An open thread where you can discuss anything you like. Especially Canadian health care and the Israel Palestine conflict.
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Here is a thread where you can discuss anything you like. For example, Canadian health care policies.
Throughout the years, I have read quite a bit about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but because I do not claim to be an expert on the situation, I rarely comment about it. Despite this, I have long been convinced that there is a much better way to deal with that tragic situation than what is…
"Ali Eteraz" has started a new site, States of Islam. My friend Aziz Poonawalla has a post up offering his thoughts on the Israel-Palestine conflict. I am aware of two of the headline contributors, Haroon Moghul and Thabet. Though I disagree with them, they're both smart, so I indulge them in…
There can be no doubt that the combatants in the battle between Hezbollah and Israel engulfing southern Lebanon have lost all moral credibility. Both sides are waging a war without any regard for innocent human life, except insofar as it is regard for the public relations problems it causes.
The…
I was staying with Canadian friends at Christmas, and learned how provincially-based their government health insurance is, and how torturous it can be to be reimbursed for medical care you receive outside your home province. All these transaction costs and administration dramas for the end user... doesn't sound like one of the best models.
"Okay, so I was wrong. It's worse to destroy property than to kill people. My bad."
_ Levsenson.
1. No. Killing 2000 people is worse than killing 13.
2. Talk to an IDF soldier who was forced (under threat of court-martial and prison) to drag a 70-year-old paraplegic woman out into the street in the middle of winter so her home could be demolished to punish her family for the actions of her grand nephew then tell me the policy of collective punishment doesn't kill people.
Or look up the figures for the number of Palestinians who die every year in Israeli detention camps. The adult male relatives of a suicide bomber typically get six months or more detention without trial.
Can I say, in conclusion, (and I will not be wasting my time responding to any more of your usual nonsense on this topic) the Arab-Israeli conflict is not a fucking spectator sport played out for the benefit of ignorant bigoted foreigners like yourself with no stake in it.
As I have already noted, I have friends and relatives in Israel. virtually none of them, including the Kadima voters and the former and serving IDF members take the smug ignorant "Israel is completely in the right and simply defending itself" line put about by its supposed self-appointed friends in the west.
I will continue to criticise Israeli excesses while defending Israel's right to exist.
I do not do this out of the anti-Semitism you so ludicrously accuse me of (I'm Jewish you ass!) nor out of a belief in "Fascist America" you also accuse me of. It is because, after a literal lifetime of thinking about and studying this issue and speaking to numerous Israelis of all political affiliations, I believe that Israel's current policies are not in the interests of either Israel or the Jewish people.
In doing so, I will treat the nonsense spewed forth by bigots such as yourself with the contempt it deserves.
Ian Gould posts, in his usual friendly, open manner:
[[the Arab-Israeli conflict is not a fucking spectator sport played out for the benefit of ignorant bigoted foreigners like yourself with no stake in it.]]
No kidding? Gee, and here I thought it was a fucking spectator sport played out for the benefit of ignorant bigoted foreigners like myself with no stake in it.
I have a stake in justice and fairness anywhere in the world, Ian, and where I see unjust accusations and people, like you, defending murderers, I will continute to speak up about it. If you don't like it, I hope you know what you can do with it.
Tell me Barton, philosophers have wrestled for centuries with the question of whether God can make a stone so large he himself can not lift it, have you considered the similar question of whether he will be able to construct a martyr's crown for a head as swollen as yours?
And you think it's any different here, with say an HMO that is regional, not national? I ran into this very same problem in massachussets with kaiser and a clinic run by a regional provider in somerville. The two systems aren't on speaking terms.
The Canadian system, despite its HEAVY reliance on government intervention, still manages to be more efficient than the US system, as an aggregate; private canadian care is less efficient than private US care, but administrative costs for the public system represent 1.3% of total health expenditures. Needless to say, with a consolidated, national system, providers also have lower administrative costs. Meanwhile in the US, private insurers have administrative overhead of 11.7%, while Medicare has an overhead of ~3% (taking overhead as "fraction of expenditures devoted to administration"). Of course, Medicare tends to spend more per patient than most private insurers do (old people are expensive), so this is not really a fair comparison. However, on this basis, the Canadians kick the ass of the Americans - per-capita costs are something like a third of what they are in the US, in dollars.
Of course, you guys don't necessarily care about our health care woes...
private canadian care is less efficient than private US care
Don't they, like, ban private care in Canada for "necessary" medicine? That's the way it was when I lived there. "No Two Tier Health Care System!" was the mantra I heard so often.
You know Ian, what could the Israeli's do to stop the violence? The one side hates, hates, hates. They practice it, they teach it to their children, and any concessions the Israelis give only seem to make things worse.
I am curious to hear Ian Gould's suggestions for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The floor is yours Ian.
Looking at the Israel/Palestine conflict in terms of nationalities is unproductive, as that kind of thinking automatically buys in to a set of implicit assumptions that just feed the fire. One needs to rotate the coordinates, as it were, and view it in terms of those who seek a peaceful solution vs. those who wish to continue the conflict until their side achieves victory, whichever side that is. Seek out those organizations where folks of both nationalities work together to humanize the other side; they exist, both in Israel/Palestine, and abroad.
"And you think it's any different here, with say an HMO that is regional, not national?"
lord, yes. I mean, no. never mind regional problems, if there are two hospitals in your city and your insurer contracts with one because it's trying to undercut the other on costs, then you might be able to get emergency services at the other covered, but don't let them try to admit you from the ER! which can be problematic, if you happen to be comatose at the time.
Then theres the tangle of which doctors have admitting privileges at which hospital, etc. you need to make sure your doctors, hospital, anaesthologists, lab, etc. are all contracted.
says I, who just got out from under a couple of hundred dollars billed by the lab for a routine test ordered by my GP which the insurer feels is unjustified as routine coverage. luckily, i am savvy enough to demonstrate to the insurer's appeal board on the basis of prior test results, exactly why this test is indicated; and it gets paid. meanwhile, i receive yet another dunning letter from the lab, somewhat feisty sounding this time. now i'm engaging in correspondence with the lab; it turns out that they've credited me with the payment by the insurer, but "forgot" to account for the discount the insurer gets, and are billing me for the difference between the payment they expect from big companies with lots of money and little shmucks who are scrabbling. now that seems to be straightened out.
isn't this a bit much to expect from people who are actually seriously ill?
z,
Are you implying that a government operated entity devoid of a profit motive is going to provide a better system?
In line with what z said in post 9, here's an Israeli group that keeps track of the human rights violations of both sides and is morally consistent--
http://www.btselem.org/English/
Here's the difference between the two sides:
If the Israeli's stopped using violence/force, the conflict would not end. If the Palestinians stopped using violence/force, there would be no more violent conflict in Israel/Palestine.
Why is this so difficult to see?
Um, because it's wrong, ben? The first intifada (late 80s) was non-violent (unless you count throwing rocks as violent enough to justify occupation) - why didn't that work? Suicide bombing didn't start happening until later (~93 or 94). And before Arafat formed the PLO, there was no significant Palestinian violence. But there's a few things that force the conflict to continue outside of violence: (1) Israeli settlements, which continue to expand in the West Bank, and (2) the military occupation of Palestinian territories. These two things are connected, and they're connected to the violence of both sides.
No need to imply something which is supported by reams of empirical evidence.
Not that Lance has any regard whatsoever for empirical evidence.
Personally, I favor something akin to the French national insurance system, though I've been very favorably impressed by the Spanish national medical system, as my girlfriend has had ample opportunity to make use of it in the last year.
I shouldn't cut it off there - there's plenty of other stuff, like the right of return for displaced Palestinians, sovereignty over the border, and, well, a country.
Last night's channel 7 news featured a segment about the weather in the months and years ahead. The subject of the story seemed to be the weather, not the "weatherman" they interviewed to provide the information on what the weather was going to be like.
That "weatherman" was Ken Ring.
https://www.predictweather.co.nz/#/home/
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/fastsearch?order=date&IncludeBlogs=15&s…
His views were put forward uncritically as what the weather was going to be like. This is the news i'm talking about, not Today Tonight.
Tidbits include:
1. Ken was introduced as having accurately predicted this summer's rains.
2. Ken said Autumn was going to finish early, and we'd be in for a long winter.
3. KEn said we won't see another big drought until about 2030-something.
Maybe i'm too easily surprised and not cynical enough. but i say again:
this was no the nightly news, and the story was about the weather - ken ring was just an "expert" they got in to give his knowledge.
W. T. F???
Dunlin have been spotted migrating in Nevada this week, and great horned owls nesting a couple weeks ago. Very early dates.
In Madrid, residential song birds have been starting to act territorially and singing fragments all month. Early.
Finland's been exceptionally warm all winter. Madrid was a bit warm, too, not even a threat of snow.
Perhaps that long winter hasn't been exactly universal?
Yeah, ben, in Christian terms if one side turned into sinless angels the other side would remain sinful. Similarly, if I suddenly became perfect I'd still have to deal with assholes tailgating me on busy roads on my daily commute. Given that this is the case, I might as well drive 80 mph and force people off the road if they get in my way.
like the right of return for displaced Palestinians.
Has any other group been "displaced" (i.e. refugees) for as long as the Palestinians, and been given right of return? Aren't the host countries of these refuges supposed to absorb them after some time period, e.g. Jordan and Egypt? Or don't they want them? Why is this grievance allowed to perpetuate in the UN when no others are?
Would the first intifada have happened if the Arab countries had not attacked Israel in 1967? That's why the "occupied territories" were occupied in the first place, no? The Israelis have been giving concessions lately to no avail. Why can't the Palestinians knock off the violence? World opinion and pressure would be behind them if they would seek peaceful means at this point. Whatever happened in the past doesn't matter. At this point, the conflict will not end until the Palestinians seek peace.
My wife visited Israel during the time right before the latest uprising and noted that most Arabs she talked to preferred to live under Israeli rule (they were Israeli Arabs) than Palestinian rule.
Further, do the Israelis have children's television shows promoting hatred and annihilation of Arabs? Do they parade their children around wearing masks and machine-guns? Do they publicly proclaim Arabs to be pigs and monkeys? The Palestinians need their own Martin Luther King Jr, or Ghandi. The only problem is that such a person would be murdered in about 30 seconds by his/her own people.
I've decided it's probably not worthwhile trying to engage ben on this. There are these things called books, ben. Israelis who genuinely want peace with Palestinians have written them. And the story they tell doesn't really fit too well with your version of events---this doesn't mean that they portray the Palestinians as innocent either.
And here's something interesting about all those horrible Palestinians and what they were teaching their children--
http://lawrenceofcyberia.blogs.com/news/2008/02/dear-senator-cl.html
Er, Donald, I wasn't referring to any textbooks. I was mostly referring to the wonderful Hamas TV children's programming known as "Pioneers of Tomorrow" that features the strange Mickey Mouse, Giant Bee and a big bunny. It's a big wonderful Jew hate-fest for kids, brought by the marvelous and peace-loving Hamas.
