Tuesday, November 24, 2009

I was right to be cynical - Adam Shapiro

President Obama, unlike a well-trained and increasingly sycophantic Congress, has set out to change America's image in the world. This image is not undermined because of our relationship with Ireland, Thailand or Chile - or even by North Korea, Iran, Pakistan or Afghanistan, despite the seeming inadequacy of US policy to meet these challenges. No, the consistent lack of US credibility in the world spans Democrats and Republicans and is a consequence of our relationship with Israel and the exceptionalism applied to an occupier nation foisting apartheid on the Palestinians. Most of the world grasps immediately the hypocrisy of the Congress when it votes against the carefully documented work of Judge Goldstone, who has devoted his life to fighting racism and apartheid.

24 comments:

  1. Most of the world has little idea what Israel, Palestine, or even the term "Jew" means.

    Israel has maybe 7 million citizens, of which 1 1/2 million are Palestinian. There are another 8 million or so Palestinians living in the occupied territories and other Arab countries. Total population of Israel + Palestine = 15 million or 0.2% of the world's population. Total global population = 7 trillion.

    The people I interact with are not representative. However, still, almost none of them want to discuss Palestine, aside from Iraqi Mojo and some of the other people on this blog.

    Many of them want to discuss many other issues. It isn't that they are bad people; rather it reflects the fact that almost none of them know much about Palestine and Israel (I include the large majority of American Jews in this.)

    I don't know the best way to address this. I think perhaps one way is to increase Palestinian leverage over Israel and the international community so that the Palestinians can win their own freedom.

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  2. I see I am being attacked here:

    http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/2009/11/terrorisms-mask.php
    http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/2009/11/a-third-lebanon-1.php

    This is pretty scary. Because I really am pro Israelis. Have never hidden it. I just happen to be pro Palestinian too. To want the Israelis to compensate Palestinians for all of Israel's past mistakes (of ommission and commision) is to be pro Israeli.

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  3. <span>Total global population = 7 trillion.  </span>
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    I'm sure you're exaggerating a bit..

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  4. "I believe Congressman Perriello's vote resulted from the almost-obligatory fealty to AIPAC displayed by members of Congress and perhaps his desire to get re-elected.

    Incumbents have learned over the years not to cross AIPAC if re-election is important to them. This is not a tangential correlation - ask former Rep. Cynthia McKinney, former Senator Charles Percy and former President George HW Bush what happened to them when they took stands helpful to securing Palestinian rights. So the logic behind his vote is pretty simple."

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  5. "But is winning everything? Even when it means voting for apartheid? Where do accountability to self and the bedrock principles we discussed in the Kabul hills enter the equation?

    If the Goldstone report concerned any other country than Israel as the main perpetrator and any other people as victims than the Palestinians, there is no doubt that the report would be fully endorsed in Congress and perhaps there would be House resolutions praising the work of the commission, supporting the role of the UN in investigating war crimes, and affirming the need for the US government to take action to support implementing the findings."

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  6. <span> I really am pro Israeli</span><span></span>
    <span> I just happen to be pro Palestinian</span>
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    It could have been as good as hearing "I'm pro Nazi but also pro Jew" in 1940s.

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  7. The US builds up its bases in oil rich S.A. 

    No, I'm not referring to Saudi Arabia or the Middle East

    This is South America, no less:     

    The United States is massively building up its potential for nuclear and non-nuclear strikes in Latin America and the Caribbean by acquiring unprecedented freedom of action in seven new military, naval and air bases in Colombia. The development - and the reaction of Latin American leaders to it - is further exacerbating America's already fractured relationship with much of the continent.

    Hat tip to the Angry Arab himself!

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  8. I notice there haven't been many distracting economics related posts here.  There are two articles which I recommend.  The first is a pet interest of mine and concerns INDUSTRIAL POLICY.  The second one is by Nouriel Roubini who, significantly, sees the US heading for a U-shaped economic recovery.  I'll leave you with a quote from the first one:

    "Clyde Presotwitz of the Economic Strategy Institute, who was U.S. Trade Representative under Reagan...pointed out that labor is not a significant factor in chip manufacture. Why then are so many chip manufacturing facilities located in China? He says it... Read More’s because the Chinese wanted these as part of their industrial policy, so they seized the land, built the infrastructure, provided low-cost loans, granted energy and water subsidies, trained a work force, and gave the manufacturers tax breaks. Now they offer more subtle incentives, funding for research and development, refunds of the value added tax and space in industrial parks. As Prestowitz said, the plants are there for financial reasons."

    Free-Market supremacists just don't get it.

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  9. Thanks Mar. I posted it.

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  10. Very interesting Mara,  now,  what was that conversation we had a while back about what was going to happen in Latin America under Obama?

