Both the Israeli and Palestinian political arenas are in turmoil. In Israel, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s stroke has left the country and his newly established party, Kadima, in disarray. In the Palestinian territories, the ruling Fatah party is rapidly losing popular support, and the Islamist party Hamas is gaining ground. Paradoxically, Hamas’ steady ascent is part of Sharon legacy, while… return to article
-
subscribe to print magazine
-
email this article to a friend
-
Reader Comments (57)Page 1 of 1 pagesAh, of course. Blame the victim. Oh. Wait a minute. It is all the Israeli’s fault.
Disclaimer: This is a response to only the headline. I don’t have time to read such nonsense.
Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 23, 2006 at 4:40 PM Well, I see I didn’t beat the first Zionist to the Comments section here. His arrogant, ignorant and unsurprising words speak volumes.
I expect over the next few days to see Neve Gordon Savaged (as in Michael) by “liberal” Jews whose heart-felt beliefs in human rights, morality, fairness and international law stop at Israel’s illegal borders and do not extend to the sub-human Palestinians (or any Arabs/Muslims for that matter).
But I will remind them nonetheless (and for all the good it will do) that not all of us liberals are Zionists and many of us still retain the ability to discern right and wrong, just and unjust as well as legal and illegal. And though you will certainly pronounce this discernment as “anti-Semitism,” it is not. But if it makes you feel better to slander me, go ahead. It is your only defense.
It is my fervent hope that this view I hold is a contagious condition that will spread not only throughout the liberal, progressive community but the entire country itself. Yet I realize there are decades of propaganda and mythology to overcome.
No, that would not bode well for business as usual in Israel or Washington.
Good.
Posted by opeluboy on Jan 23, 2006 at 8:10 PM Yes, a round-about way to say that Israel is stealing land, and dividing the Palestinians into “enclaves” so that their movement and organization can be controlled by Israeli forces.
The wall reminds me of something...what was that...everyone has heard about it....WW II.... oh, yeah ---the Warsaw Ghetto!!!
What is Sharon up to anyway? Is he dead yet? Will we get the pharoah’s funeral on Fox?
I hear you opeluboy. They can worship caribou for all I care. What the Israelis are doing to the Palestinian people is shameful and evil. Ah, but the oppressed do yearn to be the oppressor.
You know we’re going to be hearing about the suicide bombers. The suicide bombers justify everything. Oh yes, the suicide bombers. Israeli snipers are helpless in the face of suicide bombers, suicide bombers, suicide bombers. Oh the most awful thing in the world is suicide bombers. Shoot them in the head---shoot seven year old children in the head when they throw rocks, so that they don’t grow up to be suicide bombers. Shoot thechildren in the head, because they might grow up to be suicide bombers.
Posted by wileywitch on Jan 24, 2006 at 12:02 AM The more people make Israel and its occupation a distinctly Jewish issue the further we get from the topics to be addressed by the peace movement. The fact is that poll after poll find most Jews both in the diaspora and in Israel in favor of an end to the illegal occupation and a total withdrawl from the Palestinian territories. The Jews don’t control the Israel government or its decisions anymore than most Americans control what goes on with the political decisions of the Bush Administration. One of the real problems is the Wests actual love affair with religious fundamentalism. The answer to this phenomenon is very simple. Backward religious nuts and the populace they control through fear and ignorance are far weaker and easier to control than enlightened people and movements guided by the ideas underlying nationalism, democratic socialism, developmentalist challenges to the free market and neoliberal orthodoxy, and secular humanist agenda. This is why Sharon actually promoted Hamas functionaries in the Occupied Territories as a counter-wieght to Fatah-the more modern and realistic threat to Israeli hegemony. This is why Hamas affiliated Shiekhs in Arab towns inside the Israeli greenline are allowed to be elected Major and recieve lavish Israeli funds for their municiple budgets and free services while secular nationalists like Bassam Shakha gets his legs blown off and peaceful opponenets of Zionism and proponents of a non-aligned, secular, democratic, non-apartheid, cooperative Israel/Palestine like Mustafa Barghouthi languish in Israeli military prisons. US policy in Iraq is also benefiting the most religiously fanatical elements such as the Shiite SCIRI and its terrorist military arm, the Badr Brigades. The war on terror is not meant to be won but to continue on while providing a smokescreen for the crushing of democracy everywhere! Bush and Sharon’s Muslim fundamentalist allies help in this task as ordinary people suffer!
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Jan 24, 2006 at 12:14 AM Hi cabdriverinchicago, glad you could make it. Do you have space making capability on your puter? If you could break your posts into shorter paragraphs, that would be wonderful. If not, I’ll read ya anyway, I’ll just get lost sometimes.
Actually, I hear about a third of the Israeli population wants peace, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are willing to give up the occupied territories.
I have never heard anyone complain about the Jewish problem in Israel. It is always the state sponsored terrorism and militancy that is criticised. The knee jerk reaction against any criticism of Isreal as being anti-semitic is a pathetically low blow.
The Jewish and Christian Zionist bedfellows are a horribly strange combo. Most Christian Americans have no clue that Christians were much better off in Iraq under Hussein, than they are in Israel, now. I hear a lot of jewish Israelis are going to Russia because the caste system in Israel is so fossilized.
I hate to say this, but I think the Iranian honcho made a good point when he said that since Europeans oppressed the Jews, and the Europeans want the Jews to have a homeland, then Europe should offer them land to establish their state instead of demanding that Palestinians give up their homeland. Sure, he’s a little nutty, but I hear the imams are keeping him on a leash, and it is hard to argue with the logic in any secular way. If Israel insists on a religious argument....well....then what? Will we be anti-semitic then? If they insist that we interpret their behavior in the light of their religion, or race, or however they define jewry will we be anti-semitic when we criticise their behavior?
