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TechnoratiLeaders Lie, Civilians Die, and Lessons of History are Ignored
We've got so used to the carnage of the Middle East that we don't care any more - providing we don't offend the Israelis. It's not clear how many of the Gaza dead are civilians, but the response of the Bush administration, not to mention the pusillanimous reaction of Gordon Brown, reaffirm for Arabs what they have known for decades: however they struggle against their antagonists, the West will take Israel's side. As usual, the bloodbath was the fault of the Arabs - who, as we all know, only understand force.
Ever since 1948, we've been hearing this balderdash from the Israelis - just as Arab nationalists and then Arab Islamists have been peddling their own lies: that the Zionist "death wagon" will be overthrown, that all Jerusalem will be "liberated". And always Mr Bush Snr or Mr Clinton or Mr Bush Jnr or Mr Blair or Mr Brown have called upon both sides to exercise "restraint" - as if the Palestinians and the Israelis both have F-18s and Merkava tanks and field artillery. Hamas's home-made rockets have killed just 20 Israelis in eight years, but a day-long blitz by Israeli aircraft that kills almost 300 Palestinians is just par for the course.
The blood-splattering has its own routine. Yes, Hamas provoked Israel's anger, just as Israel provoked Hamas's anger, which was provoked by Israel, which was provoked by Hamas, which ... See what I mean? Hamas fires rockets at Israel, Israel bombs Hamas, Hamas fires more rockets and Israel bombs again and ... Got it? And we demand security for Israel - rightly - but overlook this massive and utterly disproportionate slaughter by Israel. It was Madeleine Albright who once said that Israel was "under siege" - as if Palestinian tanks were in the streets of Tel Aviv.
By last night, the exchange rate stood at 296 Palestinians dead for one dead Israeli. Back in 2006, it was 10 Lebanese dead for one Israeli dead. This weekend was the most inflationary exchange rate in a single day since - the 1973 Middle East War? The 1967 Six Day War? The 1956 Suez War? The 1948 Independence/Nakba War? It's obscene, a gruesome game - which Ehud Barak, the Israeli Defence Minister, unconsciously admitted when he spoke this weekend to Fox TV. "Our intention is to totally change the rules of the game," Barak said.
Exactly. Only the "rules" of the game don't change. This is a further slippage on the Arab-Israeli exchanges, a percentage slide more awesome than Wall Street's crashing shares, though of not much interest in the US which - let us remember - made the F-18s and the Hellfire missiles which the Bush administration pleads with Israel to use sparingly.
Quite a lot of the dead this weekend appear to have been Hamas members, but what is it supposed to solve? Is Hamas going to say: "Wow, this blitz is awesome - we'd better recognise the state of Israel, fall in line with the Palestinian Authority, lay down our weapons and pray we are taken prisoner and locked up indefinitely and support a new American 'peace process' in the Middle East!" Is that what the Israelis and the Americans and Gordon Brown think Hamas is going to do?
Yes, let's remember Hamas's cynicism, the cynicism of all armed Islamist groups. Their need for Muslim martyrs is as crucial to them as Israel's need to create them. The lesson Israel thinks it is teaching - come to heel or we will crush you - is not the lesson Hamas is learning. Hamas needs violence to emphasise the oppression of the Palestinians - and relies on Israel to provide it. A few rockets into Israel and Israel obliges.
Not a whimper from Tony Blair, the peace envoy to the Middle East who's never been to Gaza in his current incarnation. Not a bloody word.
We hear the usual Israeli line. General Yaakov Amidror, the former head of the Israeli army's "research and assessment division" announced that "no country in the world would allow its citizens to be made the target of rocket attacks without taking vigorous steps to defend them". Quite so. But when the IRA were firing mortars over the border into Northern Ireland, when their guerrillas were crossing from the Republic to attack police stations and Protestants, did Britain unleash the RAF on the Irish Republic? Did the RAF bomb churches and tankers and police stations and zap 300 civilians to teach the Irish a lesson? No, it did not. Because the world would have seen it as criminal behaviour. We didn't want to lower ourselves to the IRA's level.