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  11. Here is the line of logic,  if you want to follow it.  It is not just the Palestinians that are the target with this,  but everyone - you too. When push comes to shove do you think you have any more pull eith Congress than th Palestinians? Ha!!  The American people are already being eaten up alive,  and it boild odwn to money and influence.  The only thing you do not realize is that there is a world wide apartheid,  between the rich and the poor - you're tent awaits you.

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  12. Thanks for the catch. It is 7 billion.

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  13. Welcome back Mara. :) I would love to touch base offline.

    Mara, I know a thing or two about the chip business.

    Intel's China fab is 65 nanometer, or old obsolete DSP manufacturing.

    No new modern fabs (45 nm, 40 nm, 32 nm, 28 nm) are being manufactured in China to my knowledge. There remains skepticism that the Chinese can pull off the technical perfection needed for cutting edge fabs.

    However, the Chinese are getting better, rapidly.

    I would also emphasize that EECS engineers and scientists in China and India make salaries that are increasingly comparable to those in the US.

    One friend of mine estimated that India was 30% cheaper than the US and that the gap was closing. Indians need to compete on quality rather than price.

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  14. Was WWII about liberating both the Germans and the Jews from a horrible dictator, Adolf Hilter?

    WWII was not fought against the good German people but against a cruel dictator who abused and manipulated them. After Adolf Hitler was removed, Germany rapidly became a prosperous successful plural free democracy. German Jews also benefited from the fall of Hitler (like their German counterparts.)

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  15. You'd make a great historian anan.. Ha ha..

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  16. <span><span>Totten is not interesting. More accurately, he's a piece of shit. He's totally obssessed with Hizbullah. He doesn't understand why people are critical of Israel, the only democracy blah blah in the M.E. </span></span>
    Puke!

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  17. Especially when you explain for example, as you did on that Russian site, that the Palestinians "fled because of the war" and where not ethnically cleansed..

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  18. I argue that America should try to make friends with Iran and Hezbollah on Totten's blog.

    Hezbollah did some bad things against Totten personally when Totten was visiting Lebonon. Some of the Hezbollah leaders are idiots. That doesn't mean that America shouldn't try to make friends with them, however.

    "<span>Palestinians "fled because of the war" and where not ethnically cleansed..</span>" During the war Palestinians and Jews were temporarily displaced people who were made refugees by the fighting. Ethnic cleansing didn't take place for the most part during the war.

    After the war, Israel should have let the Palestinians return home to Israel. By refusing to do so in accordance with international law and Israeli law, Israel ethnically cleansed the Palestinians from their country and property. This was Israel's crime.

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  19. anan
    <span style="">Hezbollah did some bad things against Totten </span>
    They should've finished him off.

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  20. <span style=""><span>Some of the Hezbollah leaders are idiots.</span> 
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    anan 
    I love it when you accuse others of being idiots, like calling Amy Goodman idiot etc. and now Hizbullah. But tell me how does an idiot assess  other others of being idiots. You're nothing but a not funny jOKE </span>

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  21. During the war Palestinians and Jews were temporarily displaced people who were made refugees by the fighting. Ethnic cleansing didn't take place for the most part during the war.
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    Whatever that exactly means!!
    anan
    You obviously never heard of the "plan Dalet"..It was a deliberate and carefully planned for ethnically cleansing.
     "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" by the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe is a very well documented book based on Israeli military archives. Check it out. If you do not want to, the alternative is to not talk about things you ignore.

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  22. <span>"The 1948 " war of Independence" involved one of the largest forced migrations in modern history. Around a million people were expelled from their homes at gunpoint, civilians were massacred, and hundreds of Palestinian villages destroyed. Denied for almost six decades, had it happened today it could only have been called "ethnic cleansing". 
    In this groundbreaking book, renowned Israeli historian Ilan Pappe offers impressive archival evidence to demonstrate that, from its very inception, a central plank in Israel's founding ideology was the forcible removal of the indigenous population, a strategy that continues to the present day." 
    Ilan Pappe</span>

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  23. I know how it feels now to be talking to a Holocaust denier!

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  24. Thanks for letting me know about  <span>"The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" by the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe. I would like to ask some Israelis and Michael Totten's commentator about Ilan Pappe's research.</span>

    TGIA, even if Pappe is right, many of the Jewish, Christians and Muslims who fled their homes in 1948 would have been internally displaced persons trying to flee the fighting.

    However, while the Jews were allowed back to their homes after the war ended; Christians and Muslims were the same right, which is wrong.

    If I am not mistaken, the inverse happened in the West Bank (East Jerusalem, Hebron and other towns) for Jewish Palestinians or Jewish Arabs as they were then refered too.

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