The Israel-Palestine tragedy isn't insolvable. It simply isn't the case that the peace-loving people of Israel will be forever doomed to their tragic "self-defence" against the insane death-cultist Palestinian Arabs.
It seems like an insolvable problem to some observers because they think that the weak, barely armed Palestinians are irrationally hurling themselves against the benevolent and wise and heavily armed and powerful Israelis out of vile anti-Semitism and nationalist delusions and infernal Muslim blood-lust. The reality, of course, is that bigoted Israeli expansionists are trying to steal the Palestinians' remaining lands and since taking land by conquest is clearly illegal, they're nibbling away at Palestine piece-by-piece via "settlements" (which are still illegal, but there's enough of a "process" involved that self-interested people can self-delude themselves that they aren't illegal) and, also, through the occupation, Israel can make life in Gaza and the West Bank intolerable for the Palestinians in the hopes that they'll all leave.
Anger at this injustice and at the conditions of their existence drives some Palestinians to engage in their Quixotic rocket-attacks at Israel and to occasionally hurl rocks at their soldiers.
This process continues decade after decade because it's in Israel's benefit that it continue. The USA supports Israel because Israel is a loyal attack dog for them in a geo-politically/economically important part of the world. (OIL) US puppets like Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt collude in the oppression of their fellow Arabs because their governments are run by corrupt scum who don't give a shit about their own people so why should they care about the Palestinians?
The flood of refugees from Mexico and the rest of Latin America isn't going to end any time soon. But it's not an inevitability. For as long as racist, right-wing shit-heads believe that this flood of human misery is actually part of a bizarre "re-Conquista" of the South-Western United States (stolen from Mexico by the USA in the mid-1800s) as well as being simply a manifestation of unadulterated laziness and greed of people hoping to sneak into the country and have their "anchor babies" so that they can sponge off of the USA's super-indulgent welfare state, or (and please ignore the contradiction) it's a scheme of super-industrious Latinos to steal Americans' jobs just because they like to steal, .... for so long as those asinine ideas hold sway, it will be a problem.
Or, more accurately, for so long as those crackpot theories dominate, they will obscure the truth which, if faced directly, could bring an end to the problem. This truth is that Latin America is dominated by the United States and the United States is dominated by insanely corrupt and greedy fucks who are driving their own population down with their mercenary economic policies and they force these economic policies on countries that are far too poor to be able to mask their deleterious effects. These immiserating policies force millions of people to flee to the USA to find some sort of work to keep themselves and their families from literally starving to death. (Cuba produces economic refugees as well. How much of this is due to the blockade, how much is the fault of the government there, and how much is the inevitable product of the limited opportunities in a poor country is beyond my knowledge.)
As well, US elites think nothing of applying brutal warfare against any movement within Latin America that tries to change things, and this produces either states of civil war or, after those wars are over, states of lawlessness and violence.
Canada's First Nations are not doomed to poverty forever. It simply isn't the case that our governments have lavished money and programs on them since forever, in the blinkered hopes that allowing them to wallow in dependency on reserves run by inevitably corrupt leadership (tolerated because the people within these reserves are too lazy to do anything about them, are on the take themselves and because corruption is an integral part of the First Nations' social make-up) will somehow magically transform into vital, independent, self-governing communities within the Canadian family of peoples.
It's actually the case that our governments used to brazenly abuse the First Nations, decade after decade, and that, while they're still suffering the traumatic after-effects of much of this, our governments are more content just to under-fund their communities, decade after decade, in the hopes that they'll all just leave their reserves and wander into the towns and cities of the settler society (where, supposedly they have always been welcomed as brothers and sisters and fellow Canadians and are never denied jobs by racist employers or beaten by racist cops or raped and murdered by racist scum) and renounce all their claims to special status and resource rights. They're kind of like our Palestinians that way. If there is corruption among their leadership (and there is) most of it is directly the product of our own corrupt governments who foster sell-outs among the First Nations to manage this sick state of affairs in return for some short-term personal benefit.
If we were to fund First Nations' social programs on the same per-capita basis that the rest of Canadians' programs are funded, and were to give them control over their own natural resources, and were to realize that the "gifts" they were promised in our treaties with them were not one-time lump-sum payments for land, but were an ongoing obligation since their cooperation made Canada viable in the first place, we would go a long way to solving this seemingly insolvable problem.
Just remember, the corrupt and destructive US elite has produced a country that believes deeply entrenched poverty and inequality is unavoidable. Monthly mass-shootings are an inevitability. Their health-care crisis is an inevitability. Their massive prison population is an inevitability. People in other industrialized nations know that such is not the case. As do informed US Americans. Unfortunately, the contagion of religious stupidity and corporate maximum-propanda "information" systems have oozed across our borders and plenty of Canadians are so fucking stupid that, well, Jesus fucking Christ, ... a disgusting imbecile like Rob Ford looks good to them.
