That photograph of the four 'leaders' speaks volumes. No coincidence, or even satire, that they look like the Mob. Netty as the bullying boss, Mubarak as his right hand strongman enforcer with Obama looking eager to please him, whilst Abbas tags along behind, following orders. Obama has been inducted, however reluctantly he realises what he has got involved in, there is no way out. Only a mass uprising can unseat these gangsters.
Magnificent summary of over fifty years of corruption flowing from the capitulation of the US to Israel, locking in to a co-dependency of Israeli Zionism (fascism by another name) and Arab despotism. That the US buys into this sham is shameful, and is now paying the price for supporting anti-democratic forces all over the Middle East, including of course the rigged democracy of Israel where the indigenous population have no real representation or rights. Israel wants a dictator no better than Saddam to stay - that surely illustrates the point.
I think you are wrong. There is a rationale to the siege. It is simply this: the aim is to utterly destroy any glimmer of hope that any Palestinian might have for the future. The message is everything: "Do what you want but whatever it is understand this - no Palestinian will ever live anything like a normal life, have any civil or human rights, have a functioning economy, schools or hospitals, land or water; they will not be able to travel freely or visit relatives. Any hope you nurture for yourself or your children in this place will be crushed mercilessly, while we have every convenience and luxury afforded to us by the largesse of the US taxpayer. We can wait for an unlimited time until you understand this."
This is the purpose of the pitiless sadism and cruelty meted to people who are to be punished for the crime of existence in a place where a foreign people decided to make their home. It is cruelty, but because it is calculated and ruthless, planned and executed with great care and attention to every last detail it is more commonly known as the pathology of fascism.
Good, dispassionate skewering of the entirely typical Glick ranting. The hysteria of these kind of people is telling. Personally, were I Jewish or Israeli, I would be very worried about the calibre of 'thinking' displayed by these people, particularly since it seems to penetrate the upper echelons of those who exercise power. What must be particularly galling for them is their inability to hold back the tide of facts which refute their rambling denunciations. They are in a hole, they keep digging, going so deep no light gets through. People who have no great interest in the Middle East increasingly gain the impression of Israel being in the hands of crackpots and fundamentalists, best avoided, liable to eruptions of mad-eyed wild assertions, hostile to everybody, yet demanding unlimited indulgence. In a word, dangerous to know, dangerous to avoid.
Great piece, Juan. However, the chances of Palin or her band of benighted followers being able to engage with your arguments, or even understand them, is less than zero. One of the characteristics of the Founding Fathers was their desire for harnessing wisdom in a framework of tolerance - the ideals of Enlightenment. Sadly, Palin & Co have no interest in goals such as these, they would struggle to understand why they should - even from their enveloping creed of self-interest. Stupidity and intolerance, cloaked in self-righteousness, are the only apparent characteristics of these people - they have absolutely nothing in common with statesmen or women who strive to make the world a better place for all.
Juan,
you may be interested in an article comparing this spill to the continuous spills in the Nigerian Delta. The oil companies there know it won't make front page news, despite the fact that whole communities lose their livelihoods, as well as access to fresh water:
Apparently BP think as long as they keep the scale of the disaster out of the media, then somehow things are not so bad. Obama has played right into their hands, appearing to shoulder some of the responsibility (ie blame), which they will gladly offload, as they keep trying to on to Halliburton and others, despite the fact it was their own engineers who flagged up the dangers:
"Papers obtained by the New York Times show that issues were raised as far back as last June. The problems involved the well casing and blowout preventer, considered critical pieces in the chain of events that led to the disaster.
On 22 June last year, BP engineers were worried that the casing the company wanted to use might collapse under high pressure. "This would certainly be a worst-case scenario," Mark Hafle, a senior drilling engineer at BP, warned in an internal report. "However, I have seen it happen so know it can occur."
The company went ahead with the casing, but only after getting special permission because it violated safety policies and design standards, the New York Times reported."
Special permission? That would be kickbacks, presumably.
Surely it is time to separate government and the maintenance of environmental standards from the industries who shovel money into pressure groups and senators' election funds. Oil, Israel, Big Pharma, the banks - they are all too embedded in the government structures for independent and rational non-partisan decisions to be made. 'Democracy', so-called, needs a massive makeover, root and branch reform.
