I’ve written before about the dilemma of choosing a term to describe our enemies in this war.
Islamofascists? No, not exact enough; and misleading, hearkening back to our World War II enemies who had different political ideologies and methods. Islamic fundamentalists? Incorrect as well; not all Islamic fundamentalists have adopted violence as a way of life. “Jihadis” is too inclusive and not specific enough.
Austin Bay has called attention to a recent article appearing in the London Times, written by Michael Gove. Well worth reading, it is a good summary of the aims and ideology of the enemy, as well as offering the useful and descriptive term “Islamist totalitarians” to refer to the movement.
The piece is an excerpt from Gove’s recently published book, Celsius 7/7. The thrust of Gove’s article is that the enemy we face is, first and foremost, our old nemesis: totalitarianism. The jihadis are at war not only with the West, but with most of their co-religionists, whose version of Islam they consider fatally compromised and in need of revision, violent if necessary (and they deem violence to be necessary).
“Islamist totalitarianism” may indeed be the very best name of all for those who adhere to this vision, since it places the movement firmly in the twentieth/twenty-first century context in which it belongs, which is one of world dominance through force, and the negation of human freedom. That is why all totalitarian movements are, in their dark hearts, a reaction to and a profound rejection of the Enlightenment. Islamist totalitariansim is no exeption to this rule.
As Gove writes:
Islamism is a twentieth-century phenomenon. Like its sibling ideologies, fascism and communism, it offers followers a form of redemption through violence. Like fascism, Islamism envisages the creation of a purified realm purged of toxic outside influences and internal corruption. Like communism, Islamism is not ethnically exclusive, it seeks to enlist new converts through proselytisation, political education and military advances. Like both, it reserves a special hatred for the West, for political freedom the separation of the public and private realms, dissent, sexual tolerance and a belief in the sanctity of individual life. And like both it finds a dark and furious energy in hatred towards the Jewish people.
Politically correct thinking dictates that we respect all religions. When Islamist totalitarianism is described as the enemy, many have a kneejerk response that such thinking as anti-Moslem or racist in some way. But it is not. Make no mistake about it. The war the Islamist totalitarians have decreed is every bit as much against the everyday, garden-variety Moslem as it is against all the rest of us.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Bogotry? Ooops.
Kinda fits though somehow.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Sigh. That clearly isn’t what this is about at all. You are claiming moral superiority, not me. You are practising oppression and warfare on the basis of race, religion and perceived cultural superiority. Not me.
And Sally, I’d punch the crap out of that guy again. Every time. There is no ‘unconditional support’ for anyone from me.
In your world, the bullies would have been right on the basis of their nationality. Bogotry indeed.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
I’m not going to climb down into the slime pit with confud here, where we trade atrocity vignettes that are supposed to illustrate how “degenerate” or morally depraved are the ordinary people of this or that state, region, or ethnic group. He doesn’t see anything bigoted about such stories — provided they’re told about his particular hated group — and he never will. To the naive or impressionable, I’ll just point out the old lesson that “passionate intensity” can just as easily be an attribute of the worst amongst us as the best — a lesson that the bloody century just past should have drilled into us by now.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Sally…………………………….
1) Unlike Chavez (not to mention Hitler, Goebbels, and confud), I don’t attribute “all the troubles of the world”, and all your troubles in particular to a group — I attribute all the troubles regarding global islamist terrorists to, um, global islamist terrorists. Those troubles are quite serious, but also quite specific.
Sally, I’ve explained my position a number of times on this. I do not blame all the world’s ills on the US or Israel.
1) I point out that the hypocrisy of your/our (as the west) stance makes the stated goals look suspect. We can’t claim moral supremecy or expect to be viewed credibly ia a) we’ve been just as barbaric as the nastys we are trying to eradicate an db) we won’t own up to the obvious documented trangression in the recent past.
2) US inability to treat the Israeli/Palestinian crisis with any sense of balance or fairness, and turning a blind eye to flagrant breaches of law and common human decency in the pursuit of a ‘final solution’ is a weeping sore that serves as an overwhelming example of western hypocrisy and a clear reference point to US disdain for islam and arabs at the behest of Judeochristian militancy.
3) You have referred many times to islamic flaws and crazy beliefs yet your own president thinks that god told him to invade Iraq, and Israeli settlers have a belief system that says it is OK to steal arab land, kill muslims and christians and act as a master race under god’s will.
Hypocrisy, credibility and law.
You are under scrutiny because you are the aggressors and your false statements are discussed because you keep putting them out there to be shot down.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Sally….
No, if you really think that the problem is just a “comparitive handful of terrorist” (sic), then your really are wonderfully simpleminded. But I think, sadly, you’re not
Prior to your invasion of Iraq, the number was quite small and probably containable with intelligent leadership and prosecution. Instead you/we attacked a traditionally secular arab state and strengthened ties to other militarists, butchers and gangsters.
Brilliant.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
And Sally,
Chavez is a democratically elected head of state. You can disagree with him all you like, but when you use hyperbole e.g “siezing power by whatever means” it only weakens your argument if you have one.
He does have a point regarding world food , water and mineral resources though. There is no world food shortage, just a distribution problem that could be solved for less money than you spend on your military.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Sally……..
I don’t know what “when not responding to smear” is supposed to mean — is that supposed to excuse his obscene description of an “Israeli tourist” above, for example, or his gratuitous and irrelevant mention of a “Jewish intellectual” as a supposed founder of his hated “neocons”? Or are those instances, in your view, of his use of “quite specific examples to argue his case”?
The reference to Leo Strauss, Sally, isn’t about his Jewishness at all. You are being paranoid and hyperbolic again. Strauss was Wolfowitz’s greatest influence and has had an impact on the Chicago school of politico/economic thought.
It is about amoralism, power and manipulation. OK?
It was a teaser which was clearly too subtle for you.
What is obscene about my description of this particularly obnoxious racist Israeli Sally? And how would that indicate antisemitism on my part? If you want, I’ll tell you the whole story but I doubt that you’d want to know, because 9 of the 11 in the group were disgusting racist bullies, picking on a 14 or 15 year old Bolivian kid who’s crime was to be a bit simple and not an Israeli ‘master’. 1 Aussie and 1 Kiwi soon showed them how brave they were, and we were racially abused too.
I’d have knocked his teeth out whatever nationality he was, but in my experience young Israelis are some of the worst of the worst when it comes to being obnoxious and disrespectful to other cultures and peoples. I’ve seen them in Egypt, Kenya, Bolivia and Peru and they ain’t pleasant in the main.
I could tell you what IDF soldiers have done when an Irish woman I work with sometimes, takes personal mail to aid workers in the West Bank. They’ve kept her waiting for hours while they take the mail away and urinate and defecate in the bag. Just for fun. Heroic eh?
Or, how about the settlers who shoot at the refugees and UN workers on the Syrian side of the green line from the land they stole from those very refugees. I’ve been shot at there. Just for sport.
Or how about the arab christians and muslims within Israel who are treated as 3rd class citizens? I’ve posted links to credible reports on this. I doubt that you would allow yourself to read them though. You’d rather read Alexandra and her wingnut conspiracy rantings.
This is no liberal democracy Sally. They make war, they steal land, they kill and they ethnically cleanse and they’re doing it right now.
And they are doing it with YOUR MONEY and YOUR BLESSING.
Hundreds of Palestinians will lose their homes in the West Bank TODAY. Some of these people are 3 and 4 times refugees. Where is that in your great left wing conspiracy MSM?
And you want them (the Palestinians) to submit to eternal serfdom.
It is nought to do with antisemitism, it is about taking them off this bizarre pedestal you’ve placed beneath them and making them and you accountable in the same way everyone should be. If you are wedded to freedom, democracy and the rule of law, some time soon you are going to have to prove it by living it.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Let’s start from the end, and we might find we don’t have to go much further:
Steve: So yes - I’d agree that ” reason and evidence are the tools that we use to distinguish them.” It’s probably good to remember too that bigotry exists because a good portion of the theories and positions are formed on obervable facts - i.e jews and money, black and unemployment etc - it it the conclusions that we draw from observable fact that constitute racial, cultural or religous hatred.
No, it doesn’t — bigotry exists prior to observable facts and merely exploits what facts it can to provide a false cover for its hatred, and is quite happy inventing “facts” when it can’t find them. What is good to remember is that bigotry can appear in a variety of forms, one of which is a kind of patronizing, self-satisfied moral condescension, in which, for example, the bigot declares something like: “well, the jews have gotten hold of most of the money, it’s true, but we should forgive them for it rather than hate them”, etc. I would hope you’re not saying something like that.
Incidently - I don’t draw much of a distinction between them either - but I wouldn’t think it should be a a matter of major contention..
I have no idea what that means, but perhaps that’s just as well.
Having said that - I’m still left wondering how you arrive at the conclusion that confud is an anti-semite based on what he has written.
Here are a couple of comments in their entirety that confud posted and that might have come straight out of the pages of Der Sturmer:
” You filthy fucking little Indian shit”
Israeli tourist (one of 11) to a simple but polite and cheerful 14 year old kid in a bar in Bolivia - March 17th 2006.
“You broke my fucking tooth you fuck”
Same Israeli tourist blubbing whilst getting up off the footpath before running away.
March 17th, 2006
Did you just miss those, Steve? Or do you think there’s nothing antisemitic about them?
… but Confud and Chavez have not attributed all the troubles of the world to a particular group in the same way Hitler and co did.
Here’s what Chavez actually said:
The world has these things [”sufficient riches”] for all, sure, but because of some minorities, the decendents of those same people who killed[crucified] Christ, the decendents of the same people who fought Bolivar, and also those who crucified them in Santa Marta, over in Colombia. A minority that has seized the riches of the world, a minority that has seized the gold of the planet, the silver, the minerals, the water, the good land, the oil, all these riches, well, and they have concentrated the riches in only a few hands
Did you miss that too, Steve? Or is that not quite “in the same way” as Hitler and co. did? How does it differ?