Yes, Israel deserves security. But these bloodbaths will not bring it. Not since 1948 have air raids protected Israel. Israel has bombed Lebanon thousands of times since 1975 and not one has eliminated "terrorism". So what was the reaction last night? The Israelis threaten ground attacks. Hamas waits for another battle. Our Western politicians crouch in their funk holes. And somewhere to the east - in a cave? a basement? on a mountainside? - a well-known man in a turban smiles.
32 Comments so far
Show AllSo Fisk thinks the British didn't want to lower themselves to the "IRA's level" huh...
So Bobby have you forgotten about the Littlejohn brothers (British agents who planted bombs in Dublin, killing ) or "Bloody Sunday" or the countless innocent civilians killed by the loyalist terror counter-gangs controlled from London.
Or how about those "Black and Tans" in your Daddy's time.
The fact is that the Israeli's learned their terror tactics from the British. Just as the Nazi's learned about concentration camps from the British.
Compared to ole Britannia the IRA were amateurs at the terror game.
sierra7
Israel has become a criminal state and we, the United States are its enablers.
Until that changes nothing will change in the Middle East...The so called "peace process" is meaningless.
Fisk has written so much over the past 30 years about the inequities levied on the Palestinian people....
Read his latest book: "The Age of the Warrior"
It is a compilation of lots of his articles about the mess in Lebanon, Beirut, Palestine, Israel, etc....and the complicity of Tony Blair whom he hates...with good reason.
The average American has no idea of the history or terrible suffering of the Palestinians in the "war between them and Israel." No idea at all.
Unless that social consciousness is changed nothing will change until we will witness true "Armageddon" there.....
Israel is the only "country" in the world without true borders......
As long as the dumbing down of the American people continues we will not share that suffering and will blithely go one our way until we are slapped on the side of the head (again) by some "terrorist" act.
The French-Algerian mess, the Northern Ireland mess, was brought home (also in Spain with minority groups) to France and Great Britain by acts of violence....
Does that have to happen here before we wake up????
I hope not.
turfbill,
How can you say you wouldn't give a rat's ass what they are doing to Palestinians if they were not using your money?
I mean of course the fact that they use tax payer contributions to commit crimes sucks, but to say otherwise let them kill each other, is regressive, ignorant and insensitive. We all should want peace and justice whether our interests are directly involved or not. Because in the end, it's in Planet Earth's best interest that there is peace everywhere.
If you were a Palestinian or from any other opressed group, wouldn't you like that people from other countries worried about your plight even if it doesn't affect them directly?
Fisk says:
"The blood-splattering has its own routine. Yes, Hamas provoked Israel's anger, just as Israel provoked Hamas's anger, which was provoked by Israel, which was provoked by Hamas, which ... See what I mean? Hamas fires rockets at Israel, Israel bombs Hamas, Hamas fires more rockets and Israel bombs again and ... Got it? And we demand security for Israel - rightly - but overlook this massive and utterly disproportionate slaughter by Israel. It was Madeleine Albright who once said that Israel was "under siege" - as if Palestinian tanks were in the streets of Tel Aviv."
To that, I say ... BULL! Hamas did not provoke Israel, not this time, and never really in the past. Israel's been criminally genociding Palestinians since ... following WWII; although there's no need to say "criminally genociding", since the act of committing genocide is known to be and treated, official, on paper of law, as criminal anyway. But as far as this present campaign of genocide against Palestinians goes, sure Israel claims that this is due to a Palestinian rocket launched into Israel on Saturday having killed [one] Israel, sure Israel makes or presents this claim; it's Israel's usual psychopathic way, Israel's usual hypocrisy and hegemony, as usual ... usual ... and customary of Israeli leadership.
Does Fisk mention the extreme, total, genocidal, ... sons-of-Satan blockade against Palestinians for what, two months or so now, and how this has forced some Gazans to resort to trying to feed themselves from grass picked on the grounds near where they live and when the grounds contain grasses, or from eating whatever "food" they can find in dumps or peoples' garbage containers or ...; and then there are the much longer Israeli blockades against allowing food, medicines and other essentials from being transported into Gaza in quantities that would merit some respect for Israel, which merits absolutely [none]?