Here's a sample video. You know, Donald, people like you and me get up in arms when we see this sort of crap foisted on innocent children from White Supremacist type idiots in America. Why the double standard from you when it comes to the Palestinians?
the question of what would happen if one side or the other unilaterally disarmed is a bit of a red herring. i assume that i agree with you on the answer, though.
but in keeping with my former pompous pedantries, the question is more properly, what would happen to an israeli were he/she to speak out in favor of making peace over revenging past honor; vs what would happen to a palestinian who did the same. not to mention, running for election of either's respective parliament on said platform.
which suggests to me that the pro-peace faction among the Israelis is in relatively less need of life support at this time, and the key lies in finding and nurturing such a faction among the Palestinians. occasional hints in the media refer to their existence as single unorganized furtive individuals.
i remind folks of new york city as a model; every minority basically hates every other minority, but on the whole they get along quite well.
Ben, why assume I'm like you? I'm not. I find Hamas's suicide bombing disgusting and their propaganda vicious. You're the one who seems unable to see evil on one side of this conflict. The difference between us is that I find the pompous moral arrogance of Westerners who think they're civilized just as bad. It's more subtle, of course. One never brags about killing innocent people. One merely defends oneself against the irrational crazed Other, who has no reason to be that way. Any civilian casualties are all their fault. Probably they were employed as human shields.
BTW, do you think Israelis are free of racism against Palestinians?
Z, if the Israelis evacuated all the West Bank settlements and offered a compromise on Jerusalem and peace along the 67 borders, I suspect that the vast majority of Palestinians would favor this. Let the Israelis help Abbas actually achieve a fair settlement and then we'll see how popular terrorism is.
But I'm not quite sure what you're saying. Do you think the lack of peace is because Israel lacks a partner? What's Abbas supposed to be? You seem fixated on this notion that one side is more civilized than the other. There's a distinction between the situation of the occupier vs. the occupied and one of those distinctions is that the occupier really does employ collaborators among the occupied, which leads to resentment and violence and paranoia among them. There's a new book out on this subject, though mostly dealing with early history--I haven't read it. And it's well known (outside the US press, that is) that the war between Hamas and Fatah was encouraged by the US. I'm not aware of Israel being occupied by outside powers, with those same powers encouraging the violent overthrow of one Israeli faction by the other, so I don't think your comparison is a fair one. If you only mean that Palestinian factions interested in peace need to be nurtured, well, yeah. That could be done best by having Israel evacuating all settlements and only taking actions that are genuinely necessary to defend their citizens.
This person (link below), though, thinks Abbas is irrelevant, so maybe he isn't much of a partner for now.
http://justworldnews.org/archives/002798.html
Don't they, like, ban private care in Canada for "necessary" medicine? That's the way it was when I lived there. "No Two Tier Health Care System!" was the mantra I heard so often.
Canada's healthcare is delivered by a mix of private and public providers. What is banned, for "necessary" medicine, is private insurance. All healthcare providers, private or public, are reimbursed for their service by the government insurance which is paid for by our tax dollars.
BTW, do you think Israelis are free of racism against Palestinians?
Not completely, no group of persons is without error. However, I think that the vast majority of Israelis are not racist. Many Israelis are Arab! They have to fight in the army. They can and do run for office. Methinks you are looking at a spec in one eye and comparing it to the plank in the other.
There's a distinction between the situation of the occupier vs. the occupied...
Israel did not start the war that led to the occupation. The occupation will now end only when the Palestinians seek peace. As long as they seek the destruction of Israel, there will be no peace, and the occupation will continue. It's not my choice, that's simply the way it is, and there's nothing you nor I can do about it, unless you want to muster an army to go and fight the Israelis yourself.
Ben said:
As long as they seek the destruction of Israel, there will be no peace, and the occupation will continue.
It's almost uncanny how timely this blog post is with respect to your framing of the question.
For a more extended discussion, I refer you to this one.
Complain to the new channel, raise a stink, whatever...
Woohoo, I'm sure the denialists will now conveniently forget their "you can't predict tomorrow's weather so what makes you think we can predict the climate for the next 1/2 century" mantra. Or -- more likely -- they'll conveniently mix the old mantra together with the new Ringworld mantra without their heads exploding.
It's remarkable how Israel's defenders can blithely frame the issue as one of Palestinians seeking to destroy Israel. What's a more plausible motivation? That Palestinians are hate-filled, irrational murderers who, for no good reason, have a desire to wipe out the Jews, or that the Palestinians want to get rid of the military occupation that's been controlling and killing them for a generation now? Human psychology really isn't THAT mysterious.
Ben, the Israelis fired the first shots in the 67 war. They did it in response to Nasser's threats. Anyway, your argument is illogical. (Big surprise). I don't think it'd be fair to blame Israel for the conquest of the West Bank and Gaza in war--where they went wrong in those areas is what they did after. They had no moral or legal right to establish settlements there unless they were willing to give the Palestinian residents Israeli citizenship and allow them to live inside Israel proper. Obviously they don't want that. They want the land, and the Palestinians on the land are obstacles and treated as such. As for whether "most" Israelis are racist, I've seen poll results which suggest the majority are and some Israelis say even many in the peace camp are. It's probably fair to say that the majority on both sides lack much affection for the other.
You either don't know the simplest things about the Palestinian side of the issue, or you don't care, or both.
BTW, teaching your kids to hate isn't limited to one side. I haven't included the more recent post about the ones who were allowed to paint slogans on bombs destined to be dropped on Lebanon, but here's an older post on that subject.
http://lawrenceofcyberia.blogs.com/news/2005/12/this_is_in_resp.html
One other point. I've focused mostly on Israel's sins in these posts, not because I think the Palestinian side is innocent, but because you've got this ridiculously one-sided view of the conflict. You ought to try reading some of the pro-peace Israelis, people like Shlomo Ben Ami, Meron Benvenisti, Susan Nathan (who is less well known, but wrote a book recently about Israeli racism as she perceives it), and Tom Segev, among others. You could even dip into books by Palestinians--maybe starting with Sari Nusseibeh, who will be slightly less of a shock to your system.
Anyway, I'm done here.
#1 - that canada's system is poorly implemented does not mean that the US's cannot be worse.
saurabh posts:
[[The first intifada (late 80s) was non-violent (unless you count throwing rocks as violent enough to justify occupation)]]
You can kill people throwing rocks. That's why stoning to death was a form of capital punishment in the ancient world.
And the first intifada was in 1920, before Israel even existed.
[[ - why didn't that work? Suicide bombing didn't start happening until later (~93 or 94). And before Arafat formed the PLO, there was no significant Palestinian violence. ]]
"Fedayeen" used to infiltrate the border and kill Israeli settlers in the 1950s.
saurabh posts:
[[I shouldn't cut it off there - there's plenty of other stuff, like the right of return for displaced Palestinians,]]
I.e., although they have expanded their population several-fold since 1947, they should all be permitted to move into Israel, thereby destroying Israel's identity as a Jewish state. And, of course, it would inevitably lead to massacring the Israelis.
[[ sovereignty over the border, and, well, a country.]]
The Palestinians have repeatedly had chances to form a country and have always turned them down because they didn't get 100% of what they wanted. This shows that their agenda is actually -- as saurabh pretty much admitted above -- to have Israel as well as a Palestinian state. Israel could completely pull out of the West Bank and Gaza tomorrow and the fighting wouldn't stop, not just because the Gazans would keep lobbing rockets into Israel, but because they want Israel as well as Palestine.
There are Palestinians who would settle for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, but with a few exceptions -- Abbas, for example -- they have no power in those areas. The crazies are running things.
Donald Johnson writes:
[[if the Israelis evacuated all the West Bank settlements and offered a compromise on Jerusalem and peace along the 67 borders, I suspect that the vast majority of Palestinians would favor this. ]]
The vast majority of Palestinians are probably already favor this. But they're not running Palestine, the Men with Guns are.
Donald Johnson writes:
[[And it's well known (outside the US press, that is) that the war between Hamas and Fatah was encouraged by the US. ]]
Right! If Palestinians ever do anything bad, it's because the US and/or Israel made them do it. Palestinians are, by definition, innocent. The US and Israel are, by definition, guilty.
- that canada's system is poorly implemented does not mean that the US's cannot be worse.
Is it poorly implemented?
Or is it merely imperfect?
Doesn't matter, really. Rather than compare ourselves with the Canadian health care system, perhaps we should be comparing ourselves with the top-ranked French one.
Don't we want to strive to be #1 ourselves?
Lovers of crazy propaganda should get a kick out of this stunning example of the art form:
http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1679.htm
The "highlight" must be the exchange with the caller who asks why Assud (Lion) the Rabbit is not called Arnoub (rabbit) the rabbit. Assud helpfully replies:
"Because a rabbit is not good. He's a coward. But I, Assud, will get rid of the Jews, Allah willing, and I will eat them up, Allah willing, right?"
Your post 36 was arguing with a strawman, Barton. There are often multiple actors responsible for some action, not just one or two. But strawmen are fun to beat, and I don't want to stand in the way of your fun.
I could say a few other things (for instance, about the thousands of Palestinian border-crossers that were killed by Israel in the early 50's, according to Benny Morris, most of them not terrorists), but anyone really interested in this topic can find plenty of books by Israeli and Palestinian authors in libraries and bookstores.
The fact of the matter remains, Donald, that the conflict there will not end until the Palestinians quit with the violence. They could use non-violent methods to a much greater advantage if their goal is simply to attain a Palestinian state. But they must embrace non-violent means across their culture to succeed, much as Ghandi did in India, and King Jr. in America. America will support them if they stop using violence and terrorism, otherwise we will not.
"Z, if the Israelis evacuated all the West Bank settlements and offered a compromise on Jerusalem and peace along the 67 borders, I suspect that the vast majority of Palestinians would favor this. Let the Israelis help Abbas actually achieve a fair settlement and then we'll see how popular terrorism is. "
Well, I wouldn't be terribly surprised, other than Abbas being a lame duck to the point that he probably worries about being assassinated by his own constituents, while Hamas now represents the people's choice. Which, before anybody points out, is a reaction to their feelings of hopeless oppression. Which, before anybody points out, is the Israeli's reaction to 60 years of continuous warfare where the sides are basically chosen on national/ethnic basis. Etc. etc.
And, of course, Hamas knows at some level that their mandate is a result of harnessing the anger of the public, rather than any particular competence at managing sewer taxes or such; just as the current right wing party in power in Israel realizes the symmetrical fact, and that all those news pictures of Israeli soldiers manhandling weeping Israelis out of their homes in Gaza, followed by all those news pictures of homes in Israel demolished by rockets fired by the newly Hamas-led pure Arab Gaza, is not such a good vote-getter as to be repeated in the West Bank.
