This declaration was published in The Times on 5 February 2007 and in the Jewish Chronicle on 9 February 2007.
We are a group of Jews in Britain from diverse backgrounds, occupations and affiliations who have in common a strong commitment to social justice and universal human rights. We come together in the belief that the broad spectrum of opinion among the Jewish population of this country is not reflected by those institutions which claim authority to represent the Jewish community as a whole. We further believe that individuals and groups within all communities should feel free to express their views on any issue of public concern without incurring accusations of disloyalty.
We have therefore resolved to promote the expression of alternative Jewish voices, particularly in respect of the grave situation in the Middle East, which threatens the future of both Israelis and Palestinians as well as the stability of the whole region. We are guided by the following principles:
Human rights are universal and indivisible and should be upheld without exception. This is as applicable in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories as it is elsewhere. Palestinians and Israelis alike have the right to peaceful and secure lives. Peace and stability require the willingness of all parties to the conflict to comply with international law. There is no justification for any form of racism, including anti-semitism, anti-Arab racism or Islamophobia, in any circumstance. The battle against anti-semitism is vital and is undermined whenever opposition to Israeli government policies is automatically branded as anti-semitic.
These principles are contradicted when those who claim to speak on behalf of Jews in Britain and other countries consistently put support for the policies of an occupying power above the human rights of an occupied people. The Palestinian inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza Strip face appalling living conditions with desperately little hope for the future. We declare our support for a properly negotiated peace between the Israeli and Palestinian people and oppose any attempt by the Israeli government to impose its own solutions on the Palestinians. It is imperative and urgent that independent Jewish voices find a coherent and consistent way of asserting themselves on these and other issues of concern. We hereby reclaim the tradition of Jewish support for universal freedoms, human rights and social justice. The lessons we have learned from our own history compel us to speak out. We therefore commit ourselves to make public our views on a continuing basis and invite other concerned Jews to join and support us.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Thursday, December 17, 2009
10 MILLION A YEAR
I am obviously not thinking of those success stories of my glorious civilization, those shining exemplars of ingenuity and enterprise, for whom salesmanship lies at the heart of human relations, those precious and superior beings to whom we are all beholden and for whom we hold such veneration, because for these immortal souls 10 million a year is probably not a sufficient remuneration. No, I am thinking of persons somewhat regrettably at the other end of life's wonderful spectrum, persons so unsuccessful as to be almost correctly described as non-persons, who doubtless have only themselves to blame.
10 million children die a year. 10 million. Apparently it corresponds to an aircraft full of them falling out of the sky every 15 minutes. Is it bird flu, or swine flu, or Aids? Why is it not on national television every night? Where are the mobilizing forces of righteous international corporate action? No need to worry, it is just plain old-fashioned starvation and the comfortable cannot catch it.
Indeed the comfortable contribute considerably to starving 10 million a year by protecting and subsidising their own products while subjecting those of the uncomfortable to tariff and exploitation. In the name of free market globalisation - which does not apply to the United States or the European Union - the comfortable insist upon flooding the uncomfortable with the surplus goods of their own comfort, destroying the indigenous production of goods. Having played a significant part in creating poverty the comfortable send in the United Nations to assist the economies of the uncomfortable while having no intention of buying anything from them that is subsequently produced unless completely on their own terms. The uncomfortable are not allowed to compete against the comfortable in any genuine free market.
These sick values are exemplified in the capitalistic horror that is the United States. It goes right back to the founding of that peculiar nation. Reading those wonderful stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder's pioneering family to my six children in succession, even then we read of proud Pa who is independent, who does not need anyone's help and who does not need to help anyone else unless he chooses. (This does not stop Pa taking off when they are starving and forcing wheat from someone else who was not choosing to share it). This phoney philosophy of choice was mysteriously laid down from the start. The ultimate logical end of this attitude is that the final 'choice' may just have to be starvation and death. In the current United States debate on health care reform one conditioned pawn in the game stated proudly that he would rather die poor and free - presumably in preference to living in a civilized nation which looked after those who for whatever reason were unable to do so themselves.
This is one way I can rationalise why the United States can carry on the way it does with a supposedly clear conscience. Then I get some understanding of copycats, for example, how the United States and its little buddy Israel can behave toward Gaza without a blush. How the United States and its despicable crony the European Union has behaved toward Iraq the way they have with economic sanctions and military war.
In my idle luxury, living in the eye of empire, I used to wonder how the world kept going, why it did not come to a grinding halt and fall apart. The people in charge did not seem to have a complete picture. Now I know that for the families of 10 million different children every year, and for hundreds of millions more like them, the world is not working, it is falling apart. But here in a country like New Zealand we can sleep on. What will wake us up will be that time when the centre of empire decides to really take over New Zealand. Warships in the harbours and helicoptors in the skies will be the time when we discover the implacable ruthlessness of the United States, the time when the false mask of benignity begins to slip off. Then we will begin to know what the vulnerable in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East are now experiencing.
10 million children die a year. 10 million. Apparently it corresponds to an aircraft full of them falling out of the sky every 15 minutes. Is it bird flu, or swine flu, or Aids? Why is it not on national television every night? Where are the mobilizing forces of righteous international corporate action? No need to worry, it is just plain old-fashioned starvation and the comfortable cannot catch it.
Indeed the comfortable contribute considerably to starving 10 million a year by protecting and subsidising their own products while subjecting those of the uncomfortable to tariff and exploitation. In the name of free market globalisation - which does not apply to the United States or the European Union - the comfortable insist upon flooding the uncomfortable with the surplus goods of their own comfort, destroying the indigenous production of goods. Having played a significant part in creating poverty the comfortable send in the United Nations to assist the economies of the uncomfortable while having no intention of buying anything from them that is subsequently produced unless completely on their own terms. The uncomfortable are not allowed to compete against the comfortable in any genuine free market.
These sick values are exemplified in the capitalistic horror that is the United States. It goes right back to the founding of that peculiar nation. Reading those wonderful stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder's pioneering family to my six children in succession, even then we read of proud Pa who is independent, who does not need anyone's help and who does not need to help anyone else unless he chooses. (This does not stop Pa taking off when they are starving and forcing wheat from someone else who was not choosing to share it). This phoney philosophy of choice was mysteriously laid down from the start. The ultimate logical end of this attitude is that the final 'choice' may just have to be starvation and death. In the current United States debate on health care reform one conditioned pawn in the game stated proudly that he would rather die poor and free - presumably in preference to living in a civilized nation which looked after those who for whatever reason were unable to do so themselves.
This is one way I can rationalise why the United States can carry on the way it does with a supposedly clear conscience. Then I get some understanding of copycats, for example, how the United States and its little buddy Israel can behave toward Gaza without a blush. How the United States and its despicable crony the European Union has behaved toward Iraq the way they have with economic sanctions and military war.
In my idle luxury, living in the eye of empire, I used to wonder how the world kept going, why it did not come to a grinding halt and fall apart. The people in charge did not seem to have a complete picture. Now I know that for the families of 10 million different children every year, and for hundreds of millions more like them, the world is not working, it is falling apart. But here in a country like New Zealand we can sleep on. What will wake us up will be that time when the centre of empire decides to really take over New Zealand. Warships in the harbours and helicoptors in the skies will be the time when we discover the implacable ruthlessness of the United States, the time when the false mask of benignity begins to slip off. Then we will begin to know what the vulnerable in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East are now experiencing.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
PRINS, NOMI. IT TAKES A PILLAGE
The author has been a managing director at Goldman Sachs and gives an insider view of the bailouts, bonuses and backroom deals from Washington to Wall Street. One chapter is headed 'Government Sachs' to underline the network of interaction between the U.S. top financiers and government agencies and elected officials. Criminal financiers were rescued by the public purse because of this interaction and Obama has a more integral relation to this network than Bush. He is now presiding over the largest transfer of public money to private pockets in U.S. history. There is no sense of responsibility to the public and no inclination to reform the financial system.
U.S. capitalism finds its ultimate achievement in the vicious competitiveness of its financial institutions which create clever and complex methods of making something out of nothing. Who gets the biggest bonuses is part of the competition. The most successful institution is Goldman Sachs whose personnel infiltrate and direct government. The author does not ascribe any planned conspiracy to this running of the country, but believes it to be a matter of backroom deals between extreme opportunists.
Nor does the author make any reference to the ethnic backgrounds of the top dogs. Although I have never read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, although I simply accept the document is a fake, although I presume it is about controlling the world by controlling its finance, I now realise after reading this book that regardless of ethnicity the document may well speak truth. We now live in a world controlled by the financiers, making so-called democracy and political parties irrelevant. The author quotes Mayer Amschel Rothschild, founder of the House of Rothschild: "Let me issue and control a nation's money, and I care not who writes the laws".
There is much useful information in this work: the similarity of cause for the Great Depression and this 'recession'; the value of the New Deal; the unacceptability of merging commercial and investment banks; the lack of responsible oversight from the Federal Reserve and from Congress. An example of some good and clear information: "The Second Great Bank Depression has spawned so many lies, it's hard to keep track of which is the biggest. Possibly the most irksome class of lies, usually spouted by Wall Street hacks and conservative pundits, is that we're all victims to a bunch of poor people who bought McMansions, or at least homes they had no business living in. If that was really what this crisis was all about, we could have solved it much more cheaply in a couple of days in late 2008, by simply providing borrowers with additional capital to reduce their loan principals. It would have cost about 3 per cent of what the entire bailout wound up costing, with comparatively similar risk.... There were approximately $1.4 trillion worth of subprime loans outstanding in the United States by the end of 2007. By May 2009, there were foreclosure filings against approximately 5.1 million properties. If it was only the subprime market's fault, $1.4 trillion would have covered the entire problem, right? Yet the Federal Reserve, the Treasury and the FDIC forked out more than $13 trillion to fix the 'housing correction', as Hank Paulson steadfastly referred to the Second Great Bank Depression as late as November 20, 2008, while he was treasury secretary. With that money, the government could have bought up every residential morgage in the country - there were about $11.9 trillion worth at the end of December 2008 - and still have had a trillion left over to buy homes for every single American who couldn't afford them, and pay their health care to boot. But there was much more to it than that: Wall Street was engaged in a very dangerous practice called leverage. Leverage is when you borrow a lot of money in order to place a big bet.... Leverage included, we're looking at a possible $140 trillion problem. That's right - $140 trillion!......but leverage would not have had a platform without the help of a wondrous financial feat called securitization......" etc.