Hamas did not provoke Israel for Israel to commit this extreme crime! It is not a rocket fired into Israel and killing [one] Israel that can be even slightly understood as having been the provocation! And it has [always] been totally and strongly clear that Israel, and the U.S. backer, if not director, have been totally against Palestinians' democratic electoral choices, that Israel and the U.S. are hellbent dedicated to opposing [democracy] in Palestine, that they are hellbent certain that they have an obligation of some perverted sort to control Palestinians, ... and so on!
NO, Hamas did NOT provoke Israel into committing this or any other extreme crimes of Israel against any Palestinians or anyone else!
Given Fisk LIED about this important point, reading the rest of his piece of crud article isn't worth [my] time; that is for certain.
Ya know, I wouldn't give a rat's ass about what Israel is doing to the Palestinians but they're doing it with my money!!!! Stop US financial support for Israel and let them sink or swim on their own.... Let their nutcase fictional sky-god take care of them..... Oh, that's not an option either since Israel has hundreds of nuclear missles that can be launched from land, sea and air..... And according to their Samson Option they will unleash their nukes on the world rather than go down.... Never mind.... Have a great day....
Many nations - most of all the U.S. have supported Israel in their violent actions. In addition, a whole bunch of other nations have supported violent elements in the area to oppose Israel.
The violent elements on both sides are being used as proxies in other fights.
The entire situation on every side is bad for the people. The few involved in selfish and petty fights at the expense of the many.
It is foolish to think that one more rocket attack, bombing, or invasion will do anything but cause the death of your OWN people in the subsequent retaliation. This will be solved when one or both sides reject violence. Those that reject violence will take casualties for a while. Those who embrace violence will take casualties forever.
I and my friends are going to come to your farm, take it from you and tell you to leave. We don't care where you go, thats not our problem, but you have to leave your land, because if you don't we will kill you and your wife and your children. We are doing this because God told us we could have your farm. Now leave your land or die.
-- ekaton aka d.k.shaw
To stop the madness join the effort to confront any and every Jew any and everywhere with truth and this logic !!
Forget about antisemitism and the Hollywood Holocaust code of silence !!!!
See this link below -- incredible Auschwitz Revelations by a brave Jew.
http://hidhist.wordpress.com/holocaust/david-cole-incredible-auschwitz-revelations/
Jews consists of 0.02% of the World's population.
Islam consists of 23% of the World's population.
How do Jews or ANYONE think that 0.02% of the World's population killing 23% of the World's population at will is acceptable ?
There are only 14 Million Jews in the World and yet they are causing so much misery ---- WHY ??
Jews via their "Poster Child" Israel are pushing a "PERPETUAL" war--on Islam by the USA for the benefit of Israel !!
"Shock and Awe" the neocon US Pentagon response in Iraq = neocon Israel the "other" Super Power's response in Gaza!!!
It was the same in 2006 when Israel was given a clear hand to destroy Lebanon with cluster bombs & Depleted Uranium !!!
Gaza is a place where people are reduced to eating grass to survive and an unfinished part of the larger Jewish/Israeli Agenda !!!
Israel with 250 NUKES the 4th strongest Military in the World created by the USA is just "completely" out of control!!
Israeli agenda seems to include-- 1.US extended stay in Iraq 2. Attack on Iran ASAP. 3.Possible attack on Pakistan. 4."Transfer" all remaining Palestinian people out of Palestine. 5. REVENGE on the World and Israel's rightful acceptance as a World Superpower.!!
Some 65 UN resolutions condemning Israeli actions against Palestinians have been defied by Tel Aviv & the US.
The Geneva Convention -- broken all the time -- Israel/American regimes could care less -------!!!!!
Americans are fed their Israeli/American P.R. from CNN & Fox TV like with the Iraq WMD's and Zionist propaganda to invade Iraq.
Israel is/was out of control for years and years and has "raped and killed and pillaged"ever since its creation in 1948!!
Israel with 250 NUKES the 4th strongest Military in the World created by the USA is out of control in the middle of a sea of Islam.
http://wake-up-america.net/
Are Americans STILL that dumb that they can still wonder ---- "Why do they hate us" ??
Jews must awake ASAP to knowing that Zionism is the real enemy of the Jews !!!
http://zionism-realenemyofthejews.com/
Does any sane person doubt that the only clear beneficiary of the AMERICAN war agenda is Israel.
http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/2411.htm
G.W.Bush calls it a Crusade. A Judeo/Christion Crusade against 23% of the World's population who "adhere" to Islam.
http://petras.lahaine.org
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/WTC_STF.htm
HELP WANTED PLEASE -- the World may be counting on you ---- yes you !!!!!!