You seem to be pretty well informed on this topic. Please post links when you can.
Posted by wileywitch on Jan 24, 2006 at 1:14 AM Seems fair enough. Palestinians want Hamas, they get Hamas. Isn’t that democracy?
Posted by rocco on Jan 24, 2006 at 2:34 AM cabdriverinchicago makes excellent points. The presumption that all rational players in this game really want peace is not only unfounded, it conflicts with observable events.
It serves someone’s interests to keep emotions flaring and the quotient of irrationality high. Is sending a young person strapped with explosives into a commuter bus supposed to achieve a military goal? Is an airstrike into a neighborhood really a tactic designed to kill off the enemies numbers? Seems to me that both tactics perpetuate the conflict, they don’t lead to the victorious resolution of it. Religious fervor mixed with nationalistic passions, with a nice fat pinch of historical affront and vengeful anger, is the perfect recipe for those who want to grind away the inconveniences of rational discourse, compromise, demystification of authority, and personal reflection rather than groupthink en masse. The inconveniences of democracy.
If (when) Hamas eclipses Fatah, and when (I don’t think “if") a harder-line Likud takes the lead in Israel again, we’ll witness whose interests get served. It won’t be your average Palestinian or Israeli. Nor will it be their children.
And they call it “the holy land"… strange
Posted by Kuya on Jan 24, 2006 at 4:13 AM How do people manage to make such hopeless situations and keep the conflict going?
I do want to stress one thing, because the U.S. press has distorted its reporting for so long: the occupied territories are being illegally occupied by the Israelis.
Posted by wileywitch on Jan 24, 2006 at 4:37 PM The roots of the current situation in the Palestinian Territories is quite interesting and go back to the first intifada in December 1987. At the time it broke out, the PLO and Arafat had been evacuated from Beirut to Tunisia for abour five years and had become comfortable as a government in exile living on lavish contributions from the Arab League states and others. Their main role went from leading the struggle to diplomatic activity. In the time being, Hamas stepped into the breach and built a solid base of support especially in Gaza, a hotbed of seething misery. This was reflected in the 1988 Palestine National Council meeting in Algiers whereby Gazan Hamas representitives staged a formidable challenge to Fatah. By the time of the 1996 PLC elections which Hamas boycotted Fatah garnered most of the vote with 68 of the 88 seats. This, however, did not reflect the true tendencies in the Palestinian electorate. After ten solid years of Israeli occupation and repression, a nearly 700 km wall detroying the continuity and fabric of Palestinian society, PA corruption, croneyism, and heavy-handed rule, and a serious economic crisis, Hamas is more popular than ever and set to garner nearly one-third of the vote as is Fatah. The problem is that niether Israel nor Fatah is prepared for such a power sharing arrangement in the OT. Israeli attempts to block the voting in E. Jerusalem only aggravates the problem. Israel was prepared to give limited help to Hamas only on the condition that they not become a serious contender for electoral power and that they act as a counter-wieght to Fatah. That is they had to remain outside the realm of acceptibility. Now all has changed and a crisis has developed! Palestine Election Commission resignation only appears as Fatah sabotage of Hamas momentum though there are legitimate reasons such as Israeli election restrictions in E. Jerusalem. The current crisis is the predictable result of many years of Israeli repression of secular Palestinian politics. Now Hamas is riding the wave of Islamic fundamentalist legitimacy in the Middle East.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Jan 24, 2006 at 6:53 PM I’m going to have to chew on this for a while. I wish there were more hours in the day to read.
Posted by wileywitch on Jan 25, 2006 at 2:28 AM The rise of fundamentalism is more than just a neoconservative tactic to maintain control over a liberal world system. The liberal world order is breaking down, collapsing under the weight of its inability to integrate competing peripheral states. Fundamentalism, in America, the Middle East and Israel, is the recessionary system which inherits the remnants of an expansionary economic conflict between communism and fascism, and those liberal democracies which felt compelled to export one or the other in order to maintain their economic dominance over all of them. What’s left is a transitory retreat to more primitive systems of social control.
Posted by Major Major on Jan 25, 2006 at 11:07 PM wiley found some good maps at
http://www.firstpr.com.au/nations/
This week Mr Wiseman’s settlement was being guarded by a group
of Israeli soldiers. Lounging off duty in an abandoned settler caravan,
the soldiers talked about hair-raising patrols through hostile Arab
villages, with bullets pinging off their armoured jeeps. They did not
care much for their mission.“Some day there has to be a peace deal and all these settlements are
going to have to come down,” one said. “Frankly, what we are doing
here is useless. We shouldn’t be here, and neither should they.”So much for some Israeli soldiers’ view of the COLONIES, settlements sounds so much more innocent, peaceful.
I have seen a map with all the guarded roads on it too. So much for a Palestinian State , just a number of Bantustans.
I heard a gang of Likudniks on the BBC tonight, including Daniel Pipes, sounding very reasonable and authoritative. Thanks for the expression “newsporn”, wiley.
In fact all one has to do is to show the maps to just anybody, with details on the increasing colonisation, and they will understand why the palestinians are more than angry.major, you sound like karl marx doing a spoof on tom friedman !
I see the Gangster World Disorder doing very nicely, and the rise of fundamentalism has its origins largely in OUR overthrow of mideast secular nationalist movements from the 50’s onwards.
