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

"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

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!

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. ---

Nichole 

"...followers of Galatasaray..."

Mamma li Turchi!

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.

Quote from: Alyssa M. on March 13, 2009, 01:34:44 AMAlyssalyssa.

That's what occasionally happens when you build up cut-n-paste responses.

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

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.

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Post Merge: March 13, 2009, 02:35:26 AM

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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.