Harvey wrote:
confront any and every Jew any and everywhere with truth and this logic !!
COMMENT:
I, like many people, especially on the left, try to confront lies with truth, with facts, with logic. I may have to admit I may be mentally ill because I keep trying to change minds with facts even though it never seems to work.
David Korten in Yes! magazine pointed out that most people’s minds aren’t changed with facts: you need to design new frames of reference. A lecture I attended by another author claimed the same thing in greater detail.
Alas, I didn’t retain much from the lecture or David’s article except that changing the minds of people via new frames of reference appeared to me to be nearly impossible before the world’s end because it seems it really requires completely changing society’s culture, and that culture is controlled and maintained by the ruling classes, be it in the US or Israel and much of Israeli culture has been nurtured for about four thousand years.
What is desperately needed by rational, moral people, is some sort of handbook on how to open minds unmoved by facts, truth, and logic.
First of all, you are not mentally ill - I go through the same thing every day. I think we have to do what we CAN do and not worry so much about the outcomes. It's more important to try than to win. I've been speaking to everyone I know about the plight of Palestinians. They would rather watch football games but I insist that they at least listen! I agree with what you say about the frame but it's also nearly impossible to do - but the trying is what is important.
We all know this has nothing to do with "self defense".
Israel refuses to set its borders and sees nothing to be gained from peace. The zionist state will not be happy until they own all the land west of the Jordan. This is their so called god given homeland and they will not stop till they have taken it back.
The fact they will need to commit genocide has never bothered them and their policy and tactics have been formulated over the last 50 to 100 years aimed at demonizing and provoking the palestinians so that they could unleash their murderous rampage of mass ethnic cleansing using the spurious "self defense" argument.
They use the current skirmishes as research and development of their final solution and the most efficient way of carrying it out. Who said the nazis never taught anyone anything? They know well the value of good propaganda and have taken many years work to get control of large chunks of the worlds media to disseminate their propaganda.
They also know how to keep it all sounding legitimate. The use of the victimhood and anti semitism lines and the "they want to wipe us off the map" stance (as if they could) all are calculated to sow confusion, apathy and indifference in the rest of the world and make the palestinians look like terrorists and not an oppressed and occupied population subject to an israeli military siege.
If the jews really wanted peace they could have it the same as it happened in Nthn Ireland. Pull back to their mandated and recognised borders and fix them as such forever. Remove their settlers (or allow them to become Palestinian jews). Stop stealing Palestinian water, demolishing houses, buldozing orchards and farms. Stop restricting Palestinian movement and trade. Share Jerusalem as a shared capital (or just keep Tel Aviv if thats too hard for them). Stop israeli militarism and disarm, including (especially) your nuclear weapons. And most of all renounce israels claim to the ancient lands of the bible jews in writing and in your constitution.
Then people may begin to have cause to trust the jewish religion. It has shown itself to be a vile, vicious, spiteful and vindictive cult that acts like a worldwide mafia to further its own agenda of expansion and conquest. No wonder hitler hated them so much.
This is the 21st century not the time of the pharaohs and this genocidal behavior cannot be allowed to continue. The world must stop the jews from committing atrocity's and bring them to account for war crimes and crimes against humanity that they have already committed. They must be shunned and boycotted until they comply with the not unreasonable requests I listed.
How low does israel have to go for the world to act? 296 Palestinians die for 1 israeli. For any jew to say with a straight face that this is justified is just offensive. How low will the Palestinians now go to avenge their losses? Kidnappings, beheadings, suicide bombers?? Worse???
What does israel gain from this?? Only the continuation of their evil plot to control the middle east for their imaginary friend and kill off anyone whos imaginary friend is different from theirs.
And these idiots have nuclear weapons. We should all fear them and their unstable and genocidal leaders. We must do something to (rofl) defend ourselves before it is too late.
No gods No masters!
mikk wrote:
What does israel gain from this?? Only the continuation of their evil plot to control the middle east for their imaginary friend and kill off anyone whos imaginary friend is different from theirs.