The overall impression left with me is that after a century or so of mass education and non-participatory democracy all that we have produced in the name of progress is the most sophisticated and powerful criminal gang in the history of mankind.
Rating: Very good
U.S. capitalism finds its ultimate achievement in the vicious competitiveness of its financial institutions which create clever and complex methods of making something out of nothing. Who gets the biggest bonuses is part of the competition. The most successful institution is Goldman Sachs whose personnel infiltrate and direct government. The author does not ascribe any planned conspiracy to this running of the country, but believes it to be a matter of backroom deals between extreme opportunists.
Nor does the author make any reference to the ethnic backgrounds of the top dogs. Although I have never read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, although I simply accept the document is a fake, although I presume it is about controlling the world by controlling its finance, I now realise after reading this book that regardless of ethnicity the document may well speak truth. We now live in a world controlled by the financiers, making so-called democracy and political parties irrelevant. The author quotes Mayer Amschel Rothschild, founder of the House of Rothschild: "Let me issue and control a nation's money, and I care not who writes the laws".
There is much useful information in this work: the similarity of cause for the Great Depression and this 'recession'; the value of the New Deal; the unacceptability of merging commercial and investment banks; the lack of responsible oversight from the Federal Reserve and from Congress. An example of some good and clear information: "The Second Great Bank Depression has spawned so many lies, it's hard to keep track of which is the biggest. Possibly the most irksome class of lies, usually spouted by Wall Street hacks and conservative pundits, is that we're all victims to a bunch of poor people who bought McMansions, or at least homes they had no business living in. If that was really what this crisis was all about, we could have solved it much more cheaply in a couple of days in late 2008, by simply providing borrowers with additional capital to reduce their loan principals. It would have cost about 3 per cent of what the entire bailout wound up costing, with comparatively similar risk.... There were approximately $1.4 trillion worth of subprime loans outstanding in the United States by the end of 2007. By May 2009, there were foreclosure filings against approximately 5.1 million properties. If it was only the subprime market's fault, $1.4 trillion would have covered the entire problem, right? Yet the Federal Reserve, the Treasury and the FDIC forked out more than $13 trillion to fix the 'housing correction', as Hank Paulson steadfastly referred to the Second Great Bank Depression as late as November 20, 2008, while he was treasury secretary. With that money, the government could have bought up every residential morgage in the country - there were about $11.9 trillion worth at the end of December 2008 - and still have had a trillion left over to buy homes for every single American who couldn't afford them, and pay their health care to boot. But there was much more to it than that: Wall Street was engaged in a very dangerous practice called leverage. Leverage is when you borrow a lot of money in order to place a big bet.... Leverage included, we're looking at a possible $140 trillion problem. That's right - $140 trillion!......but leverage would not have had a platform without the help of a wondrous financial feat called securitization......" etc.
The overall impression left with me is that after a century or so of mass education and non-participatory democracy all that we have produced in the name of progress is the most sophisticated and powerful criminal gang in the history of mankind.
Rating: Very good
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
RIGHT OF RETURN
On 8 August 2002, in a letter to the Guardian, a group of British Jews renounce their 'right of return'.
We are Jews, born and raised outside Israel, who, under Israel's 'law of return', have a legal right to Israeli residence and citizenship. We wish to renounce this unsought 'right' because:
We regard it as morally wrong that this legal entitlement should be bestowed on us while
the very people who should have most right to a genuine 'return', having been forced or
terrorised into fleeing, are excluded.
Israel's policies towards the Palestinians are barbaric - we do not wish to identify ourselves
in any way with what Israel is doing.
We disagree with the notion that Zionist emigration to Israel is any kind of 'solution' for
Diaspora Jews, anti-semitism or racism - no matter to what extent Jews have been or are
victims of racism, they have no right to make anyone else victims.
We wish to express our solidarity with all those who are working for a time when Israel,
the West Bank and Gaza Strip can be lived in by people without restrictions based on
so-called racial, cultural, or ethnic origins.
We look forward to the day when all peoples of the area are enabled to live in peace with each other on this basis of non-discrimination and mutual respect. Perhaps some of us would even wish to live there, but only if the rights of the Palestinians are respected. To those who consider Israel a 'safe haven' for Jews in the face of anti-semitism, we say that there can be no safety in taking on the role of occupier and oppressor.
We are Jews, born and raised outside Israel, who, under Israel's 'law of return', have a legal right to Israeli residence and citizenship. We wish to renounce this unsought 'right' because:
We regard it as morally wrong that this legal entitlement should be bestowed on us while
the very people who should have most right to a genuine 'return', having been forced or
terrorised into fleeing, are excluded.
Israel's policies towards the Palestinians are barbaric - we do not wish to identify ourselves
in any way with what Israel is doing.
We disagree with the notion that Zionist emigration to Israel is any kind of 'solution' for
Diaspora Jews, anti-semitism or racism - no matter to what extent Jews have been or are
victims of racism, they have no right to make anyone else victims.
We wish to express our solidarity with all those who are working for a time when Israel,
the West Bank and Gaza Strip can be lived in by people without restrictions based on
so-called racial, cultural, or ethnic origins.
We look forward to the day when all peoples of the area are enabled to live in peace with each other on this basis of non-discrimination and mutual respect. Perhaps some of us would even wish to live there, but only if the rights of the Palestinians are respected. To those who consider Israel a 'safe haven' for Jews in the face of anti-semitism, we say that there can be no safety in taking on the role of occupier and oppressor.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
ROTH, PHILIP. EXIT GHOST
I do not think that I have read Philip Roth since his first two novels. This 2007 novel has a theme with which I can self-indulgently identify: how does the older person live? The 71 year old protagonist since the age of 60 has eschewed the hectic life of New York and been living in isolation in a rural cabin, reading and writing and listening to music, without television or newspapers. He relinquishes political emotion and "the abiding wish to find out". He quite easily came "to feel completely at home knowing nothing of what was going on". When he temporarily returns to New York for health reasons he meets up with people for whom the outcome of the next election is almost a matter of life or death. He is sympathetic but uninvolved.
A second theme involves the writer who writes the creative work in isolation, free from the demands and negativity of the parasitic world of literary criticism. This too breaks in upon him again in New York in the form of an aggressive young academic who wants to launch his career by writing a literary biography of a neglected author based upon discovered scandal. Our protagonist knew and admired this author and refuses to cooperate or be involved.
Although it sounds suspect and uncomfortable, if not unintentionally funny, there is also a good depiction of being old and afflicted, he with the after-effects of prostate cancer surgery and an elderly female friend with a brain tumour.
Then there are a couple of tiresome aspects. There is the protagonist's obsession with a young woman, a somewhat pathetic self-indulgence given his sexual status, which does not assist the credibility of his other decisions on how to live his life unless we are meant to admire the resilience of human lust. The second aspect is that American style of writing, having escaped the immobile pomposity of Fenimore Cooper, Hawthorne and Melville, the tumultuous onward-rushing narrative, not without its own pomposity, something I first discovered in Thomas Wolfe and Kerouac, not to mention Whitman, a style which continues to this day. There can be high moments, but also a gathering sense of chaos and weariness.
Like this review not a great work of art.
Rating: Good/Fair
A second theme involves the writer who writes the creative work in isolation, free from the demands and negativity of the parasitic world of literary criticism. This too breaks in upon him again in New York in the form of an aggressive young academic who wants to launch his career by writing a literary biography of a neglected author based upon discovered scandal. Our protagonist knew and admired this author and refuses to cooperate or be involved.
Although it sounds suspect and uncomfortable, if not unintentionally funny, there is also a good depiction of being old and afflicted, he with the after-effects of prostate cancer surgery and an elderly female friend with a brain tumour.
Then there are a couple of tiresome aspects. There is the protagonist's obsession with a young woman, a somewhat pathetic self-indulgence given his sexual status, which does not assist the credibility of his other decisions on how to live his life unless we are meant to admire the resilience of human lust. The second aspect is that American style of writing, having escaped the immobile pomposity of Fenimore Cooper, Hawthorne and Melville, the tumultuous onward-rushing narrative, not without its own pomposity, something I first discovered in Thomas Wolfe and Kerouac, not to mention Whitman, a style which continues to this day. There can be high moments, but also a gathering sense of chaos and weariness.
Like this review not a great work of art.
Rating: Good/Fair
Sunday, November 29, 2009
TREASON
Since the 1980s in New Zealand it has become compelling to apply the meaning of treason to those persons in positions of power who act in a manner disloyal and injurious to the general population. The two governments of David Lange probably constitute the most significant period of treason in New Zealand history. Conscientious and professional civil servants were labelled irrelevant underpaid monkeys and replaced with a multitude of overpaid monkeys whose brief was to act with force, unpredictability and irrationality. History and context were also irrelevant; everything was done as if newly hatched by flippant adolescents.
The lives of those who did not, could not or would not play the game were turned upside down so that money could move from the public sector into the pockets of select individuals. Muldoon called them the Greedies. The first excuse for the upheaval was the need to get rid of the national debt. It was all a lie. The debt is as bad as ever. Whenever a new government comes in Treasury delivers a paper outlining a severe situation requiring extreme right-wing
measures. Currently the Brash Commission nicely supplements this.
