Category Archives: politics

links, politics, quotes

>With each grave…

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To listen and watch without hearing or seeing
allows the indifference, the ignorance and complicity to continue
and deepens with each grave our collective shame.

Just some links and quotes
from relevant articles about the war in Gaza.

Jennifer Loewenstein – If Hamas didn’t exist (zmag)
There was a time when Fatah and the PFLP held the day; when few Palestinians wanted anything to do with Islamist policies and politics. Such politics have nothing to do with primitive rockets being fired over the border, or smuggling tunnels and black-market weapons; just as Arafat’s Fatah had little to do with stones and suicide bombings. The associations are coincidental; the creations of a given political environment. They are the result of something entirely different than what the lying politicians and their analysts are telling you.

Rashid Khalidi – What You Don’t Know About Gaza (New York Times)
Nearly everything you’ve been led to believe about Gaza is wrong. Below are a few essential points that seem to be missing from the conversation, much of which has taken place in the press, about Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip.

Elaine C. Hagopian – Why Hamas is not the issue – History matters (counterpunch.org)
The picture changes when history matters. Treating Israeli war crimes as historically detached events, unrelated to its Zionist ideology and militaristic strategy to control all of Palestine, becomes more transparent each day.

Glenn Greenwald – Both parties cheerlead still more loudly for Israel’s war (salon.com)
At exactly the time that worldwide horror over this war is at its peak, the Democratic-led Congress steps up to announce to the world: “this is our war, too; we support whatever Israel does absolutely and without reservations.” We thus make Israel’s wars our wars; its enemies our enemies; its intractable disputes our disputes; and the hostility and anger it generates our own. And we embolden Israel to continue further.

Thalif Deen – Aid Groups Dispute Israeli Claims in Gaza (antiwar.com)
As the Israelis try to justify the massive loss of civilian life in Gaza, their arguments and counter-charges continue to be shot down either by the United Nations or by international human rights organizations.

United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379
United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379, adopted on November 10, 1975 by a vote of 72 to 35 (with 32 abstentions), “determine[d] that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination”.



politics

>The New Historians

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While revisionism at 99% percent of the time is connected to neo-Nazism by people without brains, it might be of interest to look at the New Historians, a group of Israeli (yes, Jews…) historians who are rewriting the traditional Israeli version of Israeli history. This is of course very controversial in a Jewish state run by ruthless Zionists… and of course, some of the New Historians have been labelled self-hating Jews, lost their jobs, suffered death threats and been forced to leave the country. That’s the way the story goes when you criticize Israel, question the Holocaust or denounce Zionism.

The New Historians, compromised of some 120 brave scholars, do not represent a unified body of thought, but they firmly believe that the Israel and Arab countries each have their own share of responsibility for the Arab-Israeli conflict. They’ve simply removed the blindfolds.
Here’s how their history differ from the ”official” version of Israeli history:

  • The official version said that Britain tried to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state; the New Historians claimed that it tried to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.
  • The official version said that the Palestinians fled their homes of their own free will; the New Historians said that the refugees were chased out or expelled.
  • The official version said that the balance of power was in favor of the Arabs; the New Historians said that Israel had the advantage both in manpower and in arms.
  • The official version said that the Arabs had a coordinated plan to destroy Israel; the New Historians said that the Arabs were divided.
  • The official version said that Arab intransigence prevented peace; the New Historians said that Israel is primarily to blame for the dead end.

Now, any sane person wouldn’t find these claims controversial. It’s pretty much what critics of Israel and Zionism have pointed out for years. However, since traditional Israeli history is clearly abused, primarily using the Holocaust memory to Nazify Arabs, exclude criticism and justify criminal policies, crimes against humanity and the violation of so many rights (alwaysprotected by the United States), using the above claims is devastating to the Zionist cause. Thus, the New Historians are public enemies number one.