As is not unusual in the affairs of humankind, harnessing rage is an easy and reliable way to power, and in this the power-wielders of both sides are united in a tacit agreement. Time to put down the rage and the who did what to whom, and who did it worse, and maybe turn towards the future. That goes not only for the Israelis and Palestinians themselves, but also for all of us who are spectators and cheerleaders; of course, the unspoken party in all this, the other governments of the Arab world, who manage to suck their power out of the conflict without any risk to themselves aren't going to give up what's worked so well for them for 60 years, so it's just that much more work for us.
"It's almost uncanny how timely this blog post is with respect to your framing of the question."
i.e.,"Does Israel have a right to exist?" people ask. What does that mean? Do countries really have rights, or do people have rights? The Jewish people have a right to exist, the Israeli people have a right to exist, but what does "Israel" mean? Israel defines itself as the state of the Jewish people. It is not a state of its citizens. It is a state of many people who are not its citizens, like myself, and is not the state of many people who are its citizens, like the 20 percent of its population that is Palestinian. So if we ask a Palestinian person, "Do you recognize the right for there to be a country on your historic homeland that explicitly excludes you?" what kind of response should we expect?"
well, isn't that exactly the same question one can ask re the statement that "the Israelis stole the Palestinians' land"; not individual loss of private property, but some kind of abstract right of the residents there to be free from having to live in a Western style democracy where, although their rights are generally legally protected, nevertheless the majority are Jews, rather that live in yet another feudal sheikdom, Islamic sharia law theocracy, or half baked "people's socialist republic" run by yet another tinhorn dictator? "Do countries really have rights?", or more precisely what is being asked, "do nations really have rights?" cuts both ways.
as for the stuff about "It is not a state of its citizens. It is a state of many people who are not its citizens", I assume that is some sort of allusion to the right of return for people of Jewish ancestry; which is hardly the basis for "It is not a state of its citizens. It is a state of many people who are not its citizens". Once more, I remind folks that most European countries have similar right of return laws, based on nationality/ancestry; the reason places like the US or Australia (i assume) do not is because they're too new.
opposition to the concept of national homelands in general as obsolete does not constitute antisemitism, of course, but opposition to the concept specifically in terms of a homeland for Jews kind of does; being progressive myself, I'd like to see everybody black white and brown seeing themselves as citizens of the human race, but it still bugs me a bit that Hitler could see fit to make a good start and massacring every Jew in Europe, and all the other citizens of the human race didn't see it as a problem for their country; so maybe there should be a country who would see it as a problem. and not just for jews, of course, but for every nationality/ethnicity. which is pretty sad, given my previously expressed universalist leanings.
"Ben, the Israelis fired the first shots in the 67 war. They did it in response to Nasser's threats"
although it could be (and has been) argued that Nasser's actions constituted de factor acts of war and international law does recognize little things like massed armies of several nations marching on your border as acts of war, the point is mute; since Egypt and Israel did eventually sign a peace treaty, and lo and behold, Egypt got the Sinai back.
however, there is no doubt at all that Israel publicly requested Jordan to stay out of the conflict, promised no acts of aggression, and Jordan attacked Israel unilaterally. Of course, you could imagine that the King knew that if he didn't, Nasser would smash his kingdom like a troublesome insect, but that doesn't change the historical fact that Jordan attacked Israel, and lost the West Bank as a result; and that they afterwards refused to sign a treaty with Israel which would involve return of the territory. a war of colonial aggression this was not, and attempts 40 years later to paint it as such are kind of silly, given the dire worries at the time whether Israel would even survive, let alone occupy enemy territory.
"BTW, do you think Israelis are free of racism against Palestinians?"
well, just to be all over the map in the name of fairness, when i visited Israel for the first time in the late 70s, i was staggered by the degree of tacit racism, and remembered wondering how any Arab-Israeli kid could grow up with any sort of positive feelings towards Israel, despite their more or less equal status legally and the not particularly good treatment they'd be given were they born in neighboring Arab countries. Much as I felt during sporadic visits to the American south previously, re African-Americans, more or less. Of course, switching sides again, the southern US had not been 30 years into a state of war with neighboring countries populated by people of African origin, at the time, so it's not as if the Israeli racism were just randomly chosen as national policy. The original Zionists, it should be pointed out again, were unreligious socialists who believed in the obsolescence of nations and saw the opportunity to build a workers' paradise in the Holy Land, where Jew and Arab alike could work side by side in fellowship and share the fruits of their labors and so on.
"What's a more plausible motivation? That Palestinians are hate-filled, irrational murderers who, for no good reason, have a desire to wipe out the Jews, or that the Palestinians want to get rid of the military occupation that's been controlling and killing them for a generation now?"
And the enmity pre-1967 was due to? farsighted leaders, seeing that there would be a brutal occupation to come? Not even the fighting between 1948-1967, what's the source of the unilateral massacres of Jews by Arabs 50 years before the occupation of the West Bank?
wikipedia topics:
1920 Palestine riots
1929 Palestine riots
1929 Hebron massacre
1929 Safed massacre
1936-1939 Arab revolt in Palestine
1938 Tiberias massacre
1947 Jerusalem riots
"They had no moral or legal right to establish settlements there unless they were willing to give the Palestinian residents Israeli citizenship and allow them to live inside Israel proper"
Gee, nobody would accuse them of colonialism and stealing territory then, would they?
"I've focused mostly on Israel's sins in these posts, not because I think the Palestinian side is innocent, but because you've got this ridiculously one-sided view of the conflict"
All questions of morality aside, I feel the Palestinians are more committed to keeping the fighting going at this point, for the simple reason that they have less to lose right now. It's more tempting to gamble everything you have for a big win, when you have nothing than when you have a halfway decent situation in life.
Z-- The first large scale violence was by the Arabs in the 20's, but in the 30's both sides were committing atrocities, as you surely know, but wrote as though you didn't, for some reason. The Palestinian violence post 48 and pre-67 was obviously a reaction to what happened in 1948, not that this justifies it. The Palestinians, unlike Americans, didn't need to read Benny Morris to know what happened in 1948 or to know that thousands of Arab civilians were shot by the Israelis in the years immediately after when they crossed the borders, nor was it news that Israeli reprisals were often exercises in mass murder (Sharon's career as a war criminal began then, as you know.) I know it's customary in the US for people to scratch their heads and say "Gee, why were the Palestinians violent before 1967? It must be their culture." I assume there's something in Western culture that encourages convenient forgetfulness.
The early Arab hostility was a reaction to the Balfour declaration, or that's my impression. The violence was barbaric and inexcusable, but it's not exactly unusual for people to react badly when one country promises the land your people live in to another people (yes, some of whom have lived there all along). The history of US/Native American relations contains similar sorts of atrocities on both sides, but we've stopped pretending the violence was all the fault of the "savages". And yes, I very much wish the Palestinians had had a Gandhi or an MLK or even a Mandela (though Mandela was not a pacifist). There may also have been hostility on the Arab side because of perceived Zionist arrogance--Tom Segev quotes something by Ahad Ha'am in 1893 that the Zionists of that time treated Arabs like they were animals, predicting that this would ultimately lead to trouble.
You're entirely right about Jordan attacking Israel, of course. King Hussein had to posture that way and as I already said, I don't blame Israel for taking the West Bank as a result. Where they went wrong is in what they did afterwards.
Regarding your comment about people accusing them of colonialism if they'd tried to annex the West Bank--probably so. What's your point? That they might as well not offer the Palestinians citizenship and just go ahead and settle the land anyway? That's worked out real well. I was just pointing out what they'd have done if they had wanted to keep the land and also be fair to the people already there.
Ben, some Palestinians and Western sympathizers have tried nonviolent resistance. They don't get much sympathy here. I think they should practice it without harboring any illusions about the reactions they'll get from hypocritical Westerners. I agree that it would have been much better if the entire movement had been nonviolent from the start--better for both sides and if nothing else, there'd be thousands fewer innocent people dead. But I notice once again your double standard--only Palestinian violence matters, it's all their fault, etc....
I've promised to leave this thread repeatedly. I'm going to stick to it this time, because the responses seem to be growing exponentially in length. If you want to demonstrate your fairness, z, maybe you can argue with ben and/or Barton for awhile.
As I occasionally do, I will once again try to draw attention to Monbiot's points regarding the problems with the technological approach to mitigating AGW:
The Last Straw.
Is he wrong, or is Al Gore feeding us fairy tales?
From what I've seen, biofuels aren't the answer.
"If the Palestinians stopped using violence/force, there would be no more violent conflict in Israel/Palestine.
Why is this so difficult to see?"
I do not want to be drawn into this discussion but this is simply blatantly false.
There's a militant core amongst the West Bank settlers and their supporters within Israel who want the Palestinians (and in many cases the Arab Israelis) gone - ethnically cleansed preferably, dead if necessary.
Settlers regularly attack and kill Palestinians - and do so not to defend themselves but out a conviction that it is their religious duty to rid Israel of all non-Jews.
Hundreds of Palestinians are killed by settlers every year.
There are virtually never prosecutions or even criminal investigations of such killings.
Israeli TV filmed a teenager from a Gaza settler smash in the head of a Palestinian while he was lying unconscious on the ground.
Because of the video evidence it actually went to trial. The judges ruled that there was insufficient evidence of intent to kill to justify attempted murder. I believe the accused plead guilty to assault and walked on time served.
"Has any other group been "displaced" (i.e. refugees) for as long as the Palestinians, and been given right of return?"
Do you appreciate the irony of this question in this context?
Next year in Jeruslaem!
"Er, Donald, I wasn't referring to any textbooks. I was mostly referring to the wonderful Hamas TV children's programming known as "Pioneers of Tomorrow" that features the strange Mickey Mouse, Giant Bee and a big bunny. It's a big wonderful Jew hate-fest for kids, brought by the marvelous and peace-loving Hamas."
Well that's if you trust the translators at MEMRI who somehow turned "I will draw a picture" into "I will shoot them" and "The Jews are going to kill us" into "I want to become a suicide bomber."
"But they must embrace non-violent means across their culture to succeed, much as Ghandi did in India, and King Jr. in America."
Tell me, Ben, do you think America should adopt this policy towards Al Qaida?
"Well, I wouldn't be terribly surprised, other than Abbas being a lame duck to the point that he probably worries about being assassinated by his own constituents, while Hamas now represents the people's choice."
HAMAS never had the support of the majority in the west bank and by most accounts they no longer have it in Gaza either.
"From what I've seen, biofuels aren't the answer."
At this point biofuels is a hopelessly broad term.
Are we talking about Brazilian sugar-derived ethanol; American corn-derived ethanol; German canola-derived biodiesel; Indian Jatophra-derived biodiesel; CWT's technology to turn turkey guts into oil; cellulytic ethanol?
fairly obviously grain-based ethanol production as practiced in the US and the EU is not a long-term solution.
I'm sure Gore is willing to be educated by Monbiot, but I can just imagine the response by global warming denialists if Gore says, "Biofuels won't solve the problem. You'll all just have to travel less and use smaller cars." That will go down real well in the USA.
