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It is true two completely different views in life have collided head on. But unlike other conflicting views colliding in the past, the Muslims have been responding with hate and violence. Not all Muslims of course, but it seems radical Muslims have taken control of what is said to be a peaceful religion. I am not saying that is a lie, but I have not seen enough results to back that claim up. Although Islam may feel they are under attack, Westerners feel the same pressure due to the radical Muslims who have declared war on the different values they disagree with. The violent reaction over the cartoons and the threats to kill the people responsible for drawing the cartoons is senseless and brutal. The free speech that they want to end is the same freedom that allows them to practice their religion freely in any Western country. I look forward to this cartoon debate shaping the world around us in different and new ways, but at the same time, the two values in conflict must be defended fully. How that is possible is not an easy question to answer, but once Muslims realize the violent reactions are only causing more and more of an image problem, maybe then can they look for different methods to defend what they believe in. I think the West must also take a look at their values, as Western media has failed its largest test, and allowed this terror and violence to control it. But in the end, I personally believe more good will come from this issue than the harm that is being done, as it has served as a wake up call for both values. I posted the cartoons on my website at http://www.obber.com. I don’t believe brushing this under the rug is going to help much. I also put together a small documentary related to this issue, one that is meant to show the reason why such cartoons would be drawn in the first place.
Posted by stncrtsw on Feb 21, 2006 at 8:26 AM
Mr Muwakkil, I believe that your suspicion as to the cartoons being planted is certainly reasonable. Fleming Rose is an ardent Zionist and knew the reaction the publication of such work would cause. Couple that with the fact that he is friendly with Daniel Pipes, extreme Muslim hater, warmonger and racist pig, and it becomes more than a suspicion.
We can also thank the media for doing their usual yellow and jingoistic journalism by covering only the violent demonstrations and giving no coverage to the millions of Muslims who protested this insult to their faith peacefully. And let’s not forget that the much-demonized Hamas also came out strongly opposing the violent reaction and calling for calm. Of course this got zero American press. Surprise.
No, this was an intentional incitement, designed to encourage Europeans to go along with our new crusade. It will backfire, but that has never stopped the neocons before. They are afterall, safe.
Under their rocks.
Posted by opeluboy on Feb 21, 2006 at 4:47 PM
“It will backfire, but that has never stopped the neocons before. They are afterall, safe.
Under their rocks.”
Unless they go hunting with Dick Cheney
Posted by FraM on Feb 22, 2006 at 12:12 PM
Are we talking about Danish Neocons here or more U.S. bashing?
Along with freedom of speech we used to believe in the idea of “innocent until proven guilty”.
Posted by whattheheck on Feb 22, 2006 at 12:41 PM
If nothing else, the cartoons demonstrated how incredibly easy it is to incite large numbers of Muslims to violence. Again.
Lets see, just for fun. How many people were killed as a result of the extremely offensive “piss Christ”? Of Farrakhan
Posted by wolf on Feb 22, 2006 at 2:15 PM
Sometimes push really does come to shove. I guess that’s how the demonstrators feel too. However, if it comes to a choice between enforced respect for the gestures of piety others observe or upholding the freedom to express oneself in objectionable ways, I’ll go with the latter. When it comes to the proper role of a journalist (imo), these include informing, stimulating debate, and in op-ed pieces including cartoons, representing an opinion clearly and perhaps provocatively. Unless these standards endure a journalist is nothing but an apologist for a powerful agency.
As we all know, no one campaigns for free expressions that are pleasant. What would be the point? It’s speech that may offend those powerful agencies (including vocal minorities and majorities) that needs protection.
It can be argued that the cartoons were rude, insulting, perhaps sacrilegious. As for whether they’re worthy of rampaging around the city torching diplomatic missions and newsstands, they are not.
Posted by Kuya on Feb 22, 2006 at 9:49 PM
I find it ironic that David Irving sits in jail for provoking historical sensibilities while Rose, Pipes, and the rest of the neocon crowd go on their merry ways to even better stir the “clash of civilizations”. Irving may be a fool, but fools should be ridiculed - not jailed. Rose, Pipes, and the neocons are the real danger - war criminals who deserve their day at the Hague.
If it weren’t tragic, this could be a laughing matter. I have heard this song of “Western, Christian World” vs. ... before. Back in the 70s the military junta in Argentina, with Mr. Kissinger’s sponsorship launched a campaign against people with leftist tendencies which ended in the disappearance of 30.000 young people in which the “good guys” were of course Western and Christian and the “bad guys” were pro-Russia (which was considered to be in the Eastern World). The border has now been moved further to the East and instead of atheists or commies the enemies now are islamic, but the principle is the same.
So far, the results of the actions of the self-righteous Christian gentlemen have been painful and unjust to others to say the least and usually based on a pack of lies, duly transmitted by the media at their disposal. In my humble opinion, human beings are very much alike everywhere and I refuse to be a puppet of the neocons, fancy name to identify a greedy minority which seems to never have enough of the cake.
Posted by Maria on Feb 24, 2006 at 1:14 PM
The Murder of Ilan Halimi
A Jewish man is kidnapped in Paris, tortured for 24 days and then dies.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008006
——————————————————————————
Posted by whattheheck on Feb 26, 2006 at 8:10 AM
So, the cartoon bullshit has resulted in 200deaths worldwide.
Very sad, very painful.
Having reviewed some of the 911 footage, with 2200 deaths, not ALL american, that was sad, painful.
Having thought about the US bombing of Afghanistan; about 2000 men; women, and kiddies, that was sad, painful.
Having seen on TV the shock and awe on baghdad, and the rest of the country, very sad, very y painful. ONLY 20000 dead, in three weeks,what a relief ! ONLY TWENTY THOUSAND DEAD !
I include Iraqi soldiers in that figure, Have you yanks ever thought that those guys hated saddam even more than you, but they h
Posted by frog on Feb 26, 2006 at 1:53 PM
I’ve been too busy even to read much news lately, but this article caught my eye today:
misinterpretations?
An excerpt:
<i>Bush
Posted by wileywitch on Feb 27, 2006 at 7:55 PM
Frog, the holocaust revisionism as crime is strange, no? Whatever you can tell me about how this is going over in France would by me be much appreciated.
What I’m wondering now, is why and how these cartoons became a “free speech” issue? When the alleged and bogus films of Palestinians celebrating the 9/11 attacks was shown on television, I don’t remember hearing, well, whether you agree or not, they should have the right to “free speech”. When there is a school shooting, I don’t hear about the right to bear arms. When politicians lie, I don’t hear about the fifth amendment and how noble it is not to challenge the politicians’ lies because of the fifth.
Has someone responded to the cartoons by proposing legislation in the West to ban the publication of offensive cartoons?
Is the freedom or not to do something the only issue when considering what someone says and the impact it has on others?
Did I wake up in a flat universe that can’t think beyond Coke or Pepsi?
“Free speech” doesn’t wash in sexual harassment cases. Radio stations in Rwanda were charged with crimes for inciting hatred and violence between the Tutsis and Hutus (sp?). If journalists actually cracked a book or file once and a while they might find myriad examples of consequences of speech and we can have a more intelligent conversation on a national level and perhaps collectively work toward a more rational state of mind than “you can’t stop me from doing what I want, and if you do you’re a Nazi.”
Posted by wileywitch on Feb 27, 2006 at 8:30 PM
Wiley,
The writers of the Bill of Rights had no such a wide open interpretation in mind. There is a difference between freedom and license (although a bit hard to define at times).
I have no problem with the
Posted by whattheheck on Feb 28, 2006 at 2:45 PM
To start off, Islam does not proscribe images of the Prophet. Some branches of it do, but it ain’t in the koran. There are lots of images in museums etc around the world.
In the 1640s Puritan extremists in Cromwell’s army destroyed “graven images” in churches.
It sure is true that Muslims are being demonised in the MSM . And as Maria says, above, this rubbish should be opposed by all of us. Not a question of being a “liberal”, one can be a true conservative and abhor the fostering of hatred. Any hatred.
WILEY
Free Speech is just one of those things we are lucky to have, and don’t appreciate until the FBI come visiting . I take your point that it is largely therapeutic, becos we can holler and scream, be analytical and persuasive, and the Criminals are still ruling !
The problem there is to rack the brain about what to DO to change things.
Your second post asks about France. We had a perfectly adequate 1972 Law against race-hatred and anti-semitism.
In 1990 Gayssot Law against denial and revisionism came along. Voted almost unanimously, which I assume due to the power of the zionist lobby. ( i forget their names, but we along with the rest of europe have the equivalents of AIPAC and ADL.)
Other similar laws followed, in fact legislating as to what was historically TRUE, and not ! A load of dangerous rubbish.
I’ve done some reading, ongoing, and I spose I also am a Holocaust Revisionist ! History and historiography is one of my things, and that’s all about revising .
As AntiWar Conservative says above, better to let fools debate and be ridiculed than to turn them into martyrs. We have both noticed how useful it is to have shills and trolls, they stimulate the discussion!
Prosecuting them leads quickly into a judicial and ethical quagmire..
Posted by frog on Feb 28, 2006 at 2:57 PM
hello whattheheck
I haven’t visited those sites, but seen film, read a lot. I find most of the Deniers/Revisionists objectionable, to say the least .
In france we have the Front National Party , headed by an ex-torturer of the french army in algeria. Close links in the past with swastika-waving Nazis , which they now conceal. They embrace all sorts of holocaust revisionism, which gives it a bad name.
We have had a number of trials here, one book by israel shamir recently banned. Quite a lot of witch-hunting.
Somehow i missed that Northwestern professor, enlighten me ?
(For other readers—Dachau was the very first KL concentration camp in 1933 - for communists, socialists, tradeunionists, monarchists, and personal enemies. Became a work camp, supplying BMW amongst many others. Typhus arrived in january1945,.)
Well Irving was sentenced to 3years. Zundel was extradited , and also r Rudolf (?)another german from the USA. awaiting trial.in germany.
As I noted in lastpost, I’m a revisionist, too, but far from a Nazi. As far as I’m concerned, it is not important to stick with old wrong statistics. Once one passes a certain number of dead, it becomes astronomy, lightyears of dead. Historians can dispute the details, because we all know that history improves with distance.
Having no political or racist axe to grind, I do find the prevalence of Zionist propaganda interesting. There are debates running about the so-called Holocaust Industry.
Here we are talking about scores of mios of $ invested to promote the Holocaust.
Hmmmmmmmmmmm ?
When I was a kid we learnt History in school, and some of us never stopped . As time went by, my interpretations evolved, as I did.
I believe that all “the terrible times” should be remembered. No shortage in the history of the world.
Posted by frog on Feb 28, 2006 at 4:49 PM
Legislating what is historically true, frog? Has everyone gone off their nut? This reminds me of Baptists taking a vote at a Convention to determine whether or not Jesus performed miracles. Except that Baptists have a right to do that, and can do so without making it a punishable crime to believe otherwise and to say as much. (Anyone interested in other peoples
Posted by wileywitch on Feb 28, 2006 at 8:06 PM
Wiley
I can see john taylor gatto coming through on your homeschool project! The whole idea being to get kids interested and then they mostly educate themselves. As we can’t help doing still, just comes naturally
.
I Never thought you were into ‘prosecution’, tho your rant may have given that impression to some.
We have obviously been reading in parallel on the Holo-subject. And you have summed it up very well.
As with the 911debate, we are seeing attempts at steamrollering dissidents.
I saw a clip of Tucker Carlson MSNBC refusing to broadcast a 10second clip of WTC7 for Stephen Jones. And then “You’re going to offend a lot of people if you say it wasn’t the MUSLIMS “.
Yesterday am i heard an interview with a brit jewish lawyer on the Irving Case. Naturally he managed to bring in the spectre of a new nuclear holocaust by the Iranians!
On a lighter note Chirac refused to sign the law obliging teachers to teach the “positive aspects of colonialism” !
Posted by frog on Mar 1, 2006 at 3:13 AM
<i>On a lighter note Chirac refused to sign the law obliging teachers to teach the
Posted by wileywitch on Mar 1, 2006 at 11:36 AM
To Frog and Whileywitch, your comments are interesting and show concern about knowing the truth about different historic episodes. I
Posted by Maria on Mar 2, 2006 at 5:40 PM
maria
“Never Know ?” They got pinochet, or NOT ?
Sometimes the truth creeps out, rises up, emerges .
Sometimes it has to be dug up.
I’m with the people out there.
And i expect many of them who know the Mossad far far better than I ,would agree that these cartoons could easily have been one of their Ops.
Nice smokescreen . Israel about to gobble up another 20 %of the bantustans, and cut off food supplies too.
Good article on “”“FLEMMING ROSE”“” By James Petras on the web.
Posted by frog on Mar 2, 2006 at 6:21 PM
Maria, I hear what you’re saying and if I’m reading you correctly you’re feeling a little sad and frustrated? I know I am, though I have a slightly different take—-I believe we are all sexist, racist, this-ist, that-ist, all of our lives. So much of what we think isn’t even conscious and we would reject it completely and sincerely if someone could pull it out of our brain and show it to us. But there are all kinds of messages in our unconcsious mind that we aren’t aware of and that we often act on unwittingly. It doesn’t mean that we are all in the habit of harboring extreme hatred and nursing grudges.
This is especially true for us who live in a media saturated information age. We simply cannot critically examine and reflect on every idea and impression that enters our spongey brains. It is often enough to be conscious of various perspectives and to keep the ability to keep the mind open and receptive when new information becomes available or a challenge presents itself.
We will never know the “absolute truth” (in this life anyway), but we don’t need to—-it would probably make us crazy anyway. Like the Pinochet example frog mentioned, enough truth comes out to take people to task for atrocities now and then. If Pol Pot were alive, he’d be in court right now. One of his generals went on trial recently. It’s been a long time since their psychpathology ruled their countryside, but they were eventually stopped (though the U.S. still, inexplicably supported Pol Pot after his killing fields were made public) and are being brought to justice. The wheels turn slowly, but they often turn.
Truth and reconciliation happens, too, and it is deep and meaningful for all participants—-perpetrators, victims, witnesses, and combinations of the above.
Not to be too contrarian, I see your point, but I would also like to point out that none of this is new to the world. Humans have always fought, and hated, and oppressed, and enslaved, and thought their group superior to others if not the only true humans deserving of respect.
We do need to keep an eye on the motes in our eyes, but I would caution against idealism and absolutism as well. Utopianism is as responsible for mass murder as bigotry.
There is a whole lot of room for improvement in our world. The little improvements count. People can and do change. Progress somehow happens now and then.
Posted by wileywitch on Mar 2, 2006 at 10:51 PM
Wiley,
I for one have often been very sad, and almost overwhelmed, by the injustice and cruelty around in this world.
When I was a young soldier my government conducted chemical warfare experiments on other,unwitting soldiers. I remember those ‘opportunities’ to get a few
Posted by frog on Mar 3, 2006 at 2:38 AM
Maria
“The fact that we don
Posted by frog on Mar 3, 2006 at 3:30 AM
What is Pol Pot instructing children to murder their parents by suffocating them with plastic bags to save ammunition? What is people being “disappeared” and tortured to death and just about everyone else living in constant fear of being “disappeared” and worrying about the fates of their family members and friends? What is having your wife and children kidnapped and raped in front of you?
Enough with “the holocaust” being the epitome! It was horrible. Atrocities are horrible! All atrocities are horrible!
I met a German man who refused to put a Heil Hitler doormat out instead of the Gruss Gott that was typical of Bavarians and he was sent to the Russian Front. He was captured and spent 7 years in a Siberian salt mine. He was lucky he didn’t end up in the siege of Leningrad. Did you know that only one person who survived that seige lived past the age of 40? It was that stressfull.
And now we carpet bomb cities, litter them with mines, and poison them with depleted uranium.
The number of ways that human can make each other unbelievably miserable and desperate, and mangled, and dead are infinite. I see no reason to make the suffering of Jews in the holocaust sancrosanct and above questioning. Let cranks question too, so what? I don’t know about you but I don’t think I owe anyone anything for the suffering done in WW II.
The entire human race can now be extinguished in twenty minutes. Six billion. Never again.
Posted by wileywitch on Mar 3, 2006 at 1:24 PM
Wiley,
Whoa! My comments re: the Nazi holocaust were not meant to diminish any other ones in any way. Of course they are all terrible. It is the German efficiency and organization which I was pointing out. So many seeing it at close range day after day and continuing to do it.
Mankind has been “improving” extermination methods since rock gave way to club. Wars are not rational solutions and all countries eventually disregard civilian enemy casualties if they get in a bind.
Fear is a great threat to ethics
Posted by whattheheck on Mar 4, 2006 at 7:26 AM
I wasn’t ranting at you WTH. This deal with throwing holocause “deniers” in prison has got my jockey shorts in a wad.
I noticed after I posted and re-read other posts that you were making an economic point, but my mind couldn’t go there at that time.
It can’t go there now. I have lots of work to do. But, if you want to expand on the economic point, I’d be interested in reading it later. Something in your post got me thinking about conscription and draft as slave labor.
Posted by wileywitch on Mar 4, 2006 at 9:22 AM
holocausT
Posted by wileywitch on Mar 4, 2006 at 9:23 AM
Wiley, thank you for your concern. I am neither sad nor frustrated, maybe simply tired. Somehow, I have made an effort to understand man
Posted by Maria on Mar 4, 2006 at 11:31 AM
Well I
Posted by wileywitch on Mar 4, 2006 at 6:01 PM
typo correction for clarification: <i>If you die in battle you
Posted by wileywitch on Mar 4, 2006 at 6:05 PM
Talk about Clashing Sensibilities…
Has the academic world gone crazy? This equates to hiring Rudolph Hess during WW2 while closing West Point!
—————————————————————-
JOHN FUND ON THE TRAIL
Taliban Man at Yale
University officials are embarrassed—but not embarrassed enough.
Monday, March 6, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST
Are there no limits to how arrogant and out-of-touch America’s Ivy League schools can get? Last week it emerged that Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, former deputy foreign secretary of the Taliban, is now a student at Yale while at the same time the school continues to block ROTC training from its campus and argues for the right of its law school to exclude military recruiters.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110008051
Posted by whattheheck on Mar 6, 2006 at 9:58 AM
It’s probably just another crony appointment, WTH. A member of the Taliban attending Yale isn’t as offensive to me as people who have no earthly idea what they are doing being appointed to FEMA, the EPA, and the CPA. If he starts slapping women around for not wearing vales, or otherwise harrassing them he should be expelled.