Well, don’t worry about it too much. As I remember now, you tend to write from behind a certain faux-naive, diffident mask that you think protects you from having to make or defend much in the way of an argument of your own. But instead it just makes you lazy and sloppy — so, for example, your banal observation that “terrorism is found in many cultures” is simply irrelevant to my suggestion that a root of islamist terrorism might be found in Islamic culture.
No, if you really think that the problem is just a “comparitive handful of terrorist” (sic), then your really are wonderfully simpleminded. But I think, sadly, you’re not. I think, “if I may be so bold”, and as I said last time, that you’ve picked your side, whether you know it or not — and a fake ingenuousness won’t hide the fact. I can’t say good luck with it.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
oops!
Sorry, me.
Yep.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Steve: … only, I would offer, without any credible sources of evidence or a consistently logical analysis.
Unlike, I suppose, nazi antisemites who DO provide “credible sources of evidence”, etc.?
I don’t recall confud refering to any Nazi literature or known anti-semites(e.g Grundel etc) for his evidence - you’d have to be a little more specific for me to get your point.
1) Unlike Chavez (not to mention Hitler, Goebbels, and confud), I don’t attribute “all the troubles of the world”, and all your troubles in particular to a group — I attribute all the troubles regarding global islamist terrorists to, um, global islamist terrorists. Those troubles are quite serious, but also quite specific.
Fine - but Confud and Chavez have not attributed all the troubles of the world to a particular group in the same way Hitler and co did. It makes for sensational rhetorical affect - but very little substance. I don’t think I’m overstepping to say that you are a firm supporter of U.S/Israeli defined “Global War on Terror” - so I equally confident in claiming that you are attributing the troubles of the world on Islamic terrorismm as it appears you’ve so broadly defined it. Clearly if you believe that exterminating a comparitive handful of terrorist requires and justifies the invasion and destruction of two nations; the killing of hundreds of thousands of civilians, the revoking of civil liberties and human rights etc - than you are not being very specific Sally.
If I may be so bold.
2) Unlike Chavez, Hitler & co., and a couple of our local trolls here, I don’t regard a culture as equivalent to a race, and hence I don’t see criticizing cultural aspects or features as having the same sort of consequences as criticizing racial features or aspects. Thus, even if the underlying or “root” cause of the upsurge in islamist terrorist activity is to be found in flawed aspects of Islamic culture, the logic would point to cultural change not to racial extermination.
This doesn’t make any sense. “If” the root cause of terrorist activity is found in cultural deficiencies than we would quite logically have to look in other areas for the cause - you are well aware that it is an objective fact that terrorism is found in many cultures and the reasons are complex and cannot be narrowly defined explicitly to one culture. Unless we use bias.
3) To my mind, however, the question about root causes in this sense is still open, as I indicated in this comment and this. I differ with neo on this, I think, who seems much more sanguine than I am about the viability of Islam in a modern world — but I’m quite willing to say my concerns on this may be wrong or exaggerated, and I hope that proves to be the case.
Fair enough. Keeping an open mind never hurts.
4) Last for now at least, but probably more important than anything else is the simple test of reasonableness. Compare the antisemite’s notion of a centuries-old conspiracy to steal the “riches of the world” (not to mention to drink the blood of gentile children, to target arab children, etc.), with a critique of a manifest current conspiracy and focused on particular cultural traits that may help explain it. Quite obviously, not all conspiracies are imaginary, but just as obviously some are
Well I can’t really comment on this because you’ve only offered explict anti-semitic expressions and thought and offered only ‘current’ manifestations of anti-semitism as exhibited by conspiracy theorists - without any examples.
So yes - I’d agree that ” reason and evidence are the tools that we use to distinguish them.” It’s probably good to remember too that bigotry exists because a good portion of the theories and positions are formed on obervable facts - i.e jews and money, black and unemployment etc - it it the conclusions that we draw from observable fact that constitute racial, cultural or religous hatred.
Incidently - I don’t draw much of a distinction between them either - but I wouldn’t think it should be a a matter of major contention..
Having said that - I’m still left wondering how you arrive at the conclusion that confud is an anti-semite based on what he has written.
Unlike, I suppose, nazi antisemites who DO provide “credible sources of evidence”, etc.?
No, Steve, there are a number of differences, and these differences are significant. Let’s look at a few:
1) Unlike Chavez (not to mention Hitler, Goebbels, and confud), I don’t attribute “all the troubles of the world”, and all your troubles in particular to a group — I attribute all the troubles regarding global islamist terrorists to, um, global islamist terrorists. Those troubles are quite serious, but also quite specific.
2) Unlike Chavez, Hitler & co., and a couple of our local trolls here, I don’t regard a culture as equivalent to a race, and hence I don’t see criticizing cultural aspects or features as having the same sort of consequences as criticizing racial features or aspects. Thus, even if the underlying or “root” cause of the upsurge in islamist terrorist activity is to be found in flawed aspects of Islamic culture, the logic would point to cultural change not to racial extermination.
3) To my mind, however, the question about root causes in this sense is still open, as I indicated in this comment and this. I differ with neo on this, I think, who seems much more sanguine than I am about the viability of Islam in a modern world — but I’m quite willing to say my concerns on this may be wrong or exaggerated, and I hope that proves to be the case.
4) Last for now at least, but probably more important than anything else is the simple test of reasonableness. Compare the antisemite’s notion of a centuries-old conspiracy to steal the “riches of the world” (not to mention to drink the blood of gentile children, to target arab children, etc.), with a critique of a manifest current conspiracy and focused on particular cultural traits that may help explain it. Quite obviously, not all conspiracies are imaginary, but just as obviously some are –Steve: … only, I would offer, without any credible sources of evidence or a consistently logical analysis.
Unlike, I suppose, nazi antisemites who DO provide “credible sources of evidence”, etc.?
No, Steve, there are a number of differences, and these differences are significant. Let’s look at a few:
1) Unlike Chavez (not to mention Hitler, Goebbels, and confud), I don’t attribute “all the troubles of the world”, and all your troubles in particular to a group — I attribute all the troubles regarding global islamist terrorists to, um, global islamist terrorists. Those troubles are quite serious, but also quite specific.
2) Unlike Chavez, Hitler & co., and a couple of our local trolls here, I don’t regard a culture as equivalent to a race, and hence I don’t see criticizing cultural aspects or features as having the same sort of consequences as criticizing racial features or aspects. Thus, even if the underlying or “root” cause of the upsurge in islamist terrorist activity is to be found in flawed aspects of Islamic culture, the logic would point to cultural change not to racial extermination.
3) To my mind, however, the question about root causes in this sense is still open, as I indicated in this comment and this. I differ with neo on this, I think, who seems much more sanguine than I am about the viability of Islam in a modern world — but I’m quite willing to say my concerns on this may be wrong or exaggerated, and I hope that proves to be the case.
4) Last for now at least, but probably more important than anything else is the simple test of reasonableness. Compare the antisemite’s notion of a centuries-old conspiracy to steal the “riches of the world” (not to mention to drink the blood of gentile children, to target arab children, etc.), with a critique of a manifest current conspiracy and focused on particular cultural traits that may help explain it. Quite obviously, not all conspiracies are imaginary, but just as obviously some are — reason and evidence are the tools that we use to distinguish them.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Steve: If you are going to fall back on the argument of liberal democracy than Israel is in gross violation of those principles that characterize these systems.
And what would be some examples of “those systems”, Steve? The US? Maybe not, hm? Canada? Australia? New Zealand? None of those either? “Liberal democracy” appears to have shrunk considerably, hasn’t it?
On the other hand, if any of those countries qualify as liberal democracies, then it would seem as though such entities do indeed impose their will on “indigenous people of the land” such entities occupy. You can certainly make the claim that those indigenous people have rights, and Israel recognizes such rights — indeed, it’s ironic that, as a liberal democracy, Israel provides more such rights than the indigenous people had ever had, and more than the indigenous people of its neighboring states enjoy.
Nevertheless, Israel is a specifically Jewish state, unquestionably — and this does set it apart from the secular versions of liberal democracy that otherwise predominate. This central fact of Israel has arisen for a number of reasons — historical, moral, practical, existential — and is the real source of the hostility toward it. Leaving aside the ravings of the nazi-like bigots, there are legitimate arguments over this. But those ongoing debates — as opposed to threat, slaughter and terror — are the only way the fact will ever change.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Jason, I think Israel is a fait acompli, as do most Palestinians in my understanding. Hamas has indicated in a very arab way that they are prepared to accept and recognize Israel but to do that prior to negotiations would clearly break their mandate. This is the catch 22 designed by Israel/US. They cannot give away the right of return for the same reason plus the compensation claims that will inevitably fund any semblance of a viable state for Palestinian muslims and christians and others. They are nothing if not pragmatic.
They have NOT said that they would expel or kill the Jews but would have a Palestinian state for all. That is the actual position, not the luny ravings of the rightwing US blogosphere.
I think that a 2 state solution is only possible if Israel returns to its pre 1967 borders and stops killing people, stops collective punishment and stops the outrageous oppression which the US lets them get away with.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Jayson wrote: “Speaking of democracy, Israel, a liberal democracy, has a right to exist. If we agree on this, then discussion about the appropriateness of the means Israel has chosen over the last few decades becomes academic.”
My apologies for budding into the conversation.
Jayson - Israel does exist. Why would you seek an affirmative on a fact?
A better question would be - does Israel as a liberal democracy(your claim)have a right to impose by whatever means neccessary it’s will on the indigenous people of the land it occupies?
You know the answer is no. If you are going to fall back on the argument of liberal democracy than Israel is in gross violation of those principles that characterize these systems.
