I found the most enlightening parts of this not to be about the presumed spying of the Israeli government on the USA and prolly :laugh: vice versa as well. Having worked for an intelligence agency for awhile I am aware that spying is a fairly universally applied doctrine: it's not just for enemies any more. If it ever was.
However, the really interesting parts of this have to do with the "sifting" of Verizon and ATT systems to winnow literally everything that comes through them. I have no doubt that to some degree the capacity is infinitely larger than it was when I worked.
O, they prolly "target" for particular phrases and identities, but the fact remains that pretty much everything you say on any phone and everything you send or browse on the internetz are "open source" to these agencies.
Nichole
Breaking the Taboo on Israel's Spying Efforts on the United States
By Christopher Ketcham, AlterNet. Posted March 10, 2009.
http://www.alternet.org/audits/130891/breaking_the_taboo_on_israel%27s_spying_efforts_on_the_united_states/ (http://www.alternet.org/audits/130891/breaking_the_taboo_on_israel%27s_spying_efforts_on_the_united_states/)
Scratch a counterintelligence officer in the US government and they'll tell you that Israel is not a friend to the United States.
This is because Israel runs one of the most aggressive and damaging espionage networks targeting the US. The fact of Israeli penetration into the country is not a subject oft-discussed in the media or in the circles of governance, due to the extreme sensitivity of the US-Israel relationship coupled with the burden of the Israel lobby, which punishes legislators who dare to criticize the Jewish state. The void where the facts should sit is filled instead with the hallucinations of conspiracy theory – the kind in which, for example, agents of the Mossad, Israel's top intelligence agency, engineer the 9/11 attacks, while 4,000 Israelis in the Twin Towers somehow all get word to escape before the planes hit. The effect, as disturbing as it is ironic, is that the less the truth is addressed, the more noxious the falsity that spreads.
it's not just for enemies any more. If it ever was.
Why people are shocked, shocked to find this out amazes me. Hell our intelligence agencies - and we have a big dog pile of them - spy on each other. Matter of fact it drives the NSA and CIA more crazy trying to guess what the other knows and isn't telling then any analysis the do of the enemy.
And, just because Israel is running a huge spy network in the US does not mean they are 'not our friend' (ahh, the world is just a big playground with kids ain't it). Really, I'm sure most nations run their biggest spy networks here, (hell, ours does) there is more information here to get, so it only makes sense.
Ehud Olmert bragged about ordering the US around like a lapdog.
Never, ever trust that racist, apartheid, murdering state.
Quote from: imaz on March 10, 2009, 10:50:07 AM
Ehud Olmert bragged about ordering the US around like a lapdog.
Never, ever trust that racist, apartheid, murdering state.
Which one Imaz? So many choices!! :laugh:
Nichole
He might have bragged about it, but like it or not, the US is not a little dog. It's an 800 pound gorilla, and if you get to to sit in your lap, you ain't going to be moving anywhere fast. And its going to get up an amble away and your going to be like some cartoon creature stuck into it. As Obama is finding out, even being the President of the United States doesn't mean you can get that government doing anything. So in that, as in other matters, Olmert was simply deluded - if not deranged. But there is a lot of both going around over there, he is sadly just one more.
Never, ever trust that racist, apartheid, murdering state
And by that, I assume you mean ALL of them, Israel, Palestine, Syria, the Saudis, Iraq, Iran, Great Brittan and the US. OK, I'm down with that, I don't trust any of them for all the same reasons.
I mean I could get that down to "never trust a state, any state, anywhere, at any time in history." And I'd be right.
Quote from: Nichole on March 10, 2009, 11:01:06 AM
Which one Imaz? So many choices!! :laugh:
Nichole
Lol! I've been banned too many times from
Guardian Talk to risk an answer! ;D
Quote from: tekla on March 10, 2009, 11:02:21 AM
I mean I could get that down to "never trust a state, any state, anywhere, at any time in history." And I'd be right.
Ah. We'll make an anarchist outta you yet. ;)
Mina.
Post Merge: March 10, 2009, 02:13:24 PM
Quote from: imaz on March 10, 2009, 11:10:37 AM
Lol! I've been banned too many times from Guardian Talk to risk an answer! ;D
Hmmm. Not that many building big walls and talking of expelling entire ethnicities of people right at the moment. South Africa tried that. All it did for us was cause an awful lot of heartache. Mind you, Western colonizers seem to do it everywhere they go, so why should the country in question be any different? We seem incapable of learning from the tragedies of the past. :-\
Mina.
Quote from: mina.m->-bleeped-<-ie link=topic=57152.msg358014#msg358014 date=1236711934
Ah. We'll make an anarchist outta you yet. ;)
Mina.
Post Merge: March 10, 2009, 01:13:24 PM
Hmmm. Not that many building big walls and talking of expelling entire ethnicities of people right at the moment. South Africa tried that. All it did for us was cause an awful lot of heartache. Mind you, Western colonizers seem to do it everywhere they go, so why should the country in question be any different? We seem incapable of learning from the tragedies of the past. :-\
Mina.
Really, so Georgia, Belarus, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Kongo, and a few petinent others are not to be counted, Mina? It's not simply the two USAs that manage to take that style.
Oh, there's no shortage of insanity out there. Ethnic cleansing is horrifying and all too common, and despite a universally accepted declaration against genocide, as a world community we seem to just watch it happen ... over and over and over ... unless there are natural resources or strategic partnerships in the offing of course.
I don't want to get into a debate about which is worse, because both are equally terrible, but they are two very different things. What's happening in the countries you mention, what happened before - that is and was genocide.
Where ethnic cleansing is brutally ... direct though, apartheid has a way of sneaking through the back door as being "for their own good" or "self-defence" or whatever. And because of that it's easy to miss and even easier to ignore. Take the San Bushmen of the Kalahari, for example. Botswana to this day sticks them into "resettlements", appropriating their ancestral land and forcing them to give up their culture and language to "bring them into the 21st century". Once resettled though, they're left to slowly starve, die of disease or drink themselves to death. Most Botswanans sleep easy though 'cause after-all, "they're only helping them move with the times" ... whether they want to or not. And the rest of the world remains ignorant of it.
Apartheid brutalises people by not only attacking them physically but also undermining everything that makes them who they are, stripping them of their language, their cultural background, everything. When you reduce people to pure survival by "resettling" them in desolate bantustans or routinely bombing the crap outta them or sticking them in camps, you dehumanise them and nurture the very worst in them. When you keep treating them like caged animals, eventually that's all you get, wild and violent. My generation grew up knowing nothing but violence. White kids were sent off to the border to fight the "black menace" in the most brutal ways imaginable while black kids grew up with little besides police beatings and "pass laws" and slow starvation to look forward to. They were provided next to no education, restricted in movement and crammed into dense slums that were passed off as "independant states" to the outside world. Basically the apartheid government took the worst of what growing up in a gang had to offer and applied it to an entire nation. Those kids grew up to be amongst the most violent men in the world? Men in this country are 9 times more likely to commit rape and murder and assault than the rest of the world because it's all they grew up with.
Genocide is a visible evil, one we all recognise and hopefully have a visceral reaction to, but often apartheid isn't. It's often hidden and quiet and just "explained away", and some of the most terrible things it does to people only come bubbling up much later. They're related, sure, both born of xenophobia, and apartheid all too often eventually becomes genocide, but unless one recognises the differences between them, it's all too easy to miss them or misunderstand the situations that give rise to them.
