desert, I would refuse to fight.
A few weeks later, I sat down on an airstrip as hundreds of Marines, many of whom I had lived with for years, filed past me and boarded the plane. I fought the Gulf War from a military brig, and after worldwide anti-war protesters helped spring me, we fought the war in the streets.
But back then we failed to stop the war. Since 1990 over 1.5 million Iraqi people have died, not mainly from the massive U.S. bombing which continues from the sky, but from a decade of economic sanctions. All the while the U.S. government has coldly declared that these Iraqi deaths are "worth it"...to achieve strategic regional objectives. So today, as the U.S. government demands the world mourn with us for our loss, we in turn are expected to ignore the suffering our nation produces.
(conclusion)
Every time the U.S. war machine is kicked into high gear, acknowledgements are made about past "mistakes" such as: Gulf War sickness, Agent Orange and napalm in Vietnam, massacres of refugees in Korea, U.S. troops used as nuclear exposure guinea pigs after World War II, internment camps for Japanese-Americans during World War II. Yet after this acknowledgement comes: "Trust us, this time it will be different." But it never is.
One need not be a pacifist, a communist, a Quaker, or a humanist to oppose this current "War on Terrorism." However, it certainly helps to be an internationalist, realizing that our collective future is bound up with the majority of humanity, and not with those who are taking this horrific opportunity to wage war.
For the women and men in uniform, you have to make a choice. Silence is what your "superiors" expect of you, but the interests of humanity expect more. Think. Speak out. And if you make the choice to resist, there are hundreds of thousands who will support you – many of whom have already taken to the streets to oppose this war.
Like his father before him, Bush Jr. has drawn a line in the sand: "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." Simply put, the rulers of the U.S. see much unfinished business for their "New World Order." While we grieve, they announce that "the normal rules no longer apply" (translation: now is the time to settle our scores), and we have "a blank check to act, the nation is united" (translation: dissent will be ignored, or suppressed, as required). Now, more than ever, the people of the world, along with American citizens, are not safe from the U.S. government.
I will not wave the red, white and blue flag; instead, I will wear a green ribbon in solidarity with immigrants and Arab-Americans facing increased racist attacks.
Stop the War. Support U.S. troops who refuse to fight.
Let's dedicate our live to changing this situation.
Jeff Paterson encourages your comments: USrefusenik@yahoo.com
Dan:
So, in your mind anyone who criticizes Israeli policy is anti-Semitic?
Seems a bit PC to me.
Rushie tell you that?
Dennis,
Oh yes I forgot, only blacks died in Vietnam and the Gulf. Pffft. Ever hear of Colin Powell ? He seemed to do o.k for himself. Are they forced into it ? No. And I can tell you that there is no racism or atheists in combat. They are truly your brothers, your life is dependant upon them and vica versa. There is a love and bond that time can't break, some have even said you love them more than family, it's a hard thing to explain. Does racism & racists exist in the service ? Sure it does. It was a problem many years ago as well but in todays forces it's almost a colorblind society. As long as that person is doing there job it doesn't matter. There will always be racism probably but frankly comparitively quite a bit less than anywhere in the U.S I have seen. A majority of my commanding officers were of different ethnicities mainly Black and Hispanicand with the exception of one, I would follow any of them into battle again. I could probably count on one hand the times I heard the "n" word used or other derogatory remarks. I am sure they were there no doubt but it's a completely different culture. As for the supposed "Marine" who wrote that story he's no Marine, he's a traitor and a coward and hypocrite who joined never guessing he'd have to fight and when his time came suddenly he objected. He could ahve signed as a C.O but After he'd gotten what he wanted. He turned his back on his brothers and broke his oath. He should still be in the brig in Leavenworth making pebbles out of rocks.
Yes it has nothing to do with terrorism
Right and as you said before the admin knew of 9-11 too right ? Sure, look out for black helicopters Dennis.
You don't know that but hey, you've never let facts get in the way so why start now.
But hey it's o.k if it's the poor Palestinains doing it.
Wow what a bold prediction that civilians would die in a war gee that's never happened before. All hail the great Karnac !