There was a “risk” they might be independent, patriotic, follow their own national interests, and we couldn’t allow that.So we installed our own dictators, and there was a political vacuum…
Posted by frog on Jan 26, 2006 at 6:24 PM WIley’s maps basically told the real story of the occupation and its objectives. They also indicate the real reason for Oslo’s failure to bring a lasting peace. The objective of colonialism is expansion and the elimination/marginalization of the native population. Since 1948 over 600 new Jewish outposts, settlements and towns have emerged while Palestinian ones have been erased. The resulting bantustans that we see today that are the legacy of this historic process which the Oslo Peace Process only codified and stabilized, are to contain a diminished Palestinian population as a confined labor reserve for the growing archipeligo of Industrial free zones whereby foreign investors produce textiles, electronic consumer durables, and other goods that were formerly part of a dynamic small scale manufacturing sector now defunct by the wall and the occupation’s many restrictions and obstructions. The objective is to globalize the economy of the Palestinian Territories once the population is at a manageable level (many Arabs are encouraged to leave by the harsh conditions) under the aegis of foreign Arab and increasingly western capital. In 1998,the PA created the Palestine Industrial Estate Free Zone Administration with World Bank and other donor funding in order to create concentrations of manufacturing export platform similar to the Mexican Maquiladores whose competitive advantage to investors lies in its cheap labor and efficiency gained through clustering integrated stages of the assembly process.Almost non-existant at the time of the first intifada, there are now hundreds of Plants and Estates throughout the OT the largest of which is in Gaza near the Erez checkpoint. This has the full support of the current Fatah led PA under Abbas but is opposed by the secular leftist Palestine National Initiative of M. Bourghouthi and Hamas, many of whose followers have committed arson at the estates! The objective is to enrich a small group of wealthy Palestinian investors as well as the PA at the expense of the former Palestinian working and middle classes. The Territories will be flooded with cheap imports and the products of the local foreign owned estates whose export products will be marketed under the current Israeli bilateral trade agreements with about 12% Israeli value added in the products. The scheme concentrates global industrial manufacturing in general while linking PA leadership to Israeli trade and destroying the economic independance of any future PA state. It is hoped this will make the Palestinian question manageable (and profitable) with neighboring Arab state participation. Palestinian living standards will decline. Transnationalized patterns of class formation have been created by globalized investment patterns. FDI flows to the Middle East, traditionally under 2% of total global value, has been increasing since the early 1990s with the manufacturing sector eclipsing the rate of FDI in the traditionally dominant oil sector. Globalization of industry is one reason why. Transnational capital and its political allies are hoping that the social and political restructuring effected by these changes bring a stabilization of the conflict. Since only poverty can result the struggles are liable to intensify.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Jan 26, 2006 at 10:19 PM Well-researched Cabbie !!
The Israeli criminal financial elite is doing the same thing at home, squeezing wages, workers rights of the poorer Sephardic immigrants, creating their own underclass. The Knesset is as, even more ?, corrupt than the US congress, and many Israelis are well aware of it.
The PA even had an investment in a casino operation, partnered with connections of our mate, Abramoff.
I get BBCradio, just across the sea, and will go mad if I once more hear the unspeakable Jack Straw saying Hamas must “""renounce violence""" !
Good counterblast from Jonathan Steele in today’s Guardian,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,5384948-103390,00.html
Others include uri avnery at www.globalresearch.ca
I tried and failed to post the maps and graphs of colonisation, Guess it’s impossible ?
Posted by frog on Jan 27, 2006 at 4:41 AM Sad that so few articles are map-less !
So easy to ask people to look at the ‘pink splodges’ purported to be the “Palestinian State”.
Did anyone else hear GWB speak about a “Palestinian State with a contiguous frontier “ ?
Although he misspoke, the meaning was clear.
Posted by frog on Jan 27, 2006 at 4:49 AM Marx spoofing Friedman? Mon dieu, mon ami. I thought I was spoofing Berrington Moore, by way of Immanuel Wallerstien. The third world’s been trapped between the communists and the fascists for at least the last hundred years, and all they have to show for it is the successive, serial decimation of their secular leadership, and the reactionary rise of a religious fundamentalism which spurns both of them. Your litany of liberal support for the dictatoships of the world ignores the complementary communist support for the dictators who defeated them, or were overthrown by them.
Posted by Major Major on Jan 27, 2006 at 4:18 PM The third world increasingly trapped I agree, and we occidentals are rapidly joining them. Very little to do with the isms, just concentration of power and wealth.
Posted by frog on Jan 27, 2006 at 5:33 PM You may be right, but to paraphrase Moore (Barrington, not Michael), most of the third world countries are, or were, agricultural monarchies in transition to becoming industrial democratic states. The former peasantry are turned out into an unemployed reserve labor force of industrial proles forced to find alternative employment as either emigrants or military conscripts or factory labor. A relative minority is allowed to join an emergent, more educated middle class who administer the demands of their employers and supervise the labor of their employees. These proto-industrial societies are forced to rapidly shed their excess (unemployed) population, either through colonization or conquest, or both. Those societies which are constrained from either alternative are transformed by revolutionary dislocation into either fascist or communist states, depending upon the ability of the ruling class to obtain the allegience of the administrative middle class. Otherwise the middle class allies itself with the working class to overthrow the ruling class. Once a demographic equilibrium is achieved, the transitory state becomes a liberal democratic state. In all cases, the transition is accomplished through a massive social dislocation of wars, civil wars, revolutions, and colonial conquest.
Posted by Major Major on Jan 27, 2006 at 6:41 PM Looks like the article was right. Hamas wins in landslide.
