| Topic: |
Science > Prophecies-Of-Nostradamus |
| User: |
"=?utf-8?B?VGhlIExhc3QgMjMwMCBEYXlzLsK3OirCqMKoKjrCty4g4pmlwqnCruKEog==?=" |
| Date: |
29 Aug 2006 10:29:24 PM |
| Object: |
The US Peace Movement and Hezbollah: The Big Picture |
NB: AN UNCLE WALLY DISCLAIMER: The following article can be found on
the WWW at the website
listed below & is for entertainment or amusement purposes only. Your
Uncle Wally does not endorse it's contents....
------------------------------=C2=AD------------------------=C2=AD---------=
-------------------
http://english.alarabonline.org/display.asp?fname=3D2006%5C08%5C08-30%5Czop=
inionz%5C668.htm&dismode=3Dx&ts=3D30/08/2006%2009:07:07%20%C3%95
The US Peace Movement and Hezbollah: The Big Picture
By James Brooks*
Many peace activists may have felt somewhat bewildered by Hezbollah's
smashing success in outfoxing and outfighting the Israeli army in
southern Lebanon. Was it right to feel such a visceral satisfaction
from these battles fought by a group that was also lobbing rockets at
Israeli civilians? Where did we stand on Hezbollah, really?
We "peace activists" struggle to take rage, anguish, and disgust and
channel them into language and tactics we believe will appeal to the
general public. In order to persevere in our relatively fruitless
efforts, we guard our optimism.
Whether our focus is Colombia, Haiti, Mexico, Palestine, Iraq,
Afghanistan, or any other US-supported war-and-poisoning zone, our news
is a steady diet of inhumane horrors and injustices. For many of us,
that's enough. We may (wittingly or not) avoid or reject analysis and
information that suggests the situation is much worse than we already
know it to be, fearing burnout and despair.
We may also worry that an analysis that is too dissonant with the
dominant paradigm will alienate the public. Leading figures in the
movement remember to utter the pieties that are supposed to legitimize
our message, such as the "importance of maintaining a strong defense."
Connecting the wrong dots threatens the tenuous bridge we have built
between reality and the world according to the machine.
But maintaining an unsatisfactory compromise built on increasingly
unreal assumptions will inevitably produce denial. Thus we find
ourselves where we are today, tripping over an array of mostly
unconscious barriers to a realistic understanding of our present
predicament.
The Israeli-US war on Lebanon crystallized the picture that we are
afraid to see.
It put the Bush cabal's determination to attack Iran on "the front
burner" and the "fast track", despite the consternation of old guard
"realists" of US imperial diplomacy, who worry Bush is about to start
World War III.
And it resoundingly affirmed the ability of today's resistance fighters
to undermine Israeli and US-UK attempts to enforce foreign occupations,
striking fear in the hearts of highly-placed warmongers on both sides
of the Atlantic. They will probably respond by calling for even more
"air power" next time.
Lebanon was the fourth all-out war on an Arab/Muslim country in the
last four years, all waged by the US-UK "coalition" and/or the
Israeli-US "alliance". Let's consider the pretexts offered to justify
this serial criminal warfare.
Afghanistan was invaded and destroyed (again), ostensibly to avenge
9/11 by destroying Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, even though the FBI
has admitted that it has "no hard evidence connecting bin Laden to
9/11."
Iraq was invaded and destroyed (again) to find mythical weapons of mass
destruction.
The Gaza Strip was invaded and destroyed (again) because resistance
fighters allied to Hamas captured an Israeli soldier in a retaliatory
cross-border raid.
Lebanon was invaded and destroyed (again) because Hezbollah captured
two Israeli soldiers in a retaliatory cross-border raid.
The grand total of pretexts? One unlikely suspect, one myth, and three
captured soldiers, who were all doing fine at last report. For this?
Of course the US and Israel have a long list of genuine reasons to wage
each of these wars and carry out the whole bloody scheme. But the
official excuses they offer to the rest of the nations of the world
have meaning, too.
In this case they appear to mean, "See, I can lie through my teeth and
you can't do a damn thing about it except say, 'Yes, sir.' The world is
what we say it is, or you don't have a place in it. I have many ways of
making your life miserable. And don't forget, I'm unpredictable. I can
do crazy things and get away with them."