COMMENT:
Lines worthy of George Carlin. In the midst of all the dismal reality of the current subject, I suddenly burst into laughter. Thanks.
More Madoff Hedge and Awe
Barack, Barak, & Biden
Barack ‘the blessed elect’, Barak ‘the minister of war’,& Biden ‘the VP of time’
the blood the bath and the blitz
triple B
we may have a new fund made off to thee
A loss on the hedge is not a theft divine
but hellfire is
like vigor and decay
just US, justice, or bombs away
a Zion piece with the usual usurious price
while peace empties its' promise
for fictitious security
excusing mass murders
as a deterrent for voting, or lobbing a crude rocket or rock the wrong way
so sure the new Zion reich need to put F-18's in play
to the non-chosen 'have a nice day'
"It's not clear how many of the Gaza dead are civilians"
Ummm... considering that Gaza doesn't have a state-military, they would ALL be civilians. Police are NOT military. Politicians are NOT military. That is who Israel is targeting, in addition to ordinary people.
All the "Hamas started it" bullshit in the press sickens me. A few rinky-dinky rockets that very rarely cause any sort of damage at all is NOT justification for mass-murder.
The whole "Palestinians could have peace if they wanted it" crap is also quite nauseating. That's expecting an occupied people to "suck it up and accept their servitude". Would you accept that if it was you? I highly doubt it.
I think Fisk's most important point falls at the end of his piece: "Not since 1948 have air raids protected Israel. Israel has bombed Lebanon thousands of times since 1975 and not one has eliminated 'terrorism.'"
The use of high tech air power against an indigenous political movement has been exposed repeatedly as a counter-productive folly, doomed to fail politically, producing only another blowback cycle later. Was this not a central lesson of the Vietnam War? Although saturation bombing certainly played a role in the defeat of Germany and Japan in World War II by eventually forcing the military leadership of both those countries to surrender, can anybody give me an example of an instance in which shock and awe from above has ever caused a grassroots guerilla/insurgency to collapse?
Andrew Bacevich and others have been writing for years about the stupidity of trying to use jets, helicopter attack platforms, and Hellfire missles in densely populated civilian areas as a counterinsurgency strategy. But using 9/11 as an excuse, in Afghanistan and Iraq American occupation forces have been adopting and apeing tactics used by the Israelis against the Palestinians for the last fifty years, calling it now a global war against terrorism. Small wonder few outside the United States and Israel (and nobody at all in the Middle East or in the larger Muslim world) look at a bombing campaign and see it as self defense. They see aggression.
Fisk is right. Israeli militarism has created more terrorists than it ever killed or deterred. And the Bush/Cheney regime's use of American high tech militarism as a response to international terrorism promises only to mirror and multiply that failed political strategy.
Time to take the toys away from the boys.
Bill form Saginaw
"Although saturation bombing certainly played a role in the defeat of Germany and Japan in World War II by eventually forcing the military leadership of both those countries to surrender, can anybody give me an example of an instance in which shock and awe from above has ever caused a grassroots guerilla/insurgency to collapse?"
This is not entirely accurate. In fact, as the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey reported in the aftermath of WWII, the saturation bombing of Germany and Japan was largely ineffective in bringing about surrender. Saturation bombing (and the demand for unconditional surrender), in fact, prolonged the war by uniting the populace against the people who were bombing them.
So, in essence, the answer to your question is that there has never been an instance of bombing bringing about a surrender.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." - George Orwell
“Hamas's home-made rockets have killed just 20 Israelis in eight years, but a day-long blitz by Israeli aircraft that kills almost 300 Palestinians is just par for the course.”
And it has taken over the news. Horrible, yes, and while understandable in the light of the transgenerational PTSD it is still inexcusable.
Yet… during the last 3 days, while the bombing has been going on in Gaza, about the same number of people in the US have been killed by guns, and this is almost completely ignored. The fact that it is continuous is seen as a reason NOT to report it, but doesn’t the fact that that 85 people a day (average in 2005, 55% suicides, 40% homicides, 3% accidents, 2% “legal” killings (by cops) or undetermined. www.cnn.com/2008/US/06/30/guns.suicides.ap/ ) equals more than 30,000 people a year are killed by guns mean we should be talking and doing more about it?