Tell me, Ben, do you think America should adopt this policy towards Al Qaida?
Of course not. The difference, which really is obvious, and I know that you know the difference, is that it only works when the "other" side is both civilized and when they would prefer peace to the alternative. It also only seems to work when the peaceful solution is the superior alternative for the pocketbook. And there it is, if your opponent is both civilized and has too much to loose financially, you can beat them with a peaceful movement.
That's why MLK could defeat the bus system, and why Ghandi defeated the British. Try that with Al Gaida and you'll simply get your head chopped off. The Israelis on the other hand, are exactly the right sort of "opponent" now, whatever their historical record was, for the Palestinians to work in peace with.
"From what I've seen, biofuels aren't the answer."
'Hemp.'
The answer is 'hemp.'
The answer is always 'hemp.'
perhaps we should be comparing ourselves with the top-ranked French one.
Who do you mean "we", kimosabe? I'm not USian.
Here is an example of how Israel treats Palestinians:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/nov/16/israel2
An Israeli soldier shot a thirteen year old girl who was 100 yards away and therefore no danger to him. He shot 17 bullets into her body. He said he would have done it if she had been three years old. He was charged, not with murder, but with minor offences such as conduct unbecoming an officer. The Israeli court found him not guilty. So the Israeli justice system thinks that it is conduct becoming an Israeli soldier to fire 17 bullets into the body of a child, as long as she is Palestinian. This is the justice that Palestinians get from the occupying forces of Israel.
Where there is no justice there is no peace.
Barton said:
You can kill people throwing rocks. That's why stoning to death was a form of capital punishment in the ancient world.
Come ON, Barton - armed soldiers with helmets having rocks thrown at them is the same as a single person being stoned? Is there a single example of an IDF soldier being killed by stone-throwing Palestinians? I'll tell you: there is not.
And the first intifada was in 1920, before Israel even existed.
Your usage of "intifada" in this context is your own - if you're referring to anti-Jewish riots in the 1920s. Anyway, it's obvious which intifada I was talking about, so I don't know what your point is here.
thereby destroying Israel's identity as a Jewish state. And, of course, it would inevitably lead to massacring the Israelis.
So WHAT? Why does Israel's identity as a Jewish state deserve to be privileged over the right of refugees to repatriate? And what leads you to conclude it would "lead to massacring the Israelis"?
The Palestinians have repeatedly had chances to form a country and have always turned them down because they didn't get 100% of what they wanted.
This is a load of horseshit. I suggest you read the Palestinians' own very good reasons for rejecting Israeli "offers" at Camp David in 2000 here: http://www.nad-plo.org/inner.php?view=facts_nego_cmp_ncampdavid1p
Suggesting that the Palestinians are unreasonable bickering nitpickers because they refused the crap deals Israel was proposing is absurd. They were not being offered a country, they were being offered a Bantustan, a controlled cantonment that Israel would police.
Think about what life is like for a Palestinian; check out that bet'selem website; think about how, when the fence between Egypt and Gaza went down, Palestinians flocked out like prisoners escaping; gee almost like the Berlin wall going down, eh?
Do a google search of "checkpoint" and "birth" and read about the Palestinian women who lose babies or die in childbirth at a checkpoint where they have been refused access to a hospital.
You want to judge the Palestinians? Go live with them for a while. Suicide bombs are evil, but so are rich people who rob and oppress poor people; and there is a hell of a lot more of the latter going on.
> From what I've seen, biofuels aren't the answer.
Ok - what is the answer then? Monbiot claims nothing short of drastic reductions in energy consumption, involving significant changes in personal habits, is going to work. Is there mainstream scientific work on this matter?
> I'm sure Gore is willing to be educated by Monbiot, but I can just imagine the response by global warming denialists if Gore says, "Biofuels won't solve the problem. You'll all just have to travel less and use smaller cars." That will go down real well in the USA.
So he is misleading the public so as not to give rhetorical ammunition to his critics? Does that seem to you like the right thing to do?
Where exactly did Gore say that the mere act of switching to biofuels will magically solve the problem of global warming?
I think someone's telling fairy tales and misleading the public here, and it's not Al Gore.
I don't know. What is he saying now?
"Z-- The first large scale violence was by the Arabs in the 20's, but in the 30's both sides were committing atrocities, as you surely know, but wrote as though you didn't, for some reason. The Palestinian violence post 48 and pre-67 was obviously a reaction to what happened in 1948, not that this justifies it. The Palestinians, unlike Americans, didn't need to read Benny Morris to know what happened in 1948 or to know that thousands of Arab civilians were shot by the Israelis in the years immediately after when they crossed the borders, nor was it news that Israeli reprisals were often exercises in mass murder (Sharon's career as a war criminal began then, as you know.) I know it's customary in the US for people to scratch their heads and say "Gee, why were the Palestinians violent before 1967? It must be their culture." I assume there's something in Western culture that encourages convenient forgetfulness."
So, now the violence on the Palestinians' side is no longer the result of the occupation of the West Bank, as it apparently was yesterday, but is the result of decades of persecution. However, apparently, they have no interest in eliminating the State of Israel, and merely want the West Bank to be free from occupation, after which all involved will tend to their knitting and pie baking.
Of course, the violence on the Israelis' part is pure malice, however, with no understandable rational motivation.
"Where they went wrong is in what they did afterwards"
And my point is that what they did afterwards, was to offer the usual here's your land back, sign a peace treaty to Egypt and Jordan, only to come up against the famous three Nos of the Arab bloc. What then? Sneak into Hussein's palace by night and leave the deed to the West Bank on his desk?
On the other hand, the West Bank settlements obviously aren't the best idea anybody ever had, which was pointed out at the time by many commentators of various degrees of pro and anti sentiment vis a vis either side. Had a lot of political expediency, though. But, as seen in Gaza, even the suggestion that a cessation of hostilities might occur leads to political expediency demanding dismantling of settlements so that the area can be properly judenrein. Unfortunately, Hamas' subsequent actions in the name of their political expediency led to that opinion being returned to extreme minority status in Israel once more.
"Settlers regularly attack and kill Palestinians - and do so not to defend themselves but out a conviction that it is their religious duty to rid Israel of all non-Jews."
And, should the Israelis pull out of the West Bank, forcibly removing as many settlers as possible, these guys wouldn't have the Israeli army to back them up any more. Colonel Custer ring a bell?
"Palestinians flocked out like prisoners escaping; gee almost like the Berlin wall going down, eh?
... Suicide bombs are evil, but so are rich people who rob and oppress poor people; and there is a hell of a lot more of the latter going on. "
Ironically, today's paper reports from Egypt that the average estimated spending of the "prisoners escaping" on goods which they brought back home to "prison" was $260. I understand they're in dire straits in Gaza and I wouldn't want to switch places with them, but let's have some semblance of proportion. For instance, I sincerely do not believe any Darfurian refugee would not give up a body part if they and their family could become Gaza residents. And I sincerely do not believe that any Gaza resident would switch places with a Darfurian refugee for any incitement whatsoever.
"From what I've seen, biofuels aren't the answer. "
Relatively obviously; given that the sun is the source of all renewable energy on earth, then biofuels would represent just another way of capturing and storing that energy, in competition with batteries, electrolytic generation of hydrogen, power by direct hookup of photovoltaic cells, and oddballs such as compressed air, flywheels, etc. or even woodburning steam engines. In that light, biofuels wouldn't seem to have great advantages in terms of efficiency, or much else other than being easy to get to from where we are now via baby steps, as very temporary intermediates for a small proportion of our needs. Particularly those made from waste products such as used up french fry oil, or inedible waste from corn or such. we're not going to power the earth on left over french fry oil, but we can at least make some small improvement quickly.
"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/nov/16/israel2 An Israeli soldier shot a thirteen year old girl who was 100 yards away and therefore no danger to him. He shot 17 bullets into her body. He said he would have done it if she had been three years old. He was charged, not with murder, but with minor offences such as conduct unbecoming an officer. The Israeli court found him not guilty. So the Israeli justice system thinks that it is conduct becoming an Israeli soldier to fire 17 bullets into the body of a child, as long as she is Palestinian. This is the justice that Palestinians get from the occupying forces of Israel."
Not to justify this or anything like this, but some background: the officer in question was reported by his men who were shocked, horrified, disgusted, etc. by the action; the officer in question was an Israeli Druze, rather than a Jewish Israeli, the Druze and nonDruze having historical bad relations, mutual massacres etc. which provide motivation at least in addition to any Israeli vs Palestinian sentiment (although the Druze are exempt from Israeli military conscription, as a community they assume a "voluntary draft", sending all males (I don't know about women) into the Israeli army when they come of age); when the first investigation whitewashed the incident, the military not only launched another investigation, but also an investigation of the conduct of the first investigation; an Israeli TV documentary of the incident created a fairly hefty amount of outrage; but in the end, as you say, a whitewash and a slap on the wrist was the result.
That tragedy being said, I await the outrage over the many similar murders of young Israeli noncombatants, which far from being even investigated by the Palestinians, are apparently universally acclaimed.
As I've said quite a few times over the past few days, to view this as the bad Jews vs the innocent Palestinians, or the bad Palestinians vs the innocent Jews, is to buy into a corrupt and unproductive model and torpedo from the outset any chance of ending the mess.
>> So he (Gore) is misleading the public so as not to give rhetorical ammunition to his critics?
> I don't know. What is he saying now?
Hmmm... your earlier statement seemed to indicate that you believe Gore was avoiding any mention of "traveling less and smaller cars" so as not to disturb the public.
Anyway, it is hard to avoid the feeling that Gore's message is that GW can be eliminated without inconveniencing the public. His strong emphasis on carbon offsets, for example, certainly gives that impression.
> I think someone's telling fairy tales and misleading the public here, and it's not Al Gore.
Is this meant as some kind of a swipe as me? You seem to be getting hot under the collar quickly here. Ok, why don't you tell me what is Gore's message on how GW can be mitigated? Except for buying some pretty cheap offsets ($18/month offset your car, your heating and your electricity usage), are we going to have life as usual?
Sortition:
Oh, it's a "feeling". In other words, nowhere did Gore ever say that biofuels alone will solve the problem of global warming. You're just being full of garbage.
Yes, because you're being full of garbage. If you don't like that, then boo hoo.
And by the way, this is what the official website of An Inconvenient Truth actually says:
etc. etc. etc. And this isn't just a "feeling", an "impression", it's what the film's official web site actually says. Does this read anything like "pay $18 a month, use biofuels, end of story"?