It is a terrible contradiction, though isn’t it? Someone in this administration needs to figure out what a terrorist and terrorist sympathizer is. This guy is probably NOT on the no-fly list, and Kennedy can’t seem to have himself removed from it, so clearly, there is much rotten in Denmark these days and reason does not have the upper hand.
Posted by wileywitch on Mar 6, 2006 at 11:06 AM
Wiley (and maybe some others),
It is always offensive when people denigrate the Nazi and general European Holocaust which killed six million Jews (one third the world population and half the European population of Jews by 1939 census count). Even proportionately speaking nothing has ever matched this in history! To compare Nazi extermination of Jews with Israeli treatment of Palestinians is beyond ridiculous. In 1948, there were 1.25 million Palestinian Arabs. Today there are almost 9 million, 3 million of which live in Palestine and another million in pre-1967 Israel—a strange genocide indeed!!! Israeli Sociologist, Baruch Kimmerling calls Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians “politicide” which is far more apt than genocide and describes the process of eliminating a group as a viable and distinct political entity. This is also horrible but far different and has aspects which are condemned as genocidal in nature by the UN Charter and Convention on Genocide. I oppose the Zionist occupation of Palestine as much as Kimmerling or anyone else for that matter and have often wondered at the necessity of a Jewish State at all ( which exists only because of Christian persecution of Jews both during and before WWII).
Wiley, I think your figures on WWII deaths are inflated. I’ve seen 50 million on the light side and about 80 million on the high side. No matter. The real thing that makes the genocide against the Jews unique and so frightening is neither the order of magnitude, nor the proportion killed, nor even the stoney silence it evoked from a disinterested world (which is pretty typical). The real unique thing about it was that it was the first (and only) totally planned genocide by a highly technologically advanced and modern state that was to be carried out for its own sake (not to obtain land, wealth, property, or access to resources) by virtue of pure racial obsession and hate EVEN WHEN DOING SO ENDANGERED THE OVERALL MILITARY OBJECTIVES OF THE THIRD REICH as it did on the eastern front according to many of Hitler’s best generals like Hans Guderian and others! The creation of complex and integrated systems of railways, gas chambers, crematoria, and other genocide infrastructe has no precident in history. The mobilization of modern science in the service of such a macabre project is also unprecedented. The vast sociology of the holocaust focuses not on the human side of the tragedy but on the implications it has for the capacity of the modern state to create sufficient alienation both moral and otherwise to carry out such a deed with little or no resistence! Yes, many people were carted off to the “east” never to be seen again but it is widely agreed that it was really all about exterminating the Jews as a whole as per the minutes of the Jan, 1942 Wannesee meeting of Hitler and the leading SS officials. Many genocides-no matter how long in coming-are spontaneous—this was the ultimate in modern state planning.
Wiley, I’ll leave you with this thought. There is a reason the Nazi genocide against the Jews had such impact and is still regarded today with such horror—and it has little to do with the Jews themselves!
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Mar 6, 2006 at 11:32 AM
WTH
At 22, this guy was the taliban’s ARI FLEISCHER .
Posted by frog on Mar 6, 2006 at 11:47 AM
Frog,
I miss Ari. This Scott Whats-his-face is just NO FUN. Too stern.
Honestly, I have never been able to understand how anyone can stand the job for any of the presidents I can remember.
The best press conference I ever watched was Eisenhower cofronted by a little old gal who had been there forever (can’t think of her name).
It went something like this…
Reporter, “Mr. President the milk industry workers have indicated that they intend to go on strike unless their demands are met. The Dairy Management Association has refused to even meet with them. Mr, President would you care to give us an idea of what you intend to do about this problem?”
Ike, “No. Next please.”
Posted by whattheheck on Mar 6, 2006 at 1:23 PM
You can’t look at the wall, cabdriver and see the Warsaw Ghetto? Why not? Why is that unthinkable?
Do you think that the mechanical carpet bombing of cities or the dropping of atomic bombs is any less horrifying or mechanical than the Nazi holocaust? Do you think the horror in Cambodia that killed a third of the Cambodian population was not as evil as the Nazi holocaust?
I think all murder and genocide, and politicide (as if that leaves people less dead), and omnicide is wrong. World War II ended over 50 years ago. How many “holocausts” have there been since? Why is it that the suffering of all the victims of genocide since doesn’t merit the outrage of The Holocaust?
You can believe that the exterminating of Jews in Europe trumps all other mass murders in the history of mankind, if you like. I don’t. I think the most important mass murders in the history of mankind are the ones that are happening NOW. Forgive me if that’s a politically incorrect conclusion that doesn’t take into account the proper structural analysis of history.
Posted by wileywitch on Mar 6, 2006 at 5:47 PM
Cabbie,
Herzl , Jabotinsky and Co had good reasons for inventing Zionism well before Hitler.
Hitler did not build the european railway system.
I regard all massacres , “politicides”, as equally evil. I disagree that the Holocaust is unique, and should take pre-eminence over every other horror in history and the present day.
Look at what the Holocaust industry has done to improve the World ! Lots of disneyland museums, wars, and more wars, and the Zionist tail wags the USA dog.
Anyone who disagrees with israel’s expansionist and warmongering policies is condemned as an antisemite , even hounded by ADL/JDL etc.
And highly unlikely to get elected to anything in the USA ?
Well, the USA has declared war on half the world, at least, “”” with little or no resistance”“” from Americans, because those that are not with you are supposed to be against you !
Sociologically the USA is approaching where Germany was in the mid Thirties.
Posted by frog on Mar 6, 2006 at 9:50 PM
Wiley, Frog, Cabbie:
It seems a weird topic to be trying to quantify. With any other topic it would be good stand-up material.
Posted by whattheheck on Mar 7, 2006 at 8:29 AM
What would have been the outcome of WW2 if Japan
Posted by whattheheck on Mar 7, 2006 at 8:37 AM
WTH
Your joke about the standup comicry is much closer to the truth than you thought ?
A courtcase here in frogland was recently dropped—some pressure group was attacking a serious historian for “denying” the genocidal nature of the Atlantic Slave Trade !
Robert Fisk tells us that after 30years reporting from the Mideast, he has NEVER seen it in such a dangerous state as today.
Talking about “context” , he doesn’t know the whole story about who is directing the deathsquads in Iraq, but damn all to do with “islamofascists”, I am sure. Those guys are mostly useful idiots.
If even the Israeli boss of Shabak (internal security) can now let slip that the world was a safer place with Saddam, he is only saying what many are coming to recognise. Yuval Diskin is his name.
As for Kosovo, Ossama and friends’ troops were recruited to fight there on the side of the KLA by “our” secret services. A staged “massacre” and time for another lovely war. Its now a major crime and drug centre, and the serbs are being ethnically cleansed.
You see how closely the secret services and the “terrorists” are connected ?
Whatever you call it, the war on terror is not just badly packaged. The whole concept is bogus, just a pretext for increasing the power of the Executive, making giga$$$$ , and keeping the population of the planet scared and divided.
“IRAN” is just a propaganda game, hyping up the old bullshit to see how far they can go to make you really scared.
As for kamikazes, not needed. Suitcase nukes have existed for years,such as the old 155mm shell from my youth.
MINI NUKE
Plenty of those around in the ex USSR? Valerie Plame and other CIA were engaged in combating that sort of nuclear proliferation. Routine serious police work, not sabre-rattling, not propaganda campaigns to scare the shit out of us all.
.
Posted by frog on Mar 7, 2006 at 10:58 AM
Frog,
I don’t know if the world was safer WITH Saddam or, if true, for how long. But it was more stable and less noisey back then. I think 90% of what passes for news is just noise
Posted by whattheheck on Mar 7, 2006 at 12:24 PM
WTH
Sorting the info is the “unsettling” duty of any citizen who would hope to be worthy of the name.
It doesn’t come for free, takes time and effort, but gets easier, and more fun, as time goes by and one starts to recognise patterns.
Here’s for some history.
In 1972 Nixon back from Moscow crazily believed that swords could be turned into ploughshares.
Nightmare news for the arms manufacturers.
Luckily two White Knights were at hand when Ford succeeded Nixon. DAH DI DAH ! ZORROS TO THE RESCUE .!!
““Rumsfeld and Cheney began a concerted effort - first secretly and then openly - to undermine Nixon’s treaty for peace and to rebuild the state of FEAR.
They did it by claiming that the Soviets had a new secret weapon of mass destruction that the president didn’t know about, that the CIA didn’t know about, that nobody knew about but them. It was a nuclear submarine technology that was undetectable by current American technology. And, they said, because of this and related-undetectable-technology weapons, the US must redirect billions of dollars away from domestic programs and instead give the money to defense contractors for whom these two men would one day work or have businesses relationships with.
The CIA strongly disagreed, calling Rumsfeld’s position a “complete fiction” and pointing out that the Soviet Union was disintegrating from within, could barely afford to feed their own people, and would collapse within a decade or two if simply left alone.””
MORE WAR !! MORE $$
Cynthia McKinney tried to get this article by Thom Hartmann into the Congressional Record. Don’t know if succeeded !
So, whenEVER, EVER, EVER, someone tries to terrify you with “terrorism”, “Musim Islamofascistic Clashes of Civilisations”, take a good deep breath.
STOP and THINK.
WHY DO THOSE MEGALOMANIACAL MONEY-GRUBBING MOTHERS WANT ME TO BEHAVE LIKE A HEADLESS CHICKEN ?
Posted by frog on Mar 7, 2006 at 5:48 PM
<a href=“http://www.freedomtofascism.com/”>MUSSOLINI-TIME A’COMING ?>/a>
Well, fascism sounds softer than nazism, same difference.
Posted by frog on Mar 7, 2006 at 6:05 PM
<a href=“http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0213-28.htm”>
Posted by frog on Mar 7, 2006 at 6:20 PM
““The archangel reported that the Almighty has become increasingly irritated with the vogue for politicians to claim that He is behind their policies - especially if these involve killing large numbers of humans.
According to Gabriel, God spake these words: “That George W Bush once had the nerve to say: ‘God told me to go end the tyranny in Iraq, and I did.’ Well, let me tell you I did no such thing! If I’d wanted to get rid of Saddam Hussein, I could have given him pneumonia.
I didn’t need the president of the United States to send in hundreds of heavy bombers and thousands of missiles to destroy Iraq - even though I appreciate that Halliburton needed to fill its order books.”
“How do Bush and Blair think it makes me look to all those parents who have lost sons and daughters in this grubby business? Don’t they know that the Muslims they’re taking out worship the same Me that they do?
It’s a public relations disaster that ought to set Christianity back hundreds of years. Though knowing the fundamentalists, it’ll probably have the reverse effect”“
THE MONTY PYTHON TAKE ON GOD VERSUS BUSH,BLAIR, AND OTHER HYPOCRITES
Big surprise for many amurricans—ONE GOD, (SAME GOD) , TWO PROPHETS.
“They worship the same ME !!!!”.
Posted by frog on Mar 7, 2006 at 6:42 PM
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Posted by wileywitch on Mar 7, 2006 at 8:40 PM
Wiley,
Why would you leap to such an unwarrented and outright stupid conclusion that I don’t equate the Israeli apartheid wall with a kind of Ghettoing the likes of which the Jews of Europe experienced for many centuries. I am involved with the Jewish peace movement and as I’ve previously said oppose even the idea of a Jewish state. I have good reason to feel this way. I lived in Israel for over three years (July 1992-September 1995) and saw not only maltreatment of Arabs but the fact that Zionism has entirely failed the Jews in its supposed mission to provide respect, security, prosperity, freedom, and sovereignty. Israel is a highly unequal and oppressive place for Jews where about a third of the Jewish population lives close to the poverty line despite two decades of nearly uninterupted economic growth. Israel is a highly externally dependant country that is universally despised, constantly at war, and repressive of individual liberties across the board. I finally left in disgust two months before the murder of Rabin by a Jewish religious fanatic.
The bombing of Hiroshima doesn’t compare to the Nazi Holocaust though it tragically took over a quarter million Japanese lives if I’m not mistaken. The complete distruction of the Japanese people was not the goal. The right insists it was to get an unconditional Japanese surrender, the left senses that it was to “win the peace” through a nuclear demonstration effect to the Soviet Union. Take your pick. Neither entails the total genocide of ALL Japanese simply because they were Japanese.
Next cases. Modern Genocides Rwanda, Cambodia, etc. The tragic outcomes of years of fomented communal conflict or failed, unnecessary military campaigns by the west leaving crisis brewing in these enormously impoverished and strife torn countries. Horrible beyond belief with the West similarly culpable for ignoring/contributing to the problems. Not the same as the Nazi genocide. Again, the extermination of such an order of magnitude through the deliberate planning and execution of a genocide program which marshalls all the contributing powers of modern science, industry, bureacratic organization, and military efficiency to the sole purpose of exterminating an entire people across an entire continent as the denumont of two thousand years of severe persecution has never has any historic peer and I hope never will!
One final thing. If people could bring themselves to stop resenting the Jews just long enough to see that the reason for holocaust remembrance is to highlight not overshadow other modern genocides much would be accomplished!
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Mar 7, 2006 at 10:06 PM
Wiley,
I have just reread one of your above posts and it does seem you are really nuts—or are you just pathologically thoughtless and insensitive. What about the Holocaust don’t you get!? What do you want to deny?! Do you hate Jews?! Lots of people seem to! Let me tell you the 6 million figure comes from Eichmann himself. What else perplexes you? That Zyclon B didn’t leave a steely blue hue in ALL the gas chambers called Prussian Blue. Many forensic chemists claim it doesn’t necessarily always do so because the compound is heavily sensitive to conditions. Feel better? Believe me if there was a way to plausibly deny what occured respectible people would have done so long ago! The Jews are in fact correct for insisting on the world’s greatest victim status. It seems they are the world’s most CONSISTENT victim. The horrors of the WWII genocide sure didn’t impress many of the Europeans who perpetrated it. Even after the German surrender in 1945 over 1,500 Jews were killed in pogroms in Poland like the one in Kielce that took 42 Jewish lives. The civilized US liberators who refused to bomb the railway lines into Auschwitz weren’t excessively moved by the tragedy either. In 1948, the 80th US congress passed an immigration bill which deliberately wrote the remaining 300,000 Jewish refugees languishing in Allied DP camps out of eligability for US Visas (Truman by executive order had allowed 160,000 in up to that point probably to take the heat off the UK and Palestine for a while). If you want to know why this horrible place called Israel exists its because the Jews were forced to go there when the real preference of most was the Anglo-phone West which closed the door on them.
And so Wiley, we come to the real question of modern anti-semitism! It may interest you to know that the Holocaust is the only modern tragedy that is a continual battle ground between the victims and their detractors over issues of truth and legitimacy. No other genocide has to plead for credibility or for respect for its victims. The Armenian genocide is NEVER actually denied (some crazed Turks notwithstanding) just frequently and unfortunately ignored. It never occurs to “progressives” that one reason that “revisionists” (who are pretty much all active neo-Nazis or highly supportive fellow-travellers) are attempting to make fascism respectible by denying one of its most hideous crimes. If they plug away long enough over time in the current political atmosphere they will succeed and democracy-not the Jews per se-will be the biggest loser. The fascists are politically motivated in what they are doing and they are in this for the long haul. They believe time is on their side and it is if people like you say the things that you do. Even Frog and WTH (who visited Dachau) don’t go to the extremes you do on this issue of apologizing for revisionism. One of the reasons I’m so appalled is that you criticize the anti-Muslim cartoons saying they aren’t necessarily protected speech due to their effect. Those who claim that free speech is absolute are spoiled and over pampered-insensitive to others’ rights in this regard! This same reasoning doesn’t extent to people who disrespect the dignity of those like Ann Frank and millions of others who died in one of the most incredible genocide machines in history. The Nazis spared no resource or effort in their singleminded purpose even when it harmed their military cause. This is truely remarkable. Wiley, perhaps you can explain such pathological hate. It baffles the imagination of many others including myself.
Dear Cabby,
thankyou so much for your personal recollections of israel.
Like wiley’s from the USAF, and mine from the british min of defence chemical/biological experiments on soldiers, they authenticate history.
( not sure if that"s english, I usually think in french !)
The Holocaust Industrialists are certainly not “pleading for credibility and respect for the victims”, they are ramming their version of history down everyone’s throats, and they have unlimited Money and Political Power.
The inevitable consequence of this campaign is that it is often so hysterical ,violent, and unscrupulous that it prompts many people to ask themselves WHY ?
What are they trying to hide ?
My own interest was spurred by the propaganda against Irving, for that very reason..
I’m old enough to make up my own mind about Irving, and detest his fascination for Nazism and his racism in general. Well that’s his particular disease, but it doesn’t automatically mean that absolutely everything he ever wrote was pure invention .
History is full of “what ifs ?”, and I am quite capable of living with a large amount of uncertainty ! No choice, that is life !
What if the world might be a better place with saddam still in place?
What if the USA had long ago stopped financing Israel ?
So, with great respect, I disagree with your stuff about being the Star Victims of history, that Hitler devoted ALL the resources of the Reich to extermination. The real history is always more complicated , often a complete muddle.
Posted by frog on Mar 8, 2006 at 4:31 AM
Frog,
The only problem with your assertions is that they’re wrong. It is NO accident that holocaust revisionism is the sole preserve of neo-nazis and their sympathizers-they are politically motivated and want to mainstream fascism by denying its greatest crime. The ultimate intent is to create and promote a viable fascist movement in the US which they are well on their way to doing.
The so called Holocaust industry (term coined by anti-Zionist Jewish scholar Norman Finkelstein of whom I have great respect) is not trying to push a particular version of history on anyone. Their ongoing effort to collect data, create a large literature, and piece together a puzzle to explain one of the most complex and inexplicable genocides in history is important work and has great political and historic value for all societies. It is widely believed (and I think rightly) that had Hitler not persecuted the Jews but enlisted their aid we might still be fighting the war (or all speaking German!). This may be an exaggeration but it makes the point that this is certainly one case where the logic of the other genocides doesn’t fit.