It's also a lie
But it's o.k if the Palestinans do it, after all it's their last resort. So it's o.k when you target civilians intentionally.
Then again you and Sadamn seem to be quoting eachother. Such voices of reason.
The protest in Washington was a farce. Like many recent protests it ran the gamut of issues. Half of them didn't even seem to know why they were or the reasons considering there were so many listed, no wonder why they "claim" to have 100,000 hell you get enough issues and gripes and you can get a bunch of people together, in fact next week there will be an animal rights, free speech, save the rainforest, welfare rights, gay lesbian and transgender rights, anti nuclear, tax protest, anti gun, m.a.a.d, rally down at the capitol, make sure you swing by, we're expecting a large number of people.
Now I'm sure there were many there who legitimatley are concerned with the plight of the Palestinian people, that's fine, but many there I don't think really give a rats ass about the Palestinans in general. It's simply another excuse to further their own socialist political agenda or spew the lies and hatred they have of their own country and its process. And knowing that it would be hard to ever get the agenda through that way you need to do it i others ie: hopping on whatever bandwagon you can to circumvent actual debate.
Next week it will be something else that they claim to care oh so much about and show once again how naughty we all really are. The biggest lie is that it is somehow racist. A word that has been hollowed out like an old rotting tree by mainly the far left. It's funny they champion (or pretend)Palestine's cause and make no mention of the racism displayed by the Palestinians themselves.
They made no mention of the teachings of the Palestinains that the Jew and American are infidels and that they wish and pray to no longer have us exist because we somehow defile the land they walk on. If one here said the same of another they would rightly be denounced as racsits, or zenophobes, but if it's a cause that fits your political agenda they are now for the moment, the opressed and given cart blanche' to do and say as they see fit.
And again not once did they call for Palestine to end their violence and racism, for it's o.k in their hypocrite world to call yourself peacefull and support murderers, terrorists and racsits, as long as they fit your political motivation for the moment. As wrong as some of the things Israel has done turning a blind eye to the horrid acts commited by the other side and not denouince it is just as wrong and is no less than supporting mass premeditated murder. And a sad lame and weak attempt to justify it.
Rick as far as your mentioning the religious aspect of all this I would agree that it is a major if not largest factor. Good luck in getting some to admit it. the racism is on BOTH sides. It's Not just in Palestine but in other countries as well they are taught from day one by their clerics that we and the Jew are inferior and all evil. How do you talk or negotiate with someone who from the age of 5 has been told by a highly regarded religious figure that an entire race of people is bad or subhuman?
Like all racism it's generally taught. We have all seen the 4 and 5 year olds repeating what they have been taught. That Jews and Americans are bad, evil, infidels. We have seen the pictures of the parents who dress their 5 year olds up as soilders with the suiide bomb holder pockets sewn in. They are taught much of this hate in the Mosques and do it all in the name of Allah with that big reward if you wipe out some Isralies or Americans, they have twisted their own religion so much that it really is unrecognizable from the true Islam which is a peacefull religion. Sadly they have highjacked it just as they did our planes.
Anyone who would encourage a teenager to blow himself up and take as many innocent people as possible with him, has no authority to call anyone subhuman.
Rick,
Bingo ! short, sweet, to the point and oh so poignant ! Amen.
intent
Well said Rick. Both posts are excellent.
A PRIMER ON THE MIDDLE EAST SITUATION
Q. What is the proper response regarding Palestinian suicide bombings?
A. Killing noncombatants in any fashion is ethically indefensible. Additionally, individual terrorism is harmful to the Palestinian cause. A fair, democratic resolution of the Middle East crisis calls for a forward-looking political program that both Arabs and Jews can unite around, with assured security and safety. Terrorism thwarts that unity. We should not, however, join with those who cry crocodile tears and opportunistically "condemn" such acts in order to justify Israeli war crimes against the Palestinian masses, by Sharon, with pivotal U.S. backing.