Mina.
PS. ZA and the US aren't uniquely guilty of apartheid either. Australia did it to the Aboriginal people there, as did the British in India, and Palestine, and most of Africa ... just about everywhere they planted a flag. Not to mention the genocides the Belgians perpetrated in the Congo, or the Spanish and Portuguese in South America ... we have a LOT of collective blood on our hands.
Excuse my ignorance Mina but what is PS?
Totally agree with everything you say, the West has blood on it's hands big time as regards colonialism, genocide, segregation, apartheid and so on...
It's ironic however that Dutch Apartheid in the then Dutch East Indies is almost totally ignored including their disgraceful use of Japanese troops against Indonesian Revolutionaries in late 1945. Indonesia suffers to this day from the corruption they embedded through their use of a sycophantic aristocracy and an Apartheid that envisioned three ethnic groups in descending order: White people, Foreign Aliens (Chinese and Arabs mainly), then "Indos" (mixed race Indonesians) and Pribumi (indigenous people). To this day the anti-Chinese sentiments are rooted in this history and sadly much prejudice and until very recently racist legislation continue to exist.
As for Palestine it is my sincere hope that a single democratic secular state may rise from the present disaster and that Muslims, Christians and Jews may collaborate together to make this happen and function. Too many lives have been lost and too much blood spilt for the present injustice to continue. While the present situation continues there will not be peace, the Palestinians will not submit even if they are killed by the thousands. Time and history is on their side. Just like Apartheid South Africa, Israel as it stands today has no future.
Quote from: imaz on March 10, 2009, 05:44:09 PM
Excuse my ignorance Mina but what is PS?
Post-script. :laugh:
Quote from: Nichole on March 10, 2009, 06:03:06 PM
Post-script. :laugh:
Shame on me! I read it together with ZA and US! :o
Quote from: imaz on March 10, 2009, 05:44:09 PM
... a single democratic secular state may rise from the present disaster and that Muslims, Christians and Jews may collaborate together to make this happen and function. ...
Christians, Muslims and Jews working together to make a functional state that looks viable?
I hate to pour cold water on a great dream, but when was the last time that happened? The Cordovan Caliphate prior to 1000 and the Toulousain in the late-12th and early 13th centuries?
Both states were overthrown by their more spectacularly warlike neighbors and annexed: one by Berber warlords and and Christian "liberators," the other by northern European fanatics and Papal indulgences.
It's a nice dream and I'd love to see it occur. It just seems unlikely as many would rather die than find the humanity in other humans, I imagine.
Nichole
Quote from: Nichole on March 10, 2009, 06:35:48 PM
Christians, Muslims and Jews working together to make a functional state that looks viable?
I hate to pour cold water on a great dream, but when was the last time that happened? The Cordovan Caliphate prior to 1000 and the Toulousain in the late-12th and early 13th centuries?
Both states were overthrown by their more spectacularly warlike neighbors and annexed: one by Berber warlords and and Christian "liberators," the other by northern European fanatics and Papal indulgences.
It's a nice dream and I'd love to see it occur. It just seems unlikely as many would rather die than find the humanity in other humans, I imagine.
Nichole
Agreed, but what is the alternative?
Despite many deplorable incidents Indonesia still holds on to being a state founded on the principles of multi faith belief and multi ethnicity. It is of course the country with the largest Muslim population in the world. Lebanon despite it's problems is another.
Nothing is impossible.
Yeah, and historically speaking the great Caliphates have tended to be the places where that mixture and the ambience that allows cultures to form that sort of religious and social peace seem to me, in the western world, either Muslim or greatly under Muslim influence (theb Toulousain.)
Given our western prejudices about how viloent Muslims are, I find that ironic to say the least.
The Muslim tradition may not be the world's best in terms of violence and treatment of women, but then the other religions of the book don't do so well in those regards either. (and much of that is not necessarily Muslim but is a cultural tradition that became Islamicized as i understand it.) At least Muslim history shows more promise than... British history and the history of British colonial descendants does. :)
Nichole
Quote from: Nichole on March 10, 2009, 08:23:07 PM
Yeah, and historically speaking the great Caliphates have tended to be the places where that mixture and the ambience that allows cultures to form that sort of religious and social peace seem to me, in the western world, either Muslim or greatly under Muslim influence (theb Toulousain.)
Given our western prejudices about how viloent Muslims are, I find that ironic to say the least.
The Muslim tradition may not be the world's best in terms of violence and treatment of women, but then the other religions of the book don't do so well in those regards either. (and much of that is not necessarily Muslim but is a cultural tradition that became Islamicized as i understand it.) At least Muslim history shows more promise than... British history and the history of British colonial descendants does. :)
Nichole
Personally I have great hope that we can all achieve a better future, insha'Allah.
As regards Islam, the ideas of Nurcholish Madjid have always appealed to me greatly. http://www.iias.nl/nl/34/IIAS_NL34_22.pdf (http://www.iias.nl/nl/34/IIAS_NL34_22.pdf) His work is virtually impossible to find in English however. The site of Jaringan Islam Liberal in English is good also - http://islamlib.com/en/ (http://islamlib.com/en/)
Thank you, Imaz. When I get back to my computer I'll bookmark the links. I very much appreciate those. Never too late to become educated, is it? :)
Nichole
Quote from: Nichole on March 10, 2009, 11:01:06 AM
Which one Imaz? So many choices!! :laugh:
Nichole
I know an Anglican priest who has worked in a number of aread around the world, including some rather troubled areas. Among the worst, at least in popular perception, were ZA townships, Lesotho, and Zimbabwe (illegally, of course). He's also worked with indigenous groups in Utah and northern Alberta.
The one place he ever got death threats was Canada. Yes, Canada. From white people. For being perceived as "siding with" the First Nations.
--
As much as one might say that Israel has no future and Palestinians will never submit, the fact is, Israel is a fait accompli, and is, in fact, a multi-faith democracy. There are Muslim Israelis with full citizenship and voting rights -- a sizeable minority in fact. If Jordan and Egypt hadn't attacked in '67, this would still be the case.
It would be great to say that a two sate solution is possible, and the main problem with that is the settlement issue. the Gaza pullout was a test of the idea that pulling out of the settlements in the terretories would help. It failed: the rockets kept flying. Say what you will about disproportionate response, but repeated provocation eventually, well, provokes.
The only solution is a two-state solution; Israel won't accept anything else. If the Palestinians don't accept that, there will be continued bloodshed on all sides. That's not a moral judgement, just a fact.
Quote from: Alyssa M. on March 10, 2009, 11:32:49 PMThe one place he ever got death threats was Canada. Yes, Canada. From white people. For being perceived as "siding with" the First Nations.
O_O
Now that was unexpected. And really sad.
QuoteIt would be great to say that a two sate solution is possible, and the main problem with that is the settlement issue. the Gaza pull-out was a test of the idea that pulling out of the settlements in the territories would help. It failed: the rockets kept flying. Say what you will about disproportionate response, but repeated provocation eventually, well, provokes.