That photograph of the four 'leaders' speaks volumes. No coincidence, or even satire, that they look like the Mob. Netty as the bullying boss, Mubarak as his right hand strongman enforcer with Obama looking eager to please him, whilst Abbas tags along behind, following orders. Obama has been inducted, however reluctantly he realises what he has got involved in, there is no way out. Only a mass uprising can unseat these gangsters.
Magnificent summary of over fifty years of corruption flowing from the capitulation of the US to Israel, locking in to a co-dependency of Israeli Zionism (fascism by another name) and Arab despotism. That the US buys into this sham is shameful, and is now paying the price for supporting anti-democratic forces all over the Middle East, including of course the rigged democracy of Israel where the indigenous population have no real representation or rights. Israel wants a dictator no better than Saddam to stay - that surely illustrates the point.
I think you are wrong. There is a rationale to the siege. It is simply this: the aim is to utterly destroy any glimmer of hope that any Palestinian might have for the future. The message is everything: "Do what you want but whatever it is understand this - no Palestinian will ever live anything like a normal life, have any civil or human rights, have a functioning economy, schools or hospitals, land or water; they will not be able to travel freely or visit relatives. Any hope you nurture for yourself or your children in this place will be crushed mercilessly, while we have every convenience and luxury afforded to us by the largesse of the US taxpayer. We can wait for an unlimited time until you understand this."
This is the purpose of the pitiless sadism and cruelty meted to people who are to be punished for the crime of existence in a place where a foreign people decided to make their home. It is cruelty, but because it is calculated and ruthless, planned and executed with great care and attention to every last detail it is more commonly known as the pathology of fascism.
Good, dispassionate skewering of the entirely typical Glick ranting. The hysteria of these kind of people is telling. Personally, were I Jewish or Israeli, I would be very worried about the calibre of 'thinking' displayed by these people, particularly since it seems to penetrate the upper echelons of those who exercise power. What must be particularly galling for them is their inability to hold back the tide of facts which refute their rambling denunciations. They are in a hole, they keep digging, going so deep no light gets through. People who have no great interest in the Middle East increasingly gain the impression of Israel being in the hands of crackpots and fundamentalists, best avoided, liable to eruptions of mad-eyed wild assertions, hostile to everybody, yet demanding unlimited indulgence. In a word, dangerous to know, dangerous to avoid.
Great piece, Juan. However, the chances of Palin or her band of benighted followers being able to engage with your arguments, or even understand them, is less than zero. One of the characteristics of the Founding Fathers was their desire for harnessing wisdom in a framework of tolerance - the ideals of Enlightenment. Sadly, Palin & Co have no interest in goals such as these, they would struggle to understand why they should - even from their enveloping creed of self-interest. Stupidity and intolerance, cloaked in self-righteousness, are the only apparent characteristics of these people - they have absolutely nothing in common with statesmen or women who strive to make the world a better place for all.
Top Kill Fails, Imperils Gulf;
"There are no Solar Spills"
Juan,
you may be interested in an article comparing this spill to the continuous spills in the Nigerian Delta. The oil companies there know it won't make front page news, despite the fact that whole communities lose their livelihoods, as well as access to fresh water:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/30/oil-spills-nigeria-niger-delta-shell
It is a shocking indictment of Big Oil. A further description of BP's refusal to admit the scale of the Gulf disaster is an eye-opening read:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/30/bp-oil-spill-gulf-mexico
Apparently BP think as long as they keep the scale of the disaster out of the media, then somehow things are not so bad. Obama has played right into their hands, appearing to shoulder some of the responsibility (ie blame), which they will gladly offload, as they keep trying to on to Halliburton and others, despite the fact it was their own engineers who flagged up the dangers:
"Papers obtained by the New York Times show that issues were raised as far back as last June. The problems involved the well casing and blowout preventer, considered critical pieces in the chain of events that led to the disaster.
On 22 June last year, BP engineers were worried that the casing the company wanted to use might collapse under high pressure. "This would certainly be a worst-case scenario," Mark Hafle, a senior drilling engineer at BP, warned in an internal report. "However, I have seen it happen so know it can occur."
The company went ahead with the casing, but only after getting special permission because it violated safety policies and design standards, the New York Times reported."
Special permission? That would be kickbacks, presumably.
Surely it is time to separate government and the maintenance of environmental standards from the industries who shovel money into pressure groups and senators' election funds. Oil, Israel, Big Pharma, the banks - they are all too embedded in the government structures for independent and rational non-partisan decisions to be made. 'Democracy', so-called, needs a massive makeover, root and branch reform.