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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (78469)	7/28/2006 1:21:12 AM
From: ChinuSFO	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 81568

So what is your solution? You asked me this question and I hope you will let me answer it instead of asking a second one before I do. My solution is to work the court of public opinion. Fight it with brains instead of bullets. Fight it since it your right and not on the basis of self-pity of holocaust. Look to the future instead of brooding over the past. Hold out hope for the future instead of bitterness and fear and paranoia of the past. Need I say more.

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (78469)	7/28/2006 1:47:54 AM
From: Proud Deplorable	Respond to of 81568

Speaking of the "court of public opinion" how's that coward Lindy Bill doing these days? You know, the one who is too cowardly to get off his ridiculous fascist thread and face the court of public opinion on other threads. Oh but he'd rather just censor everyone. The man is delusional. Hey Lindy.....COWARD....COME OUT AND PLAY where there are no bans. He shouldn't be on SI but should have his own blog where he can burn the books of those who he hates, which is darn near everyone. I think he should change his handle to LITTLE BILL because real men aren't afraid of a real debate. ---------------- Those whom the Gods wish to Destroy, they First Make Mad by Nigel Harris Or so it seems as Israeli forces set about the second week of the systematic destruction of southern Lebanon and the inevitable slaughter of Lebanese - but always, it seems in a fixed ratio of three Lebanese for every Israeli killed. The world looks on, wringing its hands as if this were some terrible natural calamity, another tsunami, instead of the deliberate and calculated policy of one of the members of the United Nations against another – and without any state of war being declared. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has just made a completely futile visit to the region to speak vacuously of being unwilling to do anything to stop the killing until a “durable” peace can be ensured – that is, until Israel decides to stop the killing. Meanwhile, the Europeans and virtually everybody else sits on their hands looking the other way, but regretting it all very much. In Rome today, the powers meet to discuss Israel's war on Lebanon, but without either of the powers, in Washington's paranoid fantasy, who supposedly control Hezbollah, Iran and Syria – and indeed, without Hezbollah itself being present. What can this empty mummery achieve? An agreement to wait until Israel has finished the killing – and perhaps precipitated Lebanon back into its terrible former civil war? Or to put in an international peacekeeping force to take over duties of border control from the Israelis? What would that achieve? Rest assured such an international force will not be required to stop the bombing by occupying the places from which the bombers come, the Israeli airfields. If that were to happen, almost certainly Hezbollah would immediately cease firing its missiles at Israel. It would be so easy to stop. Yet it is impossible – until Israel is ready to stop. Bush's paranoid fantasy of a world Islamic terrorist war on “the West” has now encompassed everyone and all the issues – from Gaza and Lebanon (where Israel exercises its “right to defend itself”, a right completely denied either Palestinians or Lebanese), Putin's Chechnya, Indian Kashmir, Chinese Sinjiang and anywhere else that can be thrown in. This is where the ludicrous talk in Washington of Lebanon being the beginning of the third world war comes from. Yet, Islam, unlike the US and Israel, has no divisions, no air power, no nuclear weapons. The threat is invented and sustained in Washington to keep the fears of Americans ever on the boil – and the Republicans in power. Only the Prime Minister of Iraq, as much an American creature as anyone, stood his ground and challenged Bush – no doubt for fear his Shia majority might start volunteering for service in Lebanon or turn as one against the US occupation of his country. * * * * Yet the reasons for the clash – just like those for the US invasion of Iraq – remain obscure. The Israelis know they cannot win. Hezbollah cannot be uprooted without a dense military occupation of southern Lebanon (and possible heavy Israeli casualties); that is what they did before to drive out the PLO and for 20 odd years occupied it - and they failed. Hezbollah will only be disarmed through their incorporation in the Lebanese establishment and armed forces. Bombing them indiscriminately means all Lebanese, Christians, Druze, Sunnis rally behind them as the only force capable of answering the Israeli savagery by inflicting some damage, albeit limited, on the Israelis. What of Hezbollah? They can win no more than the Shaba'a farms and the release of some prisoners. Sooner or later, their stock of Iranian missiles will be exhausted or will reach levels where sheer survival means they must stop. Will all that death and destruction have been for so little? Nothing can change while the Israeli High Command remains uncompromisingly fixed on making the Jordan river the eastern border of Israeli – even if the Palestinians have to be scuffed up into a couple of Indian reservations. The key to that is continuing US support. And that nexus paralyses the rest of the world – reducing the UN to the weak complaint that Israel's response is “disproportionate” (what is proportionate? Should Hezbollah be allowed to blow up an Israeli power station? Tel Aviv airport?) The Europeans are little better. UK policy is determined by the principle that the UK can be important only by slavishly following US policy – so that is a Trojan horse within the European Union. France grumbles and once had a project to make the EU a force to challenge the US, but the way Washington divided the European powers over the Iraq war while the French electorate seemed to turned against the Union altogether ended such hopes. Now the Europeans compete for favor at the emperor's court. Hence the weakness of the European response as Washington overrode the Geneva Conventions on Guatanamo Bay and Abu Gheraib – abolishing the right of habeas corpus where it thought fit so that people could be imprisoned indefinitely without charge - and tortured. And Israel itself has asserted the legal right to murder those it suspects of committing past crimes or intending future ones. No one challenges that. * * * * The war of civilizations seemed a silly thesis when Huntingdon propounded it – after all, the US had all the weapons. But such an opinion leaves out of account the foolishness and fantasy of the participants in bringing it about. Israel's destruction of southern Lebanon for short-term tactical gains (not excluding Olmert's need to establish his credibility with the Israeli armed forces and electorate) and the failure of the US and the Europeans to force Israel to stop is the most powerful recruiting sergeant for the militants – whether followers of President Bush or Osama Bin Laden. It completely undermines the idea of a world governed by law, trust and some measure of compassion and mutual support. Furthermore, Lebanon's helplessness before Israeli arms is a powerful argument for governments, secretly or otherwise, to develop a nuclear deterrent. Washington thus itself digs the grave of the Non-proliferation Treaty and strengthens the arguments of those in Teheran who say that Iran can only inhabit the same region as Israel if it has a nuclear deterrent. Those whom the gods... 07.27.2006

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (78469)	7/28/2006 2:58:36 PM
From: American Spirit	Respond to of 81568

Bush is CREATING more and more terrorists, don't you get it? Just look at the results. Before he invaded Iraq there were few if any real terrorists there. It's as if Bushies want to create more terrorism and war in order to scare the public into letting them steal our democracy at home. If it's not deliberate it's certainly happening. But they won't be able to steal our elections again. They are all going down, all those corrupt lying Bushies. Shame-shame-shame on them. They are immoral, unethical and incompetent.