In my opinion, the New Historians take on history with honesty. As already stated, they claim that Israel and Arab countries each have their own share of responsibility for the Arab-Israeli conflict, and Ilan Pappe, for example, has said that Palestinians are ”as violent as the Israelis, no more or less, with only one difference: The difference between the violence of the occupier and the violence of those fighting occupation”. Also, the Palestinians don’t have planes or tanks, they use the tools of the weak. The present situation forces Hamas to aggression. Israel must end their occupation and concentrate on including rather than excluding various ideological movements. That way Hamas’ stance will turn from aggressive to constructive. The New Historians seem to agree on this.
Genuine intellectuals should strive to have respect for someone else’s point of view, and this is where the New Historians succeed. They woke up and realised ”there are other people living here, maybe we should examine how they feel about history”.

The educational system in Israel, the media in Israel, the political system in Israel, sends us Jews in Israel a very clear message from our very early days until we die. The message is very clear, and you can see that message in the platforms of all the political parties in Israel. Everybody agrees with it, whether they are on the left, or on the right. […]
The message is that personal life – not collective life, not even political life – personal life of the Jew in Israel would have been much better had there not been Arabs around. […]
I mean, you can understand – maybe not accept but you can understand – how a society treats immigrants. Sometimes they find that these immigrants come to take my job, you know these politics of racism that are the result of immigration. But we are not even talking about immigrants, we are talking about a country that someone else immigrated into, and turned the local people into immigrants, and said that they have no rights there.
Ilan Pappe, The History of Israel reconsidered

Every 30 years (50 years for military matters, 30 for political matters) the Israeli archives declassify secret material, so when Ilan Pappe in the early 1980’s began studies of ”the other side” quite a lot of material about 1948 was released. He saw a picture of 1948 that he was not familiar with. The documents showed a reality different from what he knew. In 1998 the military archives were opened and the New Historians got even more evidence supporting their claims. But the Israeli people turned against them. This what not what they wanted to hear.
It’s the same thing with Holocaust revisionism. People don’t want the truth because it’s devastating to their cause. They respond with death threats, censorship, jail and just about anything but an open debate.

In 1948 the world knew what was happening and still decided not to do anything, thus sending a sickening message to the state of Israel: It’s okay to get rid of the Palestinians. This is why the ethnic cleansing of Palestine continues today as we speak. Will the world react this time? It’s been two weeks of relentless killing and the leaders of the world are still not doing what they should.

The creation of Israel in 1948 was a result of the Holocaust, and it resulted in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, a military occupation of Palestine (didn’t the Jews learn anything from the Holocaust? Or maybe they did…). Israel is attempting to divide the West Bank in one part annexed by Israel and another part maintained as a huge concentration camp (like the Gaza Strip). Zionism is clearly an ideology of racism, exclusion and expulsion. Future Palestinians will not forget, and certainly not forgive. The result of this war will be devastating – not only to Arabs and Jews, but to the whole world. Peace though war – everybody know how silly that sounds.
So why does the world allow Israel to do what it does?

This article is based on a great speech – The History of Israel reconsidered – by Ilan Pappe. Go here to read it.

1948 – lest we forget
Swedish review by Nikanor Teratologen of Ilan Pappe’s book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

politics

>War and pain

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This is what’s happening right now. Crank up the volume, watch the whole clip and digest. Then let’s read this post, Zionism, Jews and conspiracy theories, follow the links and at least think about the total failure of the pathetic human race for a while before continuing our daily lives.
Let’s go, 2009!

EDIT: According to comments here this video might not be showing Israel bombings in Gaza, but Hamas rockets detonated by mistake – in 2005. Well, it’s all about wartime propaganda – who to trust? Thanks to Jacques de Beaufort for bringing this to my attention.
However, no matter where this video is shot it still depicts the brutality of war and the complete failure of the human race, so this blogpost is nonetheless of major relevance. This is still what happens in Gaza right now: With the connivance and approval of the United Nations, Europe and the United States, Israel is engaged in a campaign of extermination, a holocaust against the Palestinians. Time to speak up!

politics

>Samuel P. Huntington – R.I.P.