Q. Aren't the suicide attacks worse than what Israel is doing in the West Bank and Gaza?
A. No. Although tragic, such bombings can't rationally be equated with the systematic, bloody repression of the entire Palestinian populace, in densely populated areas, where indiscriminate bombings and shellings occur, along with political assassinations. Desperate young people striking back against a brutal occupation by a powerful military that's garnered an infamous human rights record for its mistreatment of Palestinians over decades...can't be compared to that repression itself. Remember, this is a battle between subjugatee and subjugator, a distinction that carries with it many other distinctions as well, which we need to not overlook as Sharon's propaganda tries to shift attention from Israel's harsh, illegal occupation, by besmirching its resisting victims.
Q. Isn't Yasser Arafat an exponent of terrorism?
A. Previous terrorism from the Palestinian side was quite rare and almost always originated with Islamist groups, not with organizations under PLO jurisdiction, which generally disagreed with the terrorist tactic. That we've suddenly seen a spate of suicide bombings coming from all sectors is a reflection of a changed reality on the ground --i.e., an intensification of Israeli abuses during the immediate period -- and pervasive belief particulalry among Palestinian youth that old methods haven't been successful in bringing relief from unrelenting Israeli repression, with its decisive, bipartisan backing from Washington.
Q. Then who are the terrorists?
A. To answer that question, look to the Israelis, not Palestinians. The present Intifada resulted from Ariel Sharon and a retinue of 1,000 troops provocatively marching to Al-Haram al-Sharif in East Jerusalem, in Sept., 2000. Following Sharon's election some months later, he embarked on a policy of calculated destruction of Palestinian infrastructure, replete with gangster-style "hits" on Palestinian leaders, which triggered a mass Palestinian uprising, including the suicide-bomber phenomenon. In recent weeks we've seen the Israeli army hurl missiles into civilian neighborhoods, destroying water, electrical and sewage facilities, rounding up thousands of Palestinian men, and forcing them to be stamped with Nazi-style ID numbers. They've shot at journalists to stifle exposure of what Sharon's forces have wantonly done in towns like Nablus and Jenin.
Beyond that, there is both an ancient and modern history of Jewish terrorism. The Old Testament tells us that Moses, Joshua, Samson and others murdered tens of thousands in furtherance of Jewish liberation. The Maccabees, as Israeli writer Uri Avnery observes, “were terrorists who went around killing Hellenized Jews.” Latter-day "Zionists" put bombs in the Arab markets in Jaffa and Haifa, blew up the King David Hotel, and shot up Arab public transit.
Ariel Sharon's career is infamous for atrocities against Palestinian civilians, from the 1953 massacre in Qibya, in the West Bank, to the 1982 invasion of Lebanon and siege of Beirut, which saw the massacre of hundreds of Palestinian refugees at Sabra and Shatilla. That war crime eventually led to Sharon’s removal as Israeli defense minister.
Q. Didn't the Oslo agreement give "peace a chance"?
A. Not at all. The whole “peace process” was a crude and callous sham, calculated to turn the PLO into a police force for beating down the Palestinian people, while Israel went on building its settlements, assuring that any eventual Palestinian state would simply be a controlled Israeli protectorate.
This became clear at Camp David, in 2000, when Bill Clinton informed Arafat that the U.S., echoing basic Israeli intent, would not acquiesce to a return of Palestinian refugees to their homes, or the creation of a viable, unified state under free, independent, Palestinian sovereignty, with Arab Jerusalem as its capital.
Sharon's Al-Haram al-Sharif outrage followed shortly thereafter, and the rest is an unconscionable, authoritarian Israeli prelude to the bloody situation that now exists.
Q. What's Israel's interest in permitting a Palestinian homeland?
A. The Jewish people have been subjected to perniciously anti-Semitic discrimination throughout the centuries. They've been horribly persecuted based on groundless stereotypes and demonizing myths. The oppressive ultra nationalism of Zionism gives everyone, including blatant anti-Semites, warranted reason for criticizing Jews. Jews have a decided interest in doing right and fostering good, rather than appearing much like contemporary equivalents of the fascists at whose hands they suffered during the Holocaust. Working toward a truly just solution to the "Palestinian question", with mutal protective assurances for all parties involved, can only redeem tarnished Jewish prestige.
