Well, I've done it now; I've gone and screwed up so badly that it looks they're going to have to tear up my leftist/liberal secret identity card. I just can't seem to get my knee to jerk the right way anymore to be in step with the times. I'd better be careful or people are going to start thinking I'm some sort of closet fascist.
I guess I should have known better than to try and say anything impartial or that didn't paint Israel as a horrible villain considering the recent crises. I had the absolute gall to recite historical facts and just because it wasn't convenient to today's accepted left approved truth it hurt people's feelings.
It's not like I condoned what Israel is doing right now, because I don't, but I didn't compare them to Nazis or say how heroic the Palestinians are so that immediately put me in the camp of the enemy. Even worse was that I happened to say something critical about the Arab nations in regards to the current circumstances of the people on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
How could I have been so insensitive, what an unmitigated cad I am for even suggesting that it served the purpose of the Arab league forty years ago to have a bunch of people living on the border of Israel who would hate the Israelis. In fact I went so far as to say that the Arab countries refused to allow the Palestinians into their countries because they were afraid that they would start demanding they be allowed to govern the land that Britain had ceded to them on Partition.
No, Jordan and Egypt would never have occupied the land that was supposed to have been for the Arab people of Palestine, would they? Then who was ruling West Jerusalem and the West Bank prior to 1967? Who was ruling the Gaza strip prior the six-day war? It wasn't Israel, because they didn't occupy those territories until after 1967 and it wasn't the Palestinian Arabs because they didn't have any land or a country to live in.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Dave Nalle
Richard, I have to commend you. This is one of the sharpest pieces you've done. Not just the recounting of history, but your willingness to step away from the herd mentality and apply your own reason to the situation objectively. IMO this kind of thinking raises you above the 'left' you admit to being part of to that special status of 'thinking being' where discourse between those who are nominally of the self-described left or right can actually engage in meaningful discourse and find common ground.
Dave
2 - Apollo
Excellent piece Richard. Welcome to the world of Reason and for saying goodbye to the imaginary world of leftist-liberal kooks.
3 - Al Barger
Damn it Richard, the Jews are evil. They're...
They're worse than those beady eyed Canadians, is what.
4 - Christopher Rose
It's all well and good having a personal revisionist moment but it all ignores the difficult business of dealing with the here and now we see today.
As things stand, Israel can play a better role in resolving all the tensions of the area by getting out of occupied territory and simply getting on with the important business of living a normal life. As the dominant military power in the region, there is a greater burden of responsibility on it to live up to the standards of decency and democracy that it tries to portray itself as adhering to.
5 - Les Slater
Those that make up the 'left' are thoroughly confused. They are more likely to drift right than not.
Some that personally resist this drift to the right become all hyped up, dreaming of conspiracies, etc., ending up going right all-the-more violently. This is where fascists get their recruits.
6 - Christopher Rose
Les, I don't buy into party politics as they all end up telling lies but, for the sake of balance, could you tell us the problems with those on the right too..?
7 - Les Slater
Christopher,
The right?
The capitalist system and its imperialism are ultimately to the advantage of a relative few. Many people support it for various reasons.
Some resist it or some of its manifestations.
Those that accept it are generally considered to be on the right and those who resist or protest are considered to be on the left.
There is some claim of a middle ground or sometimes even, a common ground.
In general, I think the left-right terminology is useless. When I criticize the 'left' it is those that consider themselves 'left'.
The right wing? Many consider Bush as an example of the 'right wing'. I do not. He is a moderate in today's political spectrum.
There are those that actively support attacks on the working class. I suppose these might be considered the 'right'. But even here it is not so simple.
One has to distinguish between those that actually gain from the results of these attacks and those that blindly get caught up in them.
The attacks themselves, the wars, etc., are the fallout, the necessary logic, of a deepening crisis of the capitalist system itself, and its imperialism. This is what is important.
What we see in this blog is generally a reflection through middle class eyes of this crisis.
Dave Nalle fancies himself above the partisan fray but somewhat on the right. His apparent libertarianism is just a middle class elitism that is ultimately impotent.
I don’t know where Nancy considers herself on the political spectrum, she seems intelligent and reasonably well educated, but often blurts out the most reactionary shit, usually, quite consciously, and with a certain degree of pride, like a naughty child in mixed company.
As the crisis deepens many will find themselves comfortable amongst fascist mobs doing what they think the government should be doing.