“Sometimes the responses have been appropriate, other times they have been questionable. But if someone believes that we must choose policies that result in the extermination of every Jew living in Israel, the “discussion” will go nowhere.”
No, you don’t have to choose policies that would result in the “extermination of every Jew living in Israel” - but you’ve not offered any sound argument as to why such policies would do that. And until you can offer non-rhetorical substance to the claim when responding to facts and sound analysis, than I would agree - the discussion will go nowhere.
Which I would theorize is the way most of you ’supporting’ Israel wish it to be.
Am I correct?
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Steve: By the way Sally, how do you (personally) differeniate between anti-semitism and valid criticism of Israel?
I haven’t read all of confud’s posts but for the most part it seems to me he uses quite specific examples to argue his case - when not responding to smear
I don’t know what “when not responding to smear” is supposed to mean — is that supposed to excuse his obscene description of an “Israeli tourist” above, for example, or his gratuitous and irrelevant mention of a “Jewish intellectual” as a supposed founder of his hated “neocons”? Or are those instances, in your view, of his use of “quite specific examples to argue his case”?
Whatever, it’s not that hard to distinguish between rational criticisms of Israel (which, like any other state, often enough deserves criticism), and the sort of irrational, hate-filled rants that issue from confud and his ilk. The former are targeted on particular issues without using them as mere springboards for verbal abuse; they make clear efforts to find the truth of the issue without assuming it; they provide a sense of context, proportion, and moral comparison, without imposing or assuming a manifestly unfair or unjust moral equivalency. To take the last point alone, for example, you don’t see legitimate critics of Israel painting the accidental deaths of Palestinian civilians at Israeli hands as the moral equivalent of the deliberate murder of Israeli civilians at Palestinian hands — but that’s exactly what you do see from Jew-haters who try to hide their bigotry behind anti-zionism.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Steve: … only, I would offer, without any credible sources of evidence or a consistently logical analysis.
Unlike, I suppose, nazi antisemites who DO provide “credible sources of evidence”, etc.?
No, Steve, there are a number of differences, and these differences are significant. Let’s look at a few:
1) Unlike Chavez (not to mention Hitler, Goebbels, and confud), I don’t attribute “all the troubles of the world”, and all your troubles in particular to a group — I attribute all the troubles regarding global islamist terrorists to, um, global islamist terrorists. Those troubles are quite serious, but also quite specific.
2) Unlike Chavez, Hitler & co., and a couple of our local trolls here, I don’t regard a culture as equivalent to a race, and hence I don’t see criticizing cultural aspects or features as having the same sort of consequences as criticizing racial features or aspects. Thus, even if the underlying or “root” cause of the upsurge in islamist terrorist activity is to be found in flawed aspects of Islamic culture, the logic would point to cultural change not to racial extermination.
3) To my mind, however, the question about root causes in this sense is still open, as I indicated in this comment and this. I differ with neo on this, I think, who seems much more sanguine than I am about the viability of Islam in a modern world — but I’m quite willing to say my concerns on this may be wrong or exaggerated, and I hope that proves to be the case.
4) Last for now at least, but probably more important than anything else is the simple test of reasonableness. Compare the antisemite’s notion of a centuries-old conspiracy to steal the “riches of the world” (not to mention to drink the blood of gentile children, to target arab children, etc.), with a critique of a manifest current conspiracy and focused on particular cultural traits that may help explain it. Quite obviously, not all conspiracies are imaginary, but just as obviously some are — reason and evidence are the tools that we use to distinguish them.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Confudd–
With respect to Muslims, I agree with you completely. It is human nature for human beings to choose liberty when given the choice. Those here who have stated otherwise on this blog are not only bigoted against the few million Muslims living here in the United States, but undermine their position of keeping American forces in Iraq until its democracy can defend itself. If Islam is not compatible with democracy (Turkey? Indonesia? Bangladesh?), there is no reason for us to be in Iraq. I have faith that it is.
Speaking of democracy, Israel, a liberal democracy, has a right to exist. If we agree on this, then discussion about the appropriateness of the means Israel has chosen over the last few decades becomes academic. Sometimes the responses have been appropriate, other times they have been questionable. But if someone believes that we must choose policies that result in the extermination of every Jew living in Israel, the “discussion” will go nowhere. Liberalism requires argument and persuasion, while members of anti-liberal movements that worship force will “discuss” things in an analogous manner. I’ve already dignified the charade more than I ought have.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Any thoughts Sally, about the credible reports from Iraq about the rape and murder of an 11 year old girl, the murder of 3 of her family and the mutilation of their bodies by US troops. Apparently they belonged to the same group as the 2 kidnapped marines last week.
I await your expression of outrage and your damning of JudeaoChristianity as a barbaric belief system. I’ll be dissecting all the “mays” and “is”s coming out of your little cowboy’s mouth for hypocrisy and bias. Habeas corpus you say?
I don’t think you’ll be able to blame this on ‘Palliwood’.
And there are more to come if my sources are correct. The (hush)money can’t be shovelled out fast enough I hear.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
By the way Sally, how do you (personally) differeniate between anti-semitism and valid criticism of Israel?
I haven’t read all of confud’s posts but for the most part it seems to me he uses quite specific examples to argue his case - when not responding to smear - but you write quite well, you seem very intelligent - surely you can do better than having this pathetic dribble for debate…
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Sally wrote:
” On both wings there’s a very simple but very vicious strategy at work: to find a focus for the troubles of the world, and in particular for your troubles, in the machinations of an evil group — which then, logically and terribly, must be exterminated in order to “solve” those problems.”
Fair enough(at least for the sake of argument)- but Sally, do you not
employ a ‘vicious strategy’ yourself in your focus on the machinations of an ‘evil group’? - in your case, Muslims - which “logically and terribly must be exterminated in order to “solve” those problems.”
You would probably say no - but I think it would be appropriate to consider that your own rants use the same methodology - only, I would offer, without any credible sources of evidence or a consistantly logical analysis.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Me……
Now tell me that neos friend’s blog “All things are beautiful” isn’t overt racist jewish supremecist claptrap.
7:14 PM, June 30, 2006
Ariel (I’m beginning to see the symbolism of the handle)…..
Go home.
No one’s running from you. You aren’t worth engaging.
We are laughing at you. You’re comic relief. You’re an anti-semitic joke.
Your insults have no impact, no meaning, nothing. They are schoolyard taunts. They don’t work.
So……the blog isn’t overt racist jewish supremecist claptrap? Just so as I know your thoughts.
I know you hate the word ‘racism’ and all. And ‘profanity’ is a deadly sin (when lying cheating and state sponsored murder-for-profit aren’t).
But I just can’t see how that crap can not be racist. Fill us in, mate.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
.Sally……
Behind confud’s reference to “chilling” views
No, not my reference at all. From the Sydney Morning Herald. A right of centre respectable broadsheet quoting right of centre respected international figures.
Their views coincide with mine and are opposite to yours. Go figure.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Elmer,
Go home.
No one’s running from you. You aren’t worth engaging.
We are laughing at you. You’re comic relief. You’re an anti-semitic joke.
Your insults have no impact, no meaning, nothing. They are schoolyard taunts. They don’t work.
Can’t you get it?
Go home. Quit making a fool of yourself.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
And even that much pretence is dispensed with by a thug like Chavez, who’s quite happy to use and sacrifice anyone or any group as a means of seizing and clinging to power.
And that statement is proof positive of your utter inanity and inability to discern fact from rightwingnut fiction. He was democratically elected. You haven’t a clue about the world.
Now tell me that neos friend’s blog “All things are beautiful” isn’t overt racist jewish supremecist claptrap.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
And even that much pretence is dispensed with by a thug like Chavez, who’s quite happy to use and sacrifice anyone or any group as a means of seizing and clinging to power.
And that statement is proof positive of your utter inanity and inability to discern fact from rightwingnut fiction. You haven’t a clue about the world.
Now tell me that neos friend’s blog “All things are beautiful” isn’t overt racist jewish supremecist claptrap.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Just a further point about this. I agree with Ariel that much of confud’s ravings are indeed laughable in a sense — in the way that any belligerent jerk who merely fumes and rants impotently is comical (e.g., “the chief guttersnipe Sally”, which is an undeserved compliment but which I’ll take all the same). But I also think he represents something a great deal worse, and I think you make an interesting point, Jason, about an inherent tendency toward a crude antisemitism associated with the conspiratorial mindset on the extreme left, but of course on the extreme right as well. On both wings there’s a very simple but very vicious strategy at work: to find a focus for the troubles of the world, and in particular for your troubles, in the machinations of an evil group — which then, logically and terribly, must be exterminated in order to “solve” those problems.
Confud himself is useful just as a present example of this very old temptation and evil, and of its workings. He knows enough, for example, (and just enough) to know that he must deny his motivations in polite company, hiding, as I say, behind the tissue-thin pretense of being merely anti-zionist. But put him under a little stress and out pops the underlying Jew-hating, like diseased pustules. And even that much pretence is dispensed with by a thug like Chavez, who’s quite happy to use and sacrifice anyone or any group as a means of seizing and clinging to power.
Small and larg(er), these are the contemporary faces of an ancient malevolence — allied now to a resurgent totalitarionism. Behind confud’s reference to “chilling” views re: the “war on terror”, I think we can see a lurking grin.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Head rests,
a sore mind behind these
red eyes.
Watch the television,
sweet escapism,
game shows and racism.
Headlines,
war crimes behind disguised
affection.
All for a cause that
never was.
Call for a voice but all
it does is sigh.
Inside.
Sigh.
More or less,
there abouts,
a young man with so
many doubts.
I try to learn
impersonating,
the clever moves but I
am facing,
the always power-crazed,
middle aged generation.
All for a cause that
never was.
Call for a voice but
all it does is sigh.
Inside.
Sigh.
Inside.
Blood and blame passed
on to a neighbour.
Continuing the chain.
Deadly game of whispers.