Holocaust revisionism never has had any respect outside its own circles. They tend to only quote each other or distort independant data and in any case have never published acceptable peer reviewed scholarship or made any inroads into mainstream academia. This is not because they are victims of a politcal campaign against them but because they are racist crackpots with nothing to offer anyone outside the fascist movement. Most non-Jewish scholars, quite free of any pressure, willingly distance themselves.
You assume in a very insinuating and bigoted way that “the Jews” and their “holocaust industry” are hiding something. What do you think it is? Why would Jews make anything up? We were all much better off without persecution in the first place and have gained nothing from the holocaust. Israel is an uneconomic and barely feasible non-proposition for most Jews—constant war, death, boycotts, hate, and what no one actually realizes—grinding poverty for most of the Jews that live there. Spending one and a half months in army reserve duty until you’re 45 years of age isn’t attractive either. Israel was no bargain (except for US geo-strategic interests) and most Jews would be better off in the US.Perhaps this is why more than 25% of all Israelis live outside of Israel on a permanent or semi-permanent basis. There would be more but for family considerations and visa restrictions! In another five years, the Jewish state will be less than half Jewish anyhow. Then who will the conspiracy mongers blame for political pressure to support Israel?
So with regard to your last comment about the history of the holocaust being a muddle like most history I disagree. The “holocaust industry” has clarified quite a bit and it refutes “revisionist” claims with greater force and persuasion. If the Jews aren’t history’s star victims, Frog, can you nominate a more suitable candidate for the position? I’m open to suggestions and so are many others.
Cabby
Why so goddam touchy ? First time I’ve been called insinuating and bigoted, i shall treasure it !
On second thoughts, please please do not answer that question, too much ranting is bad for one, and I esteem you far too highly to wish you any harm. Ypur paragraph above on Israel is brilliant.
NOW, i also have great respect for Norman Finkelstein, and it seems to me that your interpretation of what the “Holocaust Industry” is, as defined by him, is 100% wrong !
$ permitting i shall maybe buy his books one day, so for now i go by extracts, references by others, and the reviews of them at amazon.
Some examples of quotes from him year 2000 book I found here—-
<a href=“http://www.rense.com/general69/short.htm”> FINKELSTEIN QUOTES</b>
Maybe the guy who wrote the article is some sorta nazi, maybe he took them wildly out of context, maybe lots of things. I count on you to put me right where i go wrong, witout shouting.
As for Star Victims, who cares ? no world shortage today, as we speak.
For example, who were the Star Most Evil Colonisers ? My vote would be the Belgians in the Congo, but so what ?
Posted by frog on Mar 8, 2006 at 10:37 AM
QUOTES ??? I HOPE !
All history is revisionism !
For example I grew up believing that the recent nuclear bombs were used to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of US soldiers.
Typical lazy acceptance of propaganda.
For example, maybe Japan could have been blockaded and starved to death ?
Not a question of left/right belief. Just historical research leading wherever it leads, without preconceptions, testing hypotheses.
Posted by frog on Mar 8, 2006 at 10:52 AM
Frog,
Not all history is revisionism. This is a self-conscious appoach. Finkelstein and I don’t see the same holocaust industry. He sees an “industry” emerging just after the 1967 Israeli war of aggression which opportunistically and cynicaally exploited the past suffering of the Jews of Europe for dubious political purposes like the US imperialist agenda. I see the potential for such an industry to expose fascism and genocide both today and historically. Let’s not through the holocaust industry baby out with the imperialist bathwater. By the way Jeff Rense is a kind of Neo-Nazi like Zundel. Beware!
cabdriver, you turned an increasingly interesting conversation which started from an article Islam vs the West into a panegiric of the Jewish people and their martyrhood. You know, the Russians lost many more lives during WWII and nobody felt any gratitude towards them and decided they were next on the list of “evil doers”. So, you see there have been many victims in this world and so what? One of the problems of mankind is its eternal division into groups which feel they are different or entitled to be considered “special”. I, myself, am the product of three different european nationalities with their own particularities, customs or cultures, maybe that’s why I can’t understand the insistence on segregation. Ever since I could read and write, I have been astonished by the fact that instead of looking for common grounds to attempt to make the earth a home for all, different groups try to make us believe they have a private connection with God, that they have been chosen and promised different blessings, consequently leaving the rest of humanity which doesn’t belong to that group as “strangers”. Argentina, my country, received arabs and jews in great numbers. Most of them found a way to make a living and prosper there. The Jew community was the second in the world (after USA’s). I could sense they were never discriminated, on the contrary, they all had the opportunity of developing industries, attend universities and live as a whole prosperous lives. Nevertheless, after several generations they still feel they belong to a close community and have been sending their children to Israel for military duties and sent economical help, something which is seldom done by other communities which consider themselves to be “Argentine citizens with ....... ancestors”. Who is acting in a racist way, in view of this?
Posted by Maria on Mar 8, 2006 at 5:52 PM
Cabby
“Self-conscious approach” is beyond me !
I know i’m stoopid, but struggle on in my fumbling way.
For me all history is about “revising” previous versions, otherwise no point in doing it, eh ? Since “revisionism touches such a vital nerve in some, I am happy to proclaim myself a “revisionist”.
First of all you proclaim your admiration for Finkelstein, then you say “we don’t see the same Holocaust Industry”.
Well, which is what ?
You obviously have NOT read ANY of Finkelstein’s work. If you had, it would be obvious that he is hostile to everything you hold dear.
I had a hypothesis about you being two ‘cabbies’, one being a completely rational critique of Israel today, the other being a very typical hysterical Holocaust promoter. Team- work ?
The second half of your last post is deep rubbish.
Our readers should look at it three times, and then may well bin it.
No idea if jeffrense is a neo-nazi, but he does group reports from Reuters and others in one site for easy reference. You telling me to “beware” is a puerile joke. I was trained by excellent instructors to always be aware, always vigilant, and yes O cabby, you do not quite measure up .
My suspicion is that cabby is just another Shill. His deep reticence on Finkelstein is pretty good proof. First off he says he’s a great guy, then we are somewhere completely different.
Finkelstein is 100% away from cabby. STOP.
Wiley, could you callup our witch- deconstructors from lumens country and beyond ?
Posted by frog on Mar 8, 2006 at 8:49 PM
Frog,
I have read much of Finkelsteins work, heard him publicly share a podium with Ali Abunimeh the founder of “the electronic intifada” (Abunimeh was the better speaker by far that day) and know his views. He teaches political science here in Chicago at De Paul University in a very Chic, gentrified north side community called Lincoln Park! Finkelstein’s problem with the Holocaust Industry is that it is used to promote the wrong message not that it exaggerates the extent of the genocide as neo-Nazis claim. Finkelstein divides Holocaust scholarship into two somewhat neat periods: pre-1967-the year of Israel’s expansionist war of aggression in which the West Bank and Gaza were siezed from Jordan and Egypt, and post 1967. In the early years of Holocaust scholarship the topic was explored in a way as to expose the horrors of Nazism with no hidden agenda. This was when Raul Hilberg was held to be the main scholar in the field and appropriately he positively reviewed Finkelstein’s book with a “blurb” from the review on the back of the dust jacket. In the aftermath of the 1967 war a latent, pent-up torrent of scholarship emerged which seemed to have two purposes. One was to promote sympathy for a policy of uncritical support for the State of Israel. The other was to teach about the Holocaust as an example of inexplicable evil which had confounded all sociological analysis and which was testimony to the truth of the existence of a truely manichean universe of absolute good and evil. This ahistorical, transcendental, and depoliticized account formed a new kind of pro-American pedagogy which aimed to conflate all “evil” into one big enemy to be faced down by the forces of absolute “good”, ie Israel’s new benefactor, The USA. Here Nazism was conflated with communism, terrorism, Arab Nationalism, and any other foe of the US imperialist/Zionist axis. Gone was the historic and deeply politiclzed understanding of the Holocaust that called everyone to account, the Westerners who did business with Hitler while ignoring the genocide against the Jews and others. The same westerners who ignored early fascism hoping it would clear Europe of the left parties and trade unions in time for the west to come in and reconstruct the continent in the interests of an open world economy under US hegemony were similarly exhonorated.
Some of the literature focused on the west’s obstruction of rescue and resistence efforts but it is a marginal part of the project. What Finkelstein objects to in the Holocaust Industry is its Zionist bent and its slanting the moral lessons in support of US imperialist agenda, not that it reports the full extent of the genocide and its unprecedented nature. You confuse the leftist objections with the far-rightist ones. In addition, Finkelstein’s objection to the “case for Jewish exceptionalism” is a refutation of people like Lucy Davidowicz and Daniel Goldhagen who focus intently of the Jewish aspects of the genocide as a purely unique ethno-historic experience and eschew a real sociological critique of the modern state and the dangerous alienation it breeds as do writers like Zygmunt Baumann and Enzo Traverso.
Further, people are entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts. The fact of the Nazi genocide is no more forced on people than is the fact that the earth is round and that it orbits the sun.
With all due respect, you need to do some serious research!
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Mar 8, 2006 at 11:52 PM
Maria,
First of all I didn’t start the conversation about the Jews and the Holocaust. If you followed the postings on this thread you have seen that the discussion somehow turned immediately toward david irving and “holocaust revisionism” in the postings of “the anti-war conservative” and was picked up by “WTH”, “Wileywitch”, and “Frog”. I merely responded way later in the discussion. I find it amazing that you glossed over several earlier disrespectful postings about the subject by others and only later singled out mine as inappropriately “starting” the conversation. I find your attitude distinctly anti-semitic and justly so.
I know Jews from Argentina. Argentina is virulently anti-Jewish. The fact that many Jews have successfully pursued business careers there doesn’t mean there isn’t profound hatred of Jews in that country. Ever hear of Jacobo Timmerman? The Prisoner without a name in a cell without a number? I realize that Argentina has a long history of political repression by many European style fascist dictatorships but the Jews were singled out there for special persecution. The world is quite aware of this fact. After all your country bent over backwards to assist and hide the worst Nazi criminals after the War. Eichmann was captured there. Argentina is full of Nazi sympathizers. I really don’t know how any Jew could live there!
I really don’t blame the Jews in Argentina for helping Israel (even though I don’t approve or think this is the answer). I’d want to act on my frustration with Argentine hatred as well.
By the Way Maria, You need to improve your English.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Mar 9, 2006 at 12:17 AM
Cabdriverinchicago, sorry about my English not being so good as you would expect it to be. I learnt the little I know, as well as French, Italian and Portuguese on my own, the hard way, with no teachers or paid lessons. As for my being antisemitic, it’s too offensive even to reply. I married a jew many years ago and have three children by him, so I have been surrounded by jews for many years, being a victim of their discrimination, not the other way round. He and his family, as well as many friends of theirs arrived in Argentina penniless, with war traumas and found understanding and helpful people who opened their hearts and homes to them. They never fully integrated, looked down on us and made us feel all the time we were not qualilfied to be their pars. Children born from no -jew women are even considered not full members of their community because our wombs apparently are not the same.
Even after that experience I never developed hatred or justify in anyway what the Nazis did to them, but that doesn’t mean I am not surprised at their attitude towards those of us who haven’t had Moses for an ancestor. That’s all. End of my participation.
Posted by Maria on Mar 9, 2006 at 3:18 PM
Cabby
after a close re-reading of your posts, and doing my homework!, i confess to having been taken in to a small extent by the revisionists.
Well, even a small extent is too much.
Whether the way to fight them is with Denial Laws, i’m not sure, still thinking, but my instinct is no.
A serious question, Finkelstein criticises Wiesel severely; What is your view ?
Also a few of your favourite websites would help me ? You can cut and paste, and if you want to be really helpful a very little html, too!
That method would also maybe save you some time, as a quick rebuttal can often be made with a reference to scholarly work ?
The “Holocaust Industry” deserves all the criticism, and might well contribute to a rise in antisemitism. I’m with you for the serious sociological critique.
Posted by frog on Mar 10, 2006 at 6:41 AM
Frog,
I don’t read ANY Holocaust revisionist material but I do read stuff by Finkelstein and others who accept all the valid historic evidence for the facts but object to the self rightous moralism which politically slants the lessons such that they validate US militarism as the defender of civilization against “evil” as determined US leadership. I suggest Zygmunt Baumann’s Modernity and the Holocaust whereby he sociologizes the event mostly in order to make the case AGAINST Jewish exceptionalism. I also recommend Enzo Traverso’s Marxism and Auschwicz and The Origins of Nazi Totalitarianism in which he sees the alienation brought about by modern mass society as the culprit which enabled the suffient disengagement of man from his moral sense to “follow orders” and engage in rote, mindless routines at the behest of officialdom no matter how brutal or repulsive. Also the role of ideology and propaganda wiegh in significantly. Try those two authors in addition to Finkelstein.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Mar 10, 2006 at 10:40 PM
Maria,
I don’t know about your family but I do know about Argentina. The country was known, especially during the “dirty war” of the military against the poltical opposition, as one of the worst bastions of anti-semitism in the entire world. Of the 10,000 peope who disappeared in this horrible period (1976-1983) 1000 to 1,800 were Jews according to various human rights organization estimates. This would place the Jewish number of disappeared at 10-18% of the conservatively estimated total despite the fact that Jews are barely 1% of the entire Argentine population.
In addition human rights reports from the period well document the military’s having singled out the Jewish community as a consequence of having defined them as inherently subversive. Jewish poltical prisoners were tattoed with nazi swastikas during this time as well as being tortured, beaten, and killed in captivity. Raul Alfonsin, the post dictatorship democratically elected leader, made special appeals and investigations within the Argentine Jewish community in order to heal some of their grief.
I don’t suppose the 1994 bombing of the Buenos Aires Jewish Community Center and the 86 deaths and over 200 injuries would have any connection to Argentina’s long history of anti-semitism. This occurred during the successful phase of the Israel/Palestine peace process.
Maria, I’m sorry you dropped out of the discussion but these are things for Argentine Christians to consider when maligning Argentine Jews for their solomn reclusiveness.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Mar 10, 2006 at 10:57 PM
I also became aware of a peculiar characteristic of more Orthodox Jewish culture you seem to be exhibiting of a willingness to argue emotionally in public with much shouting and waving of hands, all the while maintaining strict rules of reason, and then end their argument by shaking hands and making amiable agreement to meet again. I have to say I found this an admirable trait in contrast to my own family’s tendency to act this way in private, but to pretend otherwise to the world while letting inflicted wounds fester. I also find admirable the opposite characteristic among my many Japanese friends who feel that such emotional displays at any time must surely end in deadly violence.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that the Jewish exceptionalism of the
Posted by luminous beauty on Mar 17, 2006 at 1:19 PM
Oops! The first half of my post got lost in the ether. Sorry about that.
Posted by luminous beauty on Mar 17, 2006 at 1:22 PM
LB,
In my hacking experience I’ve never met an Illini. Nor have I met a Potawatami, the major tribal group from this area which by treaty in the 1830s, just before Chicago’s legal incorporation as a municipality, agreed to move west of the Mississippi River after decades of armed conflict with the European settlers. Billy Cauldwell, who was half Potawatami, brokered the agreement between the White settlers and the Native Chief and consequently a major street in Chicago’s posh Edgebrook neighborhood was named for him! Chicago is full of Native American history (Fort Dearborn? Captain William Wells?) and many people are well aware of the violence surrounding the early settlement and building of the City.
Yes, the history of the Native Americans is well known and certainly well documented. I’m no expert but I seem to have read that when Columbus arrived the North American Native population was about 18 Million. Today, it stands at less than half a million. They are overwhemingly impoverished and have a far less than average life expectancy. Theirs was a true Genocide as was the South American Natives whose population was reduced from over 15 million to one and a half million from the arrival of Cortez in the early 16th Century to the mid-17th Century. Forced labor in the silver ore mines plus diseases spread by Europeans killed most of them. In both cases land and riches were saught by a foreign conquerer.
This is one of history’s great crimes but tell me LB, how do you assess a modern crime that takes place in the mid-twentieth century whereby in about half a decade, a planned genocide by a thoroughly modern state takes place merely for its own sake. The Nazis created the SS at great cost and effort to spare no expense and put every resource of the Third Reich at their disposal in order to achieve the total annihilation of a nation (yes the Jews are a nation with their own distinct culture, languages, communities, and history in addition ot religion) despite the fact that the Germans would not benefit but suffer an unnecessary sacrifice. Many people feel that had Hitler embraced the Jews fully as fellow Germans he may have succeeded militarily for some time. Yes, there were other minorities singled out like Gypsies, gays, the mentally ill, political dissidents, and others yet it was the “Jewish Question” that preoccupied the Nazis from the start and whose total annihilation was mandated at Wannsee neat Berlin in January 1942. As a consequence, 6 million Jews-half the European total and one-third the world total-were systematically killed in a manner that was unprecedented. Never has such a killing machine be put into place for such a task. Yes, the Russians suffered enormously in battle with the Nazis. They lost over 20 million. Jews were amoungst those as members of the Red Army and Soviet Citizens quite apart from the 6 million purely civilian deaths. About 500,000 Jews served in the Red Army in WWII and over 90% of the Jews that survived the Holocaust did so well behind Soviet lines as combatants or refugees.
By the way the treatment of Jewish anti-Nazi resisters by their fellow partisans was not always good despite their common goals and desparate struggle against fascism and genocide. One example is the expulsion of the Jewish partisans from the Soviet organized Polish batallions commanded by Wladislaw Anders after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Many were summarily stripped of their weapons and even their boots in some cases and abandoned to die in the freezing Russian winter by their Polish comrades. Who says the Poles aren’t anti-semitic?
Many people who think the Jews just harp on about “their” tragedy don’t understand much about Jewish history or even the Holocaust itself.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Mar 17, 2006 at 4:20 PM
Cabby
Thanks for the ref to Enzo Traverso, who writes in french , here in france, shame on me for not knowing about him.
BUT. I don’t find that Lumens said anything to diminish the very real Jewish Holocaust.
Along with most other posters here, I have a lot of interests and concerns, so am not a world expert on any one. After all each would take a lifetime of study, so I’m always open to advice.
Seems to me I have also seen accounts of Poles saving Jews ? Or was that just revisionist propaganda ?
Your last three paras seem to me to be trying to convince LB that the jewish experience was triply-exceptionally “Exceptional”, which is exactly the position of what LB calls the “Uber-zionists”.
For someone as erudite as yourself I find it surprising that you should waste your energy re-stating the case for the awfulness of the Holocaust.. May we leave General Anders to the historians , please ?
