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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MSI who wrote (506360)	12/8/2003 11:30:58 PM
From: MSI	Respond to of 769670

Chomsky cont. "Today, Thomas Friedman is agonizing about the mass graves, but if you go back and read him in 1991, he knew about them. He was the New York Times' Chief Diplomatic Correspondent, and he said that the best of all worlds for the United States would be an iron fisted military junta that would rule Iraq the same as Saddam Hussein, but since Saddam is an embarrassment, lets try to get someone else. And if we cannot find someone else, we will have to settle for second best, Saddam Hussein himself. The British are an interesting case. In the US, we have pretty much the same government that was in office in 1991. But in Britain, today's government was in opposition in 1991. There were parliamentary protests in England about the gassing of the Kurds and so on, but try to find the names of Tony Blair, Jeff Hoon, Jack Straw, I think even Robin Cook. They're missing. What do the American public think about the situation in Israel? The study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes, PIPA, has done very interesting in-depth studies of people's attitudes towards Israel and Palestine, but they are never reported because the conclusions are unacceptable. The PIPA study found that a considerable majority of the American population favour what is called the Saudi plan, which is the latest version of international consensus on a two state settlement that the United States has been unilaterally blocking since 1975. Yet about two thirds of the United States' population supports it. The Poll shows that a large majority of people in the United States think that they should cut off aid to either of the two parties, Israel or the Palestinians, if they refuse to enter into goodwill negotiations. Next question. Suppose that both sides enter into negotiations, what should the United States do? Give equal aid to Israel and the Palestinians. Then comes the next question. Should the United States be more involved in this? Yes. Same large majority. That's a contradiction, a self contradiction. It's the United States involvement since the mid 1970's that's prevented a political settlement. Step by step, vetoes at the Security Council since 1976 v votes alone, or with one or two client states of the General Assembly blocking the plan. Supporting the Israeli invasion of Lebanon with the express purpose of undermining the possible threat of negotiations and on and on- So the US is involved in what it describes it "the peace process," yet it is actually be trying to prevent peace - you just can't make that connection. By definition the United States is running the peace process, but does that mean they're trying to bring peace? Of course not. You can go back to 1971 when Anwar Al Sadat, the new president of Egypt offered a full peace treaty to Israel with only one condition: That it withdraw from Egyptian territory. Nothing about the Palestinians. Nothing about the West Bank or Golan Heights. Just withdraw from Egyptian territory and you can have a full peace treaty. Israel understood it, they considered it, they recognized it was a genuine peace offer that they could accept and end the state of war. They turned it down because they said it was more important to expand settlements. At the point the settlements were in the North Eastern Sinai, and tens of thousands of Bedouins had been kicked out. It was a Labour government, not Sharon, and it decided that it was more important to expand into the northern Sinai, so they rejected Sadat's offer. Well what did the United States do? That's crucial, that determined what happened. There was an internal debate in the United States and the United States government. Henry Kissinger v his position won out. As he wrote, was that we should reject negotiations and he called for a stalemate. No negotiations just force. So the United States backed Israel's rejection of Sadat's peace offer. That led directly to the 1973 war. The 1973 war was a close call for Israel, very dangerous. There was a nuclear alert; there was a close call for the world. I mean even Kissinger, who's not very smart, understood that we can't just assume Egypt's a basket case. We have to do something. So he began the shuttle diplomacy that then ended up in Camp David with the Camp David agreements. That is hailed as a triumph in American diplomacy. Carter just won the Nobel Peace prize for it.

To: MSI who wrote (506360)	12/9/2003 12:08:54 AM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 769670

CHOMSKY ON PBS.... MSI, I was shocked when Charlie Rose had Noam Chomsky on the show, for an hour. It was one of the most honest and compelling hours of television ever. At least for those of us who have a brain. Otherwise, it was a rather analytical rendition of exactly the contents of your post. The truth. How boring. Rose did his best to be a distraction and act the fool. But Chomsky wouldn't let Rose's ADHD interfere with an adult interview, or (more correctly) interrupted monologue. If Rose weren't such a weasel and brown-noser during his propaganda effort on behalf of the war, I'd say that the man had a sense of remorse and shame about his role in perpetrating the White House's mythology. But I'd be wrong.