Posted by rocco on Jan 27, 2006 at 8:08 PM Major Major’s attempt to apply the core notions of B. Moore from “Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy” to the current situation in Occupied Palestine is not useful. Moore was not writing about small intensely foreign controlled, colonized, and occupied societies but independant and somewhat developed ones. His main concern was to understand why societies of similar levels of development-Japan, Germany, UK, US so often took a different turn in establishing their political systems. The answer, he discovers, is in the underlying social and political alliances forged between and amoung differing rural and urban social classes as determining the ultimate form of regime or politcal system. An example is that conservative Germany was prone to Fascism due to the Junker/peasant alliance while the more liberal US fought a civil war to defeat our Junkers (slaveholders) while fostering the development of an independant Yeomanry with the westward expansion thus blunting the political effect on urban society that an expanded slaveholding class would have had especially if they could link up politically with the nascent industrialist bourgeousie. Thus the US remained a democracy. One possible problem with Moore’s analysis is that it is overly determinist in being based on the balance between urban and rural forces in attributing political outcomes to some essential political agenda in certain combinations of historic class alliances. The defeat of entrenched labor repressive agrarian systems ruled by inefficient landholders is essential to democratic development. Yet one must remember that modern capitalism can profit from all manner of arrangements and social configurations many of them becoming quite repressive not based on the fixed nature of the social alliance but on the intensity of class conflict which threatens capitalism’s ability to reproduce its relations of production. Here we come to the Palestinians. Repression and the survival of Hamas (more of a protest and a response to frustrated political independance than anything else) cannot be attributed to the survival of regressive, patron/client alliances but to modern capitalism’s ability to use traditional society’s capacity for repression to its own advantage by supporting those elements. The Western support of Fatah and its clientelism helped restrain Palestinian resistence and foster compliance with western globalization to the advantage of western capital. The Hamas vote was a rejection of this arrangement and form of foreign domination. It was the only tool available after years of colonial domination not an expression of traditionalism.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Jan 28, 2006 at 12:19 PM major major, After reading your comment posted a few posts above, I better understood what you were trying to say about Moore’s notions of social transformation and its relationship to class alliances. In fact, you do make interesting points that well describe some of Moore’s more salient ideas. I suppose that if we tried to relate YOUR interpretation of Moore to the current situation regarding Arab politics in the Occupied Palestinian Territories we could say that the globalization of that society’s increasingly concentrating economy is producing a highly destabilizing landless and jobless proletariat that the Israeli State is trying to manage mostly through a combination of emigration (the new apartheid wall helps render life and most economic activity impossible), and industrial absorbtion in the new Industrial Estates which are mostly foreign owned. Some of the Fatah elite are also direct investors or simply skim money from these operations as political functionaries and administrators who are in a position to do so. This separation of the Palestinian masses from the new administrative elite has resulted in a severely repressive Palestinian National Authority (PNA State) disassociated from the struggles of the masses. That is “fascism” trumped “democracy” in the OPT. Let’s also remember that Israeli colonialism is performing the main repressive function on behalf of western capital not the internal Fatah state. The Hamas victory was an act of resistence Fatah’s transnational comprador role. Also remember that Israeli outsourcing of low-wage jobs to the OPT is a way to discipline Israeli workers in globalization’s “race to the bottom.” Keeping in mind these provisos, Moore’s analysis is apt in many ways to the electoral outcome in the OPT. However, we do have a situation where Hamas, a highly traditional religous organization dominated by large landholders and Shiekhs, is the representitive of the masses resisting foreign control from an alliance of foreign capital, a foreign occupier-colonizer (Israel), and an local repressive middle-class clientelist comprador state. This is something, perhaps, that Moore could not foresee!
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Jan 28, 2006 at 12:53 PM cabby, please make paragraphs. I really want to read your posts.
Posted by rocco on Jan 28, 2006 at 2:31 PM Yeah, great posts Cabby, but I get lost too.
You might consider point form and/or paragraphs to give us a chance to take a breath while reading your comments.
Posted by David in Canada on Jan 28, 2006 at 4:54 PM Major Major, your posts are great too. More concise though.
Posted by David in Canada on Jan 28, 2006 at 5:00 PM A pipeline from northern Iraq to Haifa? Does anyone else see this as a cruel joke, or believe that it will happen?
Posted by wileywitch on Jan 28, 2006 at 10:30 PM Dang. Why didn’t that work?
<a href=”http://www.firstpr.com.au/nations/">frog’s map</a>
Posted by wileywitch on Jan 28, 2006 at 10:31 PM I tryed, frog. The cut and paste does work, anyway.
I heard a Palestinian woman talking about this on Democracy Now a month or more ago, she mentioned the Palestinian settlements being laid out like swiss cheese, so that the settlements were the holes and it’s nearly impossible for them to do business with other Palestinian settlements.
The old divide and conquer, with an apartheid wall. Could Israel do this without U.S. support?
Hmmm. Cabbie and Major Major have certainly got some historical perspective on this. Is Israel a welfare state with a caste system or what?
Posted by wileywitch on Jan 28, 2006 at 10:36 PM The Israelis attempt to maintain the fiction that the “Palestinian territories” are an indefinite political entity separate from the state of Israel, while the Palestinians maintain that Israel itself is a fictitious state with no legal right to exist. The Israelis therefore reject any responsibility for the legal rights of the people dispossessed by the creation of the state of Irael, other than the right to employ them as migrant labor when convenient, while the Palestinians continue to vacillate between a half-hearted recognition of the Israeli state, in order to generate international support for the creation of a separate Palestinian state, or reject outright the legality of an Israeli state, and demand that the Israelis be subsumed into a Palestinian state which includes both Palestinians and Israelis, with equal rights and reponsibilities.
Posted by Major Major on Jan 29, 2006 at 10:32 AM One of the core things that I believe and have always tried to impart in my posts is that Fundamentalist Islam is key to the newest strategies of transnational capitalism and corporate-led economic globalization. The reason is quite simple. Transnational capital abhors nation building.