Years ago, I noticed that Israel had certain disturbing similarities to the nazi and colonial past. . The brit Palestine Police tortured, the israeli state tortures, the ‘Palestinian Authority’ tortures.
LB just points out, as does Finkelstein with whom you claim to agree, that the current and increasingly vehement Uber-Zionists are just as bad as the Antisemites who we all abhor.
I see this here in france. We have our equivalents of AIPAC, ADL, and as in the States these guys are more than virulent .
Any criticism of Israel, any support for the Palestinians, gets jumped on from a great height !
I’m still researching the case of Dieudonn
Posted by frog on Mar 17, 2006 at 9:25 PM
Frog,
Enzo Traverso wrote a wonderful short literature review in English published by a UK left publisher called Pluto which you’ve probably heard of in the States. Here they are printed and distributed by Guillford-an academic publisher which also prints Science & Society, the oldest and probably best Marxist Journal of theory and critique started in 1936. I guess this is their 70th anniversary year! Anyhow, Traverso’s book is called, Understanding Nazi Genocide: Marxism after Auschwicz. He makes many of the arguments that I make and is thoroughly against the idea of “Jewish exceptionalism” in any way. Needless to say he opposes Zionism. He makes a brilliant case for sociologizing the issue using the holocaust as an indictment of modernity and the alienation it spreads, monopoly capitalism, the modern state and militarism, and nationalist ideology. It’s an excellent refutation of those who see a purely ethnic dimension to the phenomenon.
There is another writer, a Polish Jew from Great Britain called Zygmunt Baumann. He wrote a book called Modernity and the Holocaust which Traverso discusses at length. It is an incredible book that also sees the Holocaust as a sociological phenomenon entailing supreme alienation particularly in the area of repeatitive, rote work routines the prototype of which is the factory assembly line. In mass society the alienation of workers from the work process is similar to that of the bureacrat from the decision making process. Both are cogs in a wheel and neither appreciates the full extent of his role in a segmented, mass process which produces an outcome that is appropriated by authority for purposes from which he is disconnected and doesn’t really benefit.
Look these up if you can. In Chicago, copies of Baumann’s book is all over the three Powells used bookstore outlets. Must have been assigned by the University of Chicago faculty quite a bit. Anyhow, I am one who definitely believes that one can separate Jewish concerns and history from Zionism. Another couple of books you might like (which FInkelstein also does) is Lenni Brenner’s Z ionism in the Age of the Dictators and a book by an author named Yosef Grodnitzky called In The Shadow of the Holocaust which accuses the Zionists of prolonging and exploiting the suffereing of Jewish displaced persons in DP camps in the US military zone between 1945 and 1948 in which the Jewish Agency for Palestine took over the security functions in the camps with US military complicity forcing unwilling internees who wanted to go west (and could have with the help of US based charities like HIAS and the JJDC) and forced them into military training on European soil to be sent to fight in Palestine with the Haganah to establish the State of Israel. It is an interesting book and is reviewed positively by Rabbi Micheal Lerner.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Mar 17, 2006 at 10:19 PM
“L’homme enfin n’est pas enti
Posted by luminous beauty on Mar 18, 2006 at 9:36 AM
It’s not all that great for the Israelis, either.
Posted by luminous beauty on Mar 18, 2006 at 9:45 AM
Gee, cabdriver;
I’ve always found your comments pretty cogent for the most part.
I’m sorry the first part of my long post was lost as it described my personal experience of anti-semitism. It kind of left the latter part out of context.
Posted by luminous beauty on Mar 19, 2006 at 10:02 AM
LB,
I didn’t mean to be dismissive in my last comments. I actually agreed strongly with what you last said. Also, I didn’t notice gaps in any of your earlier postings or things possibly omitted. Did you say you personally experienced anti-semitism. I’m curious about it. I have also but somewhat mild compared to other experiences people have had. I guess everything is relative.
I veer off from the position taken by much of the left on the Holocaust industry and don’t understand their impulse to deny anti-semitism’s existence. They’ve always believed that Zionism and purely Jewish issues like anti-semitism were unrelated. Now they foolishly behave as if they are fused inextricably. They are allowing the neo-cons to politically define anti-semitism and are thus abdicating their own role entirely to the neo-cons in the debate on a vital issue. The left needs to re-enter the fray and free the issue from neo-con distortion reclaiming it as a progressive concern with great social and political implications. The progressive forces once failed to do this in the past and the consequence was much Zionist collaberation with anti-semites and fascists the likes of which Lenni Brenner describes in his book on Zionism in the Age of the Dictators. This was all done in the name of Jewish political and humanitarian interests and turned out to be a sham. I fear that if we allow Neo-conservative abuse of the issue for political purposes to continue to hold definitive sway without an effective challenge by the left, who continues to respond by denying the existence of anti-semitism, we will be left with no options on this issue and ultimately be politically hamstrung in a quite undesirable way.
In fact the neo-cons are perfectly happy doing business with the real anti-semites like fascists and pro-Western Muslims who deny the Holocaust and continue to believe the Protocals of the Learned Elders of Zion is an authentic document. So long as these regimes are open to US capital flows and military bases their views on the Jews are quite irrelevant to the neo-cons. The issue will be used to slam the left and the very anti-western Muslim fanatics who were just as anti-Jewish when they were fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan receiving lavish US military and economic assistance! Once again the issue is being abused politically. This doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist and doesn’t need to be analyzed and confronted by the left and progressive forces. Anti-semitism is connected to reactionary politics as is all racism. Its sham abuse by neo-cons doesn’t change this fact. The left has much work to do both analytically and politically.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Mar 19, 2006 at 1:32 PM
cabdriver,
I won’t try to reconstruct what was a somewhat painful confessional. I’ll just say that conservative WASPs are very adept at disguising their real thoughts and feelings behind social masks. It may be that it takes one to know one, although Blacks don’t seem as easily fooled as others. Potentially much more troubling and insidious than those who are more blatant.
I’m not sure what you mean about leftists denying the existence of anti-semitism, as so many leftists are Jewish and vice versa. Perhaps it’s the pervasiveness of false consciousness on so many fronts that drives it into the background? It is difficult to get around how anti-semitism among Moslems is used by the likes of Bat Ne’or et al. to fuel Islamophobia. Hatred piled upon hatred without end. Shit. Makes me awful glad I’m a Buddhist.
Posted by luminous beauty on Mar 19, 2006 at 3:17 PM
LB,
Buddism is different than the “Abrahamic” faiths, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. For one thing the Abrahamic faiths are all based on egoistic narratives that are particularist in their basing and reference to places, people, and sacred spaces. It is also ethno-linguistically bound and historically situated. They seem to be the prototypes of all the succeeding “good and evil” narratives that shape the modern world perceptions of their followers!
Many on the left gloss over anti-semitism for fear of being perceived as neo-conservative due to the fact that the neo-cons have hijacked the entire issue in order to defame their enemies. For example, according to certain alternative news sources the Bush Administration has recently accused Venezualan President Hugo Chavez of anti-semitism despite the fact that no real evidence exists! They simply distorted some anti-globalization speech he gave in which he used non-specific biblical imagery to emphasize his thoughts. Real anti-semitism in friendly regimes like Saudi Arabia where Jews cannot legally be issued Visas or where Jewish religious imagery like the Star of David is effectively banned goes on without comment. Guess why!
Many Jews on the left don’t want to appear on the wrong side of the political divide in general. Most books and essays on anti-semitism ARE by conservatives. This is because the left ignores the issue. The right also sees Jews as potential and well heeled allies. This is not unprecedented. Jewish communities are not marginal but highly mainstream with much to offer potential friends. The political right has been portraying Jews as all important and decisively influential for so long they have begun to believe their own stereotypes. Many historians believe that the pro-Zionist Balfour Declaration, made by the British Government in 1917, was based on assumptions that greatly exaggerated the importance and power of the world Jewish community. The modern Jew is always seen as excessively wealthy and powerful.
What is essential is that Jews on the left not act in ways that confirm these wrongful stereotypes. The issue must be confronted in knowledgeable and interesting ways that help the left overcome its trouble in coping with it. Some individuals on the Left are especially good to read. Stephen Bronner whose excellent book about the Protocols, A Rumor about the Jews, historically situates the problem. British Historian, Norman Cohn, wrote Warrent for Genocide on the same topic which is a long contectualized work looking at the period spanning mid-Victorian era until 1945 as “an age of Anti-semitism” in which these ideas flourished taking anti-semitism into the modern age and giving it a thoroughly modern form.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Mar 20, 2006 at 12:35 PM
Cabby
Thanks for the leads. I started with the excellent Lenni Brenner, a few articles and a couple of chapters from Z in the Age of the Dictators.
As for all the “poles being antisemitic” , many, even most, were( vaguely) but many were not , as brenner points out in ch21. Just a detail, but shows the danger of generalisations.
If I had to categorise myself, spose I belong to the broad family of the progressive left, with some affinity to the libertarian right on certain issues. But since my early studies were in sociology, a tendency to wish a plague on all dangerous extremists, study them, and do something !
We anti-War europeans were accused of mindless anti-americanism by your and our neo-cons. The same problem with all anti-Zionists being accused of antisemitism. Or “self-hatred” , where that applies .
We have our french presidential election next year . The same political problem as with you, that many of our politicians of both major parties are barely-disguised likudniks. Naturally this applies most strongly to those of jewish origin.
Our “Socialist” ex-PM Laurent Fabius, not much-loved, was scrupulously even-handed in his recent trip to israel AND palestine, but he seems to be the exception. The arch-contender from the right , Sarkozy, needs some more researching, and I’m sure Doug Ireland will oblige for “In These Times”.
Of course, antisemitism exists, like racism and all forms of phobia, but it’s stupid stuff. The extreme difficulty for the rest of us is that many individuals, particularly those of jewish origin have fallen for the Zionist/Holocaust Industry propaganda, and, wherever they live , are undermining the ‘national interests’ of their own country.
Some of the easily- misled oppressed then fall into anti-semitism, thus playing the game of their real enemy.
must go, trees to cut down.
Well, back from the trees, this post did NOT POST , so will continue.
Posted by frog on Mar 20, 2006 at 2:04 PM
The Chavez ‘antisemitic story’ in your second para figured here in France in Lib
Posted by frog on Mar 20, 2006 at 3:09 PM
Cabbie,
Spot on. I remember a long time ago, D. T. Suzuki was asked what he thought about Western Monotheism. He said something like, “Man against God… God against Man…. God against Nature… Nature against God… Man against Nature… Nature against Man… funny religion!”
Odd thing. The more I practise the more respect and understanding I have for the faith of all the Sons of Abraham.
frog,
Sounds like you’re a bit of an Anarchist. Have you ever seen this site:
The Political Compass
I’m curious what you guys with all your Soc. & PoliSci cred think.
Posted by luminous beauty on Mar 20, 2006 at 4:55 PM
LB
My intention was really to criticize the Abrahamic faiths on the basis that I previously mentioned. I feel that Buddhism, being transcendental in charactor, is far more spiritual since it is not tied to worldly places, specific individuals, and historic periods. This leaves room for arrogance and worldly conflict. Buddhism’s transcendental spirituality and ethical principles are better as a moral and spiritual guide. Buddhism’s intellectual depth seems greater as well. The Buddha had great wisdom. Is it true that he said “There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way?” I wish to know more about Buddhism but need good quality sources for one who knows nothing about it! It seems like a highly sophisticated faith, or is it more of a philosophy?
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Mar 20, 2006 at 11:18 PM
LB
A very educative site !
Like the man who spoke prose all his life, a friend pointed out to me a coupla years ago that I was a “real” anarchist, unlike mutual friends who’ve been self-proclaiming it for years. No wonder i’ve so far been incapable of joining any political party.
We were shown a similar analysis in 1969, first step in first year politics. The FAQ contains an interesting US criticism that “you can’t be libertarian AND leftwing”. Duh.
The history-test in “iconochasms” is brilliant, passing to teacher-daughter and schoolinspector friend. Parts of it , such as what Colin Powell and Codoleezzzza actually said in early 2001, would be useful for political tracts. Make the buggers think !!
tksvm, as we moneylaunderers used to telex in the olden days.
Posted by frog on Mar 21, 2006 at 7:34 AM
waynemadsen rather lurid today
”“”“V has one bit of advice that is already echoing around the Internet: “People shouldn’t be afraid of their government, government should be afraid of their people.”“”“”
now there’s a thought….............
Posted by frog on Mar 21, 2006 at 8:23 AM
cabbie,
I don’t know if Gautama said that, but it is very Buddhistic.
I wish I could say that Buddhism is totally free from ethnic and nationalistic influence, but all the schools are flavored by their cultural and regional origins. I’ve met a few Zen teachers who were outwardly very arrogant and there are always inter- and intra-necine squabbles among Buddhists. It’s the spice of life, the key being moderation. We’re all just people who love our families and our homes. There is basically nothing wrong with that.
Western Buddhism is very recent in historical terms. Still wet behind the ears, so to speak. This is helpful though, as we’re not so mired in ancient tradition. This is not to say ancient traditions are not respected, as that is where our teachers come from. It’s just that they don’t have the deep cultural underpinnings that Asians do. This is both a blessing and a curse, but that in a sense what practice is all about. If there were no obstacles, there would be nothing to be overcome, and nothing to attain.
In the spirit of full disclosure the Teachings state that there are<b> no obstacles. There <b>is nothing to be overcome. There is nothing to attain.
Confusing? Well, I guess. That’s Buddhism for ya.
Posted by luminous beauty on Mar 21, 2006 at 9:32 AM
To turn your question around, I’d say that Buddhism is both a very sophisticated philosophy and a very simple faith.
Simply put, advaita (non-dual) philosophy differs from Western dualism in this way: In classic dualism, the truth of an assertion is defined by A is not B, if B has no qualities that are A. In advaita, reality is both A and B so defined, and niether A nor B particularly. Even more confusing? It is simpler just to say that everything; the self, the physical universe, and the non-physical mentally constructed cosmos are inter-penetrating and inter-connected. It makes sense to me, but it is very difficult to get across.
Faith can be put in two ways. One is to just sit your butt down and start paying quiet attention to the present situation. The other is to have the confidence, determination and vigor to throw oneself completely into a completely unknown situation. They are really the same thing.
But don’t take my word for it. I’m hardly a qualified teacher.
buddhanet is an excellent and comprehensive online resource.
One thing I’d like to add is that one does not have to to become a Buddhist to practice Buddhism. The group I sit with currently is made up of various Christians, Secularists and one atheistic Jewish lady who is a doll. And me.
Posted by luminous beauty on Mar 21, 2006 at 9:33 AM
LB
I always thought that the Zen Buddhist philosophy was based, as you suggest, on the Yin and Yang or in western philosophical lexicon, the dialectic. This notion is that truth is not strictly one thing or another but contains elements of opposite forces that together comprise a dialectical whole. Marxists apply this notion to historical analysis by saying that current historic epochs are a synthesis of past and current phenomenon. History is thus neither evolutionary nor nihilistic but revolutionary in that real change occurs but by synthesizing certain past elements with radically new ones into a wholly new outcomes. Marxist philosophy of knowledge or truth is similarly dialectical in its belief that all things contain their opposite or contradictory tendency. This is what comprises their notion of the Laws of Motion. For example, Capitalism creates poverty as it creates wealth through concentration of capital and proletarianization of former independant producers. Wealth and poverty are thus part of the very same dialectical process and not totally separate opposites each with a separate basis as in most bourgeous thought.
The Yin and Yang of Buddhism is similar in its outlook on truth. Truth is not one thing or another but contains many, often contradictory, elements. This is a refreshing change from western rationalism and logical positivism. It could also explain why so many East Asian political thinkers and leaders often found Marxism a natural way of reasoning despite its distincly western roots.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Mar 21, 2006 at 10:47 AM
cabbie,
You’re correct as far as you go. Zen is very much a syncretism of Buddhism and Taoism. But Zen is also very much about not thinking about shit too much and getting on with it. Not so much about asserting what is true or not, but being genuine, real and honest (kinda like Hip-Hop). What David Bohm (someone who was somewhat a syncretist of Physics, Zen and Marxism) speaks of as dialog rather than dialectic. Zen as a practice is very simple, but very difficult. Thinking can take us to the top of a hundred foot tower, but it can’t get us to jump off of it.
Back when I read the Little Red Book I was struck by how much Mao borrowed from both Kung Fu Tse and Lao Tsu.
frog,
Thanks for the heads up on the Madsen Report. Quite a screed. Nice bit on Bush taking a question from Helen Thomas, too.
Posted by luminous beauty on Mar 21, 2006 at 11:46 AM
LB
As with cabby’s posts will need to read yours several times and then visit the sites. (One site, plus some googles.)
Having translated the buddhistic quote from cabby in the pub tonite, I notice that it applies everywhere. It came out something like—
Pas la peine de chercher la Voie vers le Bonheur,
le Bonheur est la Voie.
Not very many years ago I realised that a smile costs no more than a non-smile, and that a little inspiring of others brings out the best in them, so a galloping introvert evolved into something more enlivening. And I learn so much!
Your 11.33 on faith.— I pay a great deal of attention to what is going on, after many decades of not-noticing, and now at last have no choice but to get involved, throwing myself into the more or less unknown. Certainly my own hangup, but I usually have to be utterly sure of myself, through long study and thought, before I get out on the streets as I did on thursday and saturday. In my case, the intensive study usually precedes the action.
Surely some people do know instinctively what is ‘right’, and then go out and fight, (as the non-intellectual East-enders in London turned out to battle the British nazis in the late 30’s) , sometimes I am one of them, with no doubts or hesitations. Same as the Polish workers who saved some jews.
Other times, I have to go out and research, because fings ain’t so simple.
I have a great respect for you both. Cabby’s marxist analysis and his very serious refs to serious historians helps all of us to see better what is happening to this world. Lumens still has more to share, and I have a lot to learn.
On a lighter note, I trust my cabby will get his arse into gear and DO the history-test from LB. I got more than 50%wrong, and am not a total nong. Lotsof mind-blowing stuff that should blow some History syllabi to Hell.
Posted by frog on Mar 21, 2006 at 5:51 PM
LB
The Helen Thomas bit came up after I posted. Icing on the cake.
His previous posts on V for vendetta CusterBattles, were worth any visit.