Point. But Hammas arrested people for rocket attacks last week. Granted it doesn't prove they're not responsible for those in the past, but as long as the entire Palestinian people get punished for the actions of individuals, the situation will never be solved.
QuoteThe only solution is a two-state solution; Israel won't accept anything else. If the Palestinians don't accept that, there will be continued bloodshed on all sides. That's not a moral judgement, just a fact.
Yeah, though there are elements on either side that would not stand for that either. Honestly though, I don't see how a two state solution can work as the geography currently stands. The West-bank is a land-locked parcel of land with few resources, while the Gaza strip, Palestine's only port is only about 40 km long and about 10 km wide. I can't see how stable state can be created out of two largely useless bits of land that aren't even geographically connected.
It's a mess, how-ever one looks at it. The original UN partition plan was and is an unmitigated disaster. I mean, just looking at the map - how on earth did they think that this could work?! Although I suppose there was a lot more yellow back then than today.
(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2Fthumb%2F9%2F97%2FUN_Partition_Plan_For_Palestine_1947.png%2F327px-UN_Partition_Plan_For_Palestine_1947.png&hash=b989591c1346fb55de35b3deee070331b0ae842f)
Mina.
Yes, you're right -- but I often see the Palestinian story presented here without the Israeli side. The only solution is that both sides see how the other side sees the situation.
When outside actors see only one side, they only impede progress. I fear that many Muslim states use the plight of the Palestinians as a distraction and excuse for their own internal persecution, just as the U.S. dismisses the Palestinian side as pure anti-Semitism (well, the Hebrew part of the Semitic group, anyway) and jealousy of the U.S. So the U.S., Jordan, Syria, etc. all need to recognize the legitimacy of both sides of the conflict.
(or maybe that's just me spouting my extremist moderate agenda again....)
Quote from: Alyssa M. on March 11, 2009, 12:35:42 AM(or maybe that's just me spouting my extremist moderate agenda again....)
Haha. No, I agree 100%. Forgive me if it sounded like I was attacking you. Pretty-much every foreign power that has something to say about that mess is using it to their own ends, and on small scale really it's no different from the old cold-war situation where either side would back one group in a local war towards their own ends. The fanatic religious groups that back either side add a scary dimension to it, but still, both Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs are being used shamelessly in all of this.
Mina.
True, but unlike the Cold War the sides aren't in balance and then there are the US vetoes of so many UN resolutions.
Posted this elsewhere but it's worth keeping in mind -
Abd' Allah bin Amar bin al-Aas reported Allah's Messenger Muhammad (pbuh), as saying:
"My people (Ummah) will undergo and experience all those conditions which were suffered by the Children of Israel in a manner of resemblance in which a shoe of a pair resembles the other shoe."
(From Tirmidhi)
And -
Rana Kabbani compares this new anti-Islamic sentiment to anti- Semitism, and concludes that:
I would even be so bold as to argue that there has been a transfer of contempt from Jews to Muslims in secular Western culture today. Many Muslims share this fear: indeed, one has written that 'the next time there are gas chambers in Europe, there is no doubt concerning who'll be inside them'. (A Letter to Christendom, p.11)
http://tinyurl.com/37xyxr (http://tinyurl.com/37xyxr)
I wonder if the UN resolutions would have made any real difference, they have not made much impact in the past. And it wasn't Europe that built the chambers, it was only the Germans for some pretty unique historical reasons.
Maybe it was only Nazi Germany that built the gas chambers but Europe has a long history of anti-semitism. Countless pogroms all over the place. When Ferdinand and Isabella "reconquered" Granada, the last Muslim stronghold of al-Andalus in 1492 it was the Jews who got expelled or forced to convert first.
Quote from: imaz on March 11, 2009, 06:52:02 AMTrue, but unlike the Cold War the sides aren't in balance and then there are the US vetoes of so many UN resolutions.
At the moment that is true, but as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation gains power and influence, it's sure to start balancing that influence again. China and Russia both have strong ties with Iran for example, and considering China's continued support of oppressive regimes in Africa - Sudan and Zimbabwe for example, They would happily destabilise a region if they thought it would benefit them, and the people be damned. Iran has observer status in the SCO, as does Pakistan, and Iran applied for full membership last year. China and Russia also both have strong ties with a number of other Middle-Eastern countries.
I've read a few opinion pieces that say the SCO was basically responsible for the closure of the US' bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, and as far as I understand they have quietly blocked the US and NATO in other areas as well. So yeah, there's alot of power-play going on behind the scenes, and Middle-Eastern powers are developing some powerful friends of their own.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Cooperation_Organization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Cooperation_Organization)
(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2Fthumb%2F9%2F9c%2FSCO_Taiwan_Map2.png%2F250px-SCO_Taiwan_Map2.png&hash=b1e1addfecc397e56a511a8e061dd2de73b36c01)
Mina.
When Ferdinand and Isabella "reconquered" Granada, the last Muslim stronghold of al-Andalus in 1492 it was the Jews who got expelled or forced to convert first.
In that case it was strictly pleasure before business I'm afraid. The Spanish have a long history of anti-Semitic actions, though I'm not sure why. Sort of like Russia, every 20 years needed or not. And indeed most of the American Jewish immigrints have one of those two backgrounds, either Sephardic Jews (beginning in 1654, exiled from Brazil, Portugal and Spanish mostly) and the later flood of Ashkenazic Jews from Poland, Russia and Germany.
In Europe, I think that the Jews were always seen - until recently - as 'the other' in general. They were always the group out that never fit into the nationalism of the 17th and 18th and 19th Century Europe. That was never the deal in the US, where being much simpler people, we had a much simpler 'other' and that based 100% on race, religion never factored into it, and interestingly enough, many slaves were Christians at some point (though often not upon arrival). Many American Jews pay some sort of preference for Israel, but that support is a cultural deal, as they don't really view it as the "Promised Land" that being much more LA, NYC, and Chicago in reality.
I think a lot of that comes from the faux nationalism that was an artificial construction in a lot of Europe. A huge part of being French, or Spanish, or Irish was being Catholic, a huge part of being a 'real Englishman, or woman' was in the Church of England. And that European nationalism was all about a circular logic of belonging. To be a part of France you had to be French, to be a real part of England, you had to be English. To be a part of the real America you only had to be here and be in business. A very different kind of construction of belonging for sure.
I know that when outsiders look at the US they see the money, and they focus on the money, and they think we are money happy, and they are right. But what they miss is that the money is only really a symbol, a means of expression, and what America really loves - and I mean REALLY LOVES, and what really makes America, is work, business. Because all work in America becomes its own form of commerce. Sometimes I think the motto of the United States should be "Make money from your hobby." Really.
I've traveled part of the world, and I've lived most of my life in a very cosmopolitan place and I've known people from all over and if I had to sum up the entire American deal it would be this, "everywhere else people work to live, in the US people live to work." And that worked out very well for the Jews in America, they seemed to love to do business too - and since, as was so once so perfectly stated, "The business of America is business" they fit right in. So from the beginning they were never much of an 'other' nature to their presence.
But the Spanish had it in for the Jews, I think largely because it was no secret that the Spanish Jews liked it under Islam better than under rather severe Spanish Catholicism (and its important to see the European Catholic Church as several different churches and not a monolith, so the Spanish Catholic Church was its own very unique and different beast) so to a degree you sort of go after the traitors in your midst first. And considering that the very first thing the Spanish did after kicking out the Moors was to form the Spanish Inquistion, perhaps the Jews had a point.