Then there are those pitiful types, a couple that jump into this blog, who fancy themselves neo-nazis, white-supremacists, etc., who are nothing but zeros and are not to be concerned with.
The real social force to be reckoned with is the working class. It has no clear leadership at the moment but I am optimistic. Do you realize that this year, around the date of May 1, we had the first mass, political, general strikes, ever in this country?
Les
8 - RedTard
"The capitalist system and its imperialism are ultimately to the advantage of a relative few."
Like all the USA and western Europe, (Imperial) Japan, SOuth Korea, Taiwan, etc. Please show us those models of leftist greatness: The only place that punishing productiveness to make people feel better works is in countries with massive natural resources per capita: Canada, Norway, etc. They can sell productive countries their excess resources and use the money to maintain their crappy, egalitarian system.
9 - Clavos
Les writes,
The attacks themselves, the wars, etc., are the fallout, the necessary logic, of a deepening crisis of the capitalist system itself, and its imperialism. This is what is important.
Les, What is the nature of this crisis? Does it exist in all capitalist societies? Is it inherent in the notion of capitalism?
Most capitalists would consider the system to be in ascendancy (though not without problems), particularly in light of the failure of communism in the Soviet Union, and the apparent drift toward capitalism currently taking place in the Chinese people's republic.
10 - gonzo marx
Red, ya missed out on Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and the Netherlands....to say the least...
a quasi-socialist environment appears to work for those cultures , giving them a high standard of living, education, healthcare and so on...while the people themselves have a high quotient of being pretty happy overall
NOT advocating the System for all... but if it works for them, who cares?
my point here is that "different strokes for different folks" (Sly Stone) is the Way of it... if folks are happy with the way it goes, then who outside of their Nation should have the Authority to give them shit over it?
think about it a second...wouldn't you get pissed if someone outside the US gave us shit over our System? of course! and rightly so...
the Criticism you level at others "crappy egalitarian systen" is therefore, a non-sequitor outside of being your own , personal Opinion (which , of course you have every Right to hold), but without some Reasoning from you to illuminate your Statement, it appears to be nothign more than personal dislike with no substantiation, and appears to oppose the same right to self determination for a Nation that you espouse for the U.S.
just sharing a Thought
Excelsior?
11 - gonzo marx
aww...geeez...sorry Richard, i fergot to comment on the actual Article...
/golfclap
a well wrought Reminder of many of the facets involved in that region's History
add to it the mid-50's removal of a democratically elected government in Iran by the CIA, with the Shah being placed in power and propped up (under the deal of BP getting 40% of the oil, Shell getting 40% and the Shah getting the last 20%, 10 of which went to his personal fortune making him one of the richest men in the world), and you can see how that plus the Factors mentioned in the original Article have combined into the root Causes of much of the Conflicts in the middle east right now....
exacerbate that with the training in the 80's of the mujahadeen in Afghanistan ( all the al Qaeda leadership, including bin Laden learned their chops there), and the subsequent abandonment of those fighters after the Russian pull out
then add the abandonment of the Kurds who were excited by the CIA into uprising against Saddam after the first Gulf War, but were also militarily abandoned, and thus crushed by Hussein after the US pull out in 91
these are all added and compounded together, stirred up by those who desire not only for there to be a new Caliphate, but who style themselves the Caliphs... with a dash of underlying greed and lust for Power, stirred by formenting fundamentalist fanatacism...
bake in the hot desert sun for 50 years or so
and you get the mess 0'potamia we have now
but i digress...
Excelsior?
12 - Les Slater
Clavos,
"Most capitalists would consider the system to be in ascendancy (though not without problems),"
I am not privy to what the capitalist think except what is refracted through some of their mouthpieces like the Wall street Journal, the Federal Reserve, and their choice of political leaders, and what policies are fought for and sometimes implemented.
Productivity is up mostly by driving the wages and living conditions of the working class, and lower levels of the middle class, down.
Monetary and financial stability in the most powerful of the capitalist states is maintained by massive lending from foreign entities. The fed uses bubbles to maintain some semblance of value in equities.
There is a trend toward the reduction of the concentration of technological superiority in the U.S., to where it can be supported more economically.
There is a severe imbalance between who produces and who rules. That’s why the inflated U.S. military and the wars it carries out and threatens. That imbalance must be maintained.
Les
13 - Al Barger
Oh Gonzo, you're going to explain modern dirtbags based on the justification of CIA activities from the 1950s?