This impulse continued through the 1990s, was somewhat quiescent in the 2000s, resurfacing now and again showing impatience with community and democratic process. A lone outlaw from the rogernomic era comes shooting his way back into town (Auckland) and is allowed to force major changes by a sheriff who watches quietly from behind his curtained office window. That same sheriff, with the laid-back manner and smiling visage, is doing a lot of quiet dismantling in other areas of social service without a peep from the newspaper office next door.
There are now 20,000 young New Zealanders who cannot find work, many with university degrees. Despite this an overpaid peanut called Jonathan Coleman, MP for Northcote and Minister of Immigration, unveils the Silver Fern Visa which actively entices young people from overseas to come to New Zealand looking for work. This is an act of disloyalty and injury to our young people and their families. Otherwise known as treason. There can be no excuse for it other than a variation on the old story of monkeys and peanuts.
New Zealand has been spared the determined attention of the United States. Despite betraying us into accepting an undemocratic americanisation of our economic and social life, Lange did his thing - a very important thing - which resulted in our anti-nuclear stance and this may have helped deter any such attention. But like a death wish, politicians and media hanker after what they fondly term a 'free-trade deal' with the United States. It is always spoken of as a given positive. Nowhere in the mainstream have I heard or read a critical view. Yet it must be known that the United States does not practice free trade. John Key must know this in order to tell us to be ready to make concessions. Ultimately these will be concessions on our sovereignty. An act of treason.
For decades people and nations have wanted to like and get along with the United States, but the US is constitutionally unable to recognise and practice genuine mutual respect. It is like the man who has a willing woman happy to go along with him but he much prefers to drag her into a dark alley and rape her. Not OK behaviour, but let's look the other way.
The lives of those who did not, could not or would not play the game were turned upside down so that money could move from the public sector into the pockets of select individuals. Muldoon called them the Greedies. The first excuse for the upheaval was the need to get rid of the national debt. It was all a lie. The debt is as bad as ever. Whenever a new government comes in Treasury delivers a paper outlining a severe situation requiring extreme right-wing
measures. Currently the Brash Commission nicely supplements this.
This impulse continued through the 1990s, was somewhat quiescent in the 2000s, resurfacing now and again showing impatience with community and democratic process. A lone outlaw from the rogernomic era comes shooting his way back into town (Auckland) and is allowed to force major changes by a sheriff who watches quietly from behind his curtained office window. That same sheriff, with the laid-back manner and smiling visage, is doing a lot of quiet dismantling in other areas of social service without a peep from the newspaper office next door.
There are now 20,000 young New Zealanders who cannot find work, many with university degrees. Despite this an overpaid peanut called Jonathan Coleman, MP for Northcote and Minister of Immigration, unveils the Silver Fern Visa which actively entices young people from overseas to come to New Zealand looking for work. This is an act of disloyalty and injury to our young people and their families. Otherwise known as treason. There can be no excuse for it other than a variation on the old story of monkeys and peanuts.
New Zealand has been spared the determined attention of the United States. Despite betraying us into accepting an undemocratic americanisation of our economic and social life, Lange did his thing - a very important thing - which resulted in our anti-nuclear stance and this may have helped deter any such attention. But like a death wish, politicians and media hanker after what they fondly term a 'free-trade deal' with the United States. It is always spoken of as a given positive. Nowhere in the mainstream have I heard or read a critical view. Yet it must be known that the United States does not practice free trade. John Key must know this in order to tell us to be ready to make concessions. Ultimately these will be concessions on our sovereignty. An act of treason.
For decades people and nations have wanted to like and get along with the United States, but the US is constitutionally unable to recognise and practice genuine mutual respect. It is like the man who has a willing woman happy to go along with him but he much prefers to drag her into a dark alley and rape her. Not OK behaviour, but let's look the other way.
Friday, November 27, 2009
CHOMSKY, NOAM. WHAT WE SAY GOES
These are conversations with David Barsamian in 2006 and 2007 about United States power and world affairs. If I had only one person to read on these matters it would have to be Chomsky, he is that rare individual - an academic with the ability, insight and courage to call a spade a spade. He cuts through the crap to the essential truths. He is an international treasure. His interviewer is excellent in not wasting time with idiotic questions. The primary truth in these interviews would be as follows: "the United States is a leading outlaw state, totally unconstrained by international law, and it openly says so. What we say goes."
Rating: Excellent
Rating: Excellent
Thursday, November 26, 2009
THE WAYS OF A BULLY
An assessment of Israeli playwright Hanoch Levin by drama critic Michael Handelzalts states: "He dissected Israeli society and described it in detail: the crudeness, the insensitivity, the interpersonal violence, the oppression, the gluttony, the intolerance and the cruelty. He wrote about people who enjoy feeling superior and causing pain, who thrive on this and who love to harass their interlocutors and haggle with them for the sake of the haggling".
It looks like the nation of legend turning desert into paradise is nothing more than a lousy bit of cheap fiction. This may come as a bit of an eye-opener for anyone with a blind spot for Israel. Mainstream commentators always report unfolding events involving Israel at face value, as though that nation is committed to some kind of constructive process involving others besides itself. Whereas for anyone following the behaviour of Israel as reported by uncensored media this asseessment gives some understanding of the nature of this particular bully in the global playground.
In that playgrond the United States and Israel stick close together. One is the major bully roaming about insisting upon being in charge of everything and in control of everyone. The other is the little devil of a lieutenant tripping around him, goading him to do things, telling tales about others and getting permission and protection do do his own bullying. It seems to be his mission to keep trouble and hatred alive. Why?
The answer seems to be that this particular bully enjoys feeling superior and causing pain, and thriving on this for its own sake. There is a truly malevolent intent in his psychology. He likes being a bully; he wants to be a bully; to glory and gloat in being a top dog. Apologist commentators harass and haggle any evidence or justified criticism as though everything is a playgound game.
A bully of course expects others to change. Israel went into Gaza and massacred 1400 people. There were no consequences for the bully. When Netanyahu visits Gordon Brown some months later there is not a word about this and continuing behaviour. Instead they jointly voice what others (Palestinians, Arabs, Persians) must do and what Israel will not do.
Between serious bouts of violence against the weak the bully is continually harassing them. An example: Israel sends low-flying aircraft over Gaza creating sonic booms instead of dropping bombs. This is described as educational and almost humanitarian, gently reminding the residents who is top dog. This is like holding a replica gun to a person's head instead of a real one, the terrorising effect is pretty much the same. And it is a real hoot for the bully.
Another example: Palestinian children near a settlement have to be escorted to school by Israeli soldiers to protect them from settler harassment, including the shooting of firearms, but the soldiers often fail to show up or when they do are themselves guilty of harassment, such as driving along beside the children so fast that the little ones cannot keep up. For the bullying soldiers a great way to start the day.
There is a psychological sickness behind such behaviours, the sickness of the torturer. The fine line - if there is one - between the bully and the torturer does not exist in the case of this little devil of a nation.
The bully's denial of wrongdoing is often reinforced by a technique of suffocating the victim by presuming to speak for him. This is an Israeli habit. On the surface this may appear as no more than an insufferable patronising superiority. An example: a Jew from multi-cultural New Zealand "returns" to apartheid Israel and tells us that Palestinians - some of whom are working on his new house under armed guard - prefer to live apart. The victim is reponsible for the apartheid.
Another example: while Israel is busy killing the 1400 people in Gaza and deliberately destroying more of their infrastructure senior politician Livni appears on screen to inform us that her country is helping the people of Gaza against Hamas ( the party they democratically elected).
There is a further strange quality to this particular bully. Witness Livni in the United States, while busy thrashing Gaza, literally sobbing that "we" have had enough, "we" cannot take any more. Immediately a cartoon came into my mind of a large adult beating a child while expressing such sentiments. We cannot hope that Israel will drive itself mad because it already is mad. Decades ago Golda Meir also felt sorry for herself because the Palestinians were making her do violence toward them. It is a very puzzling psychopathic condition, but there can be no excuse for it.
Unfortunately the mad psychopathic bully in the playground is a ticking time-bomb, a danger to everyone, and not a ready candidate for rehabilitation.
It looks like the nation of legend turning desert into paradise is nothing more than a lousy bit of cheap fiction. This may come as a bit of an eye-opener for anyone with a blind spot for Israel. Mainstream commentators always report unfolding events involving Israel at face value, as though that nation is committed to some kind of constructive process involving others besides itself. Whereas for anyone following the behaviour of Israel as reported by uncensored media this asseessment gives some understanding of the nature of this particular bully in the global playground.
In that playgrond the United States and Israel stick close together. One is the major bully roaming about insisting upon being in charge of everything and in control of everyone. The other is the little devil of a lieutenant tripping around him, goading him to do things, telling tales about others and getting permission and protection do do his own bullying. It seems to be his mission to keep trouble and hatred alive. Why?
The answer seems to be that this particular bully enjoys feeling superior and causing pain, and thriving on this for its own sake. There is a truly malevolent intent in his psychology. He likes being a bully; he wants to be a bully; to glory and gloat in being a top dog. Apologist commentators harass and haggle any evidence or justified criticism as though everything is a playgound game.
A bully of course expects others to change. Israel went into Gaza and massacred 1400 people. There were no consequences for the bully. When Netanyahu visits Gordon Brown some months later there is not a word about this and continuing behaviour. Instead they jointly voice what others (Palestinians, Arabs, Persians) must do and what Israel will not do.
Between serious bouts of violence against the weak the bully is continually harassing them. An example: Israel sends low-flying aircraft over Gaza creating sonic booms instead of dropping bombs. This is described as educational and almost humanitarian, gently reminding the residents who is top dog. This is like holding a replica gun to a person's head instead of a real one, the terrorising effect is pretty much the same. And it is a real hoot for the bully.
Another example: Palestinian children near a settlement have to be escorted to school by Israeli soldiers to protect them from settler harassment, including the shooting of firearms, but the soldiers often fail to show up or when they do are themselves guilty of harassment, such as driving along beside the children so fast that the little ones cannot keep up. For the bullying soldiers a great way to start the day.