The steady application of this kind of diplomacy has smashed our na=C3=AFve
hopes by sucking the EU and the UK ever more deeply into the orbit of
US-Israeli foreign policy, to the point where the Arabs can't trust
either of them any more than they can trust us.
While most people have been distracted by the shock and awe of
America's military presence in the Middle East, Israel's studiously
ignored long war on the Palestinians has descended to new depths of
daily living hell.
The accelerating ethnic cleansing of the northern and eastern West Bank
threatens to squeeze even the possibility of Palestinian life out of
the land. The Jordan Valley is being prepared for illegal "annexation"
to Israel.
In Israel's 'total war' on the "liberated" Gaza Strip, the IAF has
destroyed the main power station, all major roads and bridges, the sole
(unused) airport, several government and civic buildings, and dozens of
homes.
Now at least a third of the poverty-stricken inhabitants do not have
power or running water. Israel also imposed a total blockade on Gaza,
which remains in force today with EU cooperation. This little "war",
still raging on, has already killed nearly 200 Palestinians, more than
half of them civilians. One Israeli soldier has died in the "fighting".
And more civilians are dying because Israel and the US and the EU and
Canada and Britain, all those great democracies, conspired to cut off
funds and embargo the finances of the PA when it became too democratic
in a free and fair election last January.
The sick, especially children and the elderly, are dying because
hospitals have little or no electricity, are running out of fuel, have
only the most rudimentary medical supplies (if that) and no money to
pay their staff. This is how the US plays politics in the Middle East.
And more war is on the way. Palestine now finds that its struggle for
self-determination and survival has been hijacked to serve as a
crucible for the next phase of the empire's plan, in which Iran and
Syria are hot-branded as "terrorist states" that must also be forcibly
"liberated".
The propaganda campaign is going on full-tilt as we speak. Its rules
are wonderfully simple; whenever you mention the Palestinian or
Lebanese resistance, follow it with this phrase, or its equivalent: "a
terrorist group funded and armed by Syria and Iran".
As a result, the Palestinian-Lebanese resistance may become the hinge
of a crystallizing global divide. It seems unlikely that Palestine will
enjoy any benefit from this honor, but those pages have yet to be
written.
In hindsight, wasn't it obvious that World War III had begun when the
world's "sole superpower" declared an open-ended "global war" on an
indefinite, multinational enemy?
And what is the big picture for us here at home? The debacle of last
summer's hurricanes was searing evidence that the domestic underbelly
of the government is rapidly withering into an outsourced husk of
uselessness. The parasites continue to multiply, infecting the whole
body with corruption, cronyism, profiteering, and lawlessness.
The vast wealth of the nation is controlled by one percent of its
citizens. Draconian funding cuts drive people to food shelves and soup
kitchens in unprecedented numbers, neglected by a fearful herd trying
to work enough hours to sustain an unsustainable debt.
During the past fifty years, the relationship between the federal
government and corporate-finance power has transformed from a formally
bipolar arrangement into today's unipolar alignment. Government now
functions primarily to serve shifting forces of corporate-finance power
(and the odd foreign government) as a facilitator, benefactor, warrior,
and spendthrift customer.
In the modern age, this fusion of money power and national government
is called fascism. It has been observed that fascist governments
typically resort to outlandish, racially-charged propaganda and embark
on increasingly reckless wars of aggression. They usually conduct
intensive domestic surveillance and counterintelligence, rig elections,
imprison large percentages of their populations, sadistically torture
prisoners and detainees, and police and "debate" by racial- and
political-profiling. They always aggressively expand the executive
power of the central government.
You don't have to wait until they arrest you, too, to decide that
America has become a fascist state. The evidence is all around you.
Those who still have difficulty seeing the picture might be advised to
stop listening to National Public Radio.
What do "peace activists" do in a fascist state? What is the true
potential of our efforts to "change public opinion" in the world's most
advanced propaganda regime? What actions by a citizen are morally
justified to resist this tyranny, injustice, and bloodshed? Which would
be most effective? What have other people done in this situation? How
do we feel about that?