.................................................................................................................................
Already, the right-wing, including blogs like Town Hall, Men’s News Daily, and WorldNetDaily, are attacking the film, calling it, among other things, pro-terrorist, pro-homosexual, neo-Marxist, anti-Christian, and left-wing pro-Islamo-fascist (by the way, co-star Natalie Portman is Israeli born). Someone named Ted Baehr, writing for WorldNetDaily, called Britain’s Parliament, blown up by V in the movie, “Western Civilization’s most enduring symbols of democracy and republican government.” That’s funny, last time this editor went to Britain, I distinctly remember the country being a monarchy. But history is not a strong suit among the right-wing. Their hero, George W. Bush, can’t even read a history book although he’s probably listened to the book-on-tape version of Mein Kampf.
The right-wing has plenty to be worried about with the movie V for Vendetta. They will first see the push back in the November elections (and woe be it to them if they once again engage in election fraud). And upon electoral victory will inevitably come the indictments, trials, impeachments, imprisonments, electoral recalls, and, if need be, deportations, or as they called them during the days of Guy Fawkes, banishment.
..................................................................................................................................
Having followed Wayne for some time, and crosschecked his info, he is 99% spot-on. A pro.
A month or two back he received info that he might well be the object of a “contract”. No guarantee, but might well be him.
I do not know if you, cabby and LB, would believe this. Your Uncle Dave from frogland finds it completely believable. He is a more down-to-earth frog- creature , takes time to absorb new abstract ideas, but is a good cross-checker, and has a horrible fund of contract-stories.
This post above started to worry me, as never before had he been so forthright in calling for trials,imprisonments, impeachments, etc. And for Revolution.
Well, I saved his last writings, hoping they were not exactly that.
If I were over there, with you, I know I would fight for fair elections. Not very “intello”, as we say in frog, but one step.
I hope you, cabby, will do the history-test, “iconochasms” on the LB site above—-“politicalcompass”, we all need some laughs.
Posted by frog on Mar 21, 2006 at 6:38 PM
Cabby
didn’t need to ask you twice to do the history- test. That was the beer.
Very seriously, the alternative to assassinating the bastards one by one must be elsewhere. Up to us to find it. Tho i do confess a previous personal temptation otherwise.
Ridicule and humour are the best answer.
I feel that our approaching presidential elections in france are going to be “interesting”.
As with you Americans, we have bugger-all “choice”. But we have a long tradition of the “street” changing policy.
Maybe , at certain times, THEY are more scared of us than WE are of them ?
Not a bad lesson for the rest of the world, there are more of us than of them. Many billions more.
Posted by frog on Mar 21, 2006 at 7:25 PM
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Reader Comments
It is true two completely different views in life have collided head on. But unlike other conflicting views colliding in the past, the Muslims have been responding with hate and violence. Not all Muslims of course, but it seems radical Muslims have taken control of what is said to be a peaceful religion. I am not saying that is a lie, but I have not seen enough results to back that claim up. Although Islam may feel they are under attack, Westerners feel the same pressure due to the radical Muslims who have declared war on the different values they disagree with. The violent reaction over the cartoons and the threats to kill the people responsible for drawing the cartoons is senseless and brutal. The free speech that they want to end is the same freedom that allows them to practice their religion freely in any Western country. I look forward to this cartoon debate shaping the world around us in different and new ways, but at the same time, the two values in conflict must be defended fully. How that is possible is not an easy question to answer, but once Muslims realize the violent reactions are only causing more and more of an image problem, maybe then can they look for different methods to defend what they believe in. I think the West must also take a look at their values, as Western media has failed its largest test, and allowed this terror and violence to control it. But in the end, I personally believe more good will come from this issue than the harm that is being done, as it has served as a wake up call for both values. I posted the cartoons on my website at http://www.obber.com. I don’t believe brushing this under the rug is going to help much. I also put together a small documentary related to this issue, one that is meant to show the reason why such cartoons would be drawn in the first place.
Mr Muwakkil, I believe that your suspicion as to the cartoons being planted is certainly reasonable. Fleming Rose is an ardent Zionist and knew the reaction the publication of such work would cause. Couple that with the fact that he is friendly with Daniel Pipes, extreme Muslim hater, warmonger and racist pig, and it becomes more than a suspicion.
We can also thank the media for doing their usual yellow and jingoistic journalism by covering only the violent demonstrations and giving no coverage to the millions of Muslims who protested this insult to their faith peacefully. And let’s not forget that the much-demonized Hamas also came out strongly opposing the violent reaction and calling for calm. Of course this got zero American press. Surprise.
No, this was an intentional incitement, designed to encourage Europeans to go along with our new crusade. It will backfire, but that has never stopped the neocons before. They are afterall, safe.
Under their rocks.
“It will backfire, but that has never stopped the neocons before. They are afterall, safe.
Under their rocks.”
Unless they go hunting with Dick Cheney
Are we talking about Danish Neocons here or more U.S. bashing?
Along with freedom of speech we used to believe in the idea of “innocent until proven guilty”.
If nothing else, the cartoons demonstrated how incredibly easy it is to incite large numbers of Muslims to violence. Again.
Lets see, just for fun. How many people were killed as a result of the extremely offensive “piss Christ”? Of Farrakhan
Sometimes push really does come to shove. I guess that’s how the demonstrators feel too. However, if it comes to a choice between enforced respect for the gestures of piety others observe or upholding the freedom to express oneself in objectionable ways, I’ll go with the latter. When it comes to the proper role of a journalist (imo), these include informing, stimulating debate, and in op-ed pieces including cartoons, representing an opinion clearly and perhaps provocatively. Unless these standards endure a journalist is nothing but an apologist for a powerful agency.
As we all know, no one campaigns for free expressions that are pleasant. What would be the point? It’s speech that may offend those powerful agencies (including vocal minorities and majorities) that needs protection.
It can be argued that the cartoons were rude, insulting, perhaps sacrilegious. As for whether they’re worthy of rampaging around the city torching diplomatic missions and newsstands, they are not.
I find it ironic that David Irving sits in jail for provoking historical sensibilities while Rose, Pipes, and the rest of the neocon crowd go on their merry ways to even better stir the “clash of civilizations”. Irving may be a fool, but fools should be ridiculed - not jailed. Rose, Pipes, and the neocons are the real danger - war criminals who deserve their day at the Hague.
If it weren’t tragic, this could be a laughing matter. I have heard this song of “Western, Christian World” vs. ... before. Back in the 70s the military junta in Argentina, with Mr. Kissinger’s sponsorship launched a campaign against people with leftist tendencies which ended in the disappearance of 30.000 young people in which the “good guys” were of course Western and Christian and the “bad guys” were pro-Russia (which was considered to be in the Eastern World). The border has now been moved further to the East and instead of atheists or commies the enemies now are islamic, but the principle is the same.
So far, the results of the actions of the self-righteous Christian gentlemen have been painful and unjust to others to say the least and usually based on a pack of lies, duly transmitted by the media at their disposal. In my humble opinion, human beings are very much alike everywhere and I refuse to be a puppet of the neocons, fancy name to identify a greedy minority which seems to never have enough of the cake.
The Murder of Ilan Halimi
A Jewish man is kidnapped in Paris, tortured for 24 days and then dies.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008006
——————————————————————————
So, the cartoon bullshit has resulted in 200deaths worldwide.
Very sad, very painful.
Having reviewed some of the 911 footage, with 2200 deaths, not ALL american, that was sad, painful.
Having thought about the US bombing of Afghanistan; about 2000 men; women, and kiddies, that was sad, painful.
Having seen on TV the shock and awe on baghdad, and the rest of the country, very sad, very y painful. ONLY 20000 dead, in three weeks,what a relief ! ONLY TWENTY THOUSAND DEAD !
I include Iraqi soldiers in that figure, Have you yanks ever thought that those guys hated saddam even more than you, but they h
I’ve been too busy even to read much news lately, but this article caught my eye today:
misinterpretations?
An excerpt:
<i>Bush
Frog, the holocaust revisionism as crime is strange, no? Whatever you can tell me about how this is going over in France would by me be much appreciated.
What I’m wondering now, is why and how these cartoons became a “free speech” issue? When the alleged and bogus films of Palestinians celebrating the 9/11 attacks was shown on television, I don’t remember hearing, well, whether you agree or not, they should have the right to “free speech”. When there is a school shooting, I don’t hear about the right to bear arms. When politicians lie, I don’t hear about the fifth amendment and how noble it is not to challenge the politicians’ lies because of the fifth.
Has someone responded to the cartoons by proposing legislation in the West to ban the publication of offensive cartoons?
Is the freedom or not to do something the only issue when considering what someone says and the impact it has on others?
Did I wake up in a flat universe that can’t think beyond Coke or Pepsi?
“Free speech” doesn’t wash in sexual harassment cases. Radio stations in Rwanda were charged with crimes for inciting hatred and violence between the Tutsis and Hutus (sp?). If journalists actually cracked a book or file once and a while they might find myriad examples of consequences of speech and we can have a more intelligent conversation on a national level and perhaps collectively work toward a more rational state of mind than “you can’t stop me from doing what I want, and if you do you’re a Nazi.”
Wiley,
The writers of the Bill of Rights had no such a wide open interpretation in mind. There is a difference between freedom and license (although a bit hard to define at times).
I have no problem with the
To start off, Islam does not proscribe images of the Prophet. Some branches of it do, but it ain’t in the koran. There are lots of images in museums etc around the world.
In the 1640s Puritan extremists in Cromwell’s army destroyed “graven images” in churches.
It sure is true that Muslims are being demonised in the MSM . And as Maria says, above, this rubbish should be opposed by all of us. Not a question of being a “liberal”, one can be a true conservative and abhor the fostering of hatred. Any hatred.
WILEY
Free Speech is just one of those things we are lucky to have, and don’t appreciate until the FBI come visiting . I take your point that it is largely therapeutic, becos we can holler and scream, be analytical and persuasive, and the Criminals are still ruling !
The problem there is to rack the brain about what to DO to change things.
Your second post asks about France. We had a perfectly adequate 1972 Law against race-hatred and anti-semitism.
In 1990 Gayssot Law against denial and revisionism came along. Voted almost unanimously, which I assume due to the power of the zionist lobby. ( i forget their names, but we along with the rest of europe have the equivalents of AIPAC and ADL.)
Other similar laws followed, in fact legislating as to what was historically TRUE, and not ! A load of dangerous rubbish.
I’ve done some reading, ongoing, and I spose I also am a Holocaust Revisionist ! History and historiography is one of my things, and that’s all about revising .
As AntiWar Conservative says above, better to let fools debate and be ridiculed than to turn them into martyrs. We have both noticed how useful it is to have shills and trolls, they stimulate the discussion!
Prosecuting them leads quickly into a judicial and ethical quagmire..
hello whattheheck
I haven’t visited those sites, but seen film, read a lot. I find most of the Deniers/Revisionists objectionable, to say the least .
In france we have the Front National Party , headed by an ex-torturer of the french army in algeria. Close links in the past with swastika-waving Nazis , which they now conceal. They embrace all sorts of holocaust revisionism, which gives it a bad name.
We have had a number of trials here, one book by israel shamir recently banned. Quite a lot of witch-hunting.
Somehow i missed that Northwestern professor, enlighten me ?
(For other readers—Dachau was the very first KL concentration camp in 1933 - for communists, socialists, tradeunionists, monarchists, and personal enemies. Became a work camp, supplying BMW amongst many others. Typhus arrived in january1945,.)
Well Irving was sentenced to 3years. Zundel was extradited , and also r Rudolf (?)another german from the USA. awaiting trial.in germany.
As I noted in lastpost, I’m a revisionist, too, but far from a Nazi. As far as I’m concerned, it is not important to stick with old wrong statistics. Once one passes a certain number of dead, it becomes astronomy, lightyears of dead. Historians can dispute the details, because we all know that history improves with distance.
Having no political or racist axe to grind, I do find the prevalence of Zionist propaganda interesting. There are debates running about the so-called Holocaust Industry.
Here we are talking about scores of mios of $ invested to promote the Holocaust.
Hmmmmmmmmmmm ?
When I was a kid we learnt History in school, and some of us never stopped . As time went by, my interpretations evolved, as I did.
I believe that all “the terrible times” should be remembered. No shortage in the history of the world.
Legislating what is historically true, frog? Has everyone gone off their nut? This reminds me of Baptists taking a vote at a Convention to determine whether or not Jesus performed miracles. Except that Baptists have a right to do that, and can do so without making it a punishable crime to believe otherwise and to say as much. (Anyone interested in other peoples
Wiley
I can see john taylor gatto coming through on your homeschool project! The whole idea being to get kids interested and then they mostly educate themselves. As we can’t help doing still, just comes naturally
.
I Never thought you were into ‘prosecution’, tho your rant may have given that impression to some.
We have obviously been reading in parallel on the Holo-subject. And you have summed it up very well.
As with the 911debate, we are seeing attempts at steamrollering dissidents.
I saw a clip of Tucker Carlson MSNBC refusing to broadcast a 10second clip of WTC7 for Stephen Jones. And then “You’re going to offend a lot of people if you say it wasn’t the MUSLIMS “.
Yesterday am i heard an interview with a brit jewish lawyer on the Irving Case. Naturally he managed to bring in the spectre of a new nuclear holocaust by the Iranians!
On a lighter note Chirac refused to sign the law obliging teachers to teach the “positive aspects of colonialism” !
<i>On a lighter note Chirac refused to sign the law obliging teachers to teach the
To Frog and Whileywitch, your comments are interesting and show concern about knowing the truth about different historic episodes. I
maria
“Never Know ?” They got pinochet, or NOT ?
Sometimes the truth creeps out, rises up, emerges .
Sometimes it has to be dug up.
I’m with the people out there.
And i expect many of them who know the Mossad far far better than I ,would agree that these cartoons could easily have been one of their Ops.
Nice smokescreen . Israel about to gobble up another 20 %of the bantustans, and cut off food supplies too.
Good article on “”“FLEMMING ROSE”“” By James Petras on the web.
PETRAS /EASTMAN ON SO-CALLED FLEMMING ROSE
Maria, I hear what you’re saying and if I’m reading you correctly you’re feeling a little sad and frustrated? I know I am, though I have a slightly different take—-I believe we are all sexist, racist, this-ist, that-ist, all of our lives. So much of what we think isn’t even conscious and we would reject it completely and sincerely if someone could pull it out of our brain and show it to us. But there are all kinds of messages in our unconcsious mind that we aren’t aware of and that we often act on unwittingly. It doesn’t mean that we are all in the habit of harboring extreme hatred and nursing grudges.
This is especially true for us who live in a media saturated information age. We simply cannot critically examine and reflect on every idea and impression that enters our spongey brains. It is often enough to be conscious of various perspectives and to keep the ability to keep the mind open and receptive when new information becomes available or a challenge presents itself.
We will never know the “absolute truth” (in this life anyway), but we don’t need to—-it would probably make us crazy anyway. Like the Pinochet example frog mentioned, enough truth comes out to take people to task for atrocities now and then. If Pol Pot were alive, he’d be in court right now. One of his generals went on trial recently. It’s been a long time since their psychpathology ruled their countryside, but they were eventually stopped (though the U.S. still, inexplicably supported Pol Pot after his killing fields were made public) and are being brought to justice. The wheels turn slowly, but they often turn.
Truth and reconciliation happens, too, and it is deep and meaningful for all participants—-perpetrators, victims, witnesses, and combinations of the above.
Not to be too contrarian, I see your point, but I would also like to point out that none of this is new to the world. Humans have always fought, and hated, and oppressed, and enslaved, and thought their group superior to others if not the only true humans deserving of respect.
We do need to keep an eye on the motes in our eyes, but I would caution against idealism and absolutism as well. Utopianism is as responsible for mass murder as bigotry.
There is a whole lot of room for improvement in our world. The little improvements count. People can and do change. Progress somehow happens now and then.
Wiley,
I for one have often been very sad, and almost overwhelmed, by the injustice and cruelty around in this world.
When I was a young soldier my government conducted chemical warfare experiments on other,unwitting soldiers. I remember those ‘opportunities’ to get a few
Maria
“The fact that we don
Frog,
What is Pol Pot instructing children to murder their parents by suffocating them with plastic bags to save ammunition? What is people being “disappeared” and tortured to death and just about everyone else living in constant fear of being “disappeared” and worrying about the fates of their family members and friends? What is having your wife and children kidnapped and raped in front of you?
Enough with “the holocaust” being the epitome! It was horrible. Atrocities are horrible! All atrocities are horrible!
I met a German man who refused to put a Heil Hitler doormat out instead of the Gruss Gott that was typical of Bavarians and he was sent to the Russian Front. He was captured and spent 7 years in a Siberian salt mine. He was lucky he didn’t end up in the siege of Leningrad. Did you know that only one person who survived that seige lived past the age of 40? It was that stressfull.
And now we carpet bomb cities, litter them with mines, and poison them with depleted uranium.
The number of ways that human can make each other unbelievably miserable and desperate, and mangled, and dead are infinite. I see no reason to make the suffering of Jews in the holocaust sancrosanct and above questioning. Let cranks question too, so what? I don’t know about you but I don’t think I owe anyone anything for the suffering done in WW II.
The entire human race can now be extinguished in twenty minutes. Six billion. Never again.
Wiley,
Whoa! My comments re: the Nazi holocaust were not meant to diminish any other ones in any way. Of course they are all terrible. It is the German efficiency and organization which I was pointing out. So many seeing it at close range day after day and continuing to do it.
Mankind has been “improving” extermination methods since rock gave way to club. Wars are not rational solutions and all countries eventually disregard civilian enemy casualties if they get in a bind.
Fear is a great threat to ethics
I wasn’t ranting at you WTH. This deal with throwing holocause “deniers” in prison has got my jockey shorts in a wad.
I noticed after I posted and re-read other posts that you were making an economic point, but my mind couldn’t go there at that time.
It can’t go there now. I have lots of work to do. But, if you want to expand on the economic point, I’d be interested in reading it later. Something in your post got me thinking about conscription and draft as slave labor.
holocausT
Wiley, thank you for your concern. I am neither sad nor frustrated, maybe simply tired. Somehow, I have made an effort to understand man
Well I
typo correction for clarification: <i>If you die in battle you
Talk about Clashing Sensibilities…
Has the academic world gone crazy? This equates to hiring Rudolph Hess during WW2 while closing West Point!