There is a psychological sickness behind such behaviours, the sickness of the torturer. The fine line - if there is one - between the bully and the torturer does not exist in the case of this little devil of a nation.
The bully's denial of wrongdoing is often reinforced by a technique of suffocating the victim by presuming to speak for him. This is an Israeli habit. On the surface this may appear as no more than an insufferable patronising superiority. An example: a Jew from multi-cultural New Zealand "returns" to apartheid Israel and tells us that Palestinians - some of whom are working on his new house under armed guard - prefer to live apart. The victim is reponsible for the apartheid.
Another example: while Israel is busy killing the 1400 people in Gaza and deliberately destroying more of their infrastructure senior politician Livni appears on screen to inform us that her country is helping the people of Gaza against Hamas ( the party they democratically elected).
There is a further strange quality to this particular bully. Witness Livni in the United States, while busy thrashing Gaza, literally sobbing that "we" have had enough, "we" cannot take any more. Immediately a cartoon came into my mind of a large adult beating a child while expressing such sentiments. We cannot hope that Israel will drive itself mad because it already is mad. Decades ago Golda Meir also felt sorry for herself because the Palestinians were making her do violence toward them. It is a very puzzling psychopathic condition, but there can be no excuse for it.
Unfortunately the mad psychopathic bully in the playground is a ticking time-bomb, a danger to everyone, and not a ready candidate for rehabilitation.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
APPROPRIATE MURDER
Nato aircraft again kill more "unpeople" in Afghanistan and the German general responsible states that the action was "appropriate". This is an attitude that any contemporary Israeli general would endorse with those contemptible Arabs and Persians in mind. It is also an attitude that any general of the Third Reich would have endorsed. Did the SS have generals? If so, they would have fully endorsed it too.
Update: At least 100 people were killed and the German Minister of Defence has resigned because of the cover-up. So contemporary German government not yet as bad as the Third Reich and a whole lot better than the Israeli government.
Update: At least 100 people were killed and the German Minister of Defence has resigned because of the cover-up. So contemporary German government not yet as bad as the Third Reich and a whole lot better than the Israeli government.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
JAMAIL, DAHR. THE WILL TO RESIST
About soldiers who refuse to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. A story of courage and conscience from out of the pit of evil. An excellent foreword by Chris Hedges. "We do not have the power or the knowledge, nor do we have the right under international law, to occupy Iraq and Afghanistan. It is not for us to debate the terms of the occupation. We divert ourselves in our dotage and decline with images and slogans that perpetuate fantasies about our own invulnerability, our own might, our own goodness. We are preoccupied by national trivia that pass for news, even as the wolf pants at our door. These illusions blind us. We cannot see ourselves as others see us. We do not know who we are or what we have become. "We have fed the heart on fantasies," wrote William Butler Yeats, "the heart's grown brutal from the fare.""
Rating: Very good.
Rating: Very good.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
INTREPID JOURNEYS
Intrepid Journeys is a very instructive series. Apart from the George Henare episode it shows more or less uncouth representatives of my society visiting the apparently less fortunate and making fools of themselves.
Sometimes thoughtfulness breaks through but the temptation to be idiotic or offensive is too great. Meanwhile the hosts look on with dignified bemusement and treat their strange guests with quiet patience.
Sometimes thoughtfulness breaks through but the temptation to be idiotic or offensive is too great. Meanwhile the hosts look on with dignified bemusement and treat their strange guests with quiet patience.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
IRAN
I remember when Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The United States never gave up insisting upon it despite a complete lack of evidence before they invaded. They repeated it so often and so belligerently that mainstream media chimed in and - in a so-called democracy - the population could only look on and protest without influence. Many people allowed themselves to be taken in, though it was an obvious lie even at the time.
We now have Iran and its nuclear weapons of mass destruction. The United States never gives up insisting upon it despite a complete lack of evidence. They are repeating it so often and so belligerently that mainstream media is chiming in and - in a so-called democracy - the population looks on and protests without influence. Many people are allowing themselves to be taken in, for it is an obvious lie.
We are having a replay and any lessons from very recent history just pass us by. And this, after a century of mass education.
This new lie stands alongside a breathtaking hypocrisy. Iran belongs to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and within the Treaty wishes to develop nuclear power. Sorry. Israel refuses to belong to the Treaty and has nuclear weapons which it refuses to have inspected. No problem. Pakistan also refuses to belong to the Treaty and also has nuclear weapons. No worries, we are in the process of dismantling its sovereignty in order to maintain "stability" anyway. The United States has just encouraged India to develop nuclear weapons. So far, so good.
Iran is doomed because it insists upon being an independent sovereign state. It has a democratically elected government based upon a distorted form of democracy. In the United States distortion consists in the population having to be mere spectators between elections. Elections constitute a phoney selection between two dominant candidates who are interchangeable and supported by wealthy elites. New Zealand reflects this. Election time is when we imagine we are participating in democracy. Our wonderful free media encourages us in our futile imaginings.
During the Obama election not a principled word was said about Iraq. But there were a few rumblings about Iran. Look to the future. The weapons industry is booming and these weapons need to be tried out somewhere. A lot of people are employed. When we have devastated as much of the Middle East and Asia as is possible and necessary our greed can continue to feed without hindrance upon oil.
What can possibly go wrong?
We now have Iran and its nuclear weapons of mass destruction. The United States never gives up insisting upon it despite a complete lack of evidence. They are repeating it so often and so belligerently that mainstream media is chiming in and - in a so-called democracy - the population looks on and protests without influence. Many people are allowing themselves to be taken in, for it is an obvious lie.
We are having a replay and any lessons from very recent history just pass us by. And this, after a century of mass education.
This new lie stands alongside a breathtaking hypocrisy. Iran belongs to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and within the Treaty wishes to develop nuclear power. Sorry. Israel refuses to belong to the Treaty and has nuclear weapons which it refuses to have inspected. No problem. Pakistan also refuses to belong to the Treaty and also has nuclear weapons. No worries, we are in the process of dismantling its sovereignty in order to maintain "stability" anyway. The United States has just encouraged India to develop nuclear weapons. So far, so good.
Iran is doomed because it insists upon being an independent sovereign state. It has a democratically elected government based upon a distorted form of democracy. In the United States distortion consists in the population having to be mere spectators between elections. Elections constitute a phoney selection between two dominant candidates who are interchangeable and supported by wealthy elites. New Zealand reflects this. Election time is when we imagine we are participating in democracy. Our wonderful free media encourages us in our futile imaginings.
During the Obama election not a principled word was said about Iraq. But there were a few rumblings about Iran. Look to the future. The weapons industry is booming and these weapons need to be tried out somewhere. A lot of people are employed. When we have devastated as much of the Middle East and Asia as is possible and necessary our greed can continue to feed without hindrance upon oil.
What can possibly go wrong?
Sunday, November 15, 2009
REINHART, TANYA. THE ROAD MAP TO NOWHERE
The author, an Israeli academic and activist, deceased in 2007, gives an inside view of Israel's political deception and duplicity in its efforts to bamboozle the international community and to oppress and imprison the Palestinian population. Resistance to the apartheid Wall by not only Palestinian villagers, but also Israeli and international activists is a ray of hope, but the picture also contains Israeli military violence and Palestinian Authority collaboration, both of which completely undermine democratic protest. Rating: Excellent.
KHADRA, YASMINA. THE SIRENS OF BAGHDAD
The author is an Algerian male living in France and he does not write pot-boilers. He writes with distinction about a number of issues thrown up by American occupation of Iraq. Rural life during and after; irrational military behaviour; civilian suffering; the need for revenge; the chaos of urban life; the different forms of coping and resistance; betrayal and retribution; the killing of fellow Iraqis; hatred of the West. In a world full of inconsequential fiction, here is a novel that manages to get inside every facet of imperial occupation of a Muslim country. Rating: Excellent.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
MARQUSEE, MIKE. IF I AM NOT FOR MYSELF
If I am not for myself Zionism will speak for me. This is a political autobiography of an anti-Zionist Jew who subjects the ideology of Zionism to rational scrutiny. He takes an internationalist, humanitarian stance which will not accept discrimination, injustice and ethnic supremacy no matter where it shows itself. And it shows itself in Zionism. He analyses the writings of a journalist grandfather, a Jew on the American Left. He illustrates but fails to explain how this earnest left-winger was completely blind when it came to the establishment and behaviour of Israel. His father, also a Jewish leftist, involved in civil rights, was the first person to call him a self-hating Jew. The shortcomings of political activity for the realm of consciousness are evident. The author then goes on to become active in the British Labour Party. Does not his own political activity now lead him to have an over-tolerant view of the current Jewish diasporic attitude toward Zionism and Israel? An attitude of being Israel's willing helpers? Rating: Very good.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
GAZA WAR WON'T STOP DAD
During Israel the Brave's most recent all-out assault on the people of Gaza I read an item in the local newspaper entitled "Gaza war won't stop dad's trip to Israel" in which a Devonport resident was returning to Israel to be at his daughter's graduation. It sounded as if he were doing a brave thing in the face of danger and adversity. I wondered if he was feeling a little fearful of being subject to the humiliation of Gazan airport officials and Gazan security checkpoints on his arrival. Or whether, once installed in Israel, he feared a sudden neighbourhood attack from Gazan aircraft and helicopter gunships. Or whether, perhaps, he feared the arrival of Gazan tanks in the street intent upon levelling his dwelling and even killing him as he tried to make his escape, mistaking him for a sniper. His death an unfortunate event in the name of Gazan security. My heart goes out to him.
Friday, November 6, 2009
UNITED NATIONS ANTI-RACISM CONFERENCE
I believe the New Zealand government made a mistake in refusing to attend the United Nations Anti-Racism Conference, and in claiming to be in good company by doing so. The United States insisting upon waging war in the Middle East, and Israel insisting upon terrorising Palestinians and others are not good company to be in.