They would happily destabilise a region if they thought it would benefit them, and the people be damned
Hell, all god's children would do that if they could. I can't think of anyone who's hands are clean of that.
Quote from: mina.m->-bleeped-<-ie link=topic=57152.msg358397#msg358397 date=1236774729
At the moment that is true, but as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation gains power and influence, it's sure to start balancing that influence again. China and Russia both have strong ties with Iran for example, and considering China's continued support of oppressive regimes in Africa - Sudan and Zimbabwe for example, They would happily destabilise a region if they thought it would benefit them, and the people be damned. Iran has observer status in the SCO, as does Pakistan, and Iran applied for full membership last year. China and Russia also both have strong ties with a number of other Middle-Eastern countries.
I've read a few opinion pieces that say the SCO was basically responsible for the closure of the US' bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, and as far as I understand they have quietly blocked the US and NATO in other areas as well. So yeah, there's alot of power-play going on behind the scenes, and Middle-Eastern powers are developing some powerful friends of their own.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Cooperation_Organization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Cooperation_Organization)
(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2Fthumb%2F9%2F9c%2FSCO_Taiwan_Map2.png%2F250px-SCO_Taiwan_Map2.png&hash=b1e1addfecc397e56a511a8e061dd2de73b36c01)
Mina.
Very interesting, this looks like a positive step towards creating a better balance in this world.
Thanks for the link :)
@ imaz:
I don't know if it's a positive thing - power blocks are IMO always a bad thing, but yeah, from the POV that NATO led by the US needs to be balanced, I suppose.
Mina.
Quote from: mina.m->-bleeped-<-ie link=topic=57152.msg358418#msg358418 date=1236782334
@ imaz:
I don't know if it's a positive thing - power blocks are IMO always a bad thing, but yeah, from the POV that NATO led by the US needs to be balanced, I suppose.
Mina.
Well, just need ASEAN to join and then my bets are hedged... A foot in both camps!
Post Merge: March 11, 2009, 11:13:28 AM
Quote from: tekla on March 11, 2009, 08:12:09 AM
When Ferdinand and Isabella "reconquered" Granada, the last Muslim stronghold of al-Andalus in 1492 it was the Jews who got expelled or forced to convert first.
In that case it was strictly pleasure before business I'm afraid. The Spanish have a long history of anti-Semitic actions, though I'm not sure why. Sort of like Russia, every 20 years needed or not. And indeed most of the American Jewish immigrints have one of those two backgrounds, either Sephardic Jews (beginning in 1654, exiled from Brazil, Portugal and Spanish mostly) and the later flood of Ashkenazic Jews from Poland, Russia and Germany.
In Europe, I think that the Jews were always seen - until recently - as 'the other' in general. They were always the group out that never fit into the nationalism of the 17th and 18th and 19th Century Europe. That was never the deal in the US, where being much simpler people, we had a much simpler 'other' and that based 100% on race, religion never factored into it, and interestingly enough, many slaves were Christians at some point (though often not upon arrival). Many American Jews pay some sort of preference for Israel, but that support is a cultural deal, as they don't really view it as the "Promised Land" that being much more LA, NYC, and Chicago in reality.
I think a lot of that comes from the faux nationalism that was an artificial construction in a lot of Europe. A huge part of being French, or Spanish, or Irish was being Catholic, a huge part of being a 'real Englishman, or woman' was in the Church of England. And that European nationalism was all about a circular logic of belonging. To be a part of France you had to be French, to be a real part of England, you had to be English. To be a part of the real America you only had to be here and be in business. A very different kind of construction of belonging for sure.
I know that when outsiders look at the US they see the money, and they focus on the money, and they think we are money happy, and they are right. But what they miss is that the money is only really a symbol, a means of expression, and what America really loves - and I mean REALLY LOVES, and what really makes America, is work, business. Because all work in America becomes its own form of commerce. Sometimes I think the motto of the United States should be "Make money from your hobby." Really.
I've traveled part of the world, and I've lived most of my life in a very cosmopolitan place and I've known people from all over and if I had to sum up the entire American deal it would be this, "everywhere else people work to live, in the US people live to work." And that worked out very well for the Jews in America, they seemed to love to do business too - and since, as was so once so perfectly stated, "The business of America is business" they fit right in. So from the beginning they were never much of an 'other' nature to their presence.
But the Spanish had it in for the Jews, I think largely because it was no secret that the Spanish Jews liked it under Islam better than under rather severe Spanish Catholicism (and its important to see the European Catholic Church as several different churches and not a monolith, so the Spanish Catholic Church was its own very unique and different beast) so to a degree you sort of go after the traitors in your midst first. And considering that the very first thing the Spanish did after kicking out the Moors was to form the Spanish Inquistion, perhaps the Jews had a point.
They would happily destabilise a region if they thought it would benefit them, and the people be damned
Hell, all god's children would do that if they could. I can't think of anyone who's hands are clean of that.
I guess that American obsession with business is very hard for us Europeans to understand and vice versa.
Catholicism in Spain does indeed have a chequered history, Franco's form of Fascism is sometimes defined as National Catholicism as opposed to Fascist Italy's National Corporatism and Germany's National Socialism.
As regards the expulsion of the "Moors", after 800 years of Islamic rule very few of them could be considered ethnically not of Spanish origin. 800 years is a staggeringly long time, from today it would be back to 1209, uprooting a culture after such a long time was a great tragedy.
Of course the same thing happened in Sicily, under Islamic rule for approx 280 years. The last Muslims were exiled to Lucera di Puglia where they were slaughtered on orders of the Pope in the year 1300.
Personally it is my opinion that if Islam had remained in Spain we would have avoided many of the problems of the centuries that followed. The great divide of "us and them" separated by geography would not have happened and colonialism might have taken a different path if at all.
And no, I don't mean you would all be speaking Arabic by now! ;)
I guess that American obsession with business is very hard for us Europeans to understand and vice versa.
Yeah I know, its very different as I said, its about not being defined by who you are, or what you are, or who your parents are, but by what you do more than anything else.
It seems like what is missing is a recognition of the primal importance of the political hegemony in medieval, renaissance and pre-modern and modern Europe of Catholicism first and foremost and then the same primacy in various countries of various Protestant churches.
From 413 or so onward to 1525 -- over 1100 years -- Europe was the Church. Borders ebbed and flowed politically speaking and people came and went, but the unifying factor was Catholicism. No, it wasn't a world religion dspite the name. But, it was was a European religion and at the same time the one thing that brought together the continent from Sweden to Spain and from Ireland to Hungary.
The first discriminatory laws against Jews, particularly rabbis were promulgated by Theodosius the Great in the 390s. And he, not Constantine, made Catholicism the state religion. Yet, in less than 100 years his legacy was only carried forward from Byzantium/Istanbul. In the West there was an entirely different legacy.
The huge shock to Europe wasn't there when Belisarius undid the various East Goth and Vandal kingdoms for Justinian. The hugest shock to Western Europe came with the overthrow of the West Goth kingdom in Spain and the inroads made by the Ummayads into present-day France until 732 when Carolus the Hammer defeated them at Tours near Poitiers.