Is it sane to continue to pretend that we live in a "democracy" when we
manifestly do not? Does our squeamishness about armed resistance by
Arabs and Muslims reflect an unconsciously imperial notion, that we
might have peace if only they didn't fight back? Are we willing to do
everything we can to stop this global menace, starting with ourselves?
These are but a few of the questions dying to be asked now by all
people of conscience.
So, how do we feel about Hezbollah, which dealt the quickest and most
embarrassing blow yet to the war plans of "our" empire? How can we not
feel admiration, even gratitude, for their determination to prevent
another bloody occupation? Didn't they accomplish more in 34 days than
we have accomplished in nearly four decades of a preposterous "peace
process" chronically violated and manipulated to prolong the
occupation?
At the end of his recent New Yorker article, Watching Lebanon:
Washington's interests in Israel's war, Sy Hersh quoted John Arquilla,
a defense analyst at the Naval Postgraduate School, about the Bush
neocons' view of warfare: "The definition of insanity is continuing to
do the same thing and expecting a different result."
We who seek peace must ask ourselves if we have not also gone 'insane',
expecting different results from actions that obviously haven't worked.
To guard our optimism in the New World Order, we Americans will have to
learn to see peace the way most Palestinians see it: as the inevitable
fruit of resolute resistance to aggression and injustice.
* James Brooks serves as webmaster for Vermonters for a Just Peace in
Palestine/Israel. He can be contacted at
Source: www.counterpunch.org
..zopinionz cxlbx
.
|
|
| User: "Jean Guernon" |
|
| Title: Re: The US Peace Movement and Hezbollah: The Big Picture |
30 Aug 2006 11:49:02 AM |
|
|
"The Last 2300 Days.·:*¨¨*:·. ?©®T" <stargatedecember2012@yahoo.ca> a écrit
dans le message de news:
1156908564.735638.267900@74g2000cwt.googlegroups.com...
NB: AN UNCLE WALLY DISCLAIMER: The following article can be found on
the WWW at the website
listed below & is for entertainment or amusement purposes only. Your
Uncle Wally does not endorse it's contents....
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://english.alarabonline.org/display.asp?fname=2006%5C08%5C08-30%5Czopinionz%5C668.htm&dismode=x&ts=30/08/2006%2009:07:07%20%C3%95
The US Peace Movement and Hezbollah: The Big Picture
By James Brooks*
Many peace activists may have felt somewhat bewildered by Hezbollah's
smashing success in outfoxing and outfighting the Israeli army in
southern Lebanon.
Hahahahahahahahahaha How can you even read the rest. Hezbollah's smashing
success!!??? ROFL
This is total pro-terrorist ***** obviously.
J.
.
|
|
|
|
| User: "mariner" |
|
| Title: Re: The US Peace Movement and Hezbollah: The Big Picture |
30 Aug 2006 09:33:59 AM |
|
|
The article below must be one of the most naive I have ever read,
"useful and idiot" are brought into sharp focus.
"The Last 2300 Days.·:*¨¨*:·. ?©®T" <stargatedecember2012@yahoo.ca> wrote in
message news:1156908564.735638.267900@74g2000cwt.googlegroups.com...
NB: AN UNCLE WALLY DISCLAIMER: The following article can be found on
the WWW at the website
listed below & is for entertainment or amusement purposes only. Your
Uncle Wally does not endorse it's contents....
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://english.alarabonline.org/display.asp?fname=2006%5C08%5C08-30%5Czopinionz%5C668.htm&dismode=x&ts=30/08/2006%2009:07:07%20%C3%95
The US Peace Movement and Hezbollah: The Big Picture
By James Brooks*
Many peace activists may have felt somewhat bewildered by Hezbollah's
smashing success in outfoxing and outfighting the Israeli army in
southern Lebanon. Was it right to feel such a visceral satisfaction
from these battles fought by a group that was also lobbing rockets at
Israeli civilians? Where did we stand on Hezbollah, really?
We "peace activists" struggle to take rage, anguish, and disgust and
channel them into language and tactics we believe will appeal to the
general public. In order to persevere in our relatively fruitless
efforts, we guard our optimism.