How about the more simple and obvious answer: a lot of Arabs and Muslims are wicked and evil, with shame based personalities. They hate the good precisely for being the good. They hate Israel for being able to make a thriving country out of what was previously just a huge litter box. They they add in anti-Semitism and general religious nonsense to justify their lives of hatred and shame for their own failures.
Christopher Rose is as so often, talking stupid in saying "Israel can play a better role in resolving all the tensions of the area by getting out of occupied territory and simply getting on with the important business of living a normal life." He should know better than that foolishness.
That's exactly what the Israelis have been TRYING to do, and of course the Arabs have shoved that right up their ass, for example by using the recently de-occupied territories as new and improved bases for attacks. They left Lebanon years ago, and have no desire to be there.
14 - RedTard
The only thing driving the US deficit is entitlement spending. Capitalism may not be perfect but it's the best damn system we've come up with yet. The Les's of the world are just the spoiled children of the system. Capitalism brought you that computer you're writing on and the internet that serves it.
Communism and pure socialism are complete failures. A definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over again expecting a different result. Many on the left fit the definition to a T. The only 'successes' of socialism are those hybrid governments where social spending piggybacks on a dynamic freemarket economy. The long term effects of all that spending is massive deficits and an eventual push back farther to the right in order to rescue another failed leftist experiment.
15 - Clavos
Les,
Productivity is up mostly by driving the wages and living conditions of the working class, and lower levels of the middle class, down.
BLS statistics would not support this assertion. I realize that data from the BLS could be considered suspect and biased (I don't believe it is, but for the sake of argument I'll assume that momentarily). If true, it is occuring in this country mostly because jobs are being outsourced to other capitalist countries (either established as such or nascent).
Note that in my original comment I did not refer to The US, but rather to the system of capitalism in general. On a worldwide basis, capitalism is growing (and spreading) exponentially.
Monetary and financial stability in the most powerful of the capitalist states is maintained by massive lending from foreign entities.
There is some lending (in the form of foreign purchasing of US government debt instruments, e.g.), but far more investment than lending, and it is coming principally from other capitalist societies.
The fed uses bubbles to maintain some semblance of value in equities.
That's the first time I've heard of Fed monetary policy referred to as "bubbles." Supporting evidence?
There is a trend toward the reduction of the concentration of technological superiority in the U.S., to where it can be supported more economically.
True. More evidence of the worldwide spread of capitalism.
So Les, what (and where) is the "deepening crisis of the capitalist system?"
16 - gonzo marx
big Al, you missed a lot of the points...
i ain't blaming shit on anyone , really
all i was doing was giving a bit more fo the historical background which shaped the driving social/political forces in the mid-east and have allowed the general Situation there to deteriorate into the fucked up mess it's in now
was i factually inaccurate in any of the details ?
since i made no conclusions, merely pointed out historical root causes for some of the attitudes manipulated by bad people into fanaticism of the rank and file... please show me an error?
i will add in to the mix the Wahabist schools (mostly financed by the Saudi's) which, under the guise of teaching folks how to read and write utilizing the Qu'ran, instead add in propagandist and hate speech towards chosen scapegoats...
my point here is that there are quite a few reasons from near History for where we are at, and that Ignoring all of them leaves any analysis Incomplete... and hampers formulating any real and lasting Answer...
but the last Straw and the nail in the coffin for a chance at Peace in the near term, was hammered into place by Arafat a few years ago when he looked at Israel sitting at the Table, with the best Peace options the Palestinians could even hope for, and Uncle Sugar sitting there ready to write the Checks to pay for the formation of a real Palestinian state under the very best Terms any could hope for... and the rat bastard Arafat walked away...
THAT sounded the Trumpet, and let slip the dogs of War...
just my one sixth billionths of the World's opinion...
your mileage may vary
Excelsior?
17 - Christopher Rose
Al, perhaps you could explain to us exactly how Israel has establised internationally agreed secure borders with all its neighbours, as laid down in multiple peace plans it seems to have blithely ignored?
Furthermore, I'm about up to here with your general rudeness to a variety of people on here so I shall be expecting you to follow the comments policy from now on; you've been cut more than enough slack recently. And to think I was one of the people who stood up for you during the recent debates as to who should be a Blogcritic of the month...
18 - RedTard
Way to hide behind your authority position Chris. Why don't you address his point about Hizbullah growing stronger and using the territory to lauch attacks after Israel got out of Lebanon. Israel and it's supporters were right then about the Islamic nutjobs and they're right now. Now there's an 'inconvenient truth' for you.