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Samuel P. Huntington died Wednesday at the age of 81. He was one of the greatest in the field of political science and was most famous for his clash of civilizations thesis. This reminds me of an unfinished series of articles I wrote almost a year ago. Time flies. I’ll try to take care of that in 2009.
Meanwhile, visit Oskorei and read his well put commentary (in Swedish) about Huntington and his ideas.

The Clash of Civilizations – Part One
The Clash of Civilizations – Part Two

MMA, politics

>The $1 trillion bill for war – and a bit of MMA on the side

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>The U.S. war on terrorism (since 9/11) soon will have cost the American taxpayers $1 trillion – and counting. This impossible-to-grasp trillion dollar figure does not include, for example, long-term health care for the probably countless wounded or the interest payments on the money borrowed by the Federal Government to fund the war.
Nearly 5,000 U.S. soldiers have lost their lives in the conflicts. How many wounded? What if the U.S. would have fought their wars in the United States instead? How interesting…

And right now, Israel, with full U.S. support, is on yet another killing spree. We all know what the Bush administration has to say, but what about Obama? Now let’s hear him speak about hope, change and compassion regarding this U.S.-created, U.S.-supported disaster. Let’s hear him!

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This is a world of violence. On proper terms, when rules and regulations dictate war and when equality and justice reigns supreme, I worship at the altar of Mixed Martial Arts – the greatest sport ever. And I usually hate sports…
Tonight is the ultimate MMA event of the year, UFC 92 – The Ultimate 2008. The fight card is unbelievable! I’ve been hyped up for this event for months and tonight it’ll finally climax. The 27th of December 2008 is Christmas Day for real.

This is the outcome I hope for. I’ll go back and edit this post when it’s all over.
Names in bold are my picks.

Forrest Griffin vs Rashad Evans –> Yes!
Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira vs Frank Mir –> No…
Quinton Jackson vs Wanderlei Silva –> Yes! Yes! Yes!
Cheick Kongo vs Mostapha Al Turk –> Yes!
C.B. Dollaway vs Mike Massenzio –>No…
Yushin Okami vs Dean Lister –> Yes!
Antoni Hardonk vs Mike Wessel –>No…
Matt Hamill vs Reese Andy –> Yes!
Brad Blackburn vs Ryo Chonan –> Yes!
Dan Evensen vs Patrick Barry –> No…

literature, politics, quotes

>Jonathan Littell on Israel, the Holocaust and life

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I’m reading Jonathan Littell‘s Les Bienveillantes (The Kindly Ones, English translation due in March 2009, De välvilliga in Swedish) and I like it – but what must be repeated over and over again is this: this is fiction! The descriptions of everyday life in Nazi Germany bear little resemblance to reality. As with Elie Wiesel‘s Night, and to a certain extent Anne Frank’s Diary, this cannot be seen as some kind of evidence or witness description of the Holocaust. Unfortunately, a lot of people will use it that way because the majority of the people in the Western hemisphere are brainwashed and cannot think rational thoughts when dealing with such a sensitive subject as the Holocaust.

However, what I wanted to touch upon is Littell’s real life opinions about Israel and the Holocaust. Littell, of Jewish background, seems to have a clear standpoint that I consider very sane. Hear him out, quoted from an article in Haaretz, Israel’s oldest daily newspaper:

“My reading of what you call ‘Holocaust’ is also less Jewish and Judeo-centric than that of my father. I think that what happened was far broader than a narrow issue of ‘Germans killing Jews.’ The English word ‘holocaust’ is certainly the wrong term to describe what happened. It is a religious term, rife with non-historical meaning. I don’t think the word ‘shoah’ is any better. It’s a controversy among historians. Raul Hilberg described it as ‘the destruction of European Jewry,’ but he encountered criticism because that was also the Nazi terminology.