Soon Muslims held Sicily and the Balaerics and in Asia Minor most of what we now call Turkey to pretty much the walls of Byzantium. I think, perhaps, you'd want to imagine a grand conquest like one you had never thought possible and the "threat" remain under the Seljuks and later the Ottomans down to basically the mid-1600s when a coalition defeated the Ottoman Army at Vienna for the final time.
Back to Spain. There were good and regular political interests among the monarchs of what became Navarre, Leon, Castile, Aragon and, later, Portugal to "reconquer" the Iberian Peninsula. After all, at the various inceptions they were small and very poor kingdoms that ruled over mostly various Cantabrian and Pyrenees enclaves while Al-Andalus held the fertile and flatter and richer portions of Iberia. Yet, the tiny Christian kingdoms held one trump that Al-Andalus did not: the political and social power of the Papacy and its effectively only educated and competent infrastructure on the continent outside of Al-Andalus.
The monarchs of Christian Iberia (much like the dictators in Africa and South America under the anti-communist banner of the Cold War) found some value in mounting their fights for richer territory in the clothing of a "return to Christian hands" of the Iberian Peninsula.
They succesively became Defenders of the Faith and the Sword Arm of God as they pursued fealty to the Papal state that overlay every political entity in Western Europe. We have nothing comparable to that today. Papal legates had real power to withdraw communion from kings and peoples should their directives not be fulfilled. The power was used and usually the kings and emperors of Europe demurred.
In addition the Pope could grant indulgences and preach crusades and crusaders from Germany to Norway from England to Hungary and all points between would come to serve the various Iberian monarchs when necessary. The various politcal entities of Al-Andalus could not cope with the manpower or the fanaticism thus engendered except for very short periods of time. By 1238 the political map of Spain and Portugal was in fact about the way it is currently. Al-Andalus existed, but as a fief of the Castillian monarchy.
Aragon had turned it's face away from the Peninsula and instead toward the Balaerics, Sicily and southern Italy where much the same sort of "re-conquest" took place.
By 1212 at Navas de Tolosa and by 1215 at Muret the extermination of Jewish and Muslim cooperation with the Christians had been decided: there would be none. Innocent III and his successors with the aid of St. Dominic instituted policies whereby Jews and Moors were expressly offered conversion, exile or death: first in the Toulousain and then in Iberia. The ostensible reason was the extirpation of the Cathar heresy, but under Montfort and then under St. Louis and Blanche of Castille fewer hertics were wiped out than there were Jewish merchants and lenders and Muslim scribes, lawyers and merchants sent into exile.
The policy was transplanted to Iberia where it was met with approval by monarchs and commons alike. The Inquisition as such began in the 1230s as an official institution of the Church. It was mainly overseen by the Dominicans.
And so it goes.
The effective working together of all three religious during the Caliphate of Corboba between 929 & 1031 was overthrown with the fall of that Caliphate to some rather fundamentalist North African Berbers who had often formed the fighting arm of the Muslim kingdoms and Caliphates in Iberia. At that point both Christians and Jews tended to be excluded for the next 75 years from the goverment and administration of Al-Andalus. Except for a few more "liberal" areas (Catalonia and Toulouse) the same thing happened across Iberia. The hatreds and the political machinations were set-up long ago.
Nichole
Quote from: tekla on March 11, 2009, 12:13:48 PM
I guess that American obsession with business is very hard for us Europeans to understand and vice versa.
Yeah I know, its very different as I said, its about not being defined by who you are, or what you are, or who your parents are, but by what you do more than anything else.
Only if what you do happens to be a worthy, money-making pursuit - that's the impression one gets anyway, looking in from outside.
Mina.
Quote from: mina.m->-bleeped-<-ie link=topic=57152.msg358459#msg358459 date=1236792789
Only if what you do happens to be a worthy, money-making pursuit - that's the impression one gets anyway, looking in from outside.
Mina.
Really? Some of our more famous and revered "business" people have been crooks and charlatans
par excellence, Ponzi-schemers and outright criminals and liars! What we deem worthy is how much money they make and how effectively they assert their will to power. Why do you imagine that Ayn Rand is still held up as a sane and good political scenarist over here?
:laugh:
Forget the "worthy." If you make money you are worthy over here: that is all that ever makes one worthy in our national psyche.
Nichole
Quote from: Nichole on March 11, 2009, 12:38:16 PM
Really? Some of our more famous and revered "business" people have been crooks and charlatans par excellence, Ponzi-schemers and outright criminals and liars! What we deem worthy is how much money they make and how effectively they assert their will to power. Why do you imagine that Ayn Rand is still held up as a sane and good political scenarist over here?
Forget the "worthy." If you make money you are worthy over here: that is all that ever makes one worthy in our national psyche.
Well you know I didn't wanna be all confrontational and stuff. :P
Mina.
Quote from: mina.m->-bleeped-<-ie link=topic=57152.msg358466#msg358466 date=1236794025
Well you know I didn't wanna be all confrontational and stuff. :P
Mina.
Well, ya know, you weren't. But you also sounded as though you missed the entire American point. We started with that Calvinist notion that god shows his elect by how much wealth they exhibit through their hard-work.
That's only gotten more magnified over the past four centuries until today we make up the "hard-work" and rely on just the money-making! :)
Forget the "worthy." If you make money you are worthy over here: that is all that ever makes one worthy in our national psyche.
I think that is true.
That's only gotten more magnified over the past four centuries until today we make up the "hard-work" and rely on just the money-making!
I don't think that is. Not always at least.
It is a myth, and really quite false, that there is a hatred of Islam in the West today of anything like the sort that produced the inquisition, the pogroms, and the Holocaust.
The West basically supports Muslim democracies or Muslim countries moving toward democracy -- Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon, Kosovo and Bosnia -- to the extent they are democratic, the West supports them and tries to encourage them to be more so. Of course, we're mixed up badly with the Saudis -- they've got us by the gas nozzle -- so cynical short-tern national security sometimes takes priority, But basically the West doesn't care about your religion as long as you don't force it on others, you let people vote, and you're not funelling money to terrorists.
And, yes, sometimes that makes the West hypocritical.
~Alyssa
Quote from: Alyssa M. on March 11, 2009, 11:48:09 PM
It is a myth, and really quite false, that there is a hatred of Islam in the West today of anything like the sort that produced the inquisition, the pogroms, and the Holocaust.
The West basically supports Muslim democracies or Muslim countries moving toward democracy -- Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon, Kosovo and Bosnia -- to the extent they are democratic, the West supports them and tries to encourage them to be more so. Of course, we're mixed up badly with the Saudis -- they've got us by the gas nozzle -- so cynical short-tern national security sometimes takes priority, But basically the West doesn't care about your religion as long as you don't force it on others, you let people vote, and you're not funelling money to terrorists.
And, yes, sometimes that makes the West hypocritical.
I would agree for the most part, except that I would replace the word "democratic" with the word "market economy". The "democracy of the free market", so to speak.
Mina.
Quote from: Alyssa M. on March 11, 2009, 11:48:09 PM
It is a myth, and really quite false, that there is a hatred of Islam in the West today of anything like the sort that produced the inquisition, the pogroms, and the Holocaust.