At an anti-racism conference it is not acceptable to the United States and its coalition of evil to hear charges of racism by one country about another. What then is the point of such a conference? The Iranian president and his government may justifiably be criticised about many things, but when he describes Israel as a cruel and racist regime he is completely correct.
If we could put aside whether we like the messenger or not and listen to the message, responding accordingly, we would be acting responsibly. But we have to be informed and knowledgeable before we do. I have tried hard to study and understand and I can agree wholeheartedly that Israel is indeed a cruel and racist society. It is the apartheid country of our time.
I am married to a New Zealand born woman who happens to be Jewish. Our six children are therefore deemed to be Jewish. Both she and they are therefore qualified to go and live in Israel as a “right of return”. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and their descendants driven out of Palestine by the formation of Israel have no such right. To any decent-minded person this is not only absurd and unjust, it is an example of apartheid in action.
It is the continuing policy of promoting the influx of foreign Jewish immigrants which is keeping fanaticism, racism and hatred alive in Israel. Many of these immigrants, like religious converts, are articulate and aggressive. From the Palestinian perspective they are simply more foreigners arriving to displace them in their own land.
In not attending the conference New Zealand has chosen to place itself apart as if in a superior position “in good company”. Interestingly, this superior good company comprises what could loosely be termed white race nations. The formation of this good company is an act of racism in itself, an act of apartheid on the international scene.
I want New Zealand to be a nation of integrity and courage, standing by its own bicultural and multicultural values, with an independent mind on international matters.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
SAS IN AFGHANISTAN
I do not support sending New Zealand troops to Afghanistan. I believe it is vital for New Zealand to reconsider its military commitment. With the change in US policy toward increasing engagement in Afghanistan the unjustifiable devastation the US has brought to Iraq will now be intensified in Afghanistan. Only this time New Zealand will be involved.
Can I assume that we are in agreement that Iraq is an illegal war? This is why New Zealand is not involved. Unfortunately, when we put aside righteous 9/11 anger, the war in Afghanistan is equally an illegal war. As with Iraq, the US insisted upon doing its own thing.
Afghanistan did not go to war against the United States. A small group of Saudis and Egyptians carried out a criminal attack. They did not live in Afghanistan but in Hamburg. They did not go to flight school in Afghanistan but in Florida. They may have been inspired by someone living in Afghanistan, but that did not give the US the right to invade Afghanistan weeks after the attack. That is not self-defence.
By mid-December 2001 U.S. bombs had killed 3500 Afghan civilians. The Guardian newspaper printed an article titled “The innocent dead in a coward’s war”. By 2003 10,000 had been killed. It has continued counter-productively and will now get even worse.
Now the new American president has “officially” extended the shameless murder to Pakistan and surely the use of drones to kill civilians has to be the ultimate in a coward’s war.
New Zealand must continue to present itself to the world as a multi-ethnic nation with a sense of balance and justice. It is not balanced nor just to be aiding the US ‘right or wrong’ at this moment in history.
Can I assume that we are in agreement that Iraq is an illegal war? This is why New Zealand is not involved. Unfortunately, when we put aside righteous 9/11 anger, the war in Afghanistan is equally an illegal war. As with Iraq, the US insisted upon doing its own thing.
Afghanistan did not go to war against the United States. A small group of Saudis and Egyptians carried out a criminal attack. They did not live in Afghanistan but in Hamburg. They did not go to flight school in Afghanistan but in Florida. They may have been inspired by someone living in Afghanistan, but that did not give the US the right to invade Afghanistan weeks after the attack. That is not self-defence.
By mid-December 2001 U.S. bombs had killed 3500 Afghan civilians. The Guardian newspaper printed an article titled “The innocent dead in a coward’s war”. By 2003 10,000 had been killed. It has continued counter-productively and will now get even worse.
Now the new American president has “officially” extended the shameless murder to Pakistan and surely the use of drones to kill civilians has to be the ultimate in a coward’s war.
New Zealand must continue to present itself to the world as a multi-ethnic nation with a sense of balance and justice. It is not balanced nor just to be aiding the US ‘right or wrong’ at this moment in history.
ISRAEL IN PALESTINE: A PRIMER
Criticism of Israel often leads to claims of anti-Semitism by apologists which are designed to deflect attention from the issues which merit discussion. They are as hateful in their determined intolerance and dishonesty as anti-Semitism itself.
If what Israel has just committed in Gaza had been done by any other nation without the acceptance of the United States, the whole world would be voicing its criticism.
In his Nobel Prize speech Harold Pinter stated: “The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them”. The same could be said about Israel. Certainly the New Zealand mainstream media are extremely hesitant in criticising Israel.
I have tried to take an interest in the Israel / Palestine situation for four decades, and I believe that I have reached a number of valid conclusions. None of them are controversial and I apologise for their obvious nature, but they appear bothersome because apparently we are meant to keep quiet.
The first of my conclusions is that Israel is a nation founded by terrorist activity. An increasingly aggressive settlement of Palestine from the 1880s leading to terrorism in the 20th century killed and drove from their homes and lands 750,000 Palestinians. Many of these people and their descendants now exist in Gaza. It is not acceptable for Jewish people, renowned for intellectual and artistic achievement, to use religion and its texts as an excuse for this terrorism. And although it is understandable, it is also both dishonest and unacceptable to use the holocaust as an excuse.
Israel is not a victim. Jewish people in World War Two were victims, but the contemporary state of Israel is a powerful military force, fully supported by the most powerful nation on earth. It is wrong for Israel to continue to convince itself and the world that it is always and essentially the victim.
Israel is a racist society. If you found a nation for one group of people, a Jewish nation, then it follows as a matter of fact that the foundation of your nation is racist. It also follows that another group of people, the Palestinians, previously and still living within this nation are unavoidably a negative problem. So long as Israel = Jewish nation the mindset of any Israeli government to the Palestinians will be inherently racist. This is completely at variance with social developments in Western countries, mistakenly said to share common values with Israel, which make efforts to forge multicultural societies.
Israel practices apartheid. It has chosen apartheid rather than multiculturalism because it must maintain Israel as a Jewish state. A growing, developing, educated and participating Palestinian population would be a threat to this. So Israel cannot allow peaceful coexistence where all individuals possess equal rights. Some elements of an apartheid state found in Israel include: complete control of all elements of the lives of a group of second class citizens; the need for ID cards in order to travel; the subjection to checkpoints for any movement; the requirement to live in defined areas; arbitrary arrest and detention without charge; the ability to kill without excuse or apology. Israel goes a step further than South Africa by building enormous walls and structures to encircle the defined areas. If the subject population threaten to get out of control, for example by electing the wrong party, then intervention occurs. Sometimes it just occurs anyway.
Israel has never negotiated in good faith. It has strung the Palestinians along for six decades. Negotiation is a game and an end in itself. There is always a reason not to do the right thing. There is always another condition to derail an agreement. There is always someone to blame. The blameworthy have included the PLO, then Fatah, and now Hamas – the very people you must talk to in order to find a just solution. If you demonise them then you do not have to be responsible for a solution, for any solution may mean that you have to relinquish power and control. Yet if Israel has an acceptable person with which to negotiate still nothing happens. Abbas, the Palestinian Fatah president, has been available for negotiation for some time now and Israel has given him nothing – except more checkpoints in the West Bank and more Israeli settlements on Palestinian land. When a person in his position feels the need to write in newspapers directly to the Israeli people for their understanding, this underlines the disdain with which the Israeli government is treating him. Israel need not negotiate with Palestinians when they are divided: Israel will not negotiate with Palestinians when they are united.
Israel has created and is creating the most enormous open prison system in the world. These prisons, given the relentless nature of Israeli policy and behaviour, are on their way via ghettoes to concentration camps. These prisons can be and are shut down at will at any time. This can be done in part or in whole whenever an excuse can be claimed, or it can be done quite arbitrarily. The imprisoned population can be subjected to lack of food, warmth, shelter and other basic necessities of life whenever the occupying power decides.
Israel is responsible for the Palestinian resistance. It is inevitable and a human right that when an occupying power mistreats its subjects they will resist. In films of World War Two we applaud the efforts of the Dutch and French resistance when they blow up the armaments and kill the soldiers of the occupying military force. The Palestinian resistance finds this difficult because they are so bottled up and the occupying force is so much more powerful. Because the Israeli military can mistreat the Palestinians from arm’s length the resistance has adopted the questionable tactic of firing rockets into the Israeli civilian population. Israel refuses to learn the right lesson from this, namely that it is unacceptable for any group to lose some of their people to military force. This tactic merely gives Israel the supreme excuse to blame and to kill further. Israel and “the West” refuse to acknowledge that it is the role of any resistance movement not to allow the occupying force to feel comfortable in its abusive power. In the current crisis, Israel speaks of seeking “peace and quiet” for itself, not ever of dialogue and justice.
Israel is completely self-centred. It appears to have a complete inability to empathise with others, to see their point of view, even to be interested in it. Its racism equates the death of one Israeli (even a soldier) to hundreds of Palestinians. If a human being is self-centred in this way we would say that his development is somewhere between a child and an adolescent with sociopathic tendencies. The USA, as parent of this unruly child, has overindulged and spoiled him all his life. As a result he is demanding, self-righteous, overbearing and out of control. If anyone in the neighbourhood dislikes his attitude and behaviour he will respond with some form of bullying aggression, knowing that Dad is always there to back him up. He becomes the neighbour from hell.
My final conclusion is that Israeli spokespersons lie to the media. Time and again they will, with a reasonable face, indicate what reasonable actions are being taken, only for the persistent media watcher to discover that Israel will not be doing those actions at all or are doing the exact opposite. It is the old story: pay no attention to what is said, but attend to what is done. Unfortunately, in “the West” it works the other way round for most people. When Israeli spokespeople speak to the media they do so from out of an attitude and national character which has created a militant, racist, apartheid society and all the trappings which go with this.