How am I to grow.
The life I love I
don’t know.
Blood and blame passed
on to a neighbour.
Continuing the chain.
Deadly game of whispers.
How am I to grow.
The life I love I
don’t know.
Blood and blame passed
on to a neighbour.
Continuing the chain.
Deadly game of whispers.
How am I to grow.
The life I love I
don’t know.
The Means. Mattafix
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
It was never his ideas, only his methods.
Yeah right. You ran away at every turn because you can’t own up to the idea that your country has no credibility or moral capital. You’re as pathetic as neo.
And now you’re palsy with the chief guttersnipe Sally. But hey, you can always claim that you manipulated the whole thing. Heehee. And you say I’m transparent.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Jason,
No one was giggling at massacres. They aren’t something to giggle at, or laugh at in anyway. Ever.
Frankly, we were laughing at the deranged fellow. I didn’t read past the Fisk by-line, as my only desire was to see how deranged he, I call him Elmer now, would become.
He can’t see that everything he has called others is so much more applicable to him, with slight adjustment in the terms of course. Nor could he see that Sally and I found his insults, his ploys, his prejudices, etc., as simply laughable. His words have no impact because he has made such a fool of himself. It was never his ideas, only his methods.
He has to win the argument so much that if his facts fail to convince he goes on by bullying, slamming, and intimidating. And we are all laughing at him because he is so transparent. He would have been better off to be gentlemanly and “agree-to-disagree”. But like the scorpion, it isn’t really in his nature. This isn’t psychoanalytic but experential.
And yes he can’t see his own anti-semitism, seemingly burying it in the Palestinian-Israeli mess so he doesn’t have to face it. There is a lot of hate in him and it has spewed out on all of us.
Go to the 06/27/06 “How to spot a Troll” post at http://latticesofbogosity.blogspot.com/. You’ll see him in every description.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
TO ADD to the pervading gloom there is the news that the West is, in all likelihood, losing the global war on terrorism. A US think tank, the Centre for American Progress, and the prestigious American Foreign Policy magazine recently asked 100 terrorism and global security experts to assess how the war was going.
They questioned luminaries across the political spectrum, the likes of Lawrence Eagleburger, a secretary of state to the first George Bush; the historian Francis Fukuyama; James Woolsey, a former CIA director; retired US marine general Anthony Zinni, a former commander in the Middle East; Richard Clarke, counter-terrorism chief to Bill Clinton and Bush II, and so on at that high-powered level. Even our own Gareth Evans got a guernsey.
The conclusions were chilling. To quote from the survey summary: “Fewer than two in 10 believe the United States is winning the war on terror. More than eight in 10 believe we are likely to face a terrorist attack on the scale of September 11 within the next 10 years.
“Over half list Islamic animosity and the Iraq war as the main reasons why the world is becoming more dangerous. The experts put nuclear weapons and materials as the top threat, followed closely by weapons of mass destruction as a whole, and then terrorism.”
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, neatly summed up the situation for the US. On America’s current course, he said, “we are going to either commit suicide as a democracy or spend ourselves to death”.
To read the horrible details, go to www.americanprogress.org. Have a great weekend.
From the Sydney Morning Herald. (Hardly a left wing rag)
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Sigh.
No Jason. It is to do with Israel and the hypocrisy of US ‘unconditional’ support for what is a rogue state of the very worst kind.
Look at your two friends above giggling about massacres of innocents. Do you find this amusing?
The calls for assassination of democratically elected people like Chavez by your rightwingnut friends and your support for crony capitalist despots, murderers and war criminals elsewhere only serves to prove their point. You are actually strengthening them and the resolve of their elecctorates to fight against your phony foreign policies.
Chavez actually has a fair point about food and water you know. Do you have any idea how much misery US/Euro farm subsidies cause in the third world? Or the havoc that GM and the perversion of intellectual property rights (as sought by the US at the behest of companies like Monsanto) will cause to subsistence farmers and already struggling states?
Probably not.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
The Jew-baiting by this deranged individual is unreal.
Socialism, with its conspiratorial worldview, almost always leads to Jew-baiting, since the Jews symbolize everything that is capitalist, commercial, greedy, and materialist in their eyes. Take the recent ranting by socialist hero Hugo Chavez, for instance, remarked a few months ago that
“You [the audience] didn’t have money, and where was that money? The money in Venezuela was concentrated with them…like it is in the world, for this is a worldwide phenomena, you know? I just finished reading early this morning the latest report from the United Nations about the world situation, and it’s alarming because it says that today more than ever before, 2005 years after they killed Jesus Christ, because the world, the world, is worsening every day, every day, the riches of the world, because God, nature provides, the world has sufficent water for those who need water, the world has sufficent riches, land sufficient to produce foodstuffs for the entire world population, the world has sufficient stone and minerals for construction, so that there is no shortage for anyone who is living. The world has these things for all, sure, but because of some minorities, the decendents of those same people who killed Christ, the decendents of the same people who fought Bolivar, and also those who crucified them in Santa Marta, over in Colombia. A minority that has seized the riches of the world, a minority that has seized the gold of the planet, the silver, the minerals, the water, the good land, the oil, all these riches, well, and they have concentrated the riches in only a few hands: less than 10 percent of the world population has more than half the riches of the entire world..and more than half the entire population of the planet is poor and each day there are more poor in the entire world.”
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Lebensraum for example. What does Israel call theft of Palestine?
If you won’t explain re Fisk, I’ll take it that the joke exists in your little closeted rightwingnutworld only.
You defend Malkin and claim Fisk is a joke. Wingnuts.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Sally,
I am always charitable. Even when laughing at someone.
I added that he is warped because he can’t actually see how absolutely, pathetically silly he gets. He seemingly never reads anything completely, nor ponders before writing. He goes off halfcocked with his prejudices. I tried to warn him that his words have no impact because they are simply too funny now. And he had no idea that Fisk has become a joke. Talk about a closed world.
Oh, now he’s ranting about Fox News, our “only source of news”. I get all my news from reading various world newspapers. I’ve never watched Fox News. But of course, he knows…
“bigot, certainly — blind and virulent hatred directed at entire nations and groups, an inability to look at himself and his own emotions objectively, an instinct to project his own failings and weaknesses upon the hated object, and an easy slide into malicious stereotyping…a belief that their ideology will somehow immunize them against the charge of bigotry, making them all the more careless in indulging the worst of their racial, physical, and sexual prejudices.”
You hit it on the head, and he can’t help but keep proving it, time after time after time. Hatred twists the mind.
He needs the last word, and he’s waiting, so, Sally, we should let him have it. I hope his petard doesn’t hit him on his way up.
Good night and straight ahead.
Good night, Elmer.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Oh you neocons love your labels (like kids with shiny small objects). I’m happy with speaking English thanks.
Fascism is fascism. It ain’t marxism or vaguely leftist. Hitler had his shiny labels too.
Lebensraum for example. What does Israel call theft of Palestine?
If you actually read Fisk, you wouldn’t laugh in your silly little girly manner. He is critical of all the butchers. He is everything that your Fox news screaming heads aren’t. And don’t give me that shit about not watching Fox. It seeps out of your every pore.
I’ll believe someone who lives and works there everytime over someone who’s never dreamed of leaving North America, thanks.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
He’s an obsessed man, Ariel, and warped, certainly, but I’d seriously question the “intelligent” bit. He may have just enough native wit to realize, when his breathing subsides a little, that his Jew-baiting comments were a little too revealing, but that’s about it.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
p.s. Elmer, read up on red fascism and black fascism.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Sally,
I know I’ve said goodnight twice, but this is too funny for me to stop. Neo is going to be so mad.
It’s a good idea to save some of his notable quotes because he does have to come to his senses eventually. He is an intelligent, if warped, man.
Oohh, he just ranted about Fisk. I should pull the hook out before I throw him back. “Appeal to authority”, good, bad, or indifferent just never sinks in. And I got hit with “reading racist crap from your own wingnut world”, he jumps to so many conclusions. Actually, I’m back to reading John Dos Passos. Now there’s a right winger. Oh, this is just too funny for words.
Got your goodnight, Sally. So…goodnight and straight ahead.
Oh, and good night, Elmer.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Go on, run away. As always. That’s what the gutless do after all.
Toodle pip.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
So, a neo-nazi leftist. Heehee. The wingnuts are here.
I don’t delete posts butcher girl. I leave that for dishonest lying scum like you.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Confud, just let me know when you get to more stories about “Jewish tourists”, or “Jewish intellectuals”, or “Jewish bankers”, okay? They’re actually worth something. Or when you get around to saying that some of your best friends are Joos.
Otherwise, take your meds, mate — you’re overheating.
Oh, and goodnight, Ariel. It’s been fun, but all good things must come to an end, for now at least.
(Yeah, Fisk — the only guy whose name’s become a verb meaning to demonstrate one’s own idiocy!)
Oh, and another gem from the neo-nut: “Why would any god choose scum like you?”! Can’t you just imagine the little Austrian paper-hanger muttering that to his cronies in the beer-hall?
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
” God told me to invade Iraq”
GWB
“I am the decider”
GWB
Mobile weapons laboratories can be deployed in 45 minutes.
Powell
Iraq tried to acquire nukular(sic) weapons equipment from Niger.
GWB
We will be welcomed as liberators.
Rumsfeld
You’re doing a great job, Brownie!
GWB
Axis of evil
GWB
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Ariel said…
And he just quoted Fisk for godsake.
It is scum like you that doesn’t read anything but the racist crap from your own wingnut world that makes illinfomed ignorant comments about people who you’ve clearly never read, because you’ve been ‘thinked’ by your bitchmasters.
Robert Fisk the fairest of writers of middle eastern affairs.
Why would any god choose scum like you?