Before accusing Gore of "misleading the public" and "telling fairy tales", maybe you should've checked the facts.
z, thanks for that extra background. I agree that both sides are at fault in many ways; but I always feel that Israel is the richer and more powerful country which has not come to a peace deal because its leaders do not want one. I think that the reason they will not ever give back the West Bank is that it has water under it, most of which is used by Israel. Most wars are about resources, and I think here it's the water even more than the land.
bi,
Your style is really not conducive to a fruitful discussion. I'll make one more try to ignore that and address the issues:
The kind of advice we get from Gore (buy cheap offsets; use CFLs; move thermostat 2 degrees [from what to what?]; clean filters; reduce driving "whenever possible") is exactly the kind of measures that I was talking about: they require little effort and make you feel good, but they don't amount to much. Clearly this kind of things would be a small part of any comprehensive solution.
The implication is that according to Gore the real solution would be various sorts of Green Technology that would make it possible to maintain our present habits but emit much less.
Monbiot is claiming that this is not realistic - there is no way to reduce emissions significantly without changing our habits - drastic changes would be needed.
Do you not see that these people represent two different approaches? Don't you see that if Monbiot is correct then Gore's approach is "a fairy tale"? Don't you think it is important to find out who is right on this matter?
There seem to be two versions of you, z. There's the guy who says the proper division to make is between those who seek peace and justice and those who don't and that this division exists on both sides and it's a mistake to side with one ethnic group vs. the other. This seems exactly right to me. Then there's the z who seems to believe that one ethnic group is relatively civilized. though flawed, and the other is composed of savages who universally cheer the murder of Israeli civilians.
You two should get together sometime and thrash this out. I think when I say anything, it brings out the second personality.
And yes, once again I made a liar of myself and posted again. The trick is probably not to even come back and read this thread, thinking I can restrain myself.
This, however, is interesting--a study (and condemnation of) suicide bombing by a Palestinian human rights organization. Depressing, on the whole, with some glimpses of hope.
http://www.phrmg.org/PHRMG%20Suicide%20Attacks.pdf
oh, i cheerfully admit my bias. everybody should. then account for it when coming to a rational analysis. i can't argue with those who feel there has been plenty of deplorable unexcusable behavior on the part of the Israelis; i just don't see it as particularly one sided; nor do I see it as part of the great jewish plot for world domination by getting jordan to attack them at risk to themselves. certainly the palestinians are the underdogs, and i can certainly understand the natural laudable impulse to side with the underdog by default, but perhaps my familiarity with the israeli political situation sees the spectrum of opinion there, with the palestinians' equivalent of a rightwing in power playing into the hands of the israeli rightwing who then buy votes with the settlements (and water rights too, i suppose), and vice versa.
what's funny is that prior to my previously mentioned trip to israel so many years ago, i didn't realize that the israeli political spectrum had such a wide left contingent; the tendency in america (north) is to take a fairly hardline, (the fabled israel lobby?) but that's thankfully fading, not as fast as it should.
also, fwiw, i don't want this to sound condescending, but in fact the palestinians are a new nation, and it's not unrealistic that they will go through a period such as this before "settling for what they can get", realistically and doing some painful bargaining. certainly, the early history of the hebrew nation as documented in the bible doesn't show a bent towards diplomacy and coexistence, at that time.
My point is that While Gore may have held a particular position on biofuels in the past and indeed may still present that position in published material, he may change that view based on new information. If you want to call someone's view based on their past level of knowledge a "fairytale" then fine, Newton's laws of motion were fairytales.
"As I've said quite a few times over the past few days, to view this as the bad Jews vs the innocent Palestinians, or the bad Palestinians vs the innocent Jews, is to buy into a corrupt and unproductive model and torpedo from the outset any chance of ending the mess."
Funny that's what I've been saying here all along.
I'm sure Levinson will be along shortly to denounce you as anti-Semitic and anti-American.
"all you need is love, lalalalala" etc. for what it's worth, i believe all the inhabitants of this blog would intercede were they to witness a 13 year old menaced by an armed adult, without thought of which side was "right", or whether the kid might be carrying a Weapon of Minor or Major Destruction. Me included. And even for an unarmed adult menaced similarly. but I'm kind of a pollyanna.
now onwards to that damn canadian healthcare!
speaking of which, got another phone call today from somebody frustrated from being on a long waiting list to see a gerontologist. in New Jersey.
Sortition:
Oh, so first you claim that Gore's saying merely using biofuels will solve global warming, next you claim that Gore's saying merely paying $18/month for carbon offsets will solve global warming, now you claim that Gore's saying merely doing a whole bunch of things will solve global warming. Now tell me, who has a problem with facts here?
Anyway.
No, "reduce the number of miles you drive ... whenever possible" does not require little effort, at least not in places where public transport sucks. Unfortunately there's no way to fix this at the individual level, and this is where Monbiot's suggestions come in:
and
These are complementary, not contradictory, to the things that Gore recommends.
saurabh writes:
[[Barton said: You can kill people throwing rocks. That's why stoning to death was a form of capital punishment in the ancient world.
Come ON, Barton - armed soldiers with helmets having rocks thrown at them is the same as a single person being stoned?]]
Sorry, but anyone who throws a rock at an armed soldier deserves everything they get. You don't have to respond proportionately to a deadly attack. There's no moral imperative that says soldiers having rocks thrown at them can only respond by throwing rocks back. Throw a rock, catch a bullet. That's real life. Deal with it.
My proposed solution for the middle-east: Israel should unilaterally withdraw from the West Bank, dismantling all settlements. They should build a wall along the 1967 borders and simply never let Palestinians into the country again. Rockets from Gaza should be met with rockets back.
Who wants to bet the Palestinians will still not be happy with that arrangement? Look at saurabh's posts about the "right of return." That's what gives the lie to the oh-the-Palestinians-are-so-oppressed crap. If the Israelis left the west bank, they wouldn't be oppressed any more, but they would still want Israel. That's what they've wanted all long. They didn't want Jews moving in among them. They think the land belongs to Arabs, always will belong to Arabs, can only belong to Arabs. And that's why the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza will not end the conflict there.
For Israel's sake, I think Israel should pull out of the west bank. But anyone who thinks their doing so will satisfy the Palestinians is naive at best.
Trivia question: Who was Haj Amin Effendi al Husseini?
Barton, did you just say killing stone-throwing children is acceptable?
?
SG: In self-defense or defense of another, killing anyone at all is acceptable. Dig on it a while.
Your "stone-throwing children" are generally mobs of politically inflamed teenagers seeking a martyr's death. I have no problem accommodating them.
Or are you under the impression that if a child tries to kill you, you have to let him? Let's test your beliefs. I'll give you an M-16 and a helmet, and we'll have a crowd of teenagers throw rocks at you. Remember, it would be wrong to fire back.
yeah, just to be clear, these "rock throwing"s tend to be paving stones, which proved fairly lethal when the Irish insurgents used them against the brits, for instance, not pebbles. of course, military helmets cut down a lot of the lethality, but that kind of large missile is pretty effective at breaking bones, even ribs, bulletproof vests being designed to absorb impact of small, high velocity masses, not large low velocity.
and today, the brits and irish have made their peace, side by side. more 60s music swells up from the background. "c'mon people now smile on your brother everybody get together and love one another right now"
well, plagiarizing my post from elsewhere, new article in Scientific American:
"Eliminating fossil fuels is friggin' cheap
A third of our military budget could cure our carbon addiction
Scientific American's grand plan to provide a bit over a third of U.S. energy from solar sources provides insight into what it would cost to phase out all or most U.S. greenhouse emissions. Bottom line: a lot less than current military spending.
The total cost of the SciAm plan: $420 billion over the course of that 40 years, or slightly over ten billion dollars per year -- less than current fossil fuel subsidies, less than the new subsidies "clean coal" would require."
> Oh, so first you claim [...]
Ascribing imaginary positions to other people and using **bold font** is not a substitute to making sense.
> These are complementary, not contradictory, to the things that Gore recommends.
Maybe - in the same way that eating vegetables is complementary to eating candy. Yes, you can have candy after you've eaten your vegetables, but if you keep talking about the candy, don't pretend your are dispensing nutritional advice.
> yeah, just to be clear, these "rock throwing"s tend to be paving stones, which proved fairly lethal when the Irish insurgents used them against the brits, for instance, not pebbles.
Amazingly, the Israelis, who are only engaged in self defense, are 30 times more deadly than those aggressive Palestinians (B'tselem 2007 statistics).
The basic fact of the situation is that the Israelis have been using military force to control and encroach upon a civilian population for over 40 years. During most of this period the ruled population put up very little armed resistance. As long as no significant resistance was put up, the rights and interests of that population were ignored. When resistance did finally show up, it was and is used as an excuse to continue the oppression.
Yes. It's all the Israelis' fault, and I urge the Palestinians to fight until either all the Israelis are dead or all the Palestinians.
"My proposed solution for the middle-east: Israel should unilaterally withdraw from the West Bank, dismantling all settlements. They should build a wall along the 1967 borders and simply never let Palestinians into the country again. Rockets from Gaza should be met with rockets back."
You know what's hilarious? That's pretty much my position too.
But, of course, in my case it's a product of my diseased Satan-worshipping anti-American antisemtic mind.
SG: Barton, did you just say killing stone-throwing children is acceptable?
Well not HUMAN children, obviously. Just arabs.
"You know what's hilarious? That's pretty much my position too."
Pretty much everybody's position, except for the few who want the Israelis out of Israel. But that's not the point. The point is Bad Israel Kills Arabs For Fun, Look At The West Bank. If they actually pull out of the West Bank, that would ruin everything!
> Pretty much everybody's position, except for the few who want the Israelis out of Israel.
Very far from the truth, unless by "everybody" you exclude the Israeli and the US governments. The Israeli position, backed up by the US, is that Israel should keep large parts of the West Bank. Israeli colonization of the West Bank has been an ongoing process since 1967, which has not been halted or even slowed down even during the golden era of the Oslo process.
By Israeli position, you mean rightwing Israeli opinion. In fact, there's a large spread of Israeli opinion which varies with the current events; so that UIsraeli rightwing parties come and go, generally by the ballot box rather than bwith the need of gunfire.
> By Israeli position, you mean rightwing Israeli opinion.
No - as I wrote, I mean consistent Israeli government position, as can be clearly seen from consistent, multi-decade Israeli government action. If there was any intention of pulling completely out of the West Bank, there would not have been a consistent effort to colonize the West Bank whose result is hundreds of thousands of colonists in the West Bank today.
well, as i posted the summary of polls before,
"Many Israeli Settlers Would Leave Peacefully: Poll by Geocartografia Institute, May 31, 2006:
40% of settlers would be prepared to leave without resistance if the government decided to remove them, up 25% from last June."
"Poll: 65% Support disengagement 70% Other settlement evacuations to follow by Yediot Ahronot, October 8, 2004:
Following the Gaza evacuation most Israelis expect similar action in the West Bank."
"They had no moral or legal right to establish settlements there unless they were willing to give the Palestinian residents Israeli citizenship and allow them to live inside Israel proper"
btw: of course, israel did annex Jerusalem's old city, and offered full israeli citizenship to all arab residents. most did not take them up on it, although now there seems to be more of a rush to do so. anyway, i assume that that's OK with you, then.