However, since the left is incapable of attacking the root causes of these problems, perhaps they are unsolvable.
It seems like an insolvable problem to some observers because they think that the weak, barely armed Palestinians are irrationally hurling themselves against the benevolent and wise and heavily armed and powerful Israelis out of vile anti-Semitism and nationalist delusions and infernal Muslim blood-lust. The reality, of course, is that bigoted Israeli expansionists are trying to steal the Palestinians' remaining lands and since taking land by conquest is clearly illegal, they're nibbling away at Palestine piece-by-piece via "settlements" (which are still illegal, but there's enough of a "process" involved that self-interested people can self-delude themselves that they aren't illegal) and, also, through the occupation, Israel can make life in Gaza and the West Bank intolerable for the Palestinians in the hopes that they'll all leave.
Anger at this injustice and at the conditions of their existence drives some Palestinians to engage in their Quixotic rocket-attacks at Israel and to occasionally hurl rocks at their soldiers.
This process continues decade after decade because it's in Israel's benefit that it continue. The USA supports Israel because Israel is a loyal attack dog for them in a geo-politically/economically important part of the world. (OIL) US puppets like Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt collude in the oppression of their fellow Arabs because their governments are run by corrupt scum who don't give a shit about their own people so why should they care about the Palestinians?
The flood of refugees from Mexico and the rest of Latin America isn't going to end any time soon. But it's not an inevitability. For as long as racist, right-wing shit-heads believe that this flood of human misery is actually part of a bizarre "re-Conquista" of the South-Western United States (stolen from Mexico by the USA in the mid-1800s) as well as being simply a manifestation of unadulterated laziness and greed of people hoping to sneak into the country and have their "anchor babies" so that they can sponge off of the USA's super-indulgent welfare state, or (and please ignore the contradiction) it's a scheme of super-industrious Latinos to steal Americans' jobs just because they like to steal, .... for so long as those asinine ideas hold sway, it will be a problem.
Or, more accurately, for so long as those crackpot theories dominate, they will obscure the truth which, if faced directly, could bring an end to the problem. This truth is that Latin America is dominated by the United States and the United States is dominated by insanely corrupt and greedy fucks who are driving their own population down with their mercenary economic policies and they force these economic policies on countries that are far too poor to be able to mask their deleterious effects. These immiserating policies force millions of people to flee to the USA to find some sort of work to keep themselves and their families from literally starving to death. (Cuba produces economic refugees as well. How much of this is due to the blockade, how much is the fault of the government there, and how much is the inevitable product of the limited opportunities in a poor country is beyond my knowledge.)
As well, US elites think nothing of applying brutal warfare against any movement within Latin America that tries to change things, and this produces either states of civil war or, after those wars are over, states of lawlessness and violence.
Canada's First Nations are not doomed to poverty forever. It simply isn't the case that our governments have lavished money and programs on them since forever, in the blinkered hopes that allowing them to wallow in dependency on reserves run by inevitably corrupt leadership (tolerated because the people within these reserves are too lazy to do anything about them, are on the take themselves and because corruption is an integral part of the First Nations' social make-up) will somehow magically transform into vital, independent, self-governing communities within the Canadian family of peoples.
It's actually the case that our governments used to brazenly abuse the First Nations, decade after decade, and that, while they're still suffering the traumatic after-effects of much of this, our governments are more content just to under-fund their communities, decade after decade, in the hopes that they'll all just leave their reserves and wander into the towns and cities of the settler society (where, supposedly they have always been welcomed as brothers and sisters and fellow Canadians and are never denied jobs by racist employers or beaten by racist cops or raped and murdered by racist scum) and renounce all their claims to special status and resource rights. They're kind of like our Palestinians that way. If there is corruption among their leadership (and there is) most of it is directly the product of our own corrupt governments who foster sell-outs among the First Nations to manage this sick state of affairs in return for some short-term personal benefit.
If we were to fund First Nations' social programs on the same per-capita basis that the rest of Canadians' programs are funded, and were to give them control over their own natural resources, and were to realize that the "gifts" they were promised in our treaties with them were not one-time lump-sum payments for land, but were an ongoing obligation since their cooperation made Canada viable in the first place, we would go a long way to solving this seemingly insolvable problem.
Just remember, the corrupt and destructive US elite has produced a country that believes deeply entrenched poverty and inequality is unavoidable. Monthly mass-shootings are an inevitability. Their health-care crisis is an inevitability. Their massive prison population is an inevitability. People in other industrialized nations know that such is not the case. As do informed US Americans. Unfortunately, the contagion of religious stupidity and corporate maximum-propanda "information" systems have oozed across our borders and plenty of Canadians are so fucking stupid that, well, Jesus fucking Christ, ... a disgusting imbecile like Rob Ford looks good to them.