Q. So what needs to be done?
A. The legitimate aspiration of the Palestinians for a homeland of their own is perhaps the greatest political/moral imperative of our time. Despite vicious propaganda emanating from various reactionary sources aimed at obfuscating that fact, world opinion has clearly seen the issue in central truth and is overwhelming in its support for precisely such a homeland. Whatever pressure the global community can bring to bear to assure that Palestinians receive elemental justice must now be emphatically manifested, as is already being partially done, via street protests, diplomatic initiatives and resolutions, etc.
The long-denied dream of Palestinian freedom is closer than ever before.
It will soon be won, through the Palestinians' own heroic struggle, and our ongoing, firm solidarity.
Thanks, professor.
I don't know, Dennis. You used to discuss things. Exchanged ideas. What made you cross the line from passionate to sanctimonious?
Now, you lecture.
T Taylor "Psychology of Message Boards" 4/26/02 5:49pm
All that didn't touch on a basic question, Dennis:
How much of the soul gets lost when one takes to recruiting and outfitting suicide bombers?
And if the Palistinians had the entire Saudi Peninsula and Persian Gulf, but lost their soul as people, what good is a patch of dirt?
Two additional things you may not know:
Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius, is actually a Mossad agent.
And Osama Bin Laden boogies regularly at a popular
dance club in Superior.
The bouncers don't dare hassle him.
Years ago, before he went wildly haywire himself and consequently negated every good thing he'd previously said or done, Eldridge Cleaver noted: "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem."
Well, buckaroos, we're THE problem.
Let's look at it from an uncharacteristic perspective:
Alan Jackson's "Where Were You When the World Stopped Spinning?" is a very good, emotionally-impactive song.
Or is it?
Consider the bridge, where he talks about being a simple man who listens to CNN and can't really tell the difference between Iraq and Iran.
Isn't that precisely why we're in such trouble today?
While we may not be stupid, we're definitely gullible and apathetic, and consequently uninformed/misled about harsh truths in faraway places where people have powerfully compelling grievances against what's routinely done in America's name and interest, about which we're essentially oblivious.
A couple posts back Rick made what he, I'm sure, felt was a morally-rooted, constructive comment about Palestinians.
But a Palestinian reading it would undoubtedly feel an even greater compulsion to possibly become a suicide bomber:
"Arrogant Yankee Christian! How dare you judge us, in our oppression and misery, from your position of privileged comfort, half a world away! What do you know of our pained reality, or what we supposedly teach our children? What gives you the right to even think of imposing your religion's 'values' -- the religion of pedophile priests and hypocrites who
invoke Jesus' blessings on the bombing missions that murder our brothers and sisters, in Afghanistan and many other places -- on we who have our own, sovereign, sacred faith?
What insufferable hubris! How can you call us 'terrorists' when you cavalierly dropped atomic bombs on hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in Japan, and dumped more lethally explosive ordnance on Southeast Asia during the Vietnam era than was used in all theatres of World War II? How many haggard ghosts shake their heads in total dismay? Two million? Three? Four?!"
We're so damned convinced that we're right -- in politics, economy, religion and other aspects which are actually, obviously quite corrupt on even cursory examination -- and we're so overbearingly insistent that EVERYBODY on the planet live in accordance with our objectively flawed 'model'...that we make enemies right and left, many of whom are increasingly resorting to a violence born of certitude that, if wicked America could just be
gotten rid of, humnaity would benefit.
We've already seen hijacked airliners turned into murderous missiles.
And teenagers with explosives strapped to their stomachs.
What's next?
Perhaps smallpox infecting our money, tainted as it is already, by the sickness of evil, exploitative superprofiteering that makes Wall Street richer and the world's common masses poorer.
Stop watching just CNN, or its equally-biased counterparts. Broaden your outlook, and understanding. Walk a few miles in the bare feet of the wretched of the earth, made and kept such by our selfish economic one-sidedness.
Learn, and then right what we're doing horribly wrong.
Otherwise, as Bob told us...a hard rain's gonna fall.
Dennis:
One of the things Bob Dylan said in the long rambling song is the line "I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children."
"Arrogant Yankee Christian! How dare you judge us, in our oppression and misery, from your position of privileged comfort, half a world away!"