> Many Israeli Settlers Would Leave Peacefully
You fail to engage the point: Consistent Israeli policy demonstrates clearly that Israeli government has no intention to pull out of the West Bank.
Either refute this point or withdraw your claim that "everybody" agrees that "Israel should unilaterally withdraw from the West Bank, dismantling all settlements" ("except for the few who want the Israelis out of Israel").
Ian Gould, using Joseph Goebbels's "big lie" technique, posts:
[[SG: Barton, did you just say killing stone-throwing children is acceptable?
Well not HUMAN children, obviously. Just arabs.]]
Every few posts, Ian Gould insists that I regard Arabs as subhuman. I never said I regarded Arabs as subhuman, but I guess he figures if he regards Israelis as subhuman, I must hold the reverse position.
Quit lying, Ian.
"but I guess he figures if he regards Israelis as subhuman, I must hold the reverse position.
Quit lying, Ian."
Yrs because as a Jew I obviously hate Jews.
Who started throwing the term "anti-semite" around?
Israel can't pull out of the west bank.
Israel is dependent on water from the aquifer that flows under the west bank. The major west bank settlements are at sites where that aquifer is relatively close to the surface, and Israel controls drilling and access to the aquifers. If Israel pulled out, the west bank Palestinians could take control of water control points, and threaten 30% of Israel's water supply.
A wise water planing engineer I knew used to say "In arid states,a ll politics is water politics"
Sortition:
First you claimed Gore said that a technological solution to AGW by itself will solve global warming.
Next you claimed Gore said that carbon offsets by themselves will solve global warming.
Next you claimed Gore said that doing a whole lot of things -- by themselves -- will solve global warming.
Am I making up imaginary positions? Let the jury decide.
How about using an analogy that actually makes sense? Getting people to drive less is complementary to getting governments to improve public transport.
You keep accusing Gore of "misleading the public" and "telling fairy tales", but you've provided zero actual evidence of this except a torrent of bullcrap that you made up. Why don't you just admit you're wrong and move on?
> First [...] Next [...] Next [...]
The positions you are ascribing to me now are much closer to reality than the ones you used before (things like "you claim that Gore's saying merely using biofuels will solve global warming" were completely ungrounded).
All the statements that you point to are parts of the same picture: Carbon offsets are simply a way for the public to finance a technological solution. As for the other things - yes, Gore mentions them but they are clearly a minor part of his solution since the savings in emissions that they represent would be a very small part of the needed reduction.
> Getting people to drive less is complementary to getting governments to improve public transport.
Gore is not "getting people to drive less", he is merely suggesting that if is not too much trouble they should drive less. How much reduction in mileage does that translate to? Pure candy.
> You keep accusing Gore of "misleading the public"
Actually, I haven't. I said that if a technological solution is not realistic, then Gore is misleading the public. I suspect that this is the case, but as far as I know, Monbiot is the only vocal critic of the technological approach - he may be wrong.
> you've provided zero actual evidence of this except a torrent of bullcrap that you made up. Why don't you just admit you're wrong and move on?
I see it as well established - looking at Gore's website and public statements - that Gore promotes a purely (ok, almost purely) technological solution. Your crude language does not make one iota of difference on this issue.
"Israel is dependent on water from the aquifer that flows under the west bank"
so.... what did they do from 1948-1967? not to mention however long it took after 1967 to seize the aquifers and do whatever it is they are supposed to be doing?
Sortition:
Great, so now you're trying to pull this "Truth Unencumbered by Facts" schtick.
You're dodging the point, Sortition. And the point is that getting people to drive less is complementary to getting governments to improve public transport. "eating vegetables" vs. "eating candy" analogy does not make sense.
And presumably your refined language does?
Again, why don't you just admit you were wrong and move on?
> And the point is that getting people to drive less is complementary to getting governments to improve public transport.
True, but since, as I wrote above, Gore does "get people to drive less", I don't see how this is relevant.
> And presumably your refined language does?
I am not attempting to use "refined language", but to use plain and unemotional language. I do believe that this kind of language is more useful in getting to the bottom of things than using crude language and empty rhetorical maneuvers, such as:
> Again, why don't you just admit you were wrong and move on?
z,
Can I get you to respond to the matter of Israeli colonization policy being inconsistent with the supposed universal acceptance of the '67 borders?
Oops - typo on my #112 - should read:
> ... Gore does *not* "get people to drive less" ...
before they occupied the west bank, Israel got a chunk of is water fro the downstream end of the aquifers, when they emerge under Israel. They were also smaller, and didnt use as much water. Much of the aquifer water flow went unused.
Since the occupation, Israel has taken a large majority of the water flow i that aquifer - it now supplies some 30% of Israels water supply. They have BECOME dependent on that water since the occupation.
Used a lot less water. Israel's population now is about twice what it was then, and the agricultural sector is heavily dependent on irrigation; greening the desert is another pillar of Israeli governmental policy.
Barton, missed your reply to my 90. It speaks for itself really, nothing more to add.
I like your crowd-control philosophy, and I think you should advocate its use in your own country. Whenever there are riots with any risk that an angry kid might throw a stone, I say break out the M16s. But jump the rubber bullet stage, and the tear gas, it's a waste of time.
I've got a rule for judging others' contributions on a topic. If they can say with a straight face things like
then they know nothing, they care not a jot for the people they are talking about, and they cannot be engaged with.
You should go away and rethink your view on everything about this topic, Barton, because when you start claiming that children are suicidal crazies, you have fallen off your tree.
SG writes:
[[You should go away and rethink your view on everything about this topic, Barton, because when you start claiming that children are suicidal crazies, you have fallen off your tree.]]
When I want your advice, kitten, I'll drop you a line.
I didn't say they were suicidal crazies. I said they were trying to kill the soldiers, and the soldiers quite rightly responded by firing back. Incidentally, when the Israelis used rubber bullets, they got criticized for doing that, too. Anything they do is criticized, because in the minds of people like SG, Israelis can't do anything good, and Arabs can't do anything bad.
no you didn't say they were suicidal crazies, you said they were "politically inflamed teenagers seeking a martyrs death".
I'm sure the distinction is very clear to you.
And I'm really not surprised that you missed the point.
More from Monbiot on global warming: The economic calculus of the Stern Review.
SG posts:
[[no you didn't say they were suicidal crazies, you said they were "politically inflamed teenagers seeking a martyrs death".]]
No, SG, I said nothing of the kind. That was another poster. Look again.
Barton, comment 90: your comment, your words. "I have no problem accomodating them". Are you trying to claim you didn't say that?
Oops! My bad. I did say that. Sorry, I thought I was quoting another poster.
Sortition:
Yeah, and somehow that makes your "logic" totally sound?
And I'm amazed that, with your powers of unemotional language somehow managed to turn "Reduce the number of miles you drive by walking, biking, carpooling or taking mass transit wherever possible" (Gore) into "Gore does not 'get people to drive less'".
Strange, because your method of "getting to the bottom of things" involves reading as much extra garbage into Gore's words -- never mind even if the garbage turns out to be self-contradictory -- instead of relying on, um, those boring things called Facts.
Levenson 105: Quit lying, Ian.
Levenson 121: I said nothing of the kind
Levenson 123: Oops! My bad.
Remember people, a troll who happens to agree with you on a particular subject is still a troll.
Oh and Levenson if you want to pull the "I admit MY errors" line, you can start by apologising for calling me an antisemite.
>> I am not attempting to use "refined language", but to use plain and unemotional language.
> Yeah, and somehow that makes your "logic" totally sound?
Of course not - it is a useful tool, not a guarantee.
> And I'm amazed that, with your powers of unemotional language somehow managed to turn "Reduce the number of miles you drive by walking, biking, carpooling or taking mass transit wherever possible" (Gore) into "Gore does not 'get people to drive less'".
This is completely obvious: His message is almost purely technological (see, for example, the transcript of "An Inconvenient truth"). Throwing in the occasional exhortation to drive less "whenever possible" is not nearly the same as "getting people to drive less".
Ian Gould writes:
[[Oh and Levenson if you want to pull the "I admit MY errors" line, you can start by apologising for calling me an antisemite.]]
Tell you what, Ian, I'll apologize for calling you an antisemite when you stop acting like an antisemite.
Don't bother telling me that you're Jewish (though you obviously don't believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob). Noam Chomsky is "Jewish" in that etiolated cultural sense, too, and it doesn't stop him from being an antisemite.
Noam Chomsky is an anti-semite?
This must be the definition wherein being critical of Israel is the criteria for qualification.
Michael writes:
[[Noam Chomsky is an anti-semite?
This must be the definition wherein being critical of Israel is the criteria for qualification.]]
No, Michael, this is the definition wherein calling Israelis Nazis, making up atrocities they allegedly committed, never calling Arabs on their real atrocities, calling Jews "tribal," saying that they have a genetic propensity to greed and domination, saying that the Jews run New York and seek "100%" power rather than "just 98%", and writing prefaces for books by Holocaust deniers makes you an antisemite.
I guess his strident critique of the US also makes him "anti-American" in some kind of racist way??
I'm always astonished at some people's single minded determination to reduce the term 'anti-semite' to the equivalent of a play ground taunt.
I'm sure I'll be tagged next.
well, i'm not big on the chomsky is an antisemite bandwagon, as it's barely been 60 years since we saw what real antisemitism looks like, but it's hard to call the following quotes sprinkled all over the net anything else:
"By now Jews in the US are the most privileged and influential part of the population"
"Anti-Semitism is no longer a problem, fortunately. It's raised, but it's raised because privileged people want to make sure they have total control, not just 98% control."
for instance. caveat 1: unlike my usual practice, i haven't bothered to chase down the primary sources for this, because as i explained above, i mostly don't care much. caveat 2: i'm probably more in agreement with chomsky than with most of the people who decry him. but i calls em as i sees em.
He's also desrcibed the US as the most influential and privelged people on the planet. Would you even consider drawing a similiar conclusion, or is it just a plain statement of fact?
The US is certainly the most influential country at the moment. Whether the US people are "privileged" is a matter of interpretation. Some are doing very well, and some are not. We have great health care if you can afford it, and you're screwed if you can't. Etc.
Regarding Chomski:
http://www.chomsky.info/books/dissent01.htm
Why use cherry picked quotes when you can have a partial essay. See any congruence?
(FWIW, I take z at his/her word, I don't have a dog in this fight either, but do recall distinguishing between anti-zionism and anti-semitism being a painful exercise, when discussing Israeli/Palestinian relations, which BPL is helpfully blurring.)
Mike
am i wrong, or is there a fairly large distance between "the US is the most influential and privelged people on the planet." and "Jews in the US are the most privileged and influential part of the population"?