The West basically supports Muslim democracies or Muslim countries moving toward democracy -- Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon, Kosovo and Bosnia -- to the extent they are democratic, the West supports them and tries to encourage them to be more so. Of course, we're mixed up badly with the Saudis -- they've got us by the gas nozzle -- so cynical short-tern national security sometimes takes priority, But basically the West doesn't care about your religion as long as you don't force it on others, you let people vote, and you're not funelling money to terrorists.
And, yes, sometimes that makes the West hypocritical.
~Alyssa
Sorry but I totally disagree. There is considerable Islamophobia in the West, more even perhaps among the general population than among governments themselves.
The West supports Pakistan? The West has destroyed Pakistan which is living with the after effects of US covert support to the mujahideen during the period of Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the attempts to buy power and influence through massive corruption.
If Syria and Egypt are democratic I'm the Pope...
As for the Saudi government, they are an utter disgrace, I cannot put into words how despicable I find them.
Indonesia... shall we start by remembering that Suharto's regime gained power through a military coup backed by the US. In the purge that followed between 500,000 and 1,000,000 people with Communist or left wing leanings were murdered. Unforgivable, plain and simple.
Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan have been destroyed or seriously damaged by western interventionism. Algeria is in mess as the West backed a coup against the democratically elected FIS. As for Palestine ...
I would recommend a book by William Blum entitled "Rogue State" that details how The West and the US in particular has intervened, manipulated and coerced around the world for the last 100 years or so in an attempt to crack open markets. Let's be honest, "democracy" is an excuse, nothing more: All international policy is geared towards securing resources and maximising profits.
Mina.
Quote from: mina.m->-bleeped-<-ie link=topic=57152.msg358751#msg358751 date=1236861296
I would recommend a book by William Blum entitled "Rogue State" that details how The West and the US in particular has intervened, manipulated and coerced around the world for the last 100 years or so in an attempt to crack open markets. Let's be honest, "democracy" is an excuse, nothing more: All international policy is geared towards securing resources and maximising profits.
Mina.
100 years only? you're being too generous.
I was speaking in terms of the book, which only really covers interventions from WWI onwards, if I remember correctly - haven't read it in a few years.
Mina.
US Military Interventions since 1890...
http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html (http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html)
"Every country, every ethnicity, every religion, contains within it the capability for extreme violence. Every group contains a faction that is intolerant of other groups, and actively seeks to exclude or even kill them. War fever tends to encourage the intolerant faction, but the faction only succeeds in its goals if the rest of the group acquiesces or remains silent. The attacks of September 11 were not only a test for U.S. citizens attitudes' toward minority ethnic/racial groups in their own country, but a test for our relationship with the rest of the world. We must begin not by lashing out at civilians in Muslim countries, but by taking responsibility for our own history and our own actions, and how they have fed the cycle of violence."
but by taking responsibility for our own history and our own actions, and how they have fed the cycle of violence."
Oh, like that's ever going to happen.
Actually, up until like 9-10 most Americans didn't know and didn't care. The areas, like Jersey and Detroit that had significant populations of Islamic immigrants had little problem with them, nor vice-versa. About the only conflict was in Dearborn Mich over a mosque that was going to blare the call to prayer over a loudspeaker how ever many times a day they do that, and the neighborhood wasn't thrilled. In the end I think the mosque was able to play it, but at a volume that no one could hear. I think the American take on that was, if you have to pray at X time every day, get a watch with an alarm.
I worked in SF for a huge multinational that had huge contracts in Islamic nations, and we employed a large group of Islamic followers, and aside from the stairwells being full at break time (which was prayer time as it turned out) with people praying, I don't think anyone cared - and I don't think they even cared about that. You're polite, respectful and just walk around them. It was just one more crazy religion in SF, which has tons of crazy religions.
Even the first World Trade Center bombing didn't get anyone all that upset, it was only the one that worked that got attention. Our homegrown white supremacists, militias, left-wing psudo-revolutionaries, and religious cults (in fine fashion, many are all four, which is confusing) were much more dangerous, and got more attention.
It was only in the wake of 9-11, spectacular as it was, that people noticed at all. There were several incidents post 9-11 - though few in a country with 300 million population, and some stand out as really dumb, like the Goobers who attacked a follower of Sikhism, not knowing that all turbans are not alike, and if you want some people who really hate Islam, try the followers of Sikhism and Hindu religions in India.
Fact be told, I think most people in 20th Century America find it easy to deal with non-intrusive religions, like say, Bahi, and tend not to like the ones that have a strong evangelical bent, like Christianity and Islam. It's kinda like the best thing about the Jewish religion is no one is ever going to ask you to join, or preach at you, or tell you you're going to hell (they might well think it, but at least they don't say it).
But, after 9-11, that did change, though not to the extent that has surfaced in other European populations, and though I poorly tried to explain it earlier, I'll try again. Europe sees Islam as 'the other' and sees its traditions/culture and all that rot as being threatened by Islamic workers, families and immigration. To the English, French, Germans and Dutch, these people will never be seen as "true Englishmen", or "Good Germans", or "really French" or whatever.
In the US, with no national culture to speak of to violate, with no national language to speak outside the bounds of, with all sort of weird religions with weird rituals - see say, the Amish and Mennonites, or the rather large groups of hasidic Jews, or the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, Native religions, and home grown ones like LDS - all over the place, Islam does not stand out as 'the other' they are just one more.
They have far less of a problem in the USA because none of that really matters, and often unsaid, we have a very corrosive social milue that pretty much strips all that off after a few generations. I see it all the time in the Bay Area where grandmother, mom and daughter are walking down the streets and grandmother is in full Indian, or Islamic regalia, mom has some but it's toned way down, and the teenage girl looks and dresses like all the other teenagers in her high school. Three generations to lose the faith. Its pretty much all it takes, and we more or less depend on it.
That the flag follows the dollar, well twas' ever thus, and its not something unique to America, we were just really, really good at it. One quote I love to use is this, from the most highly decorated solider in US history:
It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.
I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
You can find the entire deal here:
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm (http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm)
AND....
If this is true for the West:
but by taking responsibility for our own history and our own actions, and how they have fed the cycle of violence
Is it not true for Islam also?
Not sure that one can call Islam "evangelical"... Il Vangelo = The New Testament AFAIK, called Injil in Arabic from the same Greek root.
Some Sikhs and Hindus may indeed hate us but they do not constitute a threat on the same scale as does the US, nor have they been up to the same level of invading, occupying and killing. Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine are occupied by whom?
Our history is one of violence? One has to take into account the damage caused by colonialism and we live with its after effects.
By the way "Islamic followers "are usually called Muslims, it's more polite that way. ;)
O geo-political manouvering is old as the Chaldees, Hittites and Egyptians, toss in the Minoans, the Persians, the Franks, Saxons, Poles, Lithuanians, Romans, Greeks, Rus, Brits, Castillians and Aragonese, the Heavenly Kingdom of Ch'in and it's descendants, Berbers, Moors, Mughals, Mongols (of various sorts) Songhais, Kanem Boruns, Vaticanans, Americans, Dutch, Swedes, and yes, Arabs as well and Turks and the mixture of Turkomans and others that were the glory of Samarkand and you've quite a vast array of governments who never apologized for working their collective or singular wills on people they found weak enough to be swayed through their economic and military might to a place where the roughnecks could say: we have peace.