However, since the left is incapable of attacking the root causes of these problems, perhaps they are unsolvable.
10 comments:
What if we started a campaign: "Why Do We Have To Be In Love With Israel?" Hold on, I hear a knock at the door. .......
greg?
greg?
sorry, it was a bad joke about posting the comment and then police immediately responding.
I was playing along with you. As if you'd disappeared.
Your other comment on the other thread, about Celine Dion in the hot-tub time machine, ... that one I didn't understand.
The Celine thing...forget it. I was pretending it was 2008, then I started mixing up the years. Hot Tub Time Machine came out later and then I threw in Celine Dion because I imagined her in a small boat in the Hot Tub which I was linking with the Titanic. I made a mess of it and was trying to get cute. But seriously, why do we have to love Israel? There used to be a time where you could openly criticize it in this country without being gutted. If I had some balls, I would do something...but I'm too busy making stupid jokes about Celine Dion. What's with her??
I think it's easier than ever before to criticize Israel.
Not in the mainstream media. But nobody on the street shuts up when somebody tries to pull that "anti-Semite" shit.
The only thing we can do is stop the Canadian government's blind support for Israel. And to that we have to stop harper and we haven't done that.
I'm very happy that Harper hasn't shut down discussion on Israel. .
Where is Doonesbury when you need him? He could cut through the bullshit with one caption.
I think I've stumbled on something here....WE CAN'T MAKE FUN OF HARPER. We ridicule his policies but there is nothing about him that's funny. I mean the fact that he looks a little like an older Ken Doll is pathetic. I have yet to come across anyone who has done a Nixon on this guy.. I couldn't make light of him if I had a gun to my head. There he is, getting out of his car. There he is at the breakfast table.
Oh, I've started a cartoon wherein harper will be viciously mocked.
The man is a mess. He's totally insecure. And amazingly gutless (as I point out on this blog). He's a pathetic chicken-hawk. Creepy. Narcissistic.
Just imagine the fun one could have depicting him as a cowpoke dude.
In an interview with Palestinian Authority TV last week, Ibrahim Khreiseh, the PLO ’s ambassador to the UN Human Rights Committee admitted, “The missiles that are now being launched against Israel – each and every missile constitutes a crime against humanity whether it hits or misses, because it is directed at civilian targets.”
Khreiseh also explained that since Palestinians in Gaza have “appeared on TV and said that the Israeli army warned them to evacuate their homes before the bombardment… if someone is killed, the law considers it a mistake rather than an intentional killing because [the Israelis] followed legal procedures.”
Khreiseh then noted, “We never warn anyone about where these missiles are about to fall or the operations we carry out.”
In other words, the PLO ’s own representative said that Israel is innocent and the Palestinians are guilty of conducting acts of genocide.
But their Western supporters don’t care. Instead, their affection and commitment to the Palestinian campaign against Israel grows in intensity every time the Palestinians escalate their genocidal incitement and violence.
This support regularly involves anti-Jewish violence directed against local Jewish communities and pro-Israel activists.
Consider France. Since the beginning of the year, anti-Jewish violence and intimidation in France has reached levels not seen since the Holocaust. And things have only gotten worse since Palestinian terrorists in Hebron kidnapped and murdered Naftali Fraenkel, Eyal Yifrah and Gil-Ad Shaer a month ago. Life for Jews in France is becoming increasingly untenable.
Anti-Jewish attacks run the gamut from shouting “Death to the Jews,” and “Finish Hitler’s Work,” to delivering bomb threats to Jewish kindergartens and businesses, to vandalizing Jewish businesses, institutions and other property, to physically assaulting Jews of all ages, as well as Jewish institutions.
Well, well, what do you know?
Another nationalist-partisan hack!
Another contributor to murderous hatred.
Another useless hypocrite.
So Ibrahim Khreiseh of the rival PLO bad-mouths Hamas and that's enough for you to ignore everything I wrote above, and other "facts on the ground" such as Israel's bombing of hospitals?
Enough innocents were slaughtered in "Operation Cast Lead" for Israel to know that whatever their intentions, whatever "innocent mistakes" ... civilians were going to die in the hundreds this time around. To have known that and to have gone ahead anyway ...
I simply don't have the time for your hypocrisy and moral cowardice.
It's getting a little stale for people to talk about anti-Jewish violence and anti-Jewish sentiments, as if Pam Geller, Mark Steyn, Ezra Levant, and other Islamophobes aren't on the rampage in North America and Europe.
To say that Israel is targeted as no other country is, is such laughable bullshit. Is Iran not targeted? Was Saddam Hussein's Iraq not targeted? Assad's Jordan? Venezuela's Chavez? Cuba?
Are Israeli's out calling for "Death to Arabs" or are they not?
Get back to me when you grow a brain.
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