I googled the phrases z cited and found this listed first--
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/Is%20Noam%20Chomsky%20an%20…
It's clear from this and from the essay that mgr listed that Chomsky's antisemitism includes denouncing the antisemitism that he said was widespread when he was young and experienced firsthand. That's a funny sort of antisemite--the kind who denounces antisemitism and talks about how bad it was when he was young. He then goes on to make the privileged comment, but in context, he's talking about people in the US who try to shout down any presentation of the I/P conflict from the Palestinian viewpoint.
The comment about how much more open discussion is on the I/P conflict in Israel compared to here is something that is widely acknowledged. Obama, btw, recently mentioned it in Cleveland. Chomsky brought up the word "tribal", which shocked Barton so much. But many or most people have a tribal outlook on morality, at least when their own interests are at stake. This is obviously the case for many (not all) people on both sides of the I/P conflict, exactly as one would expect. The guy who wrote the essay that I linked above can't really fathom Chomsky's position at all--for him it's all just siding with suicide bombers.
Another one of those "antisemites"--
http://themagneszionist.blogspot.com/2007/07/are-you-moral-zionist-take…
His current post is also relevant.
While I'm doing this drive-by posting, I'll add that I wouldn't recommend Chomsky as anyone's first choice of reading material on the I/P conflict, though he's a good antidote to the pro-Israel stuff one usually reads in the US. But it's best to read Israeli authors, I think, like Shlomo Ben Ami and some of the others I've mentioned, along with the material put out by Amnesty International, HRW, and B'Tselem, which all criticize both sides fairly evenly. Chomsky does criticize Arab atrocities (despite Barton's false claim otherwise), but if you want complete evenhandedness, he doesn't pretend to provide it and you should go to the human rights groups for that.
Might as well continue Donald's attempt to map out the quote mine.
Barton said:
So that's a yes, being critical of Israel automatically makes you an antisemite.
I can find only two references to this. One is from a talk transcribed here, in which Chomsky says:
"The Hebrew press is much more open than the English language press, and there's a very obvious reason: Hebrew is a secret language, you only read it if you're inside the tribe. Like most cultures it's a tribal culture. I don't want to exaggerate, but the English translations on the internet are very revealing and very interesting."
The other is here, where Chomsky quotes another writer:
""What we feared has come true," Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling writes in Israel's leading newspaper. Jews and Palestinians are "regressing to superstitious tribalism.... War appears an unavoidable fate," an "evil colonial" war. This prospect is likely if the U.S. grants tacit authorization, with grim consequences that may reverberate far beyond.
Neither of these passages, obviously, singles out Jews as tribal. One says that Israeli Jews are as tribal as the rest of us; the other says that they and Palestinians are becoming more tribal as their conflict progresses.
Well, that would certainly be antisemitic. But I can't find anything Chomsky has said which remotely equates to that. Source?
I believe this is based on the quote mentioned here:
"We might ask how the Times would react to an Arab claim that the Jews do not merit a 'second homeland' because they already have New York, with a huge Jewish population, Jewish-run media, a Jewish mayor, and domination of cultural and economic life. "
Chomsky wrote that in response to a Times op-ed arguing that the Palestinians should not have a second state of their own because they already have Jordan. His entire point is that both arguments are absurd--but that the Times would recognize only one as absurd, while publishing the other.
As Donald says, this refers not to Jews but to the pro-Israel lobby. It's in the talk I linked to above, and Chomsky goes on to argue that the pro-Israel lobby is neither Jewish nor beholden to Israel itself--in fact, that lobby includes many antisemitic, fundamentalist American Christians.
The Holocaust denier in question was Robert Faurisson. Chomsky wrote an essay defending Faurisson's right to free expression, and permitted it to be reproduced anywhere; it was then printed as a preface to his book without Chomsky's knowledge. (When he found out, Chomsky initially tried to get it removed, but later said that he regretted doing so.)
In that essay, which you can find here, Chomsky says:
"I am concerned here solely with a narrow and specific topic, namely, the right of free expression of ideas, conclusions and beliefs. I have nothing to say here about the work of Robert Faurisson or his critics, of which I know very little, or about the topics they address, concerning which I have no special knowledge."
Elsewhere, Chomsky has written:
"Faurisson's conclusions are diametrically opposed to views I hold and have frequently expressed in print (for example, in my book Peace in the Middle East?, where I describe the holocaust as "the most fantastic outburst of collective insanity in human history")."
So Chomsky explicitly disagrees with Holocaust denialism; he simply thinks that people should not be prohibited from publicly arguing it. That's not what I would call antisemitic.
The "privileged and influential" line comes from this talk, in which Chomsky says basically the same thing he said in the essay to which mgr linked:
"In the US when I was growing up anti-Semitism was a severe problem. In the 1930's depression when my father finally had enough money to buy a second-hand car and could take the family on a trip to the mountains, if we wanted to stop at a motel we had to check it didn't have a sign saying 'Restricted'. 'Restricted' meant no Jews, so not for us; of course no Blacks. Even when I got to Harvard 50 years ago you could cut the anti-Semitism with a knife. There was almost no Jewish faculty. I think the first Jewish maths professor was appointed while I was there in the early '50s. One of the reasons MIT (where I now am) became a great university is because a lot of people who went on to become academic stars couldn't get jobs at Harvard-so they came to the engineering school down the street.
"Just 30 years ago (1960s) when my wife and I had young children, we decided to move to a Boston suburb (we couldn't afford the rents near Cambridge any longer). We asked a real estate agent about one town we were interested in, he told us: 'Well, you wouldn't be happy there.' Meaning they don't allow Jews. It's not like sending people to concentration and termination camps but that's anti-Semitism. That was almost completely national. By now Jews in the US are the most privileged and influential part of the population. You find occasional instances of anti-Semitism but they are marginal."
So, yeah, he's not at all claiming that Jews secretly run the country--merely that they've managed to gradually move up the social ladder in the last 80 years. Which, on average, they have. The United Jewish Communities' National Jewish Population Survey in 2001 found that Jewish Americans tend to be "more highly educated, have more prestigious jobs and earn higher household incomes" than non-Jewish Americans. This is hardly a bad thing, and Chomsky never suggests that it is.
One other point--if Chomsky were an antisemite (it's ridiculous even talking about this, frankly) then you'd expect he'd have said that the Mearsheimer/Walt book was right, but didn't go far enough. Not that M/W are antisemites either, but the notion that the Israeli lobby controls US foreign policy in the Mideast is popular with the antisemites. But Noam disagrees with M/W about this. He thinks it's a tail wagging the dog thesis to say that the Israel lobby dictates to the US foreign policymakers what goals they wish to pursue and how they pursue them and points out that in fact, the evidence refutes the notion that the Lobby has the control that M/W say it has. His early reaction to their thesis is here--
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=9999
More on Chomsky on the middle east and the Jews:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anti-Chomsky_Reader
Click on "The Devil State" under "external links" to open the PDF.
Ah, BPL, always the right-wing joker. I do think you need to review that little gem. It seems to cite entire books (rather than passages) that somehow encompass Chomsky's attitude towards Israel as a "devil state". Odd how no one until this essay noticed that.
Mike
Prejudice makes us say stupid things. For example, mgr above calls me a "right-wing joker." If he had checked, mgr might have found out that I was a liberal Democrat. But he assumed that if I defended Israel and/or Jews, I had to be a right-winger.
It will be a sad day when antisemitism is automatically associated with the liberal left, though people like Noam Chomsky and mgr are doing their best to make that happen. I take some comfort from the fact that the vast majority of American liberals are still not antisemites.
" but in context, he's talking about people in the US who try to shout down any presentation of the I/P conflict from the Palestinian viewpoint. "
In context, shmin context.
"Jews in the US are the most privileged and influential part of the population"?
really? how am i privileged, compared to my next door neighbor, or george bush, or my boss at work? i assure, were i influential, george bush would not be running his war odf terror; and that goes for the jews as a whole, who were the only ethnic group beside blacks to vote against bush in 2000. even in 2004, it was the white christian bloc who voted to continue the status quo, over the opposition of the jews. i don't know; chomsky is a jew, does he feel particularly influential? he seems to disagree strenuously with the direction the country is taking, so it seems not.
would anyone who feels comfortable with the statement above be as complacent were somebody to state that "blacks in the US are the most coddled and cossetted part of the population"? i'd be just as pissed off, just as I have lept into fits of rageful posting on usenet at statements like "muslims want America and other countries to change their laws to fit sharia", so i dont think i'm being unduly tribal here, i think it's seeing straight prejudice in the literal sense of the word.
but back to the case in point: the same kind of assertions about the jews led directly to the holocaust. the guys who kidnapped and tortured to death a jewish kid in france a couple of years ago explained themselves by pointing that everybody knew jews were all rich, so they could afford the ransom.
juist as the generalizations about muslims led to the wholesale abrogation of tjhe rights of american muslims after 9/11, not to mention individual acts of violence
"Hebrew is a secret language, you only read it if you're inside the tribe.... the English translations on the internet are very revealing and very interesting."
see, that's just funny
Barton,
Well, if you're looking for a thoughtful, balanced critique of Chomsky, then it makes perfect sense to rely on a book called "The Anti-Chomsky Reader" and edited by David Horowitz, doesn't it?
Now I see where you got the "greed and domination" thing, and hoo boy is that a masterpiece of quote-mining. In the seventies, the IQ hereditarian Richard Herrnstein had argued that, because we haven't yet proved that all races are equally intelligent, it's justifiable to conduct research attempting to prove that one race is smarter than another. Chomsky opposed this reasoning, and used the following analogy:
In other words, even though no one's ever shown that Jews aren't genetically programmed for greed, this doesn't (according to Chomsky) justify a scientific attempt to prove that they are. There are lots of claims that no one has ever disproved, but that are too silly and/or potentially hurtful to be worth investigating.
The Reader takes this, hacks away the context and somehow produces:
You'd get a more accurate transmission of Chomsky's views by pulling random Scrabble tiles out of a bag. I don't particularly like the guy, and I see no reason to consider him an expert in Mideast politics, but really.
Context only matters if you want to know what Chomsky meant. If you want to put the worst possible interpretation on his words, as is often done in political debate with its usual standards of intellectual honesty, then yeah, taken out of context what he said is bad. It can be made to sound as if he believes that Jews control everything, etc... But we know that's false, because he dismisses the Walt/Mearsheimer thesis that the Israel lobby controls Mideast policy. Since it is clear that he doesn't believe in antisemitic theories that Jews control everything and not even in the theory that the Israel lobby controls all of US foreign policy in the Mideast, we're left with the claim that taken out of context, it sounds as if he did. The real Chomsky doesn't believe this, but the imaginary one does and I suppose it's the imaginary one that counts--I've often found it to be the case in such discussions.
As for your lack of privilege, he's not talking about you. This is where that context thing comes in again. There's enough of it even in the link I provided (where the author is attacking Chomsky) to show that he's referring specifically to privileged people who try to shout down pro-Palestinian views. Lift it out of context and yes, the imaginary Chomsky is attacking you.