Whether our focus is Colombia, Haiti, Mexico, Palestine, Iraq,
Afghanistan, or any other US-supported war-and-poisoning zone, our news
is a steady diet of inhumane horrors and injustices. For many of us,
that's enough. We may (wittingly or not) avoid or reject analysis and
information that suggests the situation is much worse than we already
know it to be, fearing burnout and despair.
We may also worry that an analysis that is too dissonant with the
dominant paradigm will alienate the public. Leading figures in the
movement remember to utter the pieties that are supposed to legitimize
our message, such as the "importance of maintaining a strong defense."
Connecting the wrong dots threatens the tenuous bridge we have built
between reality and the world according to the machine.
But maintaining an unsatisfactory compromise built on increasingly
unreal assumptions will inevitably produce denial. Thus we find
ourselves where we are today, tripping over an array of mostly
unconscious barriers to a realistic understanding of our present
predicament.
The Israeli-US war on Lebanon crystallized the picture that we are
afraid to see.
It put the Bush cabal's determination to attack Iran on "the front
burner" and the "fast track", despite the consternation of old guard
"realists" of US imperial diplomacy, who worry Bush is about to start
World War III.
And it resoundingly affirmed the ability of today's resistance fighters
to undermine Israeli and US-UK attempts to enforce foreign occupations,
striking fear in the hearts of highly-placed warmongers on both sides
of the Atlantic. They will probably respond by calling for even more
"air power" next time.
Lebanon was the fourth all-out war on an Arab/Muslim country in the
last four years, all waged by the US-UK "coalition" and/or the
Israeli-US "alliance". Let's consider the pretexts offered to justify
this serial criminal warfare.
Afghanistan was invaded and destroyed (again), ostensibly to avenge
9/11 by destroying Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, even though the FBI
has admitted that it has "no hard evidence connecting bin Laden to
9/11."
Iraq was invaded and destroyed (again) to find mythical weapons of mass
destruction.
The Gaza Strip was invaded and destroyed (again) because resistance
fighters allied to Hamas captured an Israeli soldier in a retaliatory
cross-border raid.
Lebanon was invaded and destroyed (again) because Hezbollah captured
two Israeli soldiers in a retaliatory cross-border raid.
The grand total of pretexts? One unlikely suspect, one myth, and three
captured soldiers, who were all doing fine at last report. For this?
Of course the US and Israel have a long list of genuine reasons to wage
each of these wars and carry out the whole bloody scheme. But the
official excuses they offer to the rest of the nations of the world
have meaning, too.
In this case they appear to mean, "See, I can lie through my teeth and
you can't do a damn thing about it except say, 'Yes, sir.' The world is
what we say it is, or you don't have a place in it. I have many ways of
making your life miserable. And don't forget, I'm unpredictable. I can
do crazy things and get away with them."
The steady application of this kind of diplomacy has smashed our naïve
hopes by sucking the EU and the UK ever more deeply into the orbit of
US-Israeli foreign policy, to the point where the Arabs can't trust
either of them any more than they can trust us.
While most people have been distracted by the shock and awe of
America's military presence in the Middle East, Israel's studiously
ignored long war on the Palestinians has descended to new depths of
daily living hell.
The accelerating ethnic cleansing of the northern and eastern West Bank
threatens to squeeze even the possibility of Palestinian life out of
the land. The Jordan Valley is being prepared for illegal "annexation"
to Israel.
In Israel's 'total war' on the "liberated" Gaza Strip, the IAF has
destroyed the main power station, all major roads and bridges, the sole
(unused) airport, several government and civic buildings, and dozens of
homes.
Now at least a third of the poverty-stricken inhabitants do not have
power or running water. Israel also imposed a total blockade on Gaza,
which remains in force today with EU cooperation. This little "war",
still raging on, has already killed nearly 200 Palestinians, more than
half of them civilians. One Israeli soldier has died in the "fighting".
And more civilians are dying because Israel and the US and the EU and
Canada and Britain, all those great democracies, conspired to cut off
funds and embargo the finances of the PA when it became too democratic
in a free and fair election last January.
The sick, especially children and the elderly, are dying because
hospitals have little or no electricity, are running out of fuel, have
only the most rudimentary medical supplies (if that) and no money to
pay their staff. This is how the US plays politics in the Middle East.