Some of these trappings include the stubborn assertion that Israel is always in the right, and also the inability to consider that a mistake or injustice has been committed, let alone a crime. This can lead to quite extraordinary statements: that because Hamas exists and because it lives among the Gazans it is responsible for the death of 400 children, not the Israeli military who fired missiles, shells and bullets at them. I assume that, in an individual, this severe inability to take responsibility for one’s actions would be recognised as some kind of mental or moral incapacity.
Norman Finkelstein, son of holocaust survivors, has said that if Israel does not wish to be likened to Nazis then it must stop behaving like Nazis. This is true not just for the war on Gaza, but for the war on all Palestinians for the last sixty years. Over this time Israeli policy has shown that it does not respect the Palestinians, it does not care about Palestinian civilians, and it does not want Palestinians to get too close. In the words of Peres it wishes the Palestinians would just disappear.
The only proper solution is integration. This happened in the US in the sixties and in South Africa in the nineties. De Klerk had the statesmanship to realise that apartheid could not continue, it was morally bankrupt. We cannot live in ethnically pure states and democracy cannot be based upon tribalism. There has to be a one-state solution. Part of the one-state solution requires compensation for the Palestinians. New Zealand has experience to offer in the manner in which crimes committed by an occupying people might be addressed by an integrated nation.
Imagine if New Zealand, which has the same kind of population numbers as Israel, were able to virtually dictate American foreign policy and thereby that of Europe? How weird. That one small country with such a small population could cause so much trouble in the world! It would surely go to our heads. We would probably come to believe that the United States was also our country.
If what Israel has just committed in Gaza had been done by any other nation without the acceptance of the United States, the whole world would be voicing its criticism.
In his Nobel Prize speech Harold Pinter stated: “The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them”. The same could be said about Israel. Certainly the New Zealand mainstream media are extremely hesitant in criticising Israel.
I have tried to take an interest in the Israel / Palestine situation for four decades, and I believe that I have reached a number of valid conclusions. None of them are controversial and I apologise for their obvious nature, but they appear bothersome because apparently we are meant to keep quiet.
The first of my conclusions is that Israel is a nation founded by terrorist activity. An increasingly aggressive settlement of Palestine from the 1880s leading to terrorism in the 20th century killed and drove from their homes and lands 750,000 Palestinians. Many of these people and their descendants now exist in Gaza. It is not acceptable for Jewish people, renowned for intellectual and artistic achievement, to use religion and its texts as an excuse for this terrorism. And although it is understandable, it is also both dishonest and unacceptable to use the holocaust as an excuse.
Israel is not a victim. Jewish people in World War Two were victims, but the contemporary state of Israel is a powerful military force, fully supported by the most powerful nation on earth. It is wrong for Israel to continue to convince itself and the world that it is always and essentially the victim.
Israel is a racist society. If you found a nation for one group of people, a Jewish nation, then it follows as a matter of fact that the foundation of your nation is racist. It also follows that another group of people, the Palestinians, previously and still living within this nation are unavoidably a negative problem. So long as Israel = Jewish nation the mindset of any Israeli government to the Palestinians will be inherently racist. This is completely at variance with social developments in Western countries, mistakenly said to share common values with Israel, which make efforts to forge multicultural societies.
Israel practices apartheid. It has chosen apartheid rather than multiculturalism because it must maintain Israel as a Jewish state. A growing, developing, educated and participating Palestinian population would be a threat to this. So Israel cannot allow peaceful coexistence where all individuals possess equal rights. Some elements of an apartheid state found in Israel include: complete control of all elements of the lives of a group of second class citizens; the need for ID cards in order to travel; the subjection to checkpoints for any movement; the requirement to live in defined areas; arbitrary arrest and detention without charge; the ability to kill without excuse or apology. Israel goes a step further than South Africa by building enormous walls and structures to encircle the defined areas. If the subject population threaten to get out of control, for example by electing the wrong party, then intervention occurs. Sometimes it just occurs anyway.
Israel has never negotiated in good faith. It has strung the Palestinians along for six decades. Negotiation is a game and an end in itself. There is always a reason not to do the right thing. There is always another condition to derail an agreement. There is always someone to blame. The blameworthy have included the PLO, then Fatah, and now Hamas – the very people you must talk to in order to find a just solution. If you demonise them then you do not have to be responsible for a solution, for any solution may mean that you have to relinquish power and control. Yet if Israel has an acceptable person with which to negotiate still nothing happens. Abbas, the Palestinian Fatah president, has been available for negotiation for some time now and Israel has given him nothing – except more checkpoints in the West Bank and more Israeli settlements on Palestinian land. When a person in his position feels the need to write in newspapers directly to the Israeli people for their understanding, this underlines the disdain with which the Israeli government is treating him. Israel need not negotiate with Palestinians when they are divided: Israel will not negotiate with Palestinians when they are united.
Israel has created and is creating the most enormous open prison system in the world. These prisons, given the relentless nature of Israeli policy and behaviour, are on their way via ghettoes to concentration camps. These prisons can be and are shut down at will at any time. This can be done in part or in whole whenever an excuse can be claimed, or it can be done quite arbitrarily. The imprisoned population can be subjected to lack of food, warmth, shelter and other basic necessities of life whenever the occupying power decides.
Israel is responsible for the Palestinian resistance. It is inevitable and a human right that when an occupying power mistreats its subjects they will resist. In films of World War Two we applaud the efforts of the Dutch and French resistance when they blow up the armaments and kill the soldiers of the occupying military force. The Palestinian resistance finds this difficult because they are so bottled up and the occupying force is so much more powerful. Because the Israeli military can mistreat the Palestinians from arm’s length the resistance has adopted the questionable tactic of firing rockets into the Israeli civilian population. Israel refuses to learn the right lesson from this, namely that it is unacceptable for any group to lose some of their people to military force. This tactic merely gives Israel the supreme excuse to blame and to kill further. Israel and “the West” refuse to acknowledge that it is the role of any resistance movement not to allow the occupying force to feel comfortable in its abusive power. In the current crisis, Israel speaks of seeking “peace and quiet” for itself, not ever of dialogue and justice.
Israel is completely self-centred. It appears to have a complete inability to empathise with others, to see their point of view, even to be interested in it. Its racism equates the death of one Israeli (even a soldier) to hundreds of Palestinians. If a human being is self-centred in this way we would say that his development is somewhere between a child and an adolescent with sociopathic tendencies. The USA, as parent of this unruly child, has overindulged and spoiled him all his life. As a result he is demanding, self-righteous, overbearing and out of control. If anyone in the neighbourhood dislikes his attitude and behaviour he will respond with some form of bullying aggression, knowing that Dad is always there to back him up. He becomes the neighbour from hell.
My final conclusion is that Israeli spokespersons lie to the media. Time and again they will, with a reasonable face, indicate what reasonable actions are being taken, only for the persistent media watcher to discover that Israel will not be doing those actions at all or are doing the exact opposite. It is the old story: pay no attention to what is said, but attend to what is done. Unfortunately, in “the West” it works the other way round for most people. When Israeli spokespeople speak to the media they do so from out of an attitude and national character which has created a militant, racist, apartheid society and all the trappings which go with this.
Some of these trappings include the stubborn assertion that Israel is always in the right, and also the inability to consider that a mistake or injustice has been committed, let alone a crime. This can lead to quite extraordinary statements: that because Hamas exists and because it lives among the Gazans it is responsible for the death of 400 children, not the Israeli military who fired missiles, shells and bullets at them. I assume that, in an individual, this severe inability to take responsibility for one’s actions would be recognised as some kind of mental or moral incapacity.
Norman Finkelstein, son of holocaust survivors, has said that if Israel does not wish to be likened to Nazis then it must stop behaving like Nazis. This is true not just for the war on Gaza, but for the war on all Palestinians for the last sixty years. Over this time Israeli policy has shown that it does not respect the Palestinians, it does not care about Palestinian civilians, and it does not want Palestinians to get too close. In the words of Peres it wishes the Palestinians would just disappear.
The only proper solution is integration. This happened in the US in the sixties and in South Africa in the nineties. De Klerk had the statesmanship to realise that apartheid could not continue, it was morally bankrupt. We cannot live in ethnically pure states and democracy cannot be based upon tribalism. There has to be a one-state solution. Part of the one-state solution requires compensation for the Palestinians. New Zealand has experience to offer in the manner in which crimes committed by an occupying people might be addressed by an integrated nation.
Imagine if New Zealand, which has the same kind of population numbers as Israel, were able to virtually dictate American foreign policy and thereby that of Europe? How weird. That one small country with such a small population could cause so much trouble in the world! It would surely go to our heads. We would probably come to believe that the United States was also our country.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
SCOTT WATSON
Despite plenty of pointers to the contrary the police in New Zealand get quite a good rating from the general public. This may be from watching Police Ten-7 or Motorway Patrol. The guardians of the law are very nice on those programmes. And yet a smiling policeman is a duplicitous creature.
I have had personal experiences in previous decades where police took the side of the offender by taking the view that if only one person had a problem with the situation then he must be at fault. That is not very nice. And only last year a very nice policeman decided not to pursue a case by quoting reasons totally at variance with legal advice previously obtained. He had no obligation to put in writing why the police decided to drop the matter.
However, these are trivial matters. The real problem with police in New Zealand is to make sure you are not anywhere near the scene of a high profile murder. It is almost a tradition now for the police to get it wrong by picking on an innocent person. Without thinking twice I can name Arthur Allan Thomas, David Bain, David Dougherty, Rex Haig and Scott Watson. I know there are others I should remember. Then there are uncertain cases where they may have the right person on fabricated evidence – David Tamihere, or Mark Lundy.
What is laughable about this conviction of innocents is that it always begins with a detective’s hunch. And yet the police establishment has the cheek to criticise psychics! Indeed, if we put two reputable psychics on a case under such conditions as laid down by the TV programme Sensing Murder, we would arrive at a far more reliable outcome. A hunch is nothing more than a very low-level, unreliable psychic event.