—————————————————————-
JOHN FUND ON THE TRAIL
Taliban Man at Yale
University officials are embarrassed—but not embarrassed enough.
Monday, March 6, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST
Are there no limits to how arrogant and out-of-touch America’s Ivy League schools can get? Last week it emerged that Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, former deputy foreign secretary of the Taliban, is now a student at Yale while at the same time the school continues to block ROTC training from its campus and argues for the right of its law school to exclude military recruiters.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110008051
It’s probably just another crony appointment, WTH. A member of the Taliban attending Yale isn’t as offensive to me as people who have no earthly idea what they are doing being appointed to FEMA, the EPA, and the CPA. If he starts slapping women around for not wearing vales, or otherwise harrassing them he should be expelled.
It is a terrible contradiction, though isn’t it? Someone in this administration needs to figure out what a terrorist and terrorist sympathizer is. This guy is probably NOT on the no-fly list, and Kennedy can’t seem to have himself removed from it, so clearly, there is much rotten in Denmark these days and reason does not have the upper hand.
Wiley (and maybe some others),
It is always offensive when people denigrate the Nazi and general European Holocaust which killed six million Jews (one third the world population and half the European population of Jews by 1939 census count). Even proportionately speaking nothing has ever matched this in history! To compare Nazi extermination of Jews with Israeli treatment of Palestinians is beyond ridiculous. In 1948, there were 1.25 million Palestinian Arabs. Today there are almost 9 million, 3 million of which live in Palestine and another million in pre-1967 Israel—a strange genocide indeed!!! Israeli Sociologist, Baruch Kimmerling calls Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians “politicide” which is far more apt than genocide and describes the process of eliminating a group as a viable and distinct political entity. This is also horrible but far different and has aspects which are condemned as genocidal in nature by the UN Charter and Convention on Genocide. I oppose the Zionist occupation of Palestine as much as Kimmerling or anyone else for that matter and have often wondered at the necessity of a Jewish State at all ( which exists only because of Christian persecution of Jews both during and before WWII).
Wiley, I think your figures on WWII deaths are inflated. I’ve seen 50 million on the light side and about 80 million on the high side. No matter. The real thing that makes the genocide against the Jews unique and so frightening is neither the order of magnitude, nor the proportion killed, nor even the stoney silence it evoked from a disinterested world (which is pretty typical). The real unique thing about it was that it was the first (and only) totally planned genocide by a highly technologically advanced and modern state that was to be carried out for its own sake (not to obtain land, wealth, property, or access to resources) by virtue of pure racial obsession and hate EVEN WHEN DOING SO ENDANGERED THE OVERALL MILITARY OBJECTIVES OF THE THIRD REICH as it did on the eastern front according to many of Hitler’s best generals like Hans Guderian and others! The creation of complex and integrated systems of railways, gas chambers, crematoria, and other genocide infrastructe has no precident in history. The mobilization of modern science in the service of such a macabre project is also unprecedented. The vast sociology of the holocaust focuses not on the human side of the tragedy but on the implications it has for the capacity of the modern state to create sufficient alienation both moral and otherwise to carry out such a deed with little or no resistence! Yes, many people were carted off to the “east” never to be seen again but it is widely agreed that it was really all about exterminating the Jews as a whole as per the minutes of the Jan, 1942 Wannesee meeting of Hitler and the leading SS officials. Many genocides-no matter how long in coming-are spontaneous—this was the ultimate in modern state planning.
Wiley, I’ll leave you with this thought. There is a reason the Nazi genocide against the Jews had such impact and is still regarded today with such horror—and it has little to do with the Jews themselves!
WTH
At 22, this guy was the taliban’s ARI FLEISCHER .
Frog,
I miss Ari. This Scott Whats-his-face is just NO FUN. Too stern.
Honestly, I have never been able to understand how anyone can stand the job for any of the presidents I can remember.
The best press conference I ever watched was Eisenhower cofronted by a little old gal who had been there forever (can’t think of her name).
It went something like this…
Reporter, “Mr. President the milk industry workers have indicated that they intend to go on strike unless their demands are met. The Dairy Management Association has refused to even meet with them. Mr, President would you care to give us an idea of what you intend to do about this problem?”
Ike, “No. Next please.”
You can’t look at the wall, cabdriver and see the Warsaw Ghetto? Why not? Why is that unthinkable?
Do you think that the mechanical carpet bombing of cities or the dropping of atomic bombs is any less horrifying or mechanical than the Nazi holocaust? Do you think the horror in Cambodia that killed a third of the Cambodian population was not as evil as the Nazi holocaust?
I think all murder and genocide, and politicide (as if that leaves people less dead), and omnicide is wrong. World War II ended over 50 years ago. How many “holocausts” have there been since? Why is it that the suffering of all the victims of genocide since doesn’t merit the outrage of The Holocaust?
You can believe that the exterminating of Jews in Europe trumps all other mass murders in the history of mankind, if you like. I don’t. I think the most important mass murders in the history of mankind are the ones that are happening NOW. Forgive me if that’s a politically incorrect conclusion that doesn’t take into account the proper structural analysis of history.
Cabbie,
Herzl , Jabotinsky and Co had good reasons for inventing Zionism well before Hitler.
Hitler did not build the european railway system.
I regard all massacres , “politicides”, as equally evil. I disagree that the Holocaust is unique, and should take pre-eminence over every other horror in history and the present day.
Look at what the Holocaust industry has done to improve the World ! Lots of disneyland museums, wars, and more wars, and the Zionist tail wags the USA dog.
Anyone who disagrees with israel’s expansionist and warmongering policies is condemned as an antisemite , even hounded by ADL/JDL etc.
And highly unlikely to get elected to anything in the USA ?
Well, the USA has declared war on half the world, at least, “”” with little or no resistance”“” from Americans, because those that are not with you are supposed to be against you !
Sociologically the USA is approaching where Germany was in the mid Thirties.
Wiley, Frog, Cabbie:
It seems a weird topic to be trying to quantify. With any other topic it would be good stand-up material.
What would have been the outcome of WW2 if Japan
WTH
Your joke about the standup comicry is much closer to the truth than you thought ?
A courtcase here in frogland was recently dropped—some pressure group was attacking a serious historian for “denying” the genocidal nature of the Atlantic Slave Trade !
Robert Fisk tells us that after 30years reporting from the Mideast, he has NEVER seen it in such a dangerous state as today.
Talking about “context” , he doesn’t know the whole story about who is directing the deathsquads in Iraq, but damn all to do with “islamofascists”, I am sure. Those guys are mostly useful idiots.
If even the Israeli boss of Shabak (internal security) can now let slip that the world was a safer place with Saddam, he is only saying what many are coming to recognise. Yuval Diskin is his name.
As for Kosovo, Ossama and friends’ troops were recruited to fight there on the side of the KLA by “our” secret services. A staged “massacre” and time for another lovely war. Its now a major crime and drug centre, and the serbs are being ethnically cleansed.
You see how closely the secret services and the “terrorists” are connected ?
Whatever you call it, the war on terror is not just badly packaged. The whole concept is bogus, just a pretext for increasing the power of the Executive, making giga$$$$ , and keeping the population of the planet scared and divided.
“IRAN” is just a propaganda game, hyping up the old bullshit to see how far they can go to make you really scared.
As for kamikazes, not needed. Suitcase nukes have existed for years,such as the old 155mm shell from my youth.
MINI NUKE
Plenty of those around in the ex USSR? Valerie Plame and other CIA were engaged in combating that sort of nuclear proliferation. Routine serious police work, not sabre-rattling, not propaganda campaigns to scare the shit out of us all.
.
Frog,
I don’t know if the world was safer WITH Saddam or, if true, for how long. But it was more stable and less noisey back then. I think 90% of what passes for news is just noise
WTH
Sorting the info is the “unsettling” duty of any citizen who would hope to be worthy of the name.
It doesn’t come for free, takes time and effort, but gets easier, and more fun, as time goes by and one starts to recognise patterns.
Here’s for some history.
In 1972 Nixon back from Moscow crazily believed that swords could be turned into ploughshares.
Nightmare news for the arms manufacturers.
Luckily two White Knights were at hand when Ford succeeded Nixon. DAH DI DAH ! ZORROS TO THE RESCUE .!!
““Rumsfeld and Cheney began a concerted effort - first secretly and then openly - to undermine Nixon’s treaty for peace and to rebuild the state of FEAR.
They did it by claiming that the Soviets had a new secret weapon of mass destruction that the president didn’t know about, that the CIA didn’t know about, that nobody knew about but them. It was a nuclear submarine technology that was undetectable by current American technology. And, they said, because of this and related-undetectable-technology weapons, the US must redirect billions of dollars away from domestic programs and instead give the money to defense contractors for whom these two men would one day work or have businesses relationships with.
The CIA strongly disagreed, calling Rumsfeld’s position a “complete fiction” and pointing out that the Soviet Union was disintegrating from within, could barely afford to feed their own people, and would collapse within a decade or two if simply left alone.””
MORE WAR !! MORE $$
Cynthia McKinney tried to get this article by Thom Hartmann into the Congressional Record. Don’t know if succeeded !
So, whenEVER, EVER, EVER, someone tries to terrify you with “terrorism”, “Musim Islamofascistic Clashes of Civilisations”, take a good deep breath.
STOP and THINK.
WHY DO THOSE MEGALOMANIACAL MONEY-GRUBBING MOTHERS WANT ME TO BEHAVE LIKE A HEADLESS CHICKEN ?
<a href=“http://www.freedomtofascism.com/”>MUSSOLINI-TIME A’COMING ?>/a>
Well, fascism sounds softer than nazism, same difference.
<a href=“http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0213-28.htm”>
““The archangel reported that the Almighty has become increasingly irritated with the vogue for politicians to claim that He is behind their policies - especially if these involve killing large numbers of humans.
According to Gabriel, God spake these words: “That George W Bush once had the nerve to say: ‘God told me to go end the tyranny in Iraq, and I did.’ Well, let me tell you I did no such thing! If I’d wanted to get rid of Saddam Hussein, I could have given him pneumonia.
I didn’t need the president of the United States to send in hundreds of heavy bombers and thousands of missiles to destroy Iraq - even though I appreciate that Halliburton needed to fill its order books.”
“How do Bush and Blair think it makes me look to all those parents who have lost sons and daughters in this grubby business? Don’t they know that the Muslims they’re taking out worship the same Me that they do?
It’s a public relations disaster that ought to set Christianity back hundreds of years. Though knowing the fundamentalists, it’ll probably have the reverse effect”“
THE MONTY PYTHON TAKE ON GOD VERSUS BUSH,BLAIR, AND OTHER HYPOCRITES
Big surprise for many amurricans—ONE GOD, (SAME GOD) , TWO PROPHETS.
“They worship the same ME !!!!”.
<i>
Wiley,
Why would you leap to such an unwarrented and outright stupid conclusion that I don’t equate the Israeli apartheid wall with a kind of Ghettoing the likes of which the Jews of Europe experienced for many centuries. I am involved with the Jewish peace movement and as I’ve previously said oppose even the idea of a Jewish state. I have good reason to feel this way. I lived in Israel for over three years (July 1992-September 1995) and saw not only maltreatment of Arabs but the fact that Zionism has entirely failed the Jews in its supposed mission to provide respect, security, prosperity, freedom, and sovereignty. Israel is a highly unequal and oppressive place for Jews where about a third of the Jewish population lives close to the poverty line despite two decades of nearly uninterupted economic growth. Israel is a highly externally dependant country that is universally despised, constantly at war, and repressive of individual liberties across the board. I finally left in disgust two months before the murder of Rabin by a Jewish religious fanatic.
The bombing of Hiroshima doesn’t compare to the Nazi Holocaust though it tragically took over a quarter million Japanese lives if I’m not mistaken. The complete distruction of the Japanese people was not the goal. The right insists it was to get an unconditional Japanese surrender, the left senses that it was to “win the peace” through a nuclear demonstration effect to the Soviet Union. Take your pick. Neither entails the total genocide of ALL Japanese simply because they were Japanese.
Next cases. Modern Genocides Rwanda, Cambodia, etc. The tragic outcomes of years of fomented communal conflict or failed, unnecessary military campaigns by the west leaving crisis brewing in these enormously impoverished and strife torn countries. Horrible beyond belief with the West similarly culpable for ignoring/contributing to the problems. Not the same as the Nazi genocide. Again, the extermination of such an order of magnitude through the deliberate planning and execution of a genocide program which marshalls all the contributing powers of modern science, industry, bureacratic organization, and military efficiency to the sole purpose of exterminating an entire people across an entire continent as the denumont of two thousand years of severe persecution has never has any historic peer and I hope never will!
One final thing. If people could bring themselves to stop resenting the Jews just long enough to see that the reason for holocaust remembrance is to highlight not overshadow other modern genocides much would be accomplished!
Wiley,
I have just reread one of your above posts and it does seem you are really nuts—or are you just pathologically thoughtless and insensitive. What about the Holocaust don’t you get!? What do you want to deny?! Do you hate Jews?! Lots of people seem to! Let me tell you the 6 million figure comes from Eichmann himself. What else perplexes you? That Zyclon B didn’t leave a steely blue hue in ALL the gas chambers called Prussian Blue. Many forensic chemists claim it doesn’t necessarily always do so because the compound is heavily sensitive to conditions. Feel better? Believe me if there was a way to plausibly deny what occured respectible people would have done so long ago! The Jews are in fact correct for insisting on the world’s greatest victim status. It seems they are the world’s most CONSISTENT victim. The horrors of the WWII genocide sure didn’t impress many of the Europeans who perpetrated it. Even after the German surrender in 1945 over 1,500 Jews were killed in pogroms in Poland like the one in Kielce that took 42 Jewish lives. The civilized US liberators who refused to bomb the railway lines into Auschwitz weren’t excessively moved by the tragedy either. In 1948, the 80th US congress passed an immigration bill which deliberately wrote the remaining 300,000 Jewish refugees languishing in Allied DP camps out of eligability for US Visas (Truman by executive order had allowed 160,000 in up to that point probably to take the heat off the UK and Palestine for a while). If you want to know why this horrible place called Israel exists its because the Jews were forced to go there when the real preference of most was the Anglo-phone West which closed the door on them.
And so Wiley, we come to the real question of modern anti-semitism! It may interest you to know that the Holocaust is the only modern tragedy that is a continual battle ground between the victims and their detractors over issues of truth and legitimacy. No other genocide has to plead for credibility or for respect for its victims. The Armenian genocide is NEVER actually denied (some crazed Turks notwithstanding) just frequently and unfortunately ignored. It never occurs to “progressives” that one reason that “revisionists” (who are pretty much all active neo-Nazis or highly supportive fellow-travellers) are attempting to make fascism respectible by denying one of its most hideous crimes. If they plug away long enough over time in the current political atmosphere they will succeed and democracy-not the Jews per se-will be the biggest loser. The fascists are politically motivated in what they are doing and they are in this for the long haul. They believe time is on their side and it is if people like you say the things that you do. Even Frog and WTH (who visited Dachau) don’t go to the extremes you do on this issue of apologizing for revisionism. One of the reasons I’m so appalled is that you criticize the anti-Muslim cartoons saying they aren’t necessarily protected speech due to their effect. Those who claim that free speech is absolute are spoiled and over pampered-insensitive to others’ rights in this regard! This same reasoning doesn’t extent to people who disrespect the dignity of those like Ann Frank and millions of others who died in one of the most incredible genocide machines in history. The Nazis spared no resource or effort in their singleminded purpose even when it harmed their military cause. This is truely remarkable. Wiley, perhaps you can explain such pathological hate. It baffles the imagination of many others including myself.
Dear Cabby,
thankyou so much for your personal recollections of israel.
Like wiley’s from the USAF, and mine from the british min of defence chemical/biological experiments on soldiers, they authenticate history.
( not sure if that"s english, I usually think in french !)
The Holocaust Industrialists are certainly not “pleading for credibility and respect for the victims”, they are ramming their version of history down everyone’s throats, and they have unlimited Money and Political Power.
The inevitable consequence of this campaign is that it is often so hysterical ,violent, and unscrupulous that it prompts many people to ask themselves WHY ?
What are they trying to hide ?
My own interest was spurred by the propaganda against Irving, for that very reason..
I’m old enough to make up my own mind about Irving, and detest his fascination for Nazism and his racism in general. Well that’s his particular disease, but it doesn’t automatically mean that absolutely everything he ever wrote was pure invention .
History is full of “what ifs ?”, and I am quite capable of living with a large amount of uncertainty ! No choice, that is life !
What if the world might be a better place with saddam still in place?
What if the USA had long ago stopped financing Israel ?
So, with great respect, I disagree with your stuff about being the Star Victims of history, that Hitler devoted ALL the resources of the Reich to extermination. The real history is always more complicated , often a complete muddle.
Frog,
The only problem with your assertions is that they’re wrong. It is NO accident that holocaust revisionism is the sole preserve of neo-nazis and their sympathizers-they are politically motivated and want to mainstream fascism by denying its greatest crime. The ultimate intent is to create and promote a viable fascist movement in the US which they are well on their way to doing.
The so called Holocaust industry (term coined by anti-Zionist Jewish scholar Norman Finkelstein of whom I have great respect) is not trying to push a particular version of history on anyone. Their ongoing effort to collect data, create a large literature, and piece together a puzzle to explain one of the most complex and inexplicable genocides in history is important work and has great political and historic value for all societies. It is widely believed (and I think rightly) that had Hitler not persecuted the Jews but enlisted their aid we might still be fighting the war (or all speaking German!). This may be an exaggeration but it makes the point that this is certainly one case where the logic of the other genocides doesn’t fit.
Holocaust revisionism never has had any respect outside its own circles. They tend to only quote each other or distort independant data and in any case have never published acceptable peer reviewed scholarship or made any inroads into mainstream academia. This is not because they are victims of a politcal campaign against them but because they are racist crackpots with nothing to offer anyone outside the fascist movement. Most non-Jewish scholars, quite free of any pressure, willingly distance themselves.