And more war is on the way. Palestine now finds that its struggle for
self-determination and survival has been hijacked to serve as a
crucible for the next phase of the empire's plan, in which Iran and
Syria are hot-branded as "terrorist states" that must also be forcibly
"liberated".
The propaganda campaign is going on full-tilt as we speak. Its rules
are wonderfully simple; whenever you mention the Palestinian or
Lebanese resistance, follow it with this phrase, or its equivalent: "a
terrorist group funded and armed by Syria and Iran".
As a result, the Palestinian-Lebanese resistance may become the hinge
of a crystallizing global divide. It seems unlikely that Palestine will
enjoy any benefit from this honor, but those pages have yet to be
written.
In hindsight, wasn't it obvious that World War III had begun when the
world's "sole superpower" declared an open-ended "global war" on an
indefinite, multinational enemy?
And what is the big picture for us here at home? The debacle of last
summer's hurricanes was searing evidence that the domestic underbelly
of the government is rapidly withering into an outsourced husk of
uselessness. The parasites continue to multiply, infecting the whole
body with corruption, cronyism, profiteering, and lawlessness.
The vast wealth of the nation is controlled by one percent of its
citizens. Draconian funding cuts drive people to food shelves and soup
kitchens in unprecedented numbers, neglected by a fearful herd trying
to work enough hours to sustain an unsustainable debt.
During the past fifty years, the relationship between the federal
government and corporate-finance power has transformed from a formally
bipolar arrangement into today's unipolar alignment. Government now
functions primarily to serve shifting forces of corporate-finance power
(and the odd foreign government) as a facilitator, benefactor, warrior,
and spendthrift customer.
In the modern age, this fusion of money power and national government
is called fascism. It has been observed that fascist governments
typically resort to outlandish, racially-charged propaganda and embark
on increasingly reckless wars of aggression. They usually conduct
intensive domestic surveillance and counterintelligence, rig elections,
imprison large percentages of their populations, sadistically torture
prisoners and detainees, and police and "debate" by racial- and
political-profiling. They always aggressively expand the executive
power of the central government.
You don't have to wait until they arrest you, too, to decide that
America has become a fascist state. The evidence is all around you.
Those who still have difficulty seeing the picture might be advised to
stop listening to National Public Radio.
What do "peace activists" do in a fascist state? What is the true
potential of our efforts to "change public opinion" in the world's most
advanced propaganda regime? What actions by a citizen are morally
justified to resist this tyranny, injustice, and bloodshed? Which would
be most effective? What have other people done in this situation? How
do we feel about that?
Is it sane to continue to pretend that we live in a "democracy" when we
manifestly do not? Does our squeamishness about armed resistance by
Arabs and Muslims reflect an unconsciously imperial notion, that we
might have peace if only they didn't fight back? Are we willing to do
everything we can to stop this global menace, starting with ourselves?
These are but a few of the questions dying to be asked now by all
people of conscience.
So, how do we feel about Hezbollah, which dealt the quickest and most
embarrassing blow yet to the war plans of "our" empire? How can we not
feel admiration, even gratitude, for their determination to prevent
another bloody occupation? Didn't they accomplish more in 34 days than
we have accomplished in nearly four decades of a preposterous "peace
process" chronically violated and manipulated to prolong the
occupation?
At the end of his recent New Yorker article, Watching Lebanon:
Washington's interests in Israel's war, Sy Hersh quoted John Arquilla,
a defense analyst at the Naval Postgraduate School, about the Bush
neocons' view of warfare: "The definition of insanity is continuing to
do the same thing and expecting a different result."
We who seek peace must ask ourselves if we have not also gone 'insane',
expecting different results from actions that obviously haven't worked.
To guard our optimism in the New World Order, we Americans will have to
learn to see peace the way most Palestinians see it: as the inevitable
fruit of resolute resistance to aggression and injustice.
* James Brooks serves as webmaster for Vermonters for a Just Peace in
Palestine/Israel. He can be contacted at
Source: www.counterpunch.org
..zopinionz cxlbx
.
|
|
|
|
|
Related Articles |
|
|