Most any kind of secular nationalist regime in the third world, particularly in the Middle East much of which regards itself as under the jackboot of imperialism and neo-colonialism, is going to pursue some kind of nation building. This entails taxing and borrowing to build up a modern infrastructure (including human capital) in order to create a modern, locally controlled economy. Doubtless, there will be various types of protectionism to promote import substitution industrialization, capital controls, currency regulations, and restrictions on direct foreign investment in favor of local capital. Many developmentalist regimes in the third world, even more moderate ones, nationalize land and key extractive industries whose exports provide the bulk of the foreign exchange earnings required for national development.
Regimes in Latin America and East Asia pursued these policies with a measure of success in the decades following WWII and political independance experiencing rapid GDP growth and per capita income growth. Only with the onset of neo-liberalization did the crises of many developing economies ensue with high per capita foreign debt and slowed GDP and per capita income growth. Today, neo-liberal economics is widely encouraged by the WTO and other “Washington Consensus” advocates to open up these economies to foreign capital and “free trade” as a path to rapid growth and economic development despite obvious impracticalities and catastrophic failings.
The type of regime most susceptible to the appeal of anti-developmentalism as a way of opposing modernity are highly religious forces. They have little interest in the societies they rule beyond promoting religion, collecting local taxes (tithes), and ensuring their own power against that of their political rivals. Land reform as a handmaiden of development is out of the question because clerics and their supporters tend to be big landholders. Overtaxing foreign business is unlikely since these regimes see taxes as minor forms of tribute for the elite rather than a source of financing for societal development. All in all, theirs is a personal Patrimonial state rather than a modern one with aspirations that compete with Western hegemony and economic domination.
It is because of this that religion was first promoted by the West during the Afghan conflict with the Soviet Union in the 1980s. The stinger missiles sent to the most fundamentalist factions of the Mujihadeen in 1986 AFTER the tide turned in the war against the Soviets was meant to win the peace by supporting the most conservative elements’ bid for national power in the wake of the Soviet withdrawl from Afghanistan. In an epoch of globalized transnational investment, widespread financialization and merging of monopoly capital, unbridaled growth of energy consumption in transportation and industry, and the need for global cheap labor compliant regimes in this strategic part of the world were necessary-not competitive ones that would challenge Western hegemony.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Jan 30, 2006 at 1:33 AM Yes. The Taliban are lightyears away from us, even if they also tried to warn us about 911.
Correct me please --- the Texas Oil Mob were negotiating with them for the pipeline, but that collapsed? Was it just a question of money, percentages?
Is it just another coincidence , like Kosovo, Columbia, that the intervention of the US Army now sees an exponential rise in drug-trafficking ?
Posted by frog on Jan 30, 2006 at 5:49 PM Hey, frog. I see what you’re saying. The Taliban wanted Afghanis to be able to use some of the oil that would have been piped through Afghanistan, and wanted Bechtel to pay a little rent for the pipeline.
Someone evidently would rather have the taxpayers bomb Afghanistan into submission than cut into profits and shareholders’ dividends. Makes sense in a brutal way, I suppose.
Ken Lay is going to court today? Enron has had entirely too much influence on our little planet.
I am wondering why there isn’t an explosion of heroin use here. Maybe I’m just not hearing about it. Bumper crops.
Posted by wileywitch on Jan 30, 2006 at 8:35 PM Rabbit saw an article a while back which suggested that the Oil company execs threatened the Taliban with invasion if they didn’t go along with the pipeline on their terms. The Taliban refused, shortly thereafter, invasion. The names and connections were all there. If anyone cares the rabbit will search for it, but since there are no morons present the rest can probably take it at face value anyway.
I don’t think that Afghanistan was invaded soley for this reason, any more than it was invaded especially to reinvigorate the Heroin trade which has always been a speciality for official US drug trafficking after all. One of the least likely reasons was the actual capture of Osama Bin Laden in my opinion. Too many indications at the time said otherwise and more than enough other evidence of collusion and protection and intervention has since surfaced to make it a reasonable assertion.
The continued encirclement of China and other longer term strategic interests no doubt had their part. As such the decision to invade a country like Afghanistan, as with Iraq, was taken by a group of people with varied interests, but one thing in common. They all intend to make the most money that they possibly can out of the venture. That’s all a war like this is, a business venture. On behalf of Weapons Manufacturers, Oil companies, and International Drug Trafficking. They are a gamble. But they are mostly gambling with the money of the nation, not their own, and the nation foots the bill, provides the cannon fodder, and bears the brunt of the costs anyway.
In the same way there are several driving reasons to attack Iran if you are one of these Scumbags. With Iran it seems that there are few other options short of a sudden self realisation and repentance, followed by a complete seachange in American Leadership. The Idealogical corner into which the Bushling has backed itself precludes compromise. The Iranian Oil Bourse would be the beggining of the end for the US dollar.............with all that entails.
The Iranians would have to be the most craven cowards and snivelling slugs to give in to ANY of the demands being made upon it considering Iran has not broken any rules, and is not only acting within it’s rights under the origional agreement, all that it proposes is so to. The affrontary and the belligerence of US demands in particular not to mention the usual thuggish threats from that nasty little illegal state of Israel, would be enough to make a cur raise it’s hackles.
The Persians are not curs.
For the moment the Turks are Curs, as are the Saudis. The Egyptians and Pakistan. But even these vurs will turn and savage this brutal and inhumane master the US is become.
God help you, where will you turn, having abrogated all rights and responsibilities under international humanitarian treaties, where will you then turn for respite when the boot is on the other foot and it is kicking in your door? Not for Oil and profits, but for revenge?