You assume in a very insinuating and bigoted way that “the Jews” and their “holocaust industry” are hiding something. What do you think it is? Why would Jews make anything up? We were all much better off without persecution in the first place and have gained nothing from the holocaust. Israel is an uneconomic and barely feasible non-proposition for most Jews—constant war, death, boycotts, hate, and what no one actually realizes—grinding poverty for most of the Jews that live there. Spending one and a half months in army reserve duty until you’re 45 years of age isn’t attractive either. Israel was no bargain (except for US geo-strategic interests) and most Jews would be better off in the US.Perhaps this is why more than 25% of all Israelis live outside of Israel on a permanent or semi-permanent basis. There would be more but for family considerations and visa restrictions! In another five years, the Jewish state will be less than half Jewish anyhow. Then who will the conspiracy mongers blame for political pressure to support Israel?
So with regard to your last comment about the history of the holocaust being a muddle like most history I disagree. The “holocaust industry” has clarified quite a bit and it refutes “revisionist” claims with greater force and persuasion. If the Jews aren’t history’s star victims, Frog, can you nominate a more suitable candidate for the position? I’m open to suggestions and so are many others.
Cabby
Why so goddam touchy ? First time I’ve been called insinuating and bigoted, i shall treasure it !
On second thoughts, please please do not answer that question, too much ranting is bad for one, and I esteem you far too highly to wish you any harm. Ypur paragraph above on Israel is brilliant.
NOW, i also have great respect for Norman Finkelstein, and it seems to me that your interpretation of what the “Holocaust Industry” is, as defined by him, is 100% wrong !
$ permitting i shall maybe buy his books one day, so for now i go by extracts, references by others, and the reviews of them at amazon.
Some examples of quotes from him year 2000 book I found here—-
<a href=“http://www.rense.com/general69/short.htm”> FINKELSTEIN QUOTES</b>
Maybe the guy who wrote the article is some sorta nazi, maybe he took them wildly out of context, maybe lots of things. I count on you to put me right where i go wrong, witout shouting.
As for Star Victims, who cares ? no world shortage today, as we speak.
For example, who were the Star Most Evil Colonisers ? My vote would be the Belgians in the Congo, but so what ?
QUOTES ??? I HOPE !
All history is revisionism !
For example I grew up believing that the recent nuclear bombs were used to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of US soldiers.
Typical lazy acceptance of propaganda.
For example, maybe Japan could have been blockaded and starved to death ?
Not a question of left/right belief. Just historical research leading wherever it leads, without preconceptions, testing hypotheses.
Frog,
Not all history is revisionism. This is a self-conscious appoach. Finkelstein and I don’t see the same holocaust industry. He sees an “industry” emerging just after the 1967 Israeli war of aggression which opportunistically and cynicaally exploited the past suffering of the Jews of Europe for dubious political purposes like the US imperialist agenda. I see the potential for such an industry to expose fascism and genocide both today and historically. Let’s not through the holocaust industry baby out with the imperialist bathwater. By the way Jeff Rense is a kind of Neo-Nazi like Zundel. Beware!
cabdriver, you turned an increasingly interesting conversation which started from an article Islam vs the West into a panegiric of the Jewish people and their martyrhood. You know, the Russians lost many more lives during WWII and nobody felt any gratitude towards them and decided they were next on the list of “evil doers”. So, you see there have been many victims in this world and so what? One of the problems of mankind is its eternal division into groups which feel they are different or entitled to be considered “special”. I, myself, am the product of three different european nationalities with their own particularities, customs or cultures, maybe that’s why I can’t understand the insistence on segregation. Ever since I could read and write, I have been astonished by the fact that instead of looking for common grounds to attempt to make the earth a home for all, different groups try to make us believe they have a private connection with God, that they have been chosen and promised different blessings, consequently leaving the rest of humanity which doesn’t belong to that group as “strangers”. Argentina, my country, received arabs and jews in great numbers. Most of them found a way to make a living and prosper there. The Jew community was the second in the world (after USA’s). I could sense they were never discriminated, on the contrary, they all had the opportunity of developing industries, attend universities and live as a whole prosperous lives. Nevertheless, after several generations they still feel they belong to a close community and have been sending their children to Israel for military duties and sent economical help, something which is seldom done by other communities which consider themselves to be “Argentine citizens with ....... ancestors”. Who is acting in a racist way, in view of this?
Cabby
“Self-conscious approach” is beyond me !
I know i’m stoopid, but struggle on in my fumbling way.
For me all history is about “revising” previous versions, otherwise no point in doing it, eh ? Since “revisionism touches such a vital nerve in some, I am happy to proclaim myself a “revisionist”.
First of all you proclaim your admiration for Finkelstein, then you say “we don’t see the same Holocaust Industry”.
Well, which is what ?
You obviously have NOT read ANY of Finkelstein’s work. If you had, it would be obvious that he is hostile to everything you hold dear.
I had a hypothesis about you being two ‘cabbies’, one being a completely rational critique of Israel today, the other being a very typical hysterical Holocaust promoter. Team- work ?
The second half of your last post is deep rubbish.
Our readers should look at it three times, and then may well bin it.
No idea if jeffrense is a neo-nazi, but he does group reports from Reuters and others in one site for easy reference. You telling me to “beware” is a puerile joke. I was trained by excellent instructors to always be aware, always vigilant, and yes O cabby, you do not quite measure up .
My suspicion is that cabby is just another Shill. His deep reticence on Finkelstein is pretty good proof. First off he says he’s a great guy, then we are somewhere completely different.
Finkelstein is 100% away from cabby. STOP.
Wiley, could you callup our witch- deconstructors from lumens country and beyond ?
Frog,
I have read much of Finkelsteins work, heard him publicly share a podium with Ali Abunimeh the founder of “the electronic intifada” (Abunimeh was the better speaker by far that day) and know his views. He teaches political science here in Chicago at De Paul University in a very Chic, gentrified north side community called Lincoln Park! Finkelstein’s problem with the Holocaust Industry is that it is used to promote the wrong message not that it exaggerates the extent of the genocide as neo-Nazis claim. Finkelstein divides Holocaust scholarship into two somewhat neat periods: pre-1967-the year of Israel’s expansionist war of aggression in which the West Bank and Gaza were siezed from Jordan and Egypt, and post 1967. In the early years of Holocaust scholarship the topic was explored in a way as to expose the horrors of Nazism with no hidden agenda. This was when Raul Hilberg was held to be the main scholar in the field and appropriately he positively reviewed Finkelstein’s book with a “blurb” from the review on the back of the dust jacket. In the aftermath of the 1967 war a latent, pent-up torrent of scholarship emerged which seemed to have two purposes. One was to promote sympathy for a policy of uncritical support for the State of Israel. The other was to teach about the Holocaust as an example of inexplicable evil which had confounded all sociological analysis and which was testimony to the truth of the existence of a truely manichean universe of absolute good and evil. This ahistorical, transcendental, and depoliticized account formed a new kind of pro-American pedagogy which aimed to conflate all “evil” into one big enemy to be faced down by the forces of absolute “good”, ie Israel’s new benefactor, The USA. Here Nazism was conflated with communism, terrorism, Arab Nationalism, and any other foe of the US imperialist/Zionist axis. Gone was the historic and deeply politiclzed understanding of the Holocaust that called everyone to account, the Westerners who did business with Hitler while ignoring the genocide against the Jews and others. The same westerners who ignored early fascism hoping it would clear Europe of the left parties and trade unions in time for the west to come in and reconstruct the continent in the interests of an open world economy under US hegemony were similarly exhonorated.
Some of the literature focused on the west’s obstruction of rescue and resistence efforts but it is a marginal part of the project. What Finkelstein objects to in the Holocaust Industry is its Zionist bent and its slanting the moral lessons in support of US imperialist agenda, not that it reports the full extent of the genocide and its unprecedented nature. You confuse the leftist objections with the far-rightist ones. In addition, Finkelstein’s objection to the “case for Jewish exceptionalism” is a refutation of people like Lucy Davidowicz and Daniel Goldhagen who focus intently of the Jewish aspects of the genocide as a purely unique ethno-historic experience and eschew a real sociological critique of the modern state and the dangerous alienation it breeds as do writers like Zygmunt Baumann and Enzo Traverso.
Further, people are entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts. The fact of the Nazi genocide is no more forced on people than is the fact that the earth is round and that it orbits the sun.
With all due respect, you need to do some serious research!
Maria,
First of all I didn’t start the conversation about the Jews and the Holocaust. If you followed the postings on this thread you have seen that the discussion somehow turned immediately toward david irving and “holocaust revisionism” in the postings of “the anti-war conservative” and was picked up by “WTH”, “Wileywitch”, and “Frog”. I merely responded way later in the discussion. I find it amazing that you glossed over several earlier disrespectful postings about the subject by others and only later singled out mine as inappropriately “starting” the conversation. I find your attitude distinctly anti-semitic and justly so.
I know Jews from Argentina. Argentina is virulently anti-Jewish. The fact that many Jews have successfully pursued business careers there doesn’t mean there isn’t profound hatred of Jews in that country. Ever hear of Jacobo Timmerman? The Prisoner without a name in a cell without a number? I realize that Argentina has a long history of political repression by many European style fascist dictatorships but the Jews were singled out there for special persecution. The world is quite aware of this fact. After all your country bent over backwards to assist and hide the worst Nazi criminals after the War. Eichmann was captured there. Argentina is full of Nazi sympathizers. I really don’t know how any Jew could live there!
I really don’t blame the Jews in Argentina for helping Israel (even though I don’t approve or think this is the answer). I’d want to act on my frustration with Argentine hatred as well.
By the Way Maria, You need to improve your English.
Cabdriverinchicago, sorry about my English not being so good as you would expect it to be. I learnt the little I know, as well as French, Italian and Portuguese on my own, the hard way, with no teachers or paid lessons. As for my being antisemitic, it’s too offensive even to reply. I married a jew many years ago and have three children by him, so I have been surrounded by jews for many years, being a victim of their discrimination, not the other way round. He and his family, as well as many friends of theirs arrived in Argentina penniless, with war traumas and found understanding and helpful people who opened their hearts and homes to them. They never fully integrated, looked down on us and made us feel all the time we were not qualilfied to be their pars. Children born from no -jew women are even considered not full members of their community because our wombs apparently are not the same.
Even after that experience I never developed hatred or justify in anyway what the Nazis did to them, but that doesn’t mean I am not surprised at their attitude towards those of us who haven’t had Moses for an ancestor. That’s all. End of my participation.
Cabby
after a close re-reading of your posts, and doing my homework!, i confess to having been taken in to a small extent by the revisionists.
Well, even a small extent is too much.
Whether the way to fight them is with Denial Laws, i’m not sure, still thinking, but my instinct is no.
A serious question, Finkelstein criticises Wiesel severely; What is your view ?
Also a few of your favourite websites would help me ? You can cut and paste, and if you want to be really helpful a very little html, too!
That method would also maybe save you some time, as a quick rebuttal can often be made with a reference to scholarly work ?
The “Holocaust Industry” deserves all the criticism, and might well contribute to a rise in antisemitism. I’m with you for the serious sociological critique.
Frog,
I don’t read ANY Holocaust revisionist material but I do read stuff by Finkelstein and others who accept all the valid historic evidence for the facts but object to the self rightous moralism which politically slants the lessons such that they validate US militarism as the defender of civilization against “evil” as determined US leadership. I suggest Zygmunt Baumann’s Modernity and the Holocaust whereby he sociologizes the event mostly in order to make the case AGAINST Jewish exceptionalism. I also recommend Enzo Traverso’s Marxism and Auschwicz and The Origins of Nazi Totalitarianism in which he sees the alienation brought about by modern mass society as the culprit which enabled the suffient disengagement of man from his moral sense to “follow orders” and engage in rote, mindless routines at the behest of officialdom no matter how brutal or repulsive. Also the role of ideology and propaganda wiegh in significantly. Try those two authors in addition to Finkelstein.
Maria,
I don’t know about your family but I do know about Argentina. The country was known, especially during the “dirty war” of the military against the poltical opposition, as one of the worst bastions of anti-semitism in the entire world. Of the 10,000 peope who disappeared in this horrible period (1976-1983) 1000 to 1,800 were Jews according to various human rights organization estimates. This would place the Jewish number of disappeared at 10-18% of the conservatively estimated total despite the fact that Jews are barely 1% of the entire Argentine population.
In addition human rights reports from the period well document the military’s having singled out the Jewish community as a consequence of having defined them as inherently subversive. Jewish poltical prisoners were tattoed with nazi swastikas during this time as well as being tortured, beaten, and killed in captivity. Raul Alfonsin, the post dictatorship democratically elected leader, made special appeals and investigations within the Argentine Jewish community in order to heal some of their grief.
I don’t suppose the 1994 bombing of the Buenos Aires Jewish Community Center and the 86 deaths and over 200 injuries would have any connection to Argentina’s long history of anti-semitism. This occurred during the successful phase of the Israel/Palestine peace process.
Maria, I’m sorry you dropped out of the discussion but these are things for Argentine Christians to consider when maligning Argentine Jews for their solomn reclusiveness.
I also became aware of a peculiar characteristic of more Orthodox Jewish culture you seem to be exhibiting of a willingness to argue emotionally in public with much shouting and waving of hands, all the while maintaining strict rules of reason, and then end their argument by shaking hands and making amiable agreement to meet again. I have to say I found this an admirable trait in contrast to my own family’s tendency to act this way in private, but to pretend otherwise to the world while letting inflicted wounds fester. I also find admirable the opposite characteristic among my many Japanese friends who feel that such emotional displays at any time must surely end in deadly violence.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that the Jewish exceptionalism of the
Oops! The first half of my post got lost in the ether. Sorry about that.
LB,
In my hacking experience I’ve never met an Illini. Nor have I met a Potawatami, the major tribal group from this area which by treaty in the 1830s, just before Chicago’s legal incorporation as a municipality, agreed to move west of the Mississippi River after decades of armed conflict with the European settlers. Billy Cauldwell, who was half Potawatami, brokered the agreement between the White settlers and the Native Chief and consequently a major street in Chicago’s posh Edgebrook neighborhood was named for him! Chicago is full of Native American history (Fort Dearborn? Captain William Wells?) and many people are well aware of the violence surrounding the early settlement and building of the City.
Yes, the history of the Native Americans is well known and certainly well documented. I’m no expert but I seem to have read that when Columbus arrived the North American Native population was about 18 Million. Today, it stands at less than half a million. They are overwhemingly impoverished and have a far less than average life expectancy. Theirs was a true Genocide as was the South American Natives whose population was reduced from over 15 million to one and a half million from the arrival of Cortez in the early 16th Century to the mid-17th Century. Forced labor in the silver ore mines plus diseases spread by Europeans killed most of them. In both cases land and riches were saught by a foreign conquerer.
This is one of history’s great crimes but tell me LB, how do you assess a modern crime that takes place in the mid-twentieth century whereby in about half a decade, a planned genocide by a thoroughly modern state takes place merely for its own sake. The Nazis created the SS at great cost and effort to spare no expense and put every resource of the Third Reich at their disposal in order to achieve the total annihilation of a nation (yes the Jews are a nation with their own distinct culture, languages, communities, and history in addition ot religion) despite the fact that the Germans would not benefit but suffer an unnecessary sacrifice. Many people feel that had Hitler embraced the Jews fully as fellow Germans he may have succeeded militarily for some time. Yes, there were other minorities singled out like Gypsies, gays, the mentally ill, political dissidents, and others yet it was the “Jewish Question” that preoccupied the Nazis from the start and whose total annihilation was mandated at Wannsee neat Berlin in January 1942. As a consequence, 6 million Jews-half the European total and one-third the world total-were systematically killed in a manner that was unprecedented. Never has such a killing machine be put into place for such a task. Yes, the Russians suffered enormously in battle with the Nazis. They lost over 20 million. Jews were amoungst those as members of the Red Army and Soviet Citizens quite apart from the 6 million purely civilian deaths. About 500,000 Jews served in the Red Army in WWII and over 90% of the Jews that survived the Holocaust did so well behind Soviet lines as combatants or refugees.
By the way the treatment of Jewish anti-Nazi resisters by their fellow partisans was not always good despite their common goals and desparate struggle against fascism and genocide. One example is the expulsion of the Jewish partisans from the Soviet organized Polish batallions commanded by Wladislaw Anders after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Many were summarily stripped of their weapons and even their boots in some cases and abandoned to die in the freezing Russian winter by their Polish comrades. Who says the Poles aren’t anti-semitic?
Many people who think the Jews just harp on about “their” tragedy don’t understand much about Jewish history or even the Holocaust itself.
Cabby
Thanks for the ref to Enzo Traverso, who writes in french , here in france, shame on me for not knowing about him.
BUT. I don’t find that Lumens said anything to diminish the very real Jewish Holocaust.
Along with most other posters here, I have a lot of interests and concerns, so am not a world expert on any one. After all each would take a lifetime of study, so I’m always open to advice.
Seems to me I have also seen accounts of Poles saving Jews ? Or was that just revisionist propaganda ?
Your last three paras seem to me to be trying to convince LB that the jewish experience was triply-exceptionally “Exceptional”, which is exactly the position of what LB calls the “Uber-zionists”.
For someone as erudite as yourself I find it surprising that you should waste your energy re-stating the case for the awfulness of the Holocaust.. May we leave General Anders to the historians , please ?
Years ago, I noticed that Israel had certain disturbing similarities to the nazi and colonial past. . The brit Palestine Police tortured, the israeli state tortures, the ‘Palestinian Authority’ tortures.
LB just points out, as does Finkelstein with whom you claim to agree, that the current and increasingly vehement Uber-Zionists are just as bad as the Antisemites who we all abhor.
I see this here in france. We have our equivalents of AIPAC, ADL, and as in the States these guys are more than virulent .
Any criticism of Israel, any support for the Palestinians, gets jumped on from a great height !
I’m still researching the case of Dieudonn
Frog,
Enzo Traverso wrote a wonderful short literature review in English published by a UK left publisher called Pluto which you’ve probably heard of in the States. Here they are printed and distributed by Guillford-an academic publisher which also prints Science & Society, the oldest and probably best Marxist Journal of theory and critique started in 1936. I guess this is their 70th anniversary year! Anyhow, Traverso’s book is called, Understanding Nazi Genocide: Marxism after Auschwicz. He makes many of the arguments that I make and is thoroughly against the idea of “Jewish exceptionalism” in any way. Needless to say he opposes Zionism. He makes a brilliant case for sociologizing the issue using the holocaust as an indictment of modernity and the alienation it spreads, monopoly capitalism, the modern state and militarism, and nationalist ideology. It’s an excellent refutation of those who see a purely ethnic dimension to the phenomenon.