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
MASSACRE IN SANCTUARY; EYEWITNESS
By Robert Fisk
The Independent 4/19/96, page 1
Qana, southern Lebanon - It was a massacre. Not since Sabra and
Chatila had I seen the innocent slaughtered like this. The Lebanese
refugee women and children and men lay in heaps, their hands or arms
or legs missing, beheaded or disembowelled. There were well over a
hundred of them. A baby lay without a head. The Israeli shells had
scythed through them as they lay in the United Nations shelter,
believing that they were safe under the world’s protection. Like the
Muslims of Srebrenica, the Muslims of Qana were wrong.
In front of a burning building of the UN’s Fijian battalion
headquarters, a girl held a corpse in her arms, the body of a grey-
haired man whose eyes were staring at her, and she rocked the corpse
back and forth in her arms, keening and weeping and crying the same
words over and over: “My father, my father.” A Fijian UN soldier
stood amid a sea of bodies and, without saying a word, held aloft
the body of a headless child.
“The Israelis have just told us they’ll stop shelling the area,”
a UN soldier said, shaking with anger. “Are we supposed to thank
them?” In the remains of a burning building - the conference room of
the Fijian UN headquarters - a pile of corpses was burning. The roof
had crashed in flames onto their bodies, cremating them in front of
my eyes. When I walked towards them, I slipped on a human hand…
Israel’s slaughter of civilians in this terrible 10-day
offensive - 206 by last night - has been so cavalier, so ferocious,
that not a Lebanese will forgive this massacre. There had been the
ambulance attacked on Saturday, the sisters killed in Yohmor the day
before, the 2-year-old girl decapitated by an Israeli missile four
days ago. And earlier yesterday, the Israelis had slaughtered a
family of 12 - the youngest was a four- day-old baby - when Israeli
helicopter pilots fired missiles into their home.
Shortly afterwards, three Israeli jets dropped bombs only 250
metres from a UN convoy on which I was travelling, blasting a house
30 feet into the air in front of my eyes. Travelling back to Beirut
to file my report on the Qana massacre to the Independent last
night, I found two Israeli gunboats firing at the civilian cars on
the river bridge north of Sidon.
Every foreign army comes to grief in Lebanon. The Sabra and
Chatila massacre of Palestinians by Israel’s militia allies in 1982
doomed Israel’s 1982 invasion. Now the Israelis are stained again by
the bloodbath at Qana, the scruffy little Lebanese hill town where
the Lebanese believe Jesus turned water into wine.
The Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres may now wish to end this
war. But the Hizbollah are not likely to let him. Israel is back in
the Lebanese quagmire. Nor will the Arab world forget yesterday’a
terrible scenes.
The blood of all the refugees ran quite literally in streams
>from the shell-smashed UN compound restaurant in which the Shiite
Muslims from the hill villages of southern Lebanon - who had heeded
Israel’s order to leave their homes - had pathetically sought
shelter. Fijian and French soldiers heaved another group of dead -
they lay with their arms tightly wrapped around each other - into
blankets.
A French UN trooper muttered oaths to himself as he opened a bag
in which he was dropping feet, fingers, pieces of people’s arms.
And as we walked through this obscenity, a swarm of people burst
into the compound. They had driven in wild convoys down from Tyre
and began to pull the blankets off the mutilated corpses of their
mothers and sons and daughters and to shriek “Allahu Akbar” (God is
Great”) and to threaten the UN troops.
We had suddenly become not UN troops and journalists but
Westerners, Israel’s allies, an object of hatred and venom. One
bearded man with fierce eyes stared at us, his face dark with fury.
“You are Americans,” he screamed at us. “Americans are dogs. You did
this. Americans are dogs.”
President Bill Clinton has allied himself with Israel in its war
against “terrorism” and the Lebanese, in their grief, had not
forgotten this. Israel’s official expression of sorrow was rubbing
salt in their wounds. “I would like to be made into a bomb and blow
myself up amid the Israelis,” one old man said.
As for the Hizbollah, which has repeatedly promised that
Israelis will pay for their killing of Lebanese civilians, its
revenge cannot be long in coming. Operation Grapes of Wrath may then
turn out then to be all too aptly named.
Well debunked Palestinian propaganda obviously.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
And he just quoted Fisk for godsake. He’ll be waving Duranty next. Or quoting the Iraqi CNN bureau pre-war, you know, “we lied to you about Iraq, so we could report the news from Iraq”.
This is too funny by far.
Good night, and straight ahead.
“The Jews are coming, the Jews are coming.”
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Well, Ariel, as I’ve said before, whacking trolls is a time-waster, but it beats crosswords. And whacking neo-nazi trolls like our precious Jew-baiter confud here even beats soduko. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the viciousness inherent in the left’s attempt to hide its antisemitism behind the tissue of anti-Zionism so transparently revealed as in his last little bit of venom — a reason I’ve saved the worst (so far) in case he tries to delete the posts once he gets the froth under control. It can a useful illustration in other contexts.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
In April 11, 1996, Israel unleashed “Operation Grapes of Wrath” in which more than 170 people, mostly women and children had been killed so far, including 102 refugees shelled at a U.N. base in the south.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
In July 1993, Israel unleashed “Operation Accountability,” of week-long air, artillery and naval blitz in which 130 people, mostly Lebanese civilians, died and 300,000 fled their homes. This was in response to killing seven Israeli soldiers by Hizbullah resistance.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
In 1968, Israeli commandos blew up 13 airliners at Beirut airport Israel said the attack on Beirut airport was a reprisal for an attack in Athens by Lebanese-trained Palestinian guerrillas.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Sally,
He hasn’t caught on that his words have no impact whatsoever. I read all the Vincennes documents chronologically, he has a biased perspective that gets in the way of the full picture. And he isn’t worth the time..
Have a good night. This was just to funny.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
By Robert Fisk
The Independent
Sana Sersawi speaks carefully, loudly but slowly, as she recalls the chaotic, dangerous, desperately tragic events that overwhelmed her just over 19 years ago, on 18 September 1982. As one of the survivors prepared to testify against the Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon–who was then Israel’s defence minister–she stops to search her memory when she confronts the most terrible moments of her life. “The Lebanese Forces militia [Phalangists] had taken us from our homes and marched us up to the entrance to the camp where a large hole had been dug in the earth. The men were told to get into it. Then the militiamen shot a Palestinian. The women and children had climbed over bodies to reach this spot, but we were truly shocked by seeing this man killed in front of us and there was a roar of shouting and screams from the women. That’s when we heard the Israelis on loudspeakers shouting, ‘Give us the men, give us the men.’ We thought, ‘Thank God, they will save us.’” It was to prove a cruelly false hope.
Mrs Sersawi, three months pregnant, saw her husband Hassan, 30, and her Egyptian brother-in-law Faraj el-Sayed Ahmed standing in the crowd of men. “We were told to walk up the road towards the Kuwaiti embassy, the women and children in front, the men behind. We had been separated. There were Phalangist militiamen and Israeli soldiers walking alongside us. I could still see Hassan and Faraj. It was like a parade. There were several hundred of us. When we got to the Cite Sportif, the Israelis put us women in a big concrete room and the men were taken to another side of the stadium. There were a lot of men from the camp and I could no longer see my husband. The Israelis went round saying ‘Sit, sit.’ It was 11am. An hour later, we were told to leave. But we stood around outside amid the Israeli soldiers, waiting for our men.”
Sana Sersawi waited in the bright, sweltering sun for Hassan and Faraj to emerge. “Some men came out, none of them younger than 40, and they told us to be patient, that hundreds of men were still inside. Then about 4pm, an Israeli officer came out. He was wearing dark glasses and said in Arabic: ‘What are you all waiting for?’ He said there was nobody left, that everyone had gone. There were Israeli trucks moving out with tarpaulin over them. We couldn’t see inside. And there were jeeps and tanks and a bulldozer making a lot of noise. We stayed there as it got dark and the Israelis appeared to be leaving and we were very nervous. But then when the Israelis had moved away, we went inside. And there was no one there. Nobody. I had been only three years married. I never saw my husband again.”
Today, a Belgian appeals court will begin a hearing to decide if Prime Minister Sharon should be prosecuted for the massacre of Palestinian civilians at the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps in Beirut in 1982. (Belgian laws allow courts to try foreigners for war crimes committed on foreign soil.) In working on this case, the prosecution believes that it has discovered shocking new evidence of Israel’s involvement.
The evidence centres on the Camille Chamoun Sports Stadium– the “Cite Sportif”. Only two miles from Beirut airport, the damaged stadium was a natural holding centre for prisoners. It had been an ammunition dump for Yasser Arafat’s PLO and repeatedly bombed by Israeli jets during the 1982 siege of Beirut so that its giant, smashed exterior looked like a nightmare denture. The Palestinians had earlier mined its cavernous interior, but its vast, underground storage space and athletics changing-rooms remained intact. It was a familiar landmark to all of us who lived in Beirut. At mid-morning on 18 September 1982–about the time Sana Sersawi says she was brought to the stadium–I saw hundreds of Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners, probably well over 1,000, sitting in its gloomy, dark interior, squatting in the dust, watched over by Israeli soldiers and plain-clothes Shin Beth (Israeli secret service) agents and men who I suspected were Lebanese collaborators. The men sat in silence, obviously in fear. From time to time, I noted, a few were taken away. They were put into Israeli army trucks or jeeps or Phalangist vehicles–for further “interrogation”.
Nor did I doubt this. A few hundred metres away, inside the Sabra and Chatila Palestinian refugee camps, up to 600 massacre victims rotted in the sun, the stench of decomposition drifting over the prisoners and their captors alike. It was suffocatingly hot. Loren Jenkins of The Washington Post, Paul Eedle of Reuters and I had only got into the cells because the Israelis assumed–given our Western appearance–that we must have been members of Shin Beth. Many of the prisoners had their heads bowed. But Israel’s Phalangist militiamen–still raging at the murder of their leader and president elect Bashir Gemayel–had been withdrawn from the camps, their slaughter over, and at least the Israeli army was now in charge. So what did these men have to fear?