The West may not be any worse and is certainly not better than any of the others (although I would only use "The West advisedly as that mainly translates to US government and business interests.) For the rest we could mostly give a fig.
Were Mulims conquerors and colonialists? Why, yes they were. Their saving grace is the decline their various empires have seen in the past 400 years. When someone says now that "The Turk is at the gates of Vienna" the only notice will prolly be taken by followers of Galatasaray & Rapid Wien! :laugh:
But there were times and they may yet return. Certainly anyone who finds comfort in the fact that "The West" may always rule as it does, or did, will be shortly disabused of that illusion if they haven't already been. A read or two of Bill Kristol should make you realize that not everyone gets that though, maybe most especially the neo-con morons and their "think" tanks.
Colonialism and invasion, slaughters in the names of various gods, missionaries (even Ashoka sent Buddhist missionaries all over!) are as human as apple pie is American.
The blame and responsibility, should anyone choose to accept it, is abundant and spread across human history like a thick coat of marmalade, or maybe blutwuerst.
Who are the innocents? I am assured there are none.
--- O, the hard worker trope, tekla. Yes a lot of people do work very hard, I just find some of the peddlers of the hard work trope seem terribly sybaritic and otiose. :laugh: ---
Nichole
"...followers of Galatasaray..."
Mamma li Turchi! ;D
I don't think its as much about the 'hard worker' deal, as it is about the work itself, we define ourselves not so much by family (if we did, there would be no need to proclaim 'family values' at ever turn) or religion, or national origin, and I just think that more than other places Americans tend to define themselves by their work more than other possible groupings.
As for Islam and Hindu relations, yeah, that whole partition deal worked out real well didn't it? I'm sure the Indian nuclear weapons are pointed at an Islamic state. Not that Pakistan needs help, its doing a darn good job destroying itself at this very minute.
And, I use the term 'evangelical' in the terms of working for, and seeking converts. Most religions preach some form of converting, happy are those that don't.
Quote from: tekla on March 12, 2009, 02:49:36 PM
I don't think its as much about the 'hard worker' deal, as it is about the work itself, we define ourselves not so much by family (if we did, there would be no need to proclaim 'family values' at ever turn) or religion, or national origin, and I just think that more than other places Americans tend to define themselves by their work more than other possible groupings.
As for Islam and Hindu relations, yeah, that whole partition deal worked out real well didn't it? I'm sure the Indian nuclear weapons are pointed at an Islamic state. Not that Pakistan needs help, its doing a darn good job destroying itself at this very minute.
And, I use the term 'evangelical' in the terms of working for, and seeking converts. Most religions preach some form of converting, happy are those that don't.
I find the comment concerning Pakistan extremely offensive...
Quote from: tekla on March 12, 2009, 02:49:36 PM
As for Islam and Hindu relations, yeah, that whole partition deal worked out real well didn't it? I'm sure the Indian nuclear weapons are pointed at an Islamic state. Not that Pakistan needs help, its doing a darn good job destroying itself at this very minute.
Britain has done a consistently excellent job at partitioning, doncha think? Palestine, India/Pakistan, Nigeria, Rwanda/Uganda, Sudan/Darfur, USA/Botswana, Zimbabwe/Malawi, etc: the hits just keep coming, don't they?
Perhaps the divisive divisions in the sub-continent were not the absolute making of the indigenous peoples there?
Just a thought.
Nichole
Quote from: imaz on March 12, 2009, 07:10:01 AM
Sorry but I totally disagree. There is considerable Islamophobia in the West, more even perhaps among the general population than among governments themselves.
The West supports Pakistan? The West has destroyed Pakistan which is living with the after effects of US covert support to the mujahideen during the period of Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the attempts to buy power and influence through massive corruption.
If Syria and Egypt are democratic I'm the Pope...
As for the Saudi government, they are an utter disgrace, I cannot put into words how despicable I find them.
Indonesia... shall we start by remembering that Suharto's regime gained power through a military coup backed by the US. In the purge that followed between 500,000 and 1,000,000 people with Communist or left wing leanings were murdered. Unforgivable, plain and simple.
Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan have been destroyed or seriously damaged by western interventionism. Algeria is in mess as the West backed a coup against the democratically elected FIS. As for Palestine ...
1) Very few people care if you are Muslim in the U.S. France is a diffedrent story, mainly because they are so allergic to religion (still haven't gotten over the pre-1789 Catholic dominance); Germany has typical immigrant issues. Yes, there are some rednecks and bigots, but by and large, you're as free to practice Islam in America as you are in Mecca, if not more so.
2) Pakistan has been screwed up, especially because of the Kashmir disaster, since the split with India. Bush was an idiot and supported Musharraf, but the long-incipient democracy has always been something America tried to support. But, gee, it's South Asia, and yes, it's a huge mess. And support for the rebellion against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan is a bad thing? Excuse me? Perhaps I should ask my friend who was born in Kabul and whose family fled when she was an infant. The only bad thing was that we drew down support after the end of the Cold War under the misguided assumption that we were entering a halcyon period of peace and prosperity.
3) Indonesia: Yup, the U.S. supported a lot of attrocious regimes in the very cynical playout of the Cold War. Perhaps you are unaware of the scale of the evil that was Communist Russia, not to mention China under Mao. If you knew anyone that suffered under that oppression, perhaps you could understand. The U.S. committed terrible acts in WWII as well. It is not to excuse those acts that I say that you can't take them out of that context. It was not about racism or religion. (Remember, for example, that the atomic bomb was developed for use against Germany; if we'd finished it a year earlier we would surely have used it there.)
4) Syria is becoming more democratic, or at least open. The Pope is in Egypt, which allows more freedom of expression and democratic input than most Middle Eastern countries. Sorry, I was stretching to try to find some glimmer of democracy in the Middle East. I guess you have to go to Tel Aviv for that.
5) Blame the French for Algeria.
Look, the bottom line is the West, or at least the United States, doesn't treat the Muslim world any differently than it treats any other part of the world. Nobody cares whether Suharto was Muslim; Lumumba and Allende certainly weren't; that wasn't the issue. The U.S. tries to live up to its ideals to support democracy and human rights and, yes, generally free markets, and frequently fails because of short-term cynical interests. Just like everyone else.
The myth is that the U.S. somehow has got it in for Islam. It's just not true.
I'm sorry but I disagree on so many counts I'm too tired to respond right now.
I fail to share your anti Communist fervour and certainly don't consider Israel a bastion of democacy. As for the deposing of Allende and the subsequent horrors I'm lost for words, Suharto was a mega bastard and a bigger believer in Javanese animism than Islam btw.
Please try to understand that a huge number of us in the World outside the US do not in any way share your nationalistic world view and in fact view the US as a major threat to peace.
These last two posts are interesting. In that they take me back to 1978-1983 when I lived in Germany, Berlin and Muenchen.
The reminiscence has to do with something I saw at that time concerning El Salvador & Nicaraugua and the differences between the way my German friends mostly saw those two areas and USA involvement in them and the way my American friends saw them.
Actually both Alyssa and Imaz could be in one of the cafes in either of those two cities around that time having this conversation.
I hate to say it, but Americans seem to truly believe that what we read and hear on our news is somehow more truthful than what anyone else gets. I had imagined that true as well until I found myself comparing ARD and the Armed Forces Networks in both cities.