Our Palistinian reader missed my point. The world is judging him. And from all indications he's falling short of nobility in most eyes.
I've been to the Middle East, just once. I don't know if he's been to the United States, but he seems to demand that I understand him. At the same time he refuses to reciprocate. The acts of war he describes could no way be compared to what takes place with the blessing of Hamas. The Suicide Bombers are only "commandos" in the language of Al Jazeera, the Arabic-speaking news network. Perhaps he should peruse some other media as well.
If the Palistinian reader decks himself out in C4 and nails he does three terrible things: He kills himself, innocent people like the 5-year-old who died yesterday, and chips away at the soul of the Palistinian people who he undoubtedly loves.
He sows the seeds of distruction. The time for an end to this mindless fury has passed, but let's hope it's not too late. Because in the end, it's going to be radical Islam, not market capitalism, that will end up getting crushed.
And there's nothing to be happy about in any of it.
ISRAEL'S STATE TERRORISM
By Lev Grinberg
What is the difference between state terrorism and individual terrorist acts? If we understand this difference, we'll understand also the evil nature of U.S. policies in the Middle East and the forthcoming disasters. When Yassir Arafat was put under siege in his offices and kept hostage by the Israeli occupation forces, he was constantly pressed into condemning terror and combating terrorism. Israel's state terrorism is defined by U.S. officials as "self-defense," while individual suicide bombers are called terrorists.
The only "small" difference is that Israeli aggression is the direct responsibility of Ariel Sharon, Benjamin Ben Eliezer, Shimon Peres and Shaul Mofaz, while the individual terrorist acts are done by individuals in despair, usually against Arafat's will. One hour after Arafat declared his support of a cease fire and wished the Jews a Happy Passover feast, a suicide bomber exploded himself in an hotel in Netanya, killing 22 innocent Jews celebrating Passover. Arafat was blamed as responsible for this act, and the present IDF offensive has been justified through this accusation.
At the same time, Sharon's responsibility for Israeli war crimes is being completely ignored. Who should be arrested for the targeted killing of almost 100 Palestinians? Who will be sent to jail for the killing of more than 120 Palestinian paramedics? Who will be sentenced for the killing of more than 1,200 Palestinians and for the collective punishment of more than 3,000,000 civilians during the last 18 months? And who will face the International Tribunal for the illegal settlement of occupied Palestinian Lands, and the disobedience of UN decisions for more than 35 years?
Suicide bombs killing innocent citizens must be unequivocally condemned; they are immoral acts, and their perpetrators should be sent to jail. But they cannot be compared to state terrorism carried out by the Israeli Government. The former are individual acts of despair of a people that sees no future, vastly ignored by an unfair and distorted international public opinion. The latter are cold and "rational" decisions of a State and a military apparatus of occupation, well equipped, financed and backed by the only superpower in the world.
Yet in the public debate, state terrorism and individual suicide bombs are not even considered as comparable cases of terrorism. The State terror and war crimes perpetrated by the Israeli Government are legitimized as "self-defense," while Arafat, even under siege, is demanded to arrest "terrorists."
I want to ask: Who will arrest Sharon, the person directly responsible for the orders to kill Palestinians? When is he going to be defined a terrorist too? How long will the world ignore the Palestinian cry that all they want is freedom and independence? When will it stop neglecting the fact that the goal of the Israeli Government is not security, but the continued occupation and subjugation of the Palestinian people?
As Israelis in the opposition, we are fighting against our government, but the international support that Sharon receives is constantly jeopardizing our struggle. The whole international public opinion must be reverted, and the UN must deploy intervention forces in order to stop the bloodshed and the imminent deterioration. Israelis and Palestinians desperately need the awakening of the international community's public opinion and a reversal in the global attitude. These are needed both in order to save our lives (literally), and preserve our hope in a better future.
--Dr. Lev Grinberg is a political sociologist, and Director of the Humphrey Institute for Social Research at Ben Gurion University
http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=240&mode=thread&order=0
You might want to check out this related article of mine, which appeared this morning...
Dennis:
I've bookmarked Yellow Times. I'll give it a look occasionally.
Hope they're paying you for your work.