Ulrich Herbert calls it the ‘National-Socialist extermination policy,’ and I find that a far more accurate description because it also includes the extermination of the homosexuals, the Gypsies, the disabled and other minorities.”

Indeed, according to Littell, the “National-Socialist extermination policy” was “only one of the several big genocides that have happened in human history.”

But doesn’t the unprovoked nature of the destruction of the Jews, the underlying ideology, the apparatus that was created to implement it, its scale, make it exceptional in human history?

“I personally understand the arguments for the exceptionality of the Holocaust, but I don’t agree with them. The basic argument is that the Nazis wanted to kill all the Jews, but I don’t see the difference between that and an extermination policy that was aimed – and implemented on a large scale – at groups such as the peasants in the Soviet Union or in Cambodia. Every genocide is exceptional.”

“I think the extermination of the Jews is a universal problem, I think it concerns everyone. Beyond that, I think that today the issue is being used for political purposes in Israel.”
[…]
It is political, a mechanism. It has no connection to what actually happened. The Holocaust, I think, is being exploited politically, in a way that the Nazi extermination policy against other groups – Russians, homosexuals, Gypsies – is not.”

Asked whether he thinks the Holocaust shapes Israeli actions today, he replies: “On the one hand, Israel is a country that underwent a serious trauma, and the Holocaust made it dramatically paranoid. But then there is also greed and land-grabbing and all that shit. That’s just inexcusable. I’m sorry, but this cannot be excused by traumas that occurred 60 years ago.”

Littell says Israel uses the Holocaust to justify “inexcusable” acts, by which he means the situation in the territories, and he likens the actions of the Israel Defense Forces to the behavior of the Nazis in the period before they came to power.

Would you really compare the two?

“No, we cannot compare: There is nothing like genocide in the territories, but they are doing absolutely atrocious things. If the government would let the soldiers do worse things, they would. Everyone says, ‘Look how the Germans dealt with the Jews even before the Holocaust: cutting the beards, humiliating them in public, forcing them to clean the street.’ That kind of stuff happens in the territories every day. Every goddamn day.

[…]
“Like how what the Americans are doing in Iraq is unacceptable. I’m not talking about the war but about torture and things like Abu Ghraib. Understanding the Germans of 60 years ago may make you feel that you’re not that far from it, as Americans or as Israelis. So maybe it will be possible to enforce our social mechanisms to prevent our societies, at least, from going completely off the wall.”

What should your Israeli readers do?

“I think the Israelis, instead of beating their breast, should take a long, hard look at what they are doing now. I am not saying that present-day Israeli society is comparable to Nazi society in World War II, but it is definitely one of the most crazed Western societies.”

“Look,” Littell sums up, in a delayed response to the question of his motivation and perhaps that of his protagonist as well, “Life is a question of a search for meaning – what’s it all about? Are we here to have fun? Make money? Have sex? No, clearly not. Then you have this whole religion thing. A lot of people find meaning in that – I don’t. I adhere to a point of view that says our existence is completely meaningless and completely absurd, and all the horrible things we do to each other are completely unjustified. And anyway, we are going to die. So the question is how you get through life if you accept this approach as the fundamental parameter. Personally, I sometimes find it pretty amusing, but most times it’s just grim. And I focus on the grim, because it’s there.”

philosophy, politics

>Theodore Kaczynski, The Unabomber – Part Nine

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When finally caught, Theodore Kaczynski was at once dismissed as a nutcase. People said ”He killed because he was insane”, rather than asking themselves ”Why did someone so like me commit murder?”
And so, the man who media at first portrayed as a genius and then a hermit was now dubbed a nut. There was nothing more to explore. The man was a freak. Case closed. And then silence.