Posted by Rabbit on Jan 31, 2006 at 3:51 AM Jay DeCline Rabbit addresses you. Since you had the temerity to pop in like a little Jay Wren and post your little Zionist homily at the start. Of course you were right , yes it is all the Israelis fault, in some ways, and it’s Britain’s in others and the USA’s fault in yet other ways.
Since the Pallestinians were cheated, invaded, murdered and still are being murdered and dispossessed, since there are far more of them as innocent victims of Israeli aggression than there are innocent Israeli victims of Pallestinian violence.
Oh but Jay hasn’t time to read things like this.
Only time to comment on them.
Just for the record, Rabbit considers the person who straps explosives to himself and who then goes out into the streets of his enemy and takes out a bunch of civilians, is an honourable and worthy man. Compared to the soldier, who looks down a computer sight from his helicopter gunship and launches a missile in a civilian target or even a potential civilian target, and the goes home to dinner.
I know which one I would call a terrorist and monster, at least before the other.
Interesting thought that Sharon might have sought a Hamas leadership so as to set the right conditions for his final vision. Good article Neve.
Posted by Rabbit on Jan 31, 2006 at 3:52 AM Just because you are prepared to kill for a cause, big deal, the other guy is dying for his cause adding his own name to the list of dead as a final cry for justice.
Always remembering that it is not for religion that suicide bombers die. It has always been for land. Justice over land. NOT religion, that is part of the great tapestry of LIES.
Posted by Rabbit on Jan 31, 2006 at 4:10 AM Oh and Wiley, there is am explosion of Heroin on the streets, here in Oz and in Europe too. No doubt it is their too. Much goes to Russia. It is cheap, the cheapest and most assesible drug in most places. No kidding the market is awash in Heroin and has been for a few years. It is not only cheap, the purity is MUCH higher than ever before. Obviously so cheap it is being sold with less need to cut it to make a profit down the food chain.
Quite a few overdoses to start with from people not being used to the purity. They are apparently getting used to it now.
Horrible Drug. A soul eater. No doubt the ideal choice for the Illuminati Death Worthshippers.
Posted by Rabbit on Jan 31, 2006 at 4:18 AM AND.... yes it is all Afghani HEROIN!
Rabbit would rather see them go back to their traditional Hashish instead, .
mmmmmm, Afghani Hash................^^.........
Posted by Rabbit on Jan 31, 2006 at 4:20 AM Rabbit, I hesitate to mention it since it will only initiate another interminable succession of posts but, for what it’s worth, if you restrict yourself to one or two contributions at a time, people will more likely read them, rather skimming or skipping over them.
Chicago, globalization is dead in the water. Peak oil is about to transform an expanding global economy into an aggregation of isolated local economies.
Posted by Major Major on Jan 31, 2006 at 9:28 PM Major Major, if people skip or read over my posts that is their business.
As you will notice Rabbit is in a different timezone and thus is invariably reading back down the list and in this case coming in late.
If you read what is posted rather than as you intimate, skimming or skipping them, you would find that some are specifically for individuals anyway and overall not so long.
Rabbit for example hardly ever bothers with posting merely for some small correction. Briefness is not always just a matter of being short though Major.
Rabbit thanks you for that small help, you may get back in your corner now thankyou.
Posted by Rabbit on Feb 1, 2006 at 12:28 AM Other than that, Rabbit heartily disgree with the contention that globalisation is yet dead in the water. we are currently in the throes of the final act, the result of which is at least intended to be a Global World Order.
Peak Oil is but a toll being manipulated for these ends too.
Brief enough?
Posted by Rabbit on Feb 1, 2006 at 12:31 AM http://www.freezerbox.com/archive/article.php?id=183
Am having html issues, so I’ll just leave that there for cutting and pasting.
Enron Pipe Dreams in Afghanistan is roughly the title. Good background information.
Posted by wileywitch on Feb 1, 2006 at 12:31 AM Ooh.......... Wiley we both came together then. That was fun.
Posted by Rabbit on Feb 1, 2006 at 12:33 AM This Iranian thing is woefully awful. Criminy! If we start with a nuclear strike, then where do we go from there? My guess, is that if we nuke the power plants, we’ll take a lot of pretty satellite pictures to show around the table (that everything always seems to be on) and then We’ll start production of bunker busters.
This is a test. This is only a test.
Brought to you by Soma--- Hug me til you drug, me, baby! and <i>Pantex--- Building better bombs, is our business!
Posted by wileywitch on Feb 1, 2006 at 12:54 AM Must say though, whilst your posts are refreshingly short ,always, half of them on average involve asking others to alter their style of posting to suit yourself.
Not a control freak or anything by any chance?
Posted by Rabbit on Feb 1, 2006 at 9:25 PM MAJORMAJOR
So you switched off your alliteration-generator, and the humin animal popped out! Nice to see ya.
And the price of street-heroin is zooming down in the UK.
Hmm. Hmmm. To get back to the thread.
I must confess that I wish Sharon to live long enough to see him go down Pinochet Street. Along with Henry, Tony, Jack and the two Georges. Jacques we frogs will look after, but some forgiveness for not sending our soldats into your quagmires.On our frognews , just as bad as your BBC/CNN,, the wardrums are a little muted now. Talk is cheap and Mon Dieu there was a lot of it.
BLABLA two things. You A-rabs gotta recognise the right of ISRAEL to exist and RENOUNCE VIOLENCE.
And the rest of you forget about the IRGUN and the STERN gang, if you know what’s good for you .
BECOS we’ve got leverage, and we use it in the land of the free. We don’t rent, we OWN most of your Congress.