Some time ago I wrote to the Minister of Justice about the injustice of keeping Scott Watson in prison for a crime he did not commit. Indeed, if any crime was committed it was by certain persons who worked hard to put him in prison. He replied to the effect that something was being done. I now find that all that is being done is to appoint a crown prosecutor to assess the case. Is this really good enough?
Does the Minister of Justice not wish to personally take responsibility and acquaint himself with the details of a case of injustice? He only has to read the book and / or watch the DVD by investigative journalist Keith Hunter. In reading that book or watching that DVD all he (or anybody) needs is 1) common sense and 2) a sense of justice. He does not need to hide behind the obfuscations of legal protocol. It is the devious paths of legal procedure which have contributed to this case of injustice. And now he is asking the same malicious nonsense to assess the previous crime.
I find it embarrassing to discover that I know and care more about an important matter of injustice than the Minister of Justice of my country. In comparison with the Bain case the Scott Watson case is completely clear-cut. Some of us may still be unsure about the former, but unless we want to be perverse the latter is certain. The work has been done for us.
Does our Minister of Justice not think something should be done about crooked police officers and corrupt prosecuting counsels? There are far too many high profile cases in New Zealand in which innocent people are being convicted. It is not the fault of juries. It is not just that New Zealanders can be subject to police incompetence. Quite clearly we can far too easily be subject to police criminal behaviour.
Should there not be a law whereby such police and prosecutors who knowingly convict an innocent man can be punished?
Update. In August 2010 the Independent Police Complaints Authority reports on the miscarriages of justice as outlined by Keith Hunter and concludes there were none. This after an inordinate length of time and the statement that it has been exhaustive, implies as always that they must have got it right. The ongoing injustice is sickening. Indeed, it declares that where the police failed in best practice was when the public and media interfered. It would not have been the quiescent establishment media the Authority is pointing at but the very investigative journalism which has dared to question police and prosecution integrity. No doubt it also includes those members of the public who felt used, duped or ignored by police during the process of setting up Scott Watson, and who have had the temerity to complain.
I have had personal experiences in previous decades where police took the side of the offender by taking the view that if only one person had a problem with the situation then he must be at fault. That is not very nice. And only last year a very nice policeman decided not to pursue a case by quoting reasons totally at variance with legal advice previously obtained. He had no obligation to put in writing why the police decided to drop the matter.
However, these are trivial matters. The real problem with police in New Zealand is to make sure you are not anywhere near the scene of a high profile murder. It is almost a tradition now for the police to get it wrong by picking on an innocent person. Without thinking twice I can name Arthur Allan Thomas, David Bain, David Dougherty, Rex Haig and Scott Watson. I know there are others I should remember. Then there are uncertain cases where they may have the right person on fabricated evidence – David Tamihere, or Mark Lundy.
What is laughable about this conviction of innocents is that it always begins with a detective’s hunch. And yet the police establishment has the cheek to criticise psychics! Indeed, if we put two reputable psychics on a case under such conditions as laid down by the TV programme Sensing Murder, we would arrive at a far more reliable outcome. A hunch is nothing more than a very low-level, unreliable psychic event.
Some time ago I wrote to the Minister of Justice about the injustice of keeping Scott Watson in prison for a crime he did not commit. Indeed, if any crime was committed it was by certain persons who worked hard to put him in prison. He replied to the effect that something was being done. I now find that all that is being done is to appoint a crown prosecutor to assess the case. Is this really good enough?
Does the Minister of Justice not wish to personally take responsibility and acquaint himself with the details of a case of injustice? He only has to read the book and / or watch the DVD by investigative journalist Keith Hunter. In reading that book or watching that DVD all he (or anybody) needs is 1) common sense and 2) a sense of justice. He does not need to hide behind the obfuscations of legal protocol. It is the devious paths of legal procedure which have contributed to this case of injustice. And now he is asking the same malicious nonsense to assess the previous crime.
I find it embarrassing to discover that I know and care more about an important matter of injustice than the Minister of Justice of my country. In comparison with the Bain case the Scott Watson case is completely clear-cut. Some of us may still be unsure about the former, but unless we want to be perverse the latter is certain. The work has been done for us.
Does our Minister of Justice not think something should be done about crooked police officers and corrupt prosecuting counsels? There are far too many high profile cases in New Zealand in which innocent people are being convicted. It is not the fault of juries. It is not just that New Zealanders can be subject to police incompetence. Quite clearly we can far too easily be subject to police criminal behaviour.
Should there not be a law whereby such police and prosecutors who knowingly convict an innocent man can be punished?
Update. In August 2010 the Independent Police Complaints Authority reports on the miscarriages of justice as outlined by Keith Hunter and concludes there were none. This after an inordinate length of time and the statement that it has been exhaustive, implies as always that they must have got it right. The ongoing injustice is sickening. Indeed, it declares that where the police failed in best practice was when the public and media interfered. It would not have been the quiescent establishment media the Authority is pointing at but the very investigative journalism which has dared to question police and prosecution integrity. No doubt it also includes those members of the public who felt used, duped or ignored by police during the process of setting up Scott Watson, and who have had the temerity to complain.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
NOBEL OBAMA
Like Obama I and millions of others have a vision for peace and fail to do anything about it. Only our vision includes recognising that Hamas was democratically elected by its people. It includes acknowledgement that blockading these voters in an open prison and subjecting them to human rights and war crimes is not right nor peace-loving. At the very least it does not mean opposing the Goldstone report on the Gaza war at the United Nations.
Our vision means that we will give up interfering in South America. We will stop undermining governments democratically elected by their people. We will not support disaffected wealthy elites. We will stop building bases all over the world. We will not extend war-making in the Middle East. We will stop demonising other world figures and other countries. Instead we will stand up to the psychos leading our own country by the nose. We will treat Israel with discrimination. We will stop thinking so well of ourselves, that we the United States are somehow special and not subject to international law. We are just another country. We will look after the people in our own country properly, and this will peacefully help people in other countries.
A prominent New Zealand commentator has described Obama as a big fat disappointment. His vision of peace continues the Bush vision, only with a very charming smile upon the face of the tiger.
Does the corrupt and outrageous nature of this award mean that I can anticipate the Nobel Prize for Literature being won by Obama’s speechmakers?
OSAMA BIN LADEN
When Osama bin Laden’s messages to the world appeared it annoyed me that the media fixated upon two things: was this message genuine? plus one or two statements from the message which sounded suitably inflammatory. Where could I read the complete messages for myself and come to my own understanding and conclusions about this man and what he had to say. If I cannot trust my political leaders over Middle East wars or global economic affairs, I certainly have no reason to trust what they have to repeat about this particular individual.
I found a publication called “Messages to the world: the statements of Osama bin Laden”, published in 2005 by Verso, and edited by Bruce Lawrence. These statements cover the period from 1994 to 2004 when he lived in Sudan, Khurasan and Afghanistan and include the events of 9/11 and the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq.
Let us get 9/11 out of the way. Does he take responsibility for it? Apparently not. As time passes he becomes more ambiguous, but initially it seems clear enough that he has no planning role in the operation. He applauds the actions of those who undertake it. For it is about time that America begins to feel the pain.
What kind of a person emerges? Do I respect him? Well, compared to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Blair and Obama, yes, I do. He is intelligent and uses his intelligence to understand and articulate the predicament Muslims find themselves in. He is reasonable and tries to make us see this predicament and the response to it. He is obviously courageous in his response to the predicament: in resistance, in battle and in breaking ranks and criticising corrupt Arab governments. He possesses a genuine spiritual mana – and this is a key factor.
It is the profound lack of spiritual knowledge and stature in his adversaries which fills Osama bin Laden with contempt. We are once again the crusading barbarians who invade the more civilised world of Islam.
Even if I drop the word “invade” and just speak of an increasingly aggressive Western interference in the Middle East over a long period of time, this poses a problem for any conscious Muslim. If you are unconscious, then no problem. But if you are conscious you have two choices, no matter how you pretend otherwise: resist or collaborate. Without having to put our lives on the line yet, we have the same choice.
Osama bin Laden is no socialist. He will not become an icon for youth in the West like Che Guevara, but he is nevertheless the resistance icon of our time. The foe is the same. It does not help that youth of the West are the product of forty more years of education in conformity and unconsciousness. How free-minded we seemed to be in 1968!
So a good deal of Osama bin Laden’s messages contain increasingly severe criticism of Muslim collaborators. These may be the rulers who ineffectually protest US/Israeli aggression while secretly allowing use of their territory, and effectively doing nothing. They include the official Muslim scholars in high places who make religious pronouncements of appeasement in the name of peace. They include the Palestinian Authority which does nothing while its people are forced out of their homes or are having to fight for their lives and land as the apartheid Wall goes up.
For bin Laden there is no peace without justice and freedom from foreign oppression. (To use an idiot phrase, it’s not rocket science, is it?) But it is the kind of obvious thing that he wants us to see and accept. The kind of obvious thing that our media, full of educated people, does not want to report.
A primary point that Osama bin Laden wishes to make is this: people from overseas come to our lands and terrorise us with interference, control and massacre, and if we resist they call us terrorists. American (and Israeli) military kill and mutilate civilians with sophisticated weaponry in any Muslim land they choose, and this is the initial terrorism. He asks the question: what, for example, has Australia, way down in the south of the world, got to do with Afghanistan?
When I last saw a programme about our own New Zealand troops in Afghanistan, I had to stop and try to remember why we were there. Oh yes, we were pretending to be helpful. But this has now moved on. Someone in a Muslim country blows up a hotel for the rich and the free which includes a New Zealander among the victims. The New Zealand prime minister states that such a random outcome gives New Zealand reason to increase its commitment to Afghanistan. How can you deal with such a man?
The main document, in my view, which ought to be required reading, is the letter To The Americans of October 6 2002. In this Osama bin Laden explains why he is fighting, and he describes the sick nature of American civilization, and in doing so indicates the remedies. It is guaranteed to enrage the materialistic liberal and humanist. And this is why in the West we have a liberal defence of the murder being pursued in Muslim countries. Our Left and Right divisions have become one.