I do think he should choose his words more carefully, as anyone familiar with how dishonest political discussion tends to be would know that sentences are always being taken out of context and used to "prove" that the author believes things he clearly doesn't believe. It happens to everyone who comments on political matters, so he ought to be more careful,but he isn't. I fault him for that, because I think that he almost dares people to take him out of context in much of his writing. But if I were interested in attacking him, I'd attack him for the beliefs he actually holds, not for beliefs that can be attributed to him when sentences are taken out of context.
Gotta come up with an alternative phrase meaning the same thing as "taken out of context". That previous post of mine needs some editing along those lines.
I also agree with Anton Mates that Chomsky shouldn't be taken as some leading authority on the Mideast, though I do think he's worth reading. But he wouldn't be at the top of my list of recommendations, unless somebody needs a concentrated dose of alternative thinking on US foreign policy. He's good for jarring people out of complacent mainstream thinking (he did that for me), but he's not a primary source of info on anything, and it's a good idea to read people who are the real experts on whatever area he writes about.
"he's not a primary source of info on anything"
Aside from linguistics, of course.
Well, in the particular line z quoted, "Jews in the US are the most privileged and influential part of the population," Chomsky certainly is talking about American Jews. But that's from a different point in his talk than the bit about "making 98% control 100%."
I think the latter claim sounds rather silly without a "per capita" slapped on it, but again, from context you can see that that's what he means. So far as I can see from survey data, Jewish Americans are on average wealthier, better-educated and working in more prestigious jobs than any other fair-sized ethnic group, including non-Jewish whites. Of course that doesn't mean that many individual non-Jews aren't richer and more influential than many individual Jews. Nor does it mean that, in the unlikely event that all Jewish Americans voted the same way on any issue, their summed political clout would overpower everyone else's.
z,
How so? The assertion that the Jewish population of a particular country is doing well, economically and politically, isn't really the "same kind" as the assertion that the Jews are congenitally greedy, treacherous, Christ-killing seditionists who can destroy a nation simply by irreversibly tainting the blood of its people.
And you accept that explanation? Personally, I think that when someone targets Jews for kidnapping and murder, their ability to estimate household incomes probably isn't the biggest way in which they're screwed up.
Dentists, on average, make a lot of money. Should we conceal that fact so that people don't kidnap and murder dentists' children?
In an astounding bit of unintentional self-refutation, Anton Mates posts a bit of Chomsky which includes the following:
"On the one hand, there is the alleged scientific importance of determining whether, in fact, Jews have a genetically determined tendency toward usury and domination (as might conceivably be the case)."
Do I need to add anything further? How would Anton react to a statement by someone criticizing, say, The Bell Curve, if that person made the statement:
"On the one hand, there is the alleged scientific importance of determining whether, in fact, Blacks have a genetically determined tendency toward crime and raping white women (as might conceivably be the case)."
Might it conceivably be the case? Or is saying such a thing might conceivably be the case reflect a bit of prejudice on the part of the speaker?
BPL said:"Prejudice makes us say stupid things. For example, mgr above calls me a "right-wing joker." If he had checked, mgr might have found out that I was a liberal Democrat. But he assumed that if I defended Israel and/or Jews, I had to be a right-winger."
Um no. I happen to have read your web site, and have followed your comments here. Other than your acceptance of global warming, your comments are inconsistent with current liberal or progressive thought. When one cites articles from a David Horowitz edited book, their claims to liberalism are suspect, and you did say 'was'.
Apologia for having issue with fundamentalism on your web site. Lists of evil biologists on your website. Calling Iam Gould an anti-semite. Defending a nation that had stong diplomatic ties with South Africa during apartheid. Unwillingness to entertain the shoah was in part a responsibility of the germans beyond nazi party officials. None of this burnished your liberal credentials, but certainly embellishes the proposition, if you aren't a right winger, then you certainly are a fellow traveler.
Mike
Mike writes:
[[Um no. I happen to have read your web site, and have followed your comments here. Other than your acceptance of global warming, your comments are inconsistent with current liberal or progressive thought. When one cites articles from a David Horowitz edited book, their claims to liberalism are suspect, and you did say 'was'.
Apologia for having issue with fundamentalism on your web site. Lists of evil biologists on your website. Calling Iam Gould an anti-semite. Defending a nation that had stong diplomatic ties with South Africa during apartheid. Unwillingness to entertain the shoah was in part a responsibility of the germans beyond nazi party officials. None of this burnished your liberal credentials, but certainly embellishes the proposition, if you aren't a right winger, then you certainly are a fellow traveler.]]
Well, let's see. I voted for Barry Commoner in 1980, for Walter Mondale in 1984, for Mike Dukakis in 1988, for Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996, for Al Gore in 2000 and for John Kerry in 2004. I plan to vote for Hilary Clinton in the Pennsylvania primary.
I'm for national single-payer health insurance, ending restrictions on abortion and contraception, allowing women in combat and gays in the military, and permitting gay marriage. I think we should get out of Iraq, and I'm for banning torture and signing statements. I'm for keeping creationism out of the public schools.
But I quote a conservative source, get along with some fundamentalist Christians, and defend Israel, therefore I'm a right-winger.
Mike, Mike, Mike. Your prejudices are making you say stupid things again.
Of course it might conceivably be the case. Do you have irrefutable logical proof that blacks don't have criminal tendencies? It might also conceivably be the case that whites have a genetically-determined lack of rhythm, that gays are genetically inclined to cannibalism, and that latinos are actually shapeshifting lizard-people from Jupiter. It's a truism that almost everything might conceivably be the case.
C'mon, Barton, this is Scientific Method 101. Science doesn't deal in proof. You can take any offensive, crackpot claim and say--quite truthfully--"well, it hasn't been conclusively disproven, so the question must remain open." So what? Chomsky's entire point is that some claims are too silly or too hurtful to defend, even though in principle it's conceivable that they're correct.
BPL: Dude, you may imagine that you are the master of deflection. It is interesting that you take offense at being called right wing, but are perfectly comfortable calling someone else anti-semite (a fairly illiberal behavior).
I can't prove or disprove (nor can you) your voting record or your stands on abortion, women's rights, etc. Only what you wrote on your website and what you have said here. I note that you did not respond to the substance of what I said, except to say get along with fundamentalist christians, (but it appears you don't get along with biologists or atheists, by your website). You quote a conservative source, but it is the only information you cite to defend your strong opinion about a linguist with a large history of writing and commentary as an anti-semite.
Your blather about prejuidice indicates you have little understanding of logic, coherence, or consistency; in that I will not project onto you qualities that are contrary to the evidence you have provided. IOW, that is not prejuidice, but informed opinion.
Mike
well, ok; as i said before, i'm not of the opinion that chomsky is a raging or unraging antisemite even though i could unearth a couple of dubious statements. it's certainly not something he made the thrust of his life's goal.
No, Mike, you misread those pages. I believe the majority of my friends are atheists -- for that matter, I was an atheist most of my life myself. But my friends are intelligent atheists. the "Stupid Atheist Tricks" page was aimed at stupid atheists, the ones who can't distinguish between logical argument and Christian-baiting. I explain that at the top of the page.
As to biologists, the head of my writer's workshop is a Ph.D. biochemist, and I spend a lot of my time arguing in defense of evolution on AOL messages boards and chat rooms. The page described evil biologists. Being a Nazi (Konrad Lorenz) or a Communist (J.B.S. Haldane) or an antisemite (Richard Dawkins, Kevin Macdonald, John Hartung) or a eugenics freak (R.A. Fisher, William Hamilton) is a bad thing. I was struck by the fact that a lot of spokesmen for bad causes happened to be biologists for some reason. I never said that all biologists, or even most biologists, deserved to be on the Evil Biologists Page, and I went out of my way to list biologists who were exemplary human beings (Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, Jane Goodall, etc.).
In short, you didn't understand either page.
My biochemist friend got a big kick out of my Evil Biologists page, by the way.
"Some of my best friends are atheists."
I think the irony just swallowed its own Klein Bottle.
Why do people continue to feed the troll?
Can't you read, Vague? I was charged with having a personal problem with atheists. Pointing out that the majority of my friends are atheists is obviously evidence against that proposition.
If you want to accuse someone of prejudice, you need some kind of objective test by which their prejudice can be decided. So far, you and Mike seem to want the matter to be untestable. Anything I say may be used against me.
Not to change the subject, but:
"1st Place: "Using Prayer To Microevolve Latent Antibiotic Resistance In Bacteria"
Eileen Hyde and Lynda Morgan (grades ten & eleven) did a project showing how the power of prayer can unlock the latent genes in bacteria, allowing them to microevolve antibiotic resistance."
"2nd Place: "Maximal Packing Of Rodentia Kinds: A Feasibility Study"
Jason Spinter's (grade twelve) project was to show the feasibility of Noah's Ark using a Rodentia research model (made of a mixture of hamsters and gerbils) as a representative of diluvian life forms"
">shouldn't this be on the open thread?
It was, but you offered no response. Thanks for addressing the matter here.
Posted by: Sortition | March 6, 2008 10:39 PM "
ok, well we'll move it back here
"z,
>everyone except the people who are colonizing the west bank.
Actually, the colonists (with the exception of a small hard core of messianic ideologues) are merely pawns. The colonization is not a grassroot operation - it is the Israeli government that organizes the colonization, and it is the Israeli government which does not plan on pulling out, ever. If the Israeli government ever decides to change its expansionist policy, a solution to the conflict would be achievable."
well, OK, but you do realize that "the Israeli government" changes every time there is an election. That's like saying "the American government" believes global warming is a lie. Yeah, today. A year from now, chances are, not so much. Similarly, not long ago the Israeli government was more dovish; then, when Sharon of all people decides on a disengagement plan and calls for two states, it's not terribly much of an exaggeration to say that "everybody" agrees. For all we know, the current settlers and the government also agree, and are either just grabbing cheap housing for as long as they can, and using the settlements to pressure the Palestinians to get back to bargaining. Anyway, "the Israeli government which does not plan on pulling out, ever. If the Israeli government ever decides to change its expansionist policy, a solution to the conflict would be achievable." is probably further from the truth than "everybody believes in the two state solution, they just disagree on how to get there".
">i didn't say "withdraw to the 67 borders"
Not that it matters much, but, yes, you did."
??? because I said that it was "Pretty much everybody's position" in response to a post that said "That's pretty much my position too." in response to a post that said "Israel should unilaterally withdraw from the West Bank, dismantling all settlements. They should build a wall along the 1967 borders"?? geez. (Pretty much)^2 < 1.0
> well, OK, but you do realize that "the Israeli government" changes every time there is an election.
The government may change, but the colonization policy stays. Have a look at the statistics. The colonization trend is constant - Likud or Labour, Oslo or intifada.
> For all we know, the current settlers and the government also agree, and are either just grabbing cheap housing for as long as they can, and using the settlements to pressure the Palestinians to get back to bargaining.
This a convoluted piece of apologetics. Let me also remind you that what you are so unconvincingly trying to excuse is a crime according to international law.