American news and information programming almost always slants things in such ways that make it seem as if we are more altruistic and good in our shenanighens than other countries. In doing so much factual evidence is discarded. But, that's what plays in Peoria.
Politics will be politics and all, but I cannot imagine that were I an Afghani woman with a child killed by Soviet troops in the 80s or an Afghani woman whose child was killed by a former safety for the Arizona Cardinals turned U.S Special Forces Ranger that I'd feel a lot of difference in how my child had been slain.
But, that's just in my mind.
Nichole
My hatred of the Soviet Union has nothing to do with the American media. It has everything to do with my family history. And Nichole, the Soviet occupation and our present occupation Afghanistan are different conflicts, whatever the links between them might be, and our involvement in them ought to be judged separately.
I'm not at all trying to defend the actions of the United States over history -- for heaven's sake, why would I have brought up Lumumba and Allende if I were? -- but to explain some of the intent, and how it relates to Islam, which is scarcely at all. The United States is rather balanced in its generosity as well as its destructiveness and greediness. Frankly I understand all of the atrocities perpetrated by or in the name of the United States. It's simply a matter of balance: When I hear people condemning the United States without recognizing the vast amount of culpability that their own countries share, frankly I find it hypocritical. When I hear (which I do not at this moment) Americans condemning other nations without considering our own immense amount of culpability, I find that hypocritical too. But that's a different thread.
Don't assume that because I disagree with one extreme point of view that I hold the opposing extreme point of view.
Look: the West has plenty of misconceptions about Islam; that goes without saying. All I'm saying is that the Muslim world should consider how many misconceptions it has about America.
There was no judgement of either occupation at all, Alyssa. There was simply the musing that were my child slain in either by one man or another I would prolly not make a great differential in why one European power was propping up one Afghani faction and a North American power was propping up another.
My child would be dead: and I'd likely hate and be willing to kill people from whichever entity I had deemed responsible for her death. That's not geo-political, neo-con or cold warrior-con. It's human, luv.
Nichole
Quote from: Alyssa M. on March 12, 2009, 11:33:26 PMThe United States is rather balanced in its generosity as well as its destructiveness and greediness. Frankly I understand all of the atrocities perpetrated by or in the name of the United States. It's simply a matter of balance: When I hear people condemning the United States without recognizing the vast amount of culpability that their own countries share, frankly I find it hypocritical. When I hear (which I do not at this moment) Americans condemning other nations without considering our own immense amount of culpability, I find that hypocritical too. But that's a different thread.
I agree Alyssa, all states are naturally oppressive and expansionist, which is why I'm such a fervent supporter of Anarchism despite any difficulties there are in implementation or short-term problems it might have. People are easily manipulated, especially if they are misled by media (which is as much the business as usual elsewhere as it is in the US), and the only way to prevent that is to dismantle the mechanisms of power that allow for that abuse to take place. But that too is for another thread. The only point I was trying to make about the US and its foreign policy is that it is much more ideologically fundamentalist when it comes to market capitalism than democracy or human rights or religion or anything else, though religion does seem to feature more and more heavily in some parts of the country. Both the USSR and the USA were simply more damaging because it had the resources to do so, where other powers simply didn't.
Nobody disputes that the USSR was bloody and brutal and downright evil, but what I am arguing is that that is no less true of the US. Likewise for most of the Muslim countries, as for the rest of the world actually. All it boils down to is scale, and the problem with most of us is that we conflate the individuals who, largely by accident, are citizens of a country with their state and government, which is there by ambition, manipulation and often violence. So when people in the US do become anti-Muslim, and let's be honest, there are many, they do so because they conflate. A handful of Muslims bombed us and we see a couple of hundred burn and effigy or a flag on TV now and again, so they must all hate us, the bastards! The reality though is that those people condemning America or attacking Americans abroad or even bombing people are generalising and conflating as much as the first group is, and they turn states into these monolithic "persons" duking it out instead of a bunch of rich, greedy bastards at the top either manipulating or oppressing their populace and basically doing what they do for personal gain. It makes no sense for us to squabble like this when the real enemies are those asses in the palaces and boardrooms of the world.
Mina.
Mina.
Nichole, I just meant that each occupation might rightly be judged harshly for that very reason; supporting the resistance is another thing entirely. I think I just read too much into what you were saying. :-\
MinaMina, I agree that the U.S. is far too interested in business compared to other interests. I wouldn't dismiss economic interests as illegitimate, though I do think that the ways that the U.S. pursues them often are. But I won't accept that the bloody evil that was the USSR is "no less true" for the U.S. There's simply no comparison.
I don't support Anarchism now because it needs a laboratory to show how it could work, lest any attempt at it might simply become chaos from which despotism would emerge. Even democracy, to the somewhat limited extent practiced today, is fragile. But I certainly don't think that democracy is the end of the road in terms of ways we ought to better stucture our society; it's just the least bad among the various methods that from time to time have been attempted.
Alyssalyssa. ;) ;) :P
Quote from: Alyssa M. on March 13, 2009, 01:34:44 AMAlyssalyssa. ;) ;) :P
That's what occasionally happens when you build up cut-n-paste responses. ;D
QuoteI don't support Anarchism now because it needs a laboratory to show how it could work, lest any attempt at it might simply become chaos from which despotism would emerge. Even democracy, to the somewhat limited extent practiced today, is fragile. But I certainly don't think that democracy is the end of the road in terms of ways we ought to better stucture our society; it's just the least bad among the various methods that from time to time have been attempted.
Anarchism has had a number of laboratory cases that have worked, but none of them were allowed to last for very long - the Paris Commune was crushed by French and Prussian forces, the Spanish anarchists that successfully ran much of the country during the civil war were eventually beaten by Franco, and most recently, after the collapse of capitalism in Argentina (much like what's happening world-wide right now), workers and peasants collectivised factories and farms and ran their own affairs through direct democracy, which is basically all that anarchism is. The one problem anarchism has is that it still has to find a way to coordinate violence as effectively as other ideologies do.
There's actually a substantial list of them - wikipedia does a good job at summary - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_and_present_anarchist_communities (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_and_present_anarchist_communities)
Just one point - It's important to distinguish between "Left Anarchism", which favours collective ownership and decision-making, with "Right Anarchism", which is basically what proponents of free markets and globalisation favour. The US is actually much more Anarchist than it thinks - government has limited power and the right constantly pushes for even less, and theoretically everybody has equal power through business and the market, but it also serves as an example to left-anarchists of why "Right-Anarchism" is a contradiction. Power naturally aggregates into the hands of business leaders, until you're left with the same role and oppression as that associated with the state, only now it's in the hands of business-people.
But yeah, those labs do show that people have a natural ability to organise their own affairs equitably as long as they're not interfered with.
Mina.
Post Merge: March 13, 2009, 02:35:26 AM
Quote from: mina.m->-bleeped-<-ie link=topic=57152.msg359137#msg359137 date=1236928830The one problem anarchism has is that it still has to find a way to coordinate violence as effectively as other ideologies do.
Which I'll admit is a huge one. Anarchists are often portrayed as violently anti-authoritarian (which we sometimes are ;) ), but we're not very good at violence, which is a problem, since violence still trumps everything else in an argument, as much as we'd like for that not to be the case.
Mina.