As for the proceedings in court, Kaczynski’s lawyers and family worked hard for the court to declare Ted mentally insane to save him from the death penalty. His family gave interviews to all the major newspapers and television shows, saying that Ted had been mentally ill since childhood. Their campaign was very effective. The only problem was that Ted himself constantly would object to the whole insanity thing. ”David knows very well that I would unhesitatingly choose death over incarceration”, he writes in his book Truth Versus Lies. Ted would rather die for his ideas than being humiliated in court, being labelled insane. He valued his ideology more than his own life.
Ted asked his lawyers for them to send for his test results that he recieved during his years at Harvard, when he was participating in Professor Murray’s psychological experiments. They would prove he was clearly not insane at the time. His lawyers didn’t put much work into it, and they did so for a reason: it would ruin their case. They were well known for being respectable and reliable and they had worked on this ”mentally defect” line for so long it would ruin their reputation if the old test results would show what Kaczynski claimed – that he was perfectly normal.
In fact, the defense attorneys refused to let Kaczynski meet with psychiatrists, fearing they would not come to the ”correct” conclusions. They said their client had a ”pathological dread of examination by psychiatrists”, which was very far from the truth. One professor of psychiatry, Phillip J. Resnick, was not convinced that Kaczynski suffered from a mental disease, the writings of the Unabomber did not show this at all. While media, the defense attorneys and the Kaczynski family cemented the belief that celibacy, primitivism and that kind of lifestyle and ideas were signs of mental illness, Kaczynski rationally concluded that if he was labelled mentally ill his political agenda would be denigrated and he could not sit back and accept that. Resnick wrote several letters to the court asking for Kaczynski to be examined by a psychiatrist, without success.
At the same time the story about Murray’s experiments in the 60’s surfaced in the press, and people immediately assumed that he had suffered from mental illness since he had been psychologically examined back then. But nobody knew exactly what had happened at Harvard, not even the family. It was all rumours and media kept the real significance of the Harvard data in the dark, letting the rumours grow.

It was not until February 1998, when it was too late to make a difference, that Kaczynski managed to persuade his attorneys to send his answers from these psychological tests, along with the answers of the twenty-one other study objects, to a psychological testing expert. Because the individuals who took these tests were identified only by code names the expert could conduct a blind evaluation measuring the answers without knowing who had given them.
The expert, Berthram Karon, found that on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 a complete abscense of illness and 10 the highest degree of illness, Kaczynski scored 0 for ”Schizotopy” and 2 for ”Psychopathy”. In other words, Kaczynski was perfectly normal.

After much delay and stalling from Ted’s attorneys the court finally sent for psychiatrist Sally Johnson to examine Kaczynski. She spent ten days interviewing him and reading his writings. She concluded that he was competent to stand trial and represent himself, which was exactly what he wanted. She wrote that ”he does no show evidence of overt disorganization or psychotic symptomology”, and does not show ”evidence of a mood disorder, obvious thought disorder, intellectual dysfunction”. But – and this is the weak threads on which they hung a diagnosis of mental illness – he is ”introverted, shy, and socially insecure”, and he believes ”the system as it exists is bad and rebellion against it is justified”, and that ”freedom and personal dignity have greater importance than comfort and security”. She saw it equally symptomatic that he ”feels compelled to live a life of extreme isolation and to focus his energy against all aspects of society that are attempting to control the masses.”
Media immediately hailed the report as proving Kaczynski insane.

Only three days after Johnson delivered her report to the court the trial was on. The judge – to everyone’s astonishment – denied Kaczynski’s request for self-representation, even though the report clearly stated that he’d be able to represent himself in court. What the hell happened?
The only explanation the court could provide was delay: Kaczynski had waited too long to invoke his right to self-representation. It was obvious that this cheap judge wanted a quick trial so he could go on with his life.

Facing a humiliating trial in which his attorneys would portray him as insane and his philosophy as the ravings of a mad man, Kaczynski capitulated: In exchange for the government’s agreement not to seek the death penalty, he pleaded guilty to thirteen bombings that killed three men and seriously injured two others, and took responsibility for sixteen bombings from 1978 to 1995.
On May 4, 1998, Kaczynski was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.