Slightly more than that are killed every year by cars and are ignored. The number who die of poverty and untreated medical problems dwarfs those 2 statistics, and the number killed in other countries by our economic policies and the resulting military actions is many many times larger than that. All ignored, all tolerated, just background noise in a noisy world. Far from being off-topic, I think the dissociation that is caused by and causes this is exactly what allows us to allow continued oppression of Palestinians by Israel, paid for by us.
and just a picky little thing:
Leaders Lie, Civilians Die, and the Lessons of History are Ignored by Robert Fisk
might be a little better with 1 or 2 more pieces of punctuation or a change in wording.
Some uncomfortable and undeniably hard truths written above by J4zonian.
-- ekaton aka d.k.shaw
Thank you, Ekaton,
I knew SOMEONE would appreciate my grammatical corrections. J4Z
We always talk about learning from history, but please someone name a time when humankind learned a lesson from the history of war.
Well, Napoleon’s enemies learned by losing to 1) imitate his organization, training, and logistics and 2) fight guerilla wars, in Spain and Russia. That’s when he started losing. So have a certain segment of the oppressed people all over the world starting using guerilla tactics against us (called ‘terrorism’ when used by other people).
The trenches of World War I taught the WWII German military to use Blitzkrieg, now known as shock and awe.
Citizens' outrage at hundreds of My Lai-like massacres, photos of blood and body bags and the reality of war taught the US to hide all those, with embedded reporters, prohibiting photos of caskets and the use of mercenaries not bound by any laws in subsequent occupations.
It was clear after Vietnam that people didn't like fighting for nonsensical ideological reasons, or corporate profits, so the government has learned to lie much better, (or at least well enough to fool the average dope) and to give away the store to media companies so they don't call attention to those lies, which after all are incredibly transparent to any psychologically healthy person with an education who pays attention. They have learned that they do better with average dopes than with intelligent people, which accounts for No Child's Behind Left. And they know that if everyone is too tired and worried and frazzled after 60-hour weeks they can’t really think or take time to learn anything in depth, which accounts for the economic policies that make those 60-hour weeks all the rage.
But you said name A time… so I’ll stop. But I take your point. The one thing we seem not to learn is not to fight wars. I studied psychology to find out why. So should you if you really want to know.
The only reason Israel is safe is because of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and believe it or not, Pakistan. As long as we the taxpayers keep giving these rogue nations our taxpayer money, those corrupt dictators will work with Israel to screw the Palestinians. Israel wouldn't be powerful otherwise.
Why is there war? Because on some level enough people justify it so that it becomes the dominant paradigm. Our society as we know it would collapse if the military industrial complex suddenly stopped. And the forces that oppose war (are are pro-peace) aren't a sufficient force to prevent war.
Here it is, we are in Iraq longer than WW2. More US soldiers have been killed than in the original September 11th attack. We probably killed more Iraqis than Saddam would have killed in the same period.
And there is no outrage on a national level. Our mainstream media sides with the violence, our economic system benefits from the violence, and our politicians are being paid off by those that economically benefit from the violence.
There is no national spokesperson that speaks for peace and justice, and that includes Obama. Hope does not equate to action.
So Fisk thinks that the British were morally superior to the IRA.
What planet is he on ? I will not go into their genocidal imperial history but i will focus on their recent "morally superior" behaviour in Ireland.
The murderous thugs known as the Paras murdered civil rights marchers for taking to the streets to demand the right not to be imprisoned without due process.
More and more information comes to light about British sponsored death squads who were murdering supposed "british" citizens. That the head of one of these squads,(a certain Brigadeer Kerr) now operates in Baghdad gives the lie to British "moral superiority". Whats he doing there ? Directing death squads of course. The British government,to the very top, ordered killings in the North of Ireland and armed to the teeth loyalist death squads.I could go on butI dont have time suffice to say, that when it comes to facing the truth about their recent history, the British, Fisk included, are as blind as the proverbial bat.
The original inhabitants of Ireland were Celtic people. The Brits came from the Anglos and Saxons of what is now Germany in the vacuum left by the retreat of the Romans.
The Brits stole Ireland from the Celts, deliberately flooded North Ireland with Protestant Englanders then added soldiers, tanks, and murder to keep it.