I do not like spirituality which transfers into institutional religious fundamentalism. It is medieval in any country. However, there appears to be only one way in which the West can gain the respect of genuine leaders in the East and the acceptance of the people of the East; and that is by having a more “spiritual” civilization.
Unfortunately, what Osama bin Laden says today about America and its allies is all too true. We are a civilization “which does not understand the language of manners and principles” and we refuse to reflect upon why 9/11 happened (or could have happened). If Americans could become a people of manners and principles “you may be freed from the self-deception that you are a great nation, the self-deception your leaders spread amongst you to conceal from you the despicable state that you have reached”.
I found a publication called “Messages to the world: the statements of Osama bin Laden”, published in 2005 by Verso, and edited by Bruce Lawrence. These statements cover the period from 1994 to 2004 when he lived in Sudan, Khurasan and Afghanistan and include the events of 9/11 and the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq.
Let us get 9/11 out of the way. Does he take responsibility for it? Apparently not. As time passes he becomes more ambiguous, but initially it seems clear enough that he has no planning role in the operation. He applauds the actions of those who undertake it. For it is about time that America begins to feel the pain.
What kind of a person emerges? Do I respect him? Well, compared to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Blair and Obama, yes, I do. He is intelligent and uses his intelligence to understand and articulate the predicament Muslims find themselves in. He is reasonable and tries to make us see this predicament and the response to it. He is obviously courageous in his response to the predicament: in resistance, in battle and in breaking ranks and criticising corrupt Arab governments. He possesses a genuine spiritual mana – and this is a key factor.
It is the profound lack of spiritual knowledge and stature in his adversaries which fills Osama bin Laden with contempt. We are once again the crusading barbarians who invade the more civilised world of Islam.
Even if I drop the word “invade” and just speak of an increasingly aggressive Western interference in the Middle East over a long period of time, this poses a problem for any conscious Muslim. If you are unconscious, then no problem. But if you are conscious you have two choices, no matter how you pretend otherwise: resist or collaborate. Without having to put our lives on the line yet, we have the same choice.
Osama bin Laden is no socialist. He will not become an icon for youth in the West like Che Guevara, but he is nevertheless the resistance icon of our time. The foe is the same. It does not help that youth of the West are the product of forty more years of education in conformity and unconsciousness. How free-minded we seemed to be in 1968!
So a good deal of Osama bin Laden’s messages contain increasingly severe criticism of Muslim collaborators. These may be the rulers who ineffectually protest US/Israeli aggression while secretly allowing use of their territory, and effectively doing nothing. They include the official Muslim scholars in high places who make religious pronouncements of appeasement in the name of peace. They include the Palestinian Authority which does nothing while its people are forced out of their homes or are having to fight for their lives and land as the apartheid Wall goes up.
For bin Laden there is no peace without justice and freedom from foreign oppression. (To use an idiot phrase, it’s not rocket science, is it?) But it is the kind of obvious thing that he wants us to see and accept. The kind of obvious thing that our media, full of educated people, does not want to report.
A primary point that Osama bin Laden wishes to make is this: people from overseas come to our lands and terrorise us with interference, control and massacre, and if we resist they call us terrorists. American (and Israeli) military kill and mutilate civilians with sophisticated weaponry in any Muslim land they choose, and this is the initial terrorism. He asks the question: what, for example, has Australia, way down in the south of the world, got to do with Afghanistan?
When I last saw a programme about our own New Zealand troops in Afghanistan, I had to stop and try to remember why we were there. Oh yes, we were pretending to be helpful. But this has now moved on. Someone in a Muslim country blows up a hotel for the rich and the free which includes a New Zealander among the victims. The New Zealand prime minister states that such a random outcome gives New Zealand reason to increase its commitment to Afghanistan. How can you deal with such a man?
The main document, in my view, which ought to be required reading, is the letter To The Americans of October 6 2002. In this Osama bin Laden explains why he is fighting, and he describes the sick nature of American civilization, and in doing so indicates the remedies. It is guaranteed to enrage the materialistic liberal and humanist. And this is why in the West we have a liberal defence of the murder being pursued in Muslim countries. Our Left and Right divisions have become one.
I do not like spirituality which transfers into institutional religious fundamentalism. It is medieval in any country. However, there appears to be only one way in which the West can gain the respect of genuine leaders in the East and the acceptance of the people of the East; and that is by having a more “spiritual” civilization.
Unfortunately, what Osama bin Laden says today about America and its allies is all too true. We are a civilization “which does not understand the language of manners and principles” and we refuse to reflect upon why 9/11 happened (or could have happened). If Americans could become a people of manners and principles “you may be freed from the self-deception that you are a great nation, the self-deception your leaders spread amongst you to conceal from you the despicable state that you have reached”.
CLICHES
Cliché words and phrases seem to infect the population at any one period of time. We in New Zealand have had such cliches in recent decades.
In the 80s the iconic phrase was No Way. It came in with Rogernomics. Just about everyone said it, many with a peremptory manner equivalent to saying Fuck Off. As it happened it epitomised the whole decade. No Way are we going to discuss the issues. No Way is there an alternative way of looking at things.
Then we had the 90s and many a Window of Opportunity. Some people are still seeing them, whereas No Way went out with pork-chop sideburns. This half-baked figure of speech is supremely indicative of that decade of half-baked managerial enforcement. A decade of unpredictable irrationality.
Now we have Absolutely in our current dying decade. Absolutely as in Yes, or That’s right, or a nod of the head. What does this portend? Is this the decade of determined reassurance?
In the 80s the iconic phrase was No Way. It came in with Rogernomics. Just about everyone said it, many with a peremptory manner equivalent to saying Fuck Off. As it happened it epitomised the whole decade. No Way are we going to discuss the issues. No Way is there an alternative way of looking at things.
Then we had the 90s and many a Window of Opportunity. Some people are still seeing them, whereas No Way went out with pork-chop sideburns. This half-baked figure of speech is supremely indicative of that decade of half-baked managerial enforcement. A decade of unpredictable irrationality.
Now we have Absolutely in our current dying decade. Absolutely as in Yes, or That’s right, or a nod of the head. What does this portend? Is this the decade of determined reassurance?
TO BE OR NOT TO BE
I try hard not to think about things, to turn my back on what is happening, cover my head and hope for the best. I can see this is what many young people do and I feel sorry for them. They know matters are just too bad to face. I live my suburban life, I grow my vegetables, I go shopping, I try to read books which are not going to upset me, and most of all I only get my news from Television New Zealand.
There is simply nothing better than TVNZ news to keep me coddled and insulated from reality. Coalition of evil? Gaza? They simply do not exist. An attractive middle class Iranian woman is shot dead by an agent of a repressive regime. Axis of evil. TVNZ shows it over more than one evening. (And only 7 minutes of international news per evening) A Palestinian woman is shot dead on her own land by an agent of a repressive regime. It never happened.
Then I go and blow it. I look something up on the internet and discover what I fear: wickedness is continuing out there. The Israelis turn away a ship destined for Gaza with medicine and toys. No government of the coalition of evil does a thing or says a word. (Not TVNZ news either) Having performed a revised 2009 version of Guernica in front of the world it is business as usual for Israel. The wickedness and the evil of the civilisation I live in, a civilisation of pre-emptive strikes against civilian populations, fills me with disgust and shame.
The United States is so wedded to its own good opinion that it will dismantle its domestic base in order to pursue global power. Having driven the Muslim world into resistance it already begins to blame that world for the consequences. The U.S. is driven by fear and sentimentality, and both lead to insanity.
And Israel seems perfectly happy to be the match for global conflagration. Is this because the traumatised child grown up is going to take it out on all of us? Or is it because Israel is too full of people with a shameless ethnic superiority which they will insist upon until the bitter end?
Perhaps it is a mixture of both. Israel has been practicing both for decades against the
Palestinians with malicious spitefulness ........................................................................... forgive me, it is nearly time for me to go back to sleep for a while. I need some hack television journalism, to hear the sweet inanities of Simon Dallow and Wendy Petrie, to listen to the inconsequential splutter of Mark Sainsbury, and to wallow in the earnest emptiness of sports news ..................................................
There is simply nothing better than TVNZ news to keep me coddled and insulated from reality. Coalition of evil? Gaza? They simply do not exist. An attractive middle class Iranian woman is shot dead by an agent of a repressive regime. Axis of evil. TVNZ shows it over more than one evening. (And only 7 minutes of international news per evening) A Palestinian woman is shot dead on her own land by an agent of a repressive regime. It never happened.
Then I go and blow it. I look something up on the internet and discover what I fear: wickedness is continuing out there. The Israelis turn away a ship destined for Gaza with medicine and toys. No government of the coalition of evil does a thing or says a word. (Not TVNZ news either) Having performed a revised 2009 version of Guernica in front of the world it is business as usual for Israel. The wickedness and the evil of the civilisation I live in, a civilisation of pre-emptive strikes against civilian populations, fills me with disgust and shame.
The United States is so wedded to its own good opinion that it will dismantle its domestic base in order to pursue global power. Having driven the Muslim world into resistance it already begins to blame that world for the consequences. The U.S. is driven by fear and sentimentality, and both lead to insanity.
And Israel seems perfectly happy to be the match for global conflagration. Is this because the traumatised child grown up is going to take it out on all of us? Or is it because Israel is too full of people with a shameless ethnic superiority which they will insist upon until the bitter end?
Perhaps it is a mixture of both. Israel has been practicing both for decades against the
Palestinians with malicious spitefulness ........................................................................... forgive me, it is nearly time for me to go back to sleep for a while. I need some hack television journalism, to hear the sweet inanities of Simon Dallow and Wendy Petrie, to listen to the inconsequential splutter of Mark Sainsbury, and to wallow in the earnest emptiness of sports news ..................................................
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