Looking back–and listening to Sana Sersawi today–I shudder now at our innocence. My notes of the time, subsequently written into a book about Israel’s 1982 invasion and its war with the PLO, contain some ominous clues. We found a Lebanese employee of Reuters, Abdullah Mattar, among the prisoners and obtained his release, Paul leading him away with his arm around the man’s shoulders. “They take us away, one by one, for interrogation,” one of the prisoners muttered to me. “They are Haddad [Christian militia] men. Usually they bring the people back after interrogation, but not always. Sometimes the people do not return them.” Then an Israeli officer ordered me to leave. Why couldn’t the prisoners talk to me, I asked? “They can talk if they want,” he replied. “But they have nothing to say.”
All the Israelis knew what had happened inside the camps. The smell of the corpses was now overpowering. Outside, a Phalangist jeep with the words “Military Police” painted on it–if so exotic an institution could be associated with this gang of murderers–drove by. A few television crews had turned up. One filmed the Lebanese Christian militiamen outside the Cite Sportif. He also filmed a woman pleading to an Israeli army colonel called “Yahya” for the release of her husband. (The colonel has now been positively identified by The Independent. Today, he is a general in the Israeli army.)
Along the main road opposite the stadium there was a line of Israeli Merkava tanks, their crews sitting on the turrets, smoking, watching the men being led from the stadium in ones or twos, some being set free, others being led away by Shin Beth men or by Lebanese men in drab khaki overalls. All these soldiers knew what had happened inside the camps. One of the members of the tank crews, Lt Avi Grabovsky–he was later to testify to the Israeli Kahan commission–had even witnessed the murder of several civilians the previous day and had been told not to “interfere”.
And in the days that followed, strange reports reached us. A girl had been dragged from a car in Damour by Phalangist militiamen and taken away, despite her appeals to a nearby Israeli soldier. Then the cleaning lady of a Lebanese woman who worked for a US television chain complained bitterly that Israelis had arrested her husband. He was never seen again. There were other vague rumours of “disappeared” people.
I wrote in my notes at the time that “even after Chatila, Israel’s ‘terrorist’ enemies were being liquidated in West Beirut”. But I had not directly associated this dark conviction with the Cite Sportif. I had not even reflected on the fearful precedents of a sports stadium in time of war. Hadn’t there been a sports stadium in Santiago a few years before, packed with prisoners after Pinochet’s coup d’etat, a stadium from which many prisoners never returned?
Among the testimonies gathered by lawyers seeking to indict Ariel Sharon for war crimes is that of Wadha al-Sabeq. On Friday, 17 September 1982, she said, while the massacre was still (unknown to her) underway inside Sabra and Chatila, she was in her home with her family in Bir Hassan, just opposite the camps. “Neighbours came and said the Israelis wanted to stamp our ID cards, so we went downstairs and we saw both Israelis and Lebanese Forces [Phalangists] on the road. The men were separated from the women.” This separation–with its awful shadow of similar separations at Srebrenica during the Bosnian war–were a common feature of these mass arrests. “We were told to go to the Cite Sportif. The men stayed put.” Among the men were Wadha’s two sons, 19-year-old Mohamed and 16-year-old Ali and her brother Mohamed. “We went to the Cite Sportif, as the Israelis told us,” she says. “I never saw my sons or brother again.”
The survivors tell distressingly similar stories. Bahija Zrein says she was ordered by an Israeli patrol to go to the Cite Sportif and the men with her, including her 22-year-old brother, were taken away. Some militiamen–watched by the Israelis–loaded him into a car, blindfolded, she claims. “That’s how he disappeared,” she says in her official testimony, “and I have never seen him again since.”
It was only a few days afterwards that we journalists began to notice a discrepancy in the figures of dead. While up to 600 bodies had been found inside Sabra and Chatila, 1,800 civilians had been reported as “missing”. We assumed–how easy assumptions are in war–that they had been killed in the three days between 16 September 1982 and the withdrawal of the Phalangist killers on the 18th, that their corpses had been secretly buried outside the camp. Beneath the golf course, we suspected. The idea that many of these young people had been murdered outside the camps or after the 18th, that the killings were still going on while we walked through the camps, never occurred to us.
Why did we not think of this at the time? The following year, the Israeli Kahan commission published its report, condemning Sharon but ending its own inquiry of the atrocity on 18 September, with just a one-line hint–unexplained– that several hundred people may have “disappeared” at about the same time. The commission interviewed no Palestinian survivors but it was allowed to become the narrative of history. The idea that the Israelis went on handing over prisoners to their bloodthirsty militia allies never occurred to us. The Palestinians of Sabra and Chatila are now giving evidence that this is exactly what happened. One man, Abdel Nasser Alameh, believes his brother Ali was handed to the Phalange on the morning of the 18th. A Palestinian Christian woman called Milaneh Boutros has recorded how, in a truck-load of women and children, she was taken from the camps to the Christian town of Bikfaya, the home of the newly assassinated Christian president-elect Bashir Gemayel, where a grief-stricken Christian woman ordered the execution of a 13-year-old boy in the truck. He was shot. The truck must have passed at least four Israeli checkpoints on its way to Bikfaya. And heaven spare me, I realise now that I had even met the woman who ordered the boy’s execution.
Even before the slaughter inside the camps had ended, Shahira Abu Rudeina says she was taken to the Cite Sportif where, in one of the underground “holding centres”, she saw a retarded man, watched by Israeli soldiers, burying bodies in a pit. Her evidence might be rejected were it not for the fact that she also expressed her gratitude for an Israeli soldier–inside the Chatila camp, against all the evidence given by the Israelis–who prevented the murder of her daughters by the Phalange.
Long after the war, the ruins of the Cite Sportif were torn down and a brand new marble stadium was built in its place, partly by the British. Pavarotti has sung there. But the testimony of what may lie beneath its foundations–and its frightful implications–might give Ariel Sharon further reason to fear an indictment.
Sally said : “well-debunked Palestinian propaganda over nonexistent massacres”
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do.
I’m half crazyy, alll foorr the loovve of yoouuuuu…
BTW, how’s it going with that IP switching gag, confud?
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Ariel said:
The downing by the Vincinnes was a mistake and owned up to, as well as paid for. Reagan gave his apologies to all concerned.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Iran Air Flight 655 (IR655) was a commercial flight operated by Iran Air that flew from Bandar Abbas, Iran to Dubai. the airplane flying IR655 was shot down by the U.S. Navy guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes between Bandar Abbas and Dubai, killing all 290 passengers and crew aboard, including 38 non-Iranians and 66 children.
The plane, an Airbus A300B2, registered as EP-IBU and flown by captain Mohsen Rezaian, left Bandar Abbas at 10:17 am Iran time (UTC+0330), 27 minutes after its scheduled departure time of 9:50 am. It would have been a 28-minute flight. After takeoff, it was directed by the Bandar Abbas tower to turn on its transponder and proceed over the Persian Gulf. The flight was assigned routinely to commercial air corridor Amber 59, a twenty-mile-wide lane on a direct line to Dubai airport. The short distance made for a simple flight pattern: climb to 14,000 feet (about 4300 m), cruise for a short time, and descend into Dubai.
At that same time, the Vincennes, under the command of Captain William C. Rogers III and fitted with the then-new AEGIS combat system, was nearby in the Strait of Hormuz.
The Vincennes had been rushed to the area after the April 14 mining of the USS Samuel B. Roberts by Iranian forces. Iran had purchased Silkworm missiles from China, and an AEGIS cruiser was the only type of vessel that could counter the threat. Roberts had been operating in the Persian Gulf as part of Operation Earnest Will, the effort to protect Kuwaiti oil tankers during the Iran-Iraq War.
On the morning of July 3, the Vincennes crossed into Iranian territorial waters during clashes with Iranian gunboats. The USS Sides (FFG-14) and USS Elmer Montgomery (FF-1082) were nearby.
NB On July 3, 1988,
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Sally,
If I were doing this, I’d be baiting you to get a predictable response. But the “Leo Strauss” short biography really calls for this no matter the authors intent….and, yes, its a guilty pleasure.
“The Jews are coming, the Jews are coming”
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Medals awarded
While issuing notes of regret over the loss of human life, the U.S. government has, to date, neither admitted any wrong-doing or responsibility in this tragedy, nor apologised, but continues to blame Iranian hostile actions for the incident. The men of the Vincennes were all awarded combat-action ribbons. Commander Lustig, the air-warfare co-ordinator, even won the navy’s Commendation Medal for “heroic achievement,” his “ability to maintain his poise and confidence under fire” having enabled him to “quickly and precisely complete the firing procedure.”[2] According to a 23 April 1990 article in The Washington Post, the Legion of Merit was presented to Captain Rogers and Lieutenant Commander Lustig on 3 July 1988. The citations did not mention the downing of the Iran Air flight at all. It should be noted that the Legion of Merit is often awarded to high-ranking officers upon successful completion of especially difficult duty assignments and/or last tours of duty before retirement.
The incident continued to overshadow U.S.-Iran relations for many years. Following the explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 six months later, the British and American governments initially blamed the PFLP-GC, a Palestinian militant group backed by Syria, with assumptions of assistance from Iran in retaliation for Iran Air Flight 655.[7] The cause of the crash was later determined to be a bomb associated with the Libyan intelligence service, though an Iranian group had claimed responsibility for it.[citation needed]
The Flight 655 incident has often been compared to that of Korean Air Flight 007 interception by the Soviet Air Force in 1983.