Fisk says "We didn't want to lower ourselves to the IRA's level." Bullfeathers! The Brits would have had to climb a ladder to get to the level of the IRA.
The IRA was defending their homeland, the Brits were the invading imperialists.
In my book that puts the Brits lower than the bottom of an Irish outhouse.
There are fundamental popular equivocations that fall back on positing the self at the center of the universe - you have to break some eggs to make an omlet; there has always been inequality in the world; its just human nature; we're a violent species; on and on. Pablum of the inane and insane.
Someone who advocates gentleness and integration is seen by the system as weak while the system weakens everything in a canibalistic projection of its increasingly destructive inadequacies. If you stand down and say 'no more' you must not be aware of the horrendous threats - the threats perpetually regenerated by a paradigm that begets and prizes scarcity as a tool to justify its non-existance of any rootedness in life itself. It is an idea, a perspective, a construct. It survives only by virtue of minimal contact participants have with actual nurturing of life. A condition among infants known as "failure to thrive".
The more scarce something is - the more valuable it is. Scarcity of the amazing breadth of the uncountable micro dimension of things living is the myopic result of the system - the death of the small that are the building blocks of life. Monoculture, religious, social, racial, societal and agricultural forces its blindfold on the absolutely necessary abundance of nature creating depletion of balance and diversity wherever it lands. There is no scarcity of the short circuit of resources for arms and modes of killing - the most effective way of tying the blindfold of scarcity in its self fulfilling prophesy.
View it any way you like.
Six thousand years of recorded history demonstrates beyond doubt that we are killers.
You cannot refine it.
don't speak for me, I am not a killer. Some people are unbalanced and power hungry and murderous, but I would hardly say that that constitutes "we".
rev.charity wrote:
I am not a killer.
COMMENT:
In as much as waiguoren didn't mention your name, I suspect that he didn't have you in mind, but the human species.
After all, waiguoren mentioned "six thousand years of recorded history", and while you may be a very holy person, I doubt that you have been around for six thousand years.
It always amazes me that when people speak broadly of "we" as in "we Americans" or "we humans" some amongst us take it personally.
Humanity as a whole has been slaughtering one another for that six thousand years of recorded history, and archeological digs have indicated it went on before recorded history. "We" - humans as a species, not exceptions such as you may be - are killers of humans. No other species on earth of which I'm aware engages in wholesale slaughter of its fellow kind.
Chimps have been observed ganging up on, and even having what appears to be very much like a war against others, but as they are human's closest relatives, that should come as no surprise.
As for "some people": a majority (or at least close to it) of American voters returned the mass murderer GW Bush to office. The vast majority of Americans continue to vote for leaders from the establishment who regularly bring deaths to people in other lands and do not vote for those that promise not to.
Not just "some people," but the vast majority of Americans
fail to protest the mass murders the US continues to commit on people's in other lands.
The partners and enablers to government killing are not "some people", they are most Americans that don't care enough to walk or roll their wheelchairs down the street for a few blocks in protest to government violence.
Most, possibly not you, but most. So lighten up rev, lest yea be seen as paranoid.
You can only ignore the lessons of history if you learned them to begin with. Neither we nor the Israelis have learned anything. Like most snot-nosed nations, we love making the same mistakes over and over again and then declaring we are of sound mind.
Exactly, except Israel would hardly move as it does if these white liberal zionists weren't here at home egging them on. Israel doesn't "own" the west, but Israel will pay heavy dues, just as you say here. And the nice white liberals and conservative Christian businessmen here in the United States are entirely to blame in this cynical, vicious enterprise.
The terrorism by Israel is justified...Why? because it owns the west and dictates the west's policy in the ME. As far as they are concern, they are right and the world is wrong. They are God's chosen people, the rest of the world, including the gullible christian zionist, are less than human...
The stupid west have not figured out that they are being milked. Especially the US of A (errr.. I mean the US of I). The US of I is being milked for every penny that they are worth to provide welfare and all the benefits that are lacking for the US citizens.
Now you will be watching the beginning of the end of Israel. i would say that It will probably happen in my lifetime. The funny thing will be that it will not be the Muslims that will be killing them. No. It will be the Christian right once again.