19 - gonzo marx
side note to Red in #14
have you compared the balance sheets of those "hybrid" economies i mention with the Treasury departments own report on the US's? (remember the Treasury departments is done with real accounting rules, and does nto match the overly rosy ones from the WH)
try it, and then come back and talk to me about Nations that are overborrowing, over spending , and who appears to get the most effecient and best bang for their buck...
i'm NOT advocating other Systems for the US.. we are who we are, but i think it is Ignorant to toss aside other Ways that work for no good reasons...
rather, i woudl think that Learning from anything that works, to make your own Efforts betters is the only reasonable course of action...
Excelsior?
20 - Christopher Rose
RedTard, if you can't perceive the difference between Al's spiky bearding of people and my reasonably stated perspective, I can only hazard a guess as to which half of your nickname is predominant.
Furthermore, I separated my opinion from my observation as to his good manners, so I don't see any way I was hiding behind any "authority" I may have, which I reckon to be about the same as Cartman's.
As to your point about Al's observation, he didn't write about Hezbollah attacking Israel from Southern Lebanon, he wrote Arabs, as though the two were interchangeable.
As I have remarked more than once, I fully support efforts to establish true democratic control of all of the Lebanon and Israel's right to exist.
I don't believe the Israeli government has been very smart in launching this current offensive as and when it did. It clearly underestimated the military strength of Hezbollah and has achieved little more than increase opposition to itself throughout the region.
Thank you for your contribution to non-partisan thinking.
21 - Les Slater
Clavos #15
“Note that in my original comment I did not refer to The US, but rather to the system of capitalism in general. On a worldwide basis, capitalism is growing (and spreading) exponentially.”
I was the one that pointed to the U.S. because of its importance.
Capitalism is growing but not exponentially, at least not in the amount of labor it is exploiting. It is in a saturation mode.
“So Les, what (and where) is the ‘deepening crisis of the capitalist system?’”
It is the imbalance between who produces and who rules, the necessity to maintain this imbalance through coercive means. This has been playing out within this country and others. This is why the growth in police, the prison population, and the attacks on democratic rights.
Profits, on the whole, come at a greater expense. The risks are high and the trend is for investment in non-productive entities, mergers instead of new industries, various levels of leveraging, the extraction of wealth from the tiniest of spreads, etc.
Les
22 - Clavos
Les,
I have responses for your #21, but, belatedly I've realized we (I) have hijacked Richard's thread, so I'll save them for another opportunity.
Richard, apologies for the hijacking.
23 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Richard,
Nice job. You laid out the facts for the Euro-philes who refuse to see them like good ole Chris, and Leninists like Les...
Chris, the solution to all this is to blow HizbAllah to kingdom come, turn Damascus and Anjar into a rubble and to attack Teheran, preferably turning it into glass, before the Persian bastards do the same to us. Just because they prey to Allah five times a day doesn't make the Persians friends. Even if they didn't have mad mullahs shoving the Mahdi down their throats 24/7, they would still want an empire and they would still want to take their position in the neighborhood - DOMINANT MILITARY POWER - and run our lives from Teheran.
Dealing with all these problems is not a job for little wienies like Olmert, who strike heroic poses in public and shit in their pants in private - it is certainly not a job for sadistic and sick traitors like Peres, who arrange for murder while drinking with "friends." I will grant that Peres has the smarts for the job, but not the inclination. Peres follows the evil inclination.
And that, young man, is the truth, whether you like it or not.
24 - gonzo marx
Ruvy sez...
*the solution to all this is to blow HizbAllah to kingdom come, turn Damascus and Anjar into a rubble and to attack Teheran, preferably turning it into glass, before the Persian bastards do the same to us.*
and thus show clearly why there is no clear Answer to the problems in the Region
the same lack of sheer Humanity shown by this Statement is exactly the same as the inHumanity shown by the very Foe spoken of...
Ruvy, i Wish you and yours.... as well as your Nation, only the Best... but again, your very own Statements reveal quite a bit
Killing an Enemy who is attacking you is Justifiable... destroying innocents for the sake of such is not... deliberately targetting those innocents is a Crime, which is what is reprehensible about Hizb'allah's behavior
i would that you and yours do not become that which you so vehemently strive against
Excelsior?
25 - Clavos
gonzo,
To what point do you withhold fire in the name of humanity, when your enemy isn't holding back, and who in fact will overwhelm you if not stopped?