The Vice-President George H. W. Bush declared a month later, “I will never apologise for the United States of America, ever. I don’t care what it has done. I don’t care what the facts are.” [8][9][10][11]
[edit]
Compensation
On February 22, 1996 the United States agreed to pay Iran US$ 61.8 million in compensation ($300,000 per wage-earning victim, $150,000 per non-wage-earner) for the 248 Iranians killed in the shootdown. This was an agreed settlement to discontinue a case brought by Iran in 1989 against the U.S. in the International Court of Justice.[12] The payment of compensation was explicitly characterised by the US as being on an ex gratia basis, and the U.S. denied having any responsibility or liability for the incident.
The United States has not compensated Iran for the airplane itself, to date. The aircraft was worth more than $30 million.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
” You filthy fucking little Indian shit”
Israeli tourist (one of 11) to a simple but polite and cheerful 14 year old kid in a bar in Bolivia - March 17th 2006.
Now I know I’ve been kind of winding poor old confud up, and while I think he deserves it, I also recognize it as a guilty pleasure. But I think with his last couple of comments about the “Israeli tourist” in, where was it, Bolivia, a “bar in Bolivia”, we’ve actually got something worthwhile out of the exercise — this is good clinical material. It’s not just that he lies bare-facedly, and it’s not just that he reads, and gullibly believes what he reads, on Aryan Nation-type web sites — it’s that, when wound up even a bit, it’s this sort of Goebbels-like nazi swill that he reflexively spews. No wonder he resorts to calling others “nazi” and “racist” so readily — he worries he has to get it in before someone recognizes it in him.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Sally,
I forgot did the probligo write the below about Fudd or Conned? This too went into my book of quotes. I like the “disgrace” build-up. And probligo really doesn’t fit the troll category, as someone called him, it’s just difficult on him/her to get beat up when so many disagree.
“You have no redeeming feature that I can see.
You are like the spoilt little five year-old brat who is so desperate for attention that you end up wrecking the afternoon tea and wake following the funeral of an elderly aunt. You disgrace yourself. You disgrace your parents. You disgrace your family and name.
Grow up.”
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Leo Strauss (September 20, 1899 – October 18, 1973), was a German born Jew and naturalized American political philosopher, who specialized in the study of classical philosophy. He spent most of his career as a Political Science Professor at the University of Chicago, where he taught several generations of devoted students, as well as publishing fifteen books. Since his death, he has come to be regarded, although debatably, as a leading intellectual source of neoconservatism in the United States.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
“bigot, certainly — blind and virulent hatred directed at entire nations and groups, an inability to look at himself and his own emotions objectively, an instinct to project his own failings and weaknesses upon the hated object, and an easy slide into malicious stereotyping…a belief that their ideology will somehow immunize them against the charge of bigotry, making them all the more careless in indulging the worst of their racial, physical, and sexual prejudices.”
Sally,
That was eloquently concise. I think I’ll save this in my book of quotes. None so blind, eh?
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Fascism: is a radical authoritarian political philosophy that combines elements of corporatism, totalitarianism, extreme nationalism, militarism, anti-rationalism, anti-communism and anti-liberalism.
GWB and Beelzebub’s whacky white house to a T if you add islamonoia.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
“You broke my fucking tooth you fuck”
Same Israeli tourist blubbing whilst getting up off the footpath before running away.
March 17th, 2006
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
” You filthy fucking little Indian shit”
Israeli tourist (one of 11) to a simple but polite and cheerful 14 year old kid in a bar in Bolivia - March 17th 2006.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
I blame it on the fat evangelical christian fruitloops, personally.
Confud, even more recently.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
“I liken arabs to crabs in a bucket.”
Decaying wasp - quite recently.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Oh yes, I put my hand up to a dislike of fat people. I can’t take them seriously at all. Lazy and ignorant mostly.
So whaddaya bet he’s fat?
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
“And you can’t get a decent hamburger anywhere in this goddamned country.”
Unidentified fat yank in checked trousers - Cairo 2005
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Little pond dwellers come out to play. How cute.
Oh yes, I put my hand up to a dislike of fat people. I can’t take them seriously at all. Lazy and ignorant mostly.
Any country that would have a debate about ‘intelligent design’ is laughable in a political sense. And any country that elected a buffoon like Reagan or Bush just once has to be suspect. Twice is unforgivable.
I blame it on the fat evangelical christian fruitloops, personally.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Well, Ariel, I really think he’s got some issues re: his mental health generally. But, yes, I think he fits the pattern of the bigot, certainly — blind and virulent hatred directed at entire nations and groups, an inability to look at himself and his own emotions objectively, an instinct to project his own failings and weaknesses upon the hated object, and an easy slide into malicious stereotyping.
And one additional characteristic, associated with bigots on the left in particular: a belief that their ideology will somehow immunize them against the charge of bigotry, making them all the more careless in indulging the worst of their racial, physical, and sexual prejudices.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Sally,
Do you think someone can hate Americans and Israelis so much without being a racist? Or is it just a critique of their cultures?
Maybe he is just trying to protect all the gentile (non-jewess) women. Seeing him throw out that neo-nazi talmudic lie as real was sad.
I never thought you wore glasses, and the plump comment, do you think he is biased against full-sized women too?
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
I can’t help but picture you as the ugly plump unpopular teachers pet girl with glasses who could never quite connect and turned bitter as a result.
With glasses!!? Aww, now that’s just mean.
I know I said confud was nasty, stupid and somewhat deranged, but I didn’t say it to hurt him — I was just providing an objective description, as the above raving illustrates.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Sally,
He also doesn’t understand the definitions of racist, fascist, or troll for that matter.
It was never their ideas, but their manners and methods. The “frothing at the mouth” is laughable, the insults pathetic. The ploys don’t work. Any little boy can throw insults and call it argument.
As I said, comic relief.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Sally said…
Just a point about the individual who terms himself “confud” above, for those new to the blog and/or its comments: he’s what’s commonly termed a troll, and is an unusually nasty, stupid, and somewhat deranged specimen of even that ugly species. He can keep himself under control for brief periods if he’s not challenged in any way, but quickly loses it if confronted with a rational argument not suited to his peculiar prejudices — as in this example of typical gibberish:
But, the statement was made by Obersturmfeuhrer Ariel who hasn’t the balls to defend it. War, lies and videotape. Family values eh?
Reasonable people might reasonably decide he’s just a waste of time and space.
12:10 AM, June 30, 2006
Reasonable people might come to the conclusion little butchergirl that you are a nasty little supremecist who advocates genocide against people that you have no understanding of or willingness to empathise with.
I can’t help but picture you as the ugly plump unpopular teachers pet girl with glasses who could never quite connect and turned bitter as a result.
Now toddle off, little racist pond dweller. Go and chat with your equally dim friend Ariel. Not an iota of intellectual courage or moral fibre between you.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Why would they recognize Israel? A racially segregated state that militarily oppresses and murders on the basis of race and the very religion they believe in. If Israel went back to its legally mandated borders and stopped the killing, their attitudes would change I think.
I’ve been to many countries throughout the world and I find moderate muslims no more or less offensive than any other religion. I’ve found americans to be the most likely to try to shove their religious beliefs at me (and worse my kids). Seriously.
To lump secular muslims in with the extremists is quite wrong, and that would account for the overwhelming majority in my experience.
I find zealots of any type offensive. Sally for example thinks of herself as being part of the chosen race. That is nazi like. I don’t see too much of that in the islamic world.
You do meet plenty of arrogant supremicist Americans and Israelis though.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Just a point about the individual who terms himself “confud” above, for those new to the blog and/or its comments: he’s what’s commonly termed a troll, and is an unusually nasty, stupid, and somewhat deranged specimen of even that ugly species. He can keep himself under control for brief periods if he’s not challenged in any way, but quickly loses it if confronted with a rational argument not suited to his peculiar prejudices — as in this example of typical gibberish:
But, the statement was made by Obersturmfeuhrer Ariel who hasn’t the balls to defend it. War, lies and videotape. Family values eh?
Reasonable people might reasonably decide he’s just a waste of time and space.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Wogs, huh. My father fought with the 8th Army in North Africa and Italy. He called the locals “wogs” and had a very low opinion of them. With good reason, because they sympathized with the Nazis. They soon learned to call the wogs “yehudi fon dook” (phonetic), which apparently meant “Jewish Bastard”. It sure pissed them off. He loved the Italians and learnt Italian even though he spent much of his time stuck at the notorious Monte Cassino.
More recently, my wife and I did the Nile cruise and Ancient Egyptian monuments tour (1989). For some of our trip we were hosted by an Egyptian professor whom we’d met through a mutual professional friend. He was a great host and showed us his home, introduced us to his family, took us to his holiday home on the Suez canal. He even showed us where the Israelis had crossed the canal in the Yom Kippur war (1973). He assigned one of his students to show us around the Cairo museum and lots of Mosques. Nice young fellow, but VERY proud of his religion. We stayed in touch with the professor and his student over the years. Since 9/11 we have heard not a peep from either of them. Neither have our mutual friends.
We have tried to figure out what the problem was. Shame? Solidarity with their co-religionists? Censorship? We doubt censorship because various email viruses communicate with us through his email account. Who knows?
I look at some of the polls done on Muslim attitudes and I read about the anti-Jewish, anti-Christian, anti-West propaganda that pervades the Muslim world. I also look at the policies of the governments that have been elected in Afghanistan and Iraq. Recognize Israel? No. Religious freedom? No.
I think the problem with Islam goes much deeper than dealing with a radical fringe. Knock off the fringe and a new one grows in its place. Maybe there isn’t a moderate Islam. Certainly, the Koran is not a source of moderation. Maybe the masses serve as a reservoir of radicalism.
Our Leftie friends seem to think that Islam is just another religion on a par with Methodism. I’m afraid that is a fiction.
So, what to call the enemy? “yehudi fon dook” works for me.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Well whilst I find the terms a little confusing, I do actually speak in English terminology, unlike Ariel.