Your stupid CIA pay $5mio cash each to some Northern Alliance Warlords, and they rent him for 6months. And then he gets rich from heroin. And then you say you are ‘against’ drugs, tho US troops are making fortunes off them right now, at this second, and negotiate megacontracts with Monsanto for Roundup to do the same shit as in Columbia.
And the British Govt doesn’t agree with your program, so which will win; them or you ?
Posted by frog on Feb 1, 2006 at 9:41 PM Rabbit, my original criticism stands. If your objective is to persuade people to ignore your posts, then keep doing what you’re doing. Your scattershot diatribes of crimes and misdemeanors just turns people off, not because they’re inaccurate but because they’re interminable and often one-sided. Your lack of certitude with respect to your own convictions compels you to over-compensate by responding with a rote litany of ideological boilerplate, as if you need to constantly re-affirm the rectitude of your own beliefs.
Posted by Major Major on Feb 1, 2006 at 10:58 PM Major, old boy, when you have been elected as representative of others it is likely someone else will let the rabbit know, in the meantime your presumptions are showing.
Your scattershot diatribe and linguistic babble, ignoring the specifics of anything, some of which was simple and directed at your own remarks, is designed to do lord only knows what. Rabbit for one is generally wary of according to himself the role of group spokesman, preferring to say what he knows, believes or just sharing a few views with friends. Tolerance is the order as much as possible and Major has always been a tolerable sort of shool master so to speak. However, unprovoked ad-hominem attacks, reducing many issues and hundreds of posts, many highly thoughtful, involving a two sentence hodge podge of spurious rant is not exactly endearing you to the humble rodent.
As for a lack of certitude for his own convictions, and for any overcompensation with a form of communication, has it occurred to the Najor, that he is nothing more on this site than an occasioanal stroke, a foot in a spoke and a whinger about how others post, not what they say mind you, just how they say it.
Well Minor Major, it might come as a surprise for you to see such a certain conviction expressed with no ideological plating whatsoever, from Rabbit.
I am howver certain that you sunshine are a dickhead.
Even those with some clues can be assholes and you are obviously seeking election to the post.
You have Rabbit’s vote.
Posted by Rabbit on Feb 2, 2006 at 4:55 AM i forget to insert EVEN.
“ EVEN the britgov opposed to Roundup spraying of people and their animals and veggies and kiddies in impoverished Afghanistan.”
majormajor; old chap, are you acquainted with that other military man, smedley butler USMC ?
Rabbit is in good company with his analyses, as are many of us , but I fail to see an ‘ ideological angle’ to our posts .Without going as far as the Illuminati, we are certainly seeing the rise and rise of a Worldwide Criminal Overclass. Cabbie calls them Transnational Capitalists, but whatever the label, we agree that they abhor nation-building.
Cabbie"s first post says it all. The unending waronterra is just for crushing democracy everywhere.
Posted by frog on Feb 2, 2006 at 12:18 PM It was Israel that broke off negotiations with the Palestinians five years ago, relentlessly bombed and destroyed PA security infrastructure needed to contain the second Intifada, engaged in a near genocidal military incursion into the West Bank early 2002-operation defensive shield-and continued a policy of targeted assassinations, illegal usurpation and occupation of land, house demolitions, and the construction of the apartheid wall unanimously condemned by the ICJ at the Hague. By all accounts most Palestinians oppose the hardline political positions adopted by Hamas which is why they soft pedel their destruction of Israel position which remains in their charter. Most Palestinians would have continued to reject power sharing with Hamas as they did 10 years ago when Hamas boycotted the PA elections to the PLC but for the fact that Fatah cooperation has come to naught in the face of Israeli aggression and intransigence. The Hamas vote was meant to send a clear message to both Fatah and The West!
Israel must adhere to the quartet’s demands (the US, UN, EU, and Russia) to resume negotiate on the basis of the “road map” and seek meaningful negotiations with the Palestinians regardless of the elections outcome or the armed status of the Hamas military wing. It was Israel that declared the intention to resolve the issue of peace unilaterally (as if this has not been the intention since the very beginning) and has made good on this claim with the establishment of the apartheid wall and military aggression. Israel must return to the table and cease all colonizing of Palestinian lands and create the conditions that allow the PA to establish a viable Palestinian State.
The Occupation of more than 3 million human beings is illegal and immoral and must cease! The ball is in Israel’s court!
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Feb 2, 2006 at 6:02 PM Just for the record, Rabbit considers the person who straps explosives to himself and who then goes out into the streets of his enemy and takes out a bunch of civilians, is an honourable and worthy man. Compared to the soldier, who looks down a computer sight from his helicopter gunship and launches a missile in a civilian target or even a potential civilian target, and the goes home to dinner.
This is pure ideology which invites a false comparison between the “heroic” Iraqi patriot who sacrifices his life for his country, and only incidentally destroys other Iraqi citizens, in order to attack those who occupy his country, and the “cowardly” American soldier who occupies a foreign country and murders innocent Iraqi civilians as an afterthought and prequel to his degenerate return to base and the comforts of military chow.
The overwhelming majority of civilians and soldiers alike are neither heroes nor cowards, but ordinary people placed in an abnormal and highly hazardous environment by the foreign policy of their respective leadership.
Posted by Major Major on Feb 2, 2006 at 6:29 PM It is not ideology.
It is a moral relativism. You are reacting out of ideology, and it isn’t Rabbit’s fault if you can’t raise your point of view beyond that to see the two people in reversed positions.
Would it make any difference to you Major, if the Iraqi Pilot was bombing your neighborhood and you or your son was starpping the explosives on to take out as many of him and his supporters you could? They are both deliberately killing civilians, just that one of them has the honour to at least stake his own life on the act as well.