There is another writer, a Polish Jew from Great Britain called Zygmunt Baumann. He wrote a book called Modernity and the Holocaust which Traverso discusses at length. It is an incredible book that also sees the Holocaust as a sociological phenomenon entailing supreme alienation particularly in the area of repeatitive, rote work routines the prototype of which is the factory assembly line. In mass society the alienation of workers from the work process is similar to that of the bureacrat from the decision making process. Both are cogs in a wheel and neither appreciates the full extent of his role in a segmented, mass process which produces an outcome that is appropriated by authority for purposes from which he is disconnected and doesn’t really benefit.
Look these up if you can. In Chicago, copies of Baumann’s book is all over the three Powells used bookstore outlets. Must have been assigned by the University of Chicago faculty quite a bit. Anyhow, I am one who definitely believes that one can separate Jewish concerns and history from Zionism. Another couple of books you might like (which FInkelstein also does) is Lenni Brenner’s Z ionism in the Age of the Dictators and a book by an author named Yosef Grodnitzky called In The Shadow of the Holocaust which accuses the Zionists of prolonging and exploiting the suffereing of Jewish displaced persons in DP camps in the US military zone between 1945 and 1948 in which the Jewish Agency for Palestine took over the security functions in the camps with US military complicity forcing unwilling internees who wanted to go west (and could have with the help of US based charities like HIAS and the JJDC) and forced them into military training on European soil to be sent to fight in Palestine with the Haganah to establish the State of Israel. It is an interesting book and is reviewed positively by Rabbi Micheal Lerner.
“L’homme enfin n’est pas enti
It’s not all that great for the Israelis, either.
LB,
For once we agree!
Gee, cabdriver;
I’ve always found your comments pretty cogent for the most part.
I’m sorry the first part of my long post was lost as it described my personal experience of anti-semitism. It kind of left the latter part out of context.
LB,
I didn’t mean to be dismissive in my last comments. I actually agreed strongly with what you last said. Also, I didn’t notice gaps in any of your earlier postings or things possibly omitted. Did you say you personally experienced anti-semitism. I’m curious about it. I have also but somewhat mild compared to other experiences people have had. I guess everything is relative.
I veer off from the position taken by much of the left on the Holocaust industry and don’t understand their impulse to deny anti-semitism’s existence. They’ve always believed that Zionism and purely Jewish issues like anti-semitism were unrelated. Now they foolishly behave as if they are fused inextricably. They are allowing the neo-cons to politically define anti-semitism and are thus abdicating their own role entirely to the neo-cons in the debate on a vital issue. The left needs to re-enter the fray and free the issue from neo-con distortion reclaiming it as a progressive concern with great social and political implications. The progressive forces once failed to do this in the past and the consequence was much Zionist collaberation with anti-semites and fascists the likes of which Lenni Brenner describes in his book on Zionism in the Age of the Dictators. This was all done in the name of Jewish political and humanitarian interests and turned out to be a sham. I fear that if we allow Neo-conservative abuse of the issue for political purposes to continue to hold definitive sway without an effective challenge by the left, who continues to respond by denying the existence of anti-semitism, we will be left with no options on this issue and ultimately be politically hamstrung in a quite undesirable way.
In fact the neo-cons are perfectly happy doing business with the real anti-semites like fascists and pro-Western Muslims who deny the Holocaust and continue to believe the Protocals of the Learned Elders of Zion is an authentic document. So long as these regimes are open to US capital flows and military bases their views on the Jews are quite irrelevant to the neo-cons. The issue will be used to slam the left and the very anti-western Muslim fanatics who were just as anti-Jewish when they were fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan receiving lavish US military and economic assistance! Once again the issue is being abused politically. This doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist and doesn’t need to be analyzed and confronted by the left and progressive forces. Anti-semitism is connected to reactionary politics as is all racism. Its sham abuse by neo-cons doesn’t change this fact. The left has much work to do both analytically and politically.
cabdriver,
I won’t try to reconstruct what was a somewhat painful confessional. I’ll just say that conservative WASPs are very adept at disguising their real thoughts and feelings behind social masks. It may be that it takes one to know one, although Blacks don’t seem as easily fooled as others. Potentially much more troubling and insidious than those who are more blatant.
I’m not sure what you mean about leftists denying the existence of anti-semitism, as so many leftists are Jewish and vice versa. Perhaps it’s the pervasiveness of false consciousness on so many fronts that drives it into the background? It is difficult to get around how anti-semitism among Moslems is used by the likes of Bat Ne’or et al. to fuel Islamophobia. Hatred piled upon hatred without end. Shit. Makes me awful glad I’m a Buddhist.
LB,
Buddism is different than the “Abrahamic” faiths, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. For one thing the Abrahamic faiths are all based on egoistic narratives that are particularist in their basing and reference to places, people, and sacred spaces. It is also ethno-linguistically bound and historically situated. They seem to be the prototypes of all the succeeding “good and evil” narratives that shape the modern world perceptions of their followers!
Many on the left gloss over anti-semitism for fear of being perceived as neo-conservative due to the fact that the neo-cons have hijacked the entire issue in order to defame their enemies. For example, according to certain alternative news sources the Bush Administration has recently accused Venezualan President Hugo Chavez of anti-semitism despite the fact that no real evidence exists! They simply distorted some anti-globalization speech he gave in which he used non-specific biblical imagery to emphasize his thoughts. Real anti-semitism in friendly regimes like Saudi Arabia where Jews cannot legally be issued Visas or where Jewish religious imagery like the Star of David is effectively banned goes on without comment. Guess why!
Many Jews on the left don’t want to appear on the wrong side of the political divide in general. Most books and essays on anti-semitism ARE by conservatives. This is because the left ignores the issue. The right also sees Jews as potential and well heeled allies. This is not unprecedented. Jewish communities are not marginal but highly mainstream with much to offer potential friends. The political right has been portraying Jews as all important and decisively influential for so long they have begun to believe their own stereotypes. Many historians believe that the pro-Zionist Balfour Declaration, made by the British Government in 1917, was based on assumptions that greatly exaggerated the importance and power of the world Jewish community. The modern Jew is always seen as excessively wealthy and powerful.
What is essential is that Jews on the left not act in ways that confirm these wrongful stereotypes. The issue must be confronted in knowledgeable and interesting ways that help the left overcome its trouble in coping with it. Some individuals on the Left are especially good to read. Stephen Bronner whose excellent book about the Protocols, A Rumor about the Jews, historically situates the problem. British Historian, Norman Cohn, wrote Warrent for Genocide on the same topic which is a long contectualized work looking at the period spanning mid-Victorian era until 1945 as “an age of Anti-semitism” in which these ideas flourished taking anti-semitism into the modern age and giving it a thoroughly modern form.
Cabby
Thanks for the leads. I started with the excellent Lenni Brenner, a few articles and a couple of chapters from Z in the Age of the Dictators.
As for all the “poles being antisemitic” , many, even most, were( vaguely) but many were not , as brenner points out in ch21. Just a detail, but shows the danger of generalisations.
If I had to categorise myself, spose I belong to the broad family of the progressive left, with some affinity to the libertarian right on certain issues. But since my early studies were in sociology, a tendency to wish a plague on all dangerous extremists, study them, and do something !
We anti-War europeans were accused of mindless anti-americanism by your and our neo-cons. The same problem with all anti-Zionists being accused of antisemitism. Or “self-hatred” , where that applies .
We have our french presidential election next year . The same political problem as with you, that many of our politicians of both major parties are barely-disguised likudniks. Naturally this applies most strongly to those of jewish origin.
Our “Socialist” ex-PM Laurent Fabius, not much-loved, was scrupulously even-handed in his recent trip to israel AND palestine, but he seems to be the exception. The arch-contender from the right , Sarkozy, needs some more researching, and I’m sure Doug Ireland will oblige for “In These Times”.
Of course, antisemitism exists, like racism and all forms of phobia, but it’s stupid stuff. The extreme difficulty for the rest of us is that many individuals, particularly those of jewish origin have fallen for the Zionist/Holocaust Industry propaganda, and, wherever they live , are undermining the ‘national interests’ of their own country.
Some of the easily- misled oppressed then fall into anti-semitism, thus playing the game of their real enemy.
must go, trees to cut down.
Well, back from the trees, this post did NOT POST , so will continue.
The Chavez ‘antisemitic story’ in your second para figured here in France in Lib
Cabbie,
Spot on. I remember a long time ago, D. T. Suzuki was asked what he thought about Western Monotheism. He said something like, “Man against God… God against Man…. God against Nature… Nature against God… Man against Nature… Nature against Man… funny religion!”
Odd thing. The more I practise the more respect and understanding I have for the faith of all the Sons of Abraham.
frog,
Sounds like you’re a bit of an Anarchist. Have you ever seen this site:
The Political Compass
I’m curious what you guys with all your Soc. & PoliSci cred think.
LB
My intention was really to criticize the Abrahamic faiths on the basis that I previously mentioned. I feel that Buddhism, being transcendental in charactor, is far more spiritual since it is not tied to worldly places, specific individuals, and historic periods. This leaves room for arrogance and worldly conflict. Buddhism’s transcendental spirituality and ethical principles are better as a moral and spiritual guide. Buddhism’s intellectual depth seems greater as well. The Buddha had great wisdom. Is it true that he said “There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way?” I wish to know more about Buddhism but need good quality sources for one who knows nothing about it! It seems like a highly sophisticated faith, or is it more of a philosophy?
LB
A very educative site !
Like the man who spoke prose all his life, a friend pointed out to me a coupla years ago that I was a “real” anarchist, unlike mutual friends who’ve been self-proclaiming it for years. No wonder i’ve so far been incapable of joining any political party.
We were shown a similar analysis in 1969, first step in first year politics. The FAQ contains an interesting US criticism that “you can’t be libertarian AND leftwing”. Duh.
The history-test in “iconochasms” is brilliant, passing to teacher-daughter and schoolinspector friend. Parts of it , such as what Colin Powell and Codoleezzzza actually said in early 2001, would be useful for political tracts. Make the buggers think !!
tksvm, as we moneylaunderers used to telex in the olden days.
waynemadsen rather lurid today
”“”“V has one bit of advice that is already echoing around the Internet: “People shouldn’t be afraid of their government, government should be afraid of their people.”“”“”
now there’s a thought….............
cabbie,
I don’t know if Gautama said that, but it is very Buddhistic.
I wish I could say that Buddhism is totally free from ethnic and nationalistic influence, but all the schools are flavored by their cultural and regional origins. I’ve met a few Zen teachers who were outwardly very arrogant and there are always inter- and intra-necine squabbles among Buddhists. It’s the spice of life, the key being moderation. We’re all just people who love our families and our homes. There is basically nothing wrong with that.
Western Buddhism is very recent in historical terms. Still wet behind the ears, so to speak. This is helpful though, as we’re not so mired in ancient tradition. This is not to say ancient traditions are not respected, as that is where our teachers come from. It’s just that they don’t have the deep cultural underpinnings that Asians do. This is both a blessing and a curse, but that in a sense what practice is all about. If there were no obstacles, there would be nothing to be overcome, and nothing to attain.
In the spirit of full disclosure the Teachings state that there are<b> no obstacles. There <b>is nothing to be overcome. There is nothing to attain.
Confusing? Well, I guess. That’s Buddhism for ya.
To turn your question around, I’d say that Buddhism is both a very sophisticated philosophy and a very simple faith.
Simply put, advaita (non-dual) philosophy differs from Western dualism in this way: In classic dualism, the truth of an assertion is defined by A is not B, if B has no qualities that are A. In advaita, reality is both A and B so defined, and niether A nor B particularly. Even more confusing? It is simpler just to say that everything; the self, the physical universe, and the non-physical mentally constructed cosmos are inter-penetrating and inter-connected. It makes sense to me, but it is very difficult to get across.
Faith can be put in two ways. One is to just sit your butt down and start paying quiet attention to the present situation. The other is to have the confidence, determination and vigor to throw oneself completely into a completely unknown situation. They are really the same thing.
But don’t take my word for it. I’m hardly a qualified teacher.
buddhanet is an excellent and comprehensive online resource.
One thing I’d like to add is that one does not have to to become a Buddhist to practice Buddhism. The group I sit with currently is made up of various Christians, Secularists and one atheistic Jewish lady who is a doll. And me.
LB
I always thought that the Zen Buddhist philosophy was based, as you suggest, on the Yin and Yang or in western philosophical lexicon, the dialectic. This notion is that truth is not strictly one thing or another but contains elements of opposite forces that together comprise a dialectical whole. Marxists apply this notion to historical analysis by saying that current historic epochs are a synthesis of past and current phenomenon. History is thus neither evolutionary nor nihilistic but revolutionary in that real change occurs but by synthesizing certain past elements with radically new ones into a wholly new outcomes. Marxist philosophy of knowledge or truth is similarly dialectical in its belief that all things contain their opposite or contradictory tendency. This is what comprises their notion of the Laws of Motion. For example, Capitalism creates poverty as it creates wealth through concentration of capital and proletarianization of former independant producers. Wealth and poverty are thus part of the very same dialectical process and not totally separate opposites each with a separate basis as in most bourgeous thought.
The Yin and Yang of Buddhism is similar in its outlook on truth. Truth is not one thing or another but contains many, often contradictory, elements. This is a refreshing change from western rationalism and logical positivism. It could also explain why so many East Asian political thinkers and leaders often found Marxism a natural way of reasoning despite its distincly western roots.
cabbie,
You’re correct as far as you go. Zen is very much a syncretism of Buddhism and Taoism. But Zen is also very much about not thinking about shit too much and getting on with it. Not so much about asserting what is true or not, but being genuine, real and honest (kinda like Hip-Hop). What David Bohm (someone who was somewhat a syncretist of Physics, Zen and Marxism) speaks of as dialog rather than dialectic. Zen as a practice is very simple, but very difficult. Thinking can take us to the top of a hundred foot tower, but it can’t get us to jump off of it.
Back when I read the Little Red Book I was struck by how much Mao borrowed from both Kung Fu Tse and Lao Tsu.
frog,
Thanks for the heads up on the Madsen Report. Quite a screed. Nice bit on Bush taking a question from Helen Thomas, too.
LB
As with cabby’s posts will need to read yours several times and then visit the sites. (One site, plus some googles.)
Having translated the buddhistic quote from cabby in the pub tonite, I notice that it applies everywhere. It came out something like—
Pas la peine de chercher la Voie vers le Bonheur,
le Bonheur est la Voie.
Not very many years ago I realised that a smile costs no more than a non-smile, and that a little inspiring of others brings out the best in them, so a galloping introvert evolved into something more enlivening. And I learn so much!
Your 11.33 on faith.— I pay a great deal of attention to what is going on, after many decades of not-noticing, and now at last have no choice but to get involved, throwing myself into the more or less unknown. Certainly my own hangup, but I usually have to be utterly sure of myself, through long study and thought, before I get out on the streets as I did on thursday and saturday. In my case, the intensive study usually precedes the action.
Surely some people do know instinctively what is ‘right’, and then go out and fight, (as the non-intellectual East-enders in London turned out to battle the British nazis in the late 30’s) , sometimes I am one of them, with no doubts or hesitations. Same as the Polish workers who saved some jews.
Other times, I have to go out and research, because fings ain’t so simple.
I have a great respect for you both. Cabby’s marxist analysis and his very serious refs to serious historians helps all of us to see better what is happening to this world. Lumens still has more to share, and I have a lot to learn.
On a lighter note, I trust my cabby will get his arse into gear and DO the history-test from LB. I got more than 50%wrong, and am not a total nong. Lotsof mind-blowing stuff that should blow some History syllabi to Hell.
LB
The Helen Thomas bit came up after I posted. Icing on the cake.
His previous posts on V for vendetta CusterBattles, were worth any visit.
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Already, the right-wing, including blogs like Town Hall, Men’s News Daily, and WorldNetDaily, are attacking the film, calling it, among other things, pro-terrorist, pro-homosexual, neo-Marxist, anti-Christian, and left-wing pro-Islamo-fascist (by the way, co-star Natalie Portman is Israeli born). Someone named Ted Baehr, writing for WorldNetDaily, called Britain’s Parliament, blown up by V in the movie, “Western Civilization’s most enduring symbols of democracy and republican government.” That’s funny, last time this editor went to Britain, I distinctly remember the country being a monarchy. But history is not a strong suit among the right-wing. Their hero, George W. Bush, can’t even read a history book although he’s probably listened to the book-on-tape version of Mein Kampf.
The right-wing has plenty to be worried about with the movie V for Vendetta. They will first see the push back in the November elections (and woe be it to them if they once again engage in election fraud). And upon electoral victory will inevitably come the indictments, trials, impeachments, imprisonments, electoral recalls, and, if need be, deportations, or as they called them during the days of Guy Fawkes, banishment.
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Having followed Wayne for some time, and crosschecked his info, he is 99% spot-on. A pro.
A month or two back he received info that he might well be the object of a “contract”. No guarantee, but might well be him.
I do not know if you, cabby and LB, would believe this. Your Uncle Dave from frogland finds it completely believable. He is a more down-to-earth frog- creature , takes time to absorb new abstract ideas, but is a good cross-checker, and has a horrible fund of contract-stories.
This post above started to worry me, as never before had he been so forthright in calling for trials,imprisonments, impeachments, etc. And for Revolution.
Well, I saved his last writings, hoping they were not exactly that.
If I were over there, with you, I know I would fight for fair elections. Not very “intello”, as we say in frog, but one step.
I hope you, cabby, will do the history-test, “iconochasms” on the LB site above—-“politicalcompass”, we all need some laughs.
Cabby
didn’t need to ask you twice to do the history- test. That was the beer.
Very seriously, the alternative to assassinating the bastards one by one must be elsewhere. Up to us to find it. Tho i do confess a previous personal temptation otherwise.
Ridicule and humour are the best answer.
I feel that our approaching presidential elections in france are going to be “interesting”.
As with you Americans, we have bugger-all “choice”. But we have a long tradition of the “street” changing policy.
Maybe , at certain times, THEY are more scared of us than WE are of them ?
Not a bad lesson for the rest of the world, there are more of us than of them. Many billions more.
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