It seems a classical liberal in his mind is a racist reactionary militarist antidemocratic bigot. Hitler called himself a socialist after all. Ariel borrows the concept. To Ariel a spade is what sounds best at the time. An ‘apology’ could mean an insulting denial of responsibility for instance. Compensation could mean lying through your teeth for years to avoid paying money to families of murdered muslims. You know how it goes.
I’ve never been all that interested in US politics but GWB and his crazy band of crooks thieves and liars make it impossible to ignore. I will never vote there but the policies of military expansionism and his war against Islam are making my world a dangerous uncomfortable place.
Most western people IMO have viewed your politics as superficial argument over what you term moral issues that have long since passed in most western societies except on the relligious fruitloop fringes. All the hoopla around the conventions that we see would and does turn most people off. I find it distasteful and ugly, but it’s your right and I wouldn’t try to deny you it. Why are you trying to introduce this rubbish to us though.
The corruption in your politics is self evident but you all defend it as being utopian democracy. It clearly isn’t and needs a serious overhaul.
I don’t see a) how the antiglobalists can be called fascists (or indeed how antiglobalists can be defined as a political grouping apart from the one issue) or b) how the neocons differ from fascists.
Don’t be fooled by the extreme antiglobalists. there are many many people in the middle who would like to see free trade but don’t want the current global push to go ahead in the WTO image. Many want a moritorium because what is proposed now is not free trade at all, it is imperialism.
The US and the Europeans both practice socialism for the wealthy, but the US more so, and Bush is the crony capitalist to end all crony capitalists.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
slore: The left and old right are all fans of the Hegel type notion of the whole ‘spirit of the people’ being expressed via the state nonsense.
Good point — and note also the influence of Rousseau’s notion of the “General Will” as a quasi-mystical phenomenon that drowns the individual will. Your point about being able to opt out of a bad business as opposed to a bad government program is also good, but is often balanced by the observation that in a democracy at least you have a say in selecting the people who design the programs but not in business (the balance is sometimes called “exit” vs. “voice”, taken from a book by Albert Hirschman).
A further consideration, though, in contrasting the position of the individual vis-a-vis market and state, is to contrast the notions that lie at their respective foundations: “trade” and “law”. By definition, a trade can only occur when it’s to the conscious benefit of both parties involved, whereas a law must be applied to everyone without regard to their opinions of it, by force if necessary. That is, voluntary, mutually beneficial behavior is at the basis of the market; coercion, backed up by violence, is at the basis of the state. This is not to say, as with anarchism, that the state is inherently a bad thing — it’s not, it’s a necessary thing, in fact. But it is reason to say that the role of the state should be minimized in favor of the market wherever possible.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
sIOre,
Confud doesn’t have the organic understanding of our politics. Libertarian, classical liberal, conservative, neo-con, right, left, liberal, etc., doesn’t matter. This may be from the superficial understanding through news reports, limited time living here, reading the wrong books, whatever. He also kneejerks if you don’t agree with him, you immediately become a rightwing nut neo-con.
He really doesn’t understand that the word is not the thing.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
At 3:38 AM, June 28, 2006, confudeforeigner said…
“Is anyone to the right of you? No.”
You perhaps. I’m a libertarian. When I debate actual right wingers and am often called a progressive materialist (i.e., a step away from a Marxist in their lexicon).
Actually, my views on the state are a hop skip and jump away from Marx. I’d like it to mostly whither away.
Remember your talking points, neo cons are ex lefties. American conservativism was mostly founded by ex communists (even before this neo con nonsense… the intellectuals that worked with William F. Buckley to get his movement going were mostly ex leftists and communists)… I find the Euro (i.e., old) and Buchanan paleo con right repellent. From my POV, they’re almost indistinguishable from some parts of the left… Especially the anti-globo ‘left’ (a group that has little, if anything, ideologically distinguishable from Mussolini and the fascists)…
It’s probably mostly historical happenstance we are called conservatives at all. The US progressives took on the name liberal in the 20s and 30s because progressive was becoming associated with socialist. Actual liberals then took on the name ‘libertarian’ since their label was being co opted. A book, by a leftist BTW, called conservatism revisited (I believe) came out in the 50s and various rebels against the progressive socialists took on the name as they melded into a coalition (they were often slapped with it by the media due to the book.. they figured why fight it)… This is probably part of the reason we can’t get along with Euro continental conservatives… we really are not a conservative movement… We’d be called liberals on the continent…
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
The 89 stats are au.gov, the other CIA Worldbook I believe.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
At 4:35 PM, June 29, 2006, Ariel said…
SIOre,
“In 1989, Australia was almost 95% European White (75% Anglo-celt).”
If those stats are correct your overall point is correct.
Even ‘white’ Americans (with their mix of native and often African thrown in) tend not be Anglo-Celt. Brits and English have always been a small minority of the white population. We have more people of German descent here.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
SIOre,
In 1989, Australia was almost 95% European White (75% Anglo-celt). By 2001, approx. 92% European white. It has probably gone down another percent or two, but I haven’t dug deeper. No desire.
Obviously, most of the data being looked at applies to a near lily-white Australia. I believe you would have to go back to the 40’s or earlier to find anything comparable in the US, and it still wouldn’t as the Anglo-celt would not be as high. I doubt that a fair part of their population has aboriginal ancestry, while a fair part of white Americans do. A much smaller number of whites have black ancestry also, something I doubt you’ll find in Australia.The two countries are not comparable in racial terms whatsoever.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
confudeforeigner said…
“And Australia or the UK or Canada aren’t?”
No, I’d say they are just not the same (ie, mix).
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
confudeforeigner said…
“Oh and BTW, HMOs are the model nobody wants (except maybe the drug companies). They are absolutely 100% opposed to working toward the notion of universal healthcare and they don’t work.”
I agree they are terrible. I don’t agree that they are substantially different than public run healthcare. IMO they share key similarities.
The point of managed HMO care is to allow experts to craft a healthcare ‘plan’ so that costs can be controlled. It’s essentially a private version of the public care in other countries. Part of the reason public care is argued for is that it is less expensive (ie, because you have a healthcare policy or ‘plan’…).
I, on the other hand, want nothing of a plan that may deny me the ability to make my own healthcare choices. Give me a simple insurance policy that says I have 2 million (or so) in healthcare claims I can make based on whatever my doctor (chosen by me) recommends… If I have cancer and a $400 a pill drug might give me a 20% extra chance of living… give me the pills… in the Euro public system, the expert / planners often decide this is a poor use of resources… Public good and all. Must think of the collective. To bad for you.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
At 1:06 AM, June 29, 2006, confudeforeigner said…
sl0re…
”Market forces are amoral.”
They are amoral, not immoral. So true.
“People in general want a fair system and an amoral system will leave behind those who are the greatest risks to profit.”
State run systems are no less amoral. State beauraucrats do not care about people any more than corporations. One difference is competition creates an environment that permits choice (between competitors) and their products (which they need to try to improve in order to win your patronage). Better run companies I’ve done work for provide competition even within their own corporation… A phone company I worked with had four IT support providers (three internal / company owned and one external contract service provider) a department manager could take bids from and hire (or fire for poor service)… Another company had something similar in that for hardware repairs you could send broken items to any repair center the company owned (ie, everyone was part of the same company, customer and repair centers)… poorly done repairs from one? Use another center, eventually the manager of the bad center is demoted since no one uses their center and you can try them again…
As to leaving people behind, this is why the state should subside the poor so that insurance can be purchased for them comparable to what the middle class can buy on their own.
”The most successful societies are those with elements of market and state forces acting in concert with clearly defined roles. Not cronyism (what I call socialism for the wealthy) between government and big business.”
I think your going call any actual competition crony capitalism and then claim actual real corporatism / crony capitalism good..
”Some regulation by government is necessary.”
Of course. Especially when it increases transparency, safety, or the system’s stablity.
“No.1 economic rule. Deregulation does not competition create.”
Not in all cases no. In many cases it can.
”No. 2 economic rule. Countries are not businesses.”
Ahhh, I think you romanticize the state. The left and old right are all fans of the Hegel type notion of the whole ‘spirit of the people’ being expressed via the state nonsense. They are run like businesses. They have managers, and beauraucrats (who don’t care at all about the public), and budgets, and internal politics, and structural issues that help create the results they provide… much like businesses… the only difference is some businesses are better run than most government public services providers.. I can opt out of a bad business, a bad government program… not so much…
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
On health care:
One, no one has addressed the inevitable rationing in socialist systems. They’re supposed to be more fair, but they also get the deleterious results predicted by the classical model. For instance,
“Rationing of health care occurs in the U.S. too, especially in public hospitals that provide care for the uninsured, and for those on Medicare and Medicaid. In spite of this, average wait times in the U.S. are far shorter than in countries with national health care systems.
For example, 27 percent of Canadian patients and 36 percent of British patients must wait more than four months for elective, non-emergency surgery. By contrast, only about 5 percent of American patients wait that long.”
Secondly, no one addressed how socialist systems retard the development of new technology, as seen in the link of my June 28, 1059Pm post.
Third, here is an article about how programs like Medicare are driving up prices in the United States. Also, there is the explosion of cost to the taxpayer. Again, this is what is predicted by the classical model, not the socialist model.
These are real costs inherent to socialist systems. My health care is great, and I don’t want rationing or high premiums simply because a lot of people have bad diets. You guys have to come up with a reason better than that.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Synova,
Emory University’s health policy expert Thorpe seems to disagree with what you posted.
This is how he is quoted in this article in USA Today, from the Associated Press:
While the gaps for infants and mothers contrast sharply with the nation’s [USA’s] image as a world leader, Emory University health policy expert Kenneth Thorpe said the numbers are not surprising.
“Our [the USA’s] health care system focuses on providing high-tech services for complicated cases. We do this very well,” Thorpe said. “What we do not do is provide basic primary and preventive health care services. We do not pay for these services, and do not have a delivery system that is designed to provide either primary prevention, or adequately t