The difference is in comparison of the acts, it does not mean the rabbit supports the idea of suicide bombers. That is an erroneous conclusion on your part. It is interesting now that you’ve finally spat out what it was that was sticking in your gullet old boy, and Rabbit hopes that the clarification will allow you to cope better with the nuances of Liberal discussion. Rabbit did not call the American soldier cowardly, but if the Major wishes to define the Iraqi resistance soldier, or the resistance martyr as cowardly then he will invite the obvious comparison, given above.
Posted by Rabbit on Feb 2, 2006 at 8:40 PM There’s nothing “honorable or worthy” about killing civilians, and I would hope to be the first to admit it, even if my family had been murdered by my enemies and I had retaliated in kind. There’s nothing “honorable or worthy” about any kind of violent conflict, justified or not, and every person who ever survived such a conflict eventually admits it, or suffers from the consequences of avoiding the admission. The landscape of my country is littered with the walking wounded who contort themselves into impossible positions of moral justification, and I can only surmise that the affliction is universal: in Israel, the West Bank, Iraq, and even Australia.
Posted by Major Major on Feb 2, 2006 at 9:44 PM How incredible to see our brethren contorting themselves to the extent they can justify “pre-emptive wars” against weak and unthreatening nations who just happen to be sitting on a heap of Oil.
They justify even the use of WMD’s and torture against all comers in order to extract “Confessions”, which might somehow help make them feel safer.
They do it and call themselves bringers of democracy. They call themselves the victims. Yes there are such afflicted with denial in Oz too, a vocal minority, with all the backing of the same compliant press. We have a few more truthful media sources though which is why “911 In Plane Sight.” has shown here on television and other truths shattering of the NWO lies. .
But we are fat lazy greedy materialistic westerners too. Our “afflicted” are a product of this generic western empire thing too. Because of the movies and Coca-Cola, we collectively look to the US as the godfather of this abominable movement.
It is the American Empire, and it has become as decadent from the center of Rome, oops, America, to the far flung reaches of the globe where it’s armies are stationed. The collapse is imminent and we will be affected more or less as a sattelaite of the empire. The evil empire.
Posted by Rabbit on Feb 3, 2006 at 3:46 AM Anyway Major
Despite individual nuances we are not of much different ideology or comprehension of the reality which is being avoided by those afflicted, as you so tactfully put it.
Rabbit’s posting formats and styles are not like others, but have been defended already in their place. He is not alone in this, other unique and individual souls are represented by their own styles and lengths of posts, and subject for that matter. Some get along as friends whilst others are cordial allies, and yet others may be antagonistic allies, like a certain rock like personage who shall remain nameless lest his spirit be awakened.
So long as they are allies and fighting the same war, we don’t have to all be equally enthralled with each other’s small offerings in the great battle for truth and justice. So long as we recognise the same enemies then we fight siide by side, if not, then who gives a shit what the other side thinks?
Beyond the Rabbit’s direct defence against an unexpected wack from the side, he apologises to the Major for having been a little less than cuddly.
It is a misunderstanding which is hopefully no more, to interpret what was meant as a comment comparing the act of suicide to kill an percieved enemy and the impersonal way of doing much worse from the safety of the side with the money.
If these guys had planes and tanks, they would be using them instead, you understand. But they don’t so they use what they have. Their cars and their bodies become the missiles and guidance systems.
They are not hero’s any more or less than the soldiers who are invading their country, or who they see as invading their country, is there any difference?
For both sides it is the same.
So no they are not heros. They are doing monstrous things because they are too dumb or cowardly not to.
Or they are doing monstrous things because they feel the stakes are worth dying and killing for.
I simply want people to see that the second choice, is an honourable choice, in comparison to doing it for the money, or due to delusions which is all the duped, abused US soldiers are doing it for.
///////////////////////////////////////////////////
The civilian death toll from the US and British actions is mind bogglingly high compared with the quite moderate number of innocent civilians killed by “Insurgents” and so called Terrorists.The relative number of US and British troops killed by the Iraqi’s is higher compared to the civilian casualties they have caused as collateral damage at the same time. Next to the civilians killed and being killed by our troops relative to the actual enemy dispatched.
The Iraqis and Afghanis are not fighting because someone told them to. They are fighting for what they believe in, that is their own freedom and that is not a delusion. How they intend to exercise it may not of course add up to our ideas of it, but well you know the rest…
Posted by Rabbit on Feb 3, 2006 at 4:27 AM Page 1 of 1 pages -
register a new account »Posting Security
Also by Neve Gordon
- The Experiment in Gaza
- Israel and Hamas Just Say No To Peace
Over the past 40 years, the Arab League's position on Israel has radically shifted. It's time for Israel to recognize the change. - Fighting the Larger War
The War On Terror is unique because its political, temporal and geographic borders are unknown and its enemy is fluidly ill-defined. - Israels September 11 Effect
Israel is uniting in its war with Lebanon - The U.S.-Israeli Somalia Plan
- Hamas: Sharons Legacy?
Popular Discussions
- The 9/11 Faith Movement
Many Americans believe 9/11 was a conspiracy by the U.S. government
1972 posts since Jul 11 06 - What’s the 411 on 9/11?
891 posts since Dec 21 05 - Democrats: It’s the War
659 posts since Nov 1 05 - Was the Presidential Election Stolen?
462 posts since Jun 19 06 - A Fundamental History Lesson
The rise of National Socialism proved politics and religion don't mix
426 posts since Oct 10 05
© 2006 In These Times | Reprint Policy | Privacy Policy | Powered by Expression Engine | RSS Feeds
