Few Iraqis embraced the jihadis until the Americans stole Iraq's oil. Similarly, only 18% of the Lebanese supported Hezbollah before the current Israeli strikes. When the refugees return, we can expect every one of them to seethe with rage at Israel -- and at the United States, which has sped up Israel's supply of precision-guided weaponry.Worse still: We have growing indications of Israeli chemical warfare. Bachir Cham, a Belgian/Lebanese doctor who runs a hospital in Lebanon, offers this report:
"The bodies don't look like they normally do. After an explosion there were no traces of blood loss or subcutaneous haemorrhages [bruises]," Cham said via mobile phone direct from Beirut.After reading these words, I'm worried about Samantha Green -- a Canadian student doing a summer internship the American University in Beirut -- who has decided not to join the evacuation. Her voice narrates a powerful slide presentation here, and the Hamilton Spectator publishes her story here:
"The hair and sometimes the beard and the moustache remained intact. I found no traces of the pressure wave by the explosion. The colour of the skin was black like a shoe, but the skin was not carbonised or burnt."
Many Americans don't understand that a large number of Christians live in Lebanon -- in fact, the world's last remaining native speakers of Aramaic, the language of Jesus, reside here. Fans of historical irony will find grim humor in the fact that the "Christians" of the American south have enabled Israeli attacks on Christians in Lebanon's north. Indeed, the IDF targeted the media outlets of the very "Cedar Revolution" which the Bush administation had once supported.When I arrived two months ago, the atmosphere was an instantly appealing mix of Mediterranean and Arab culture. The depth and variety of history and culture was amazing, the food was great and cheap, and the locals were the most welcoming people I've come across, opening their homes, their kitchens, even their weddings, to me...
The Lebanese are scared, and sad, and also overwhelmingly angry. The majority of the Lebanese do not naturally support Hezbollah, but Israeli attacks are rallying support. I am staying in a dorm at the American University of Beirut, and even these least radical Lebanese were joyful when Hezbollah hit an Israeli warship.
I've volunteered in a public garden to which refugees from Beirut's southern suburbs have fled. These families, among Beirut's poorest, have had their homes destroyed by Israeli bombing and have nowhere left to go.
Since schools and community centres are full, entire families have brought mattresses and bags of clothes to camp out in the garden. There are no sanitation facilities and no shelter. Some families have been there for six days now.
The Israelis are smart -- much smarter than their easily-gulled American supporters. The Israelis know full well that this offensive will raise sympathy for Hezbollah from 18% to 100%. Why, then, the attack on Lebanon? I doubt that the stated reasons are the real ones; indeed, I would not be surprised to learn that some Hezbollah attacks were provoked or staged. (Note the precedent.)
So why would Israel engage in such a risky adventure? For the same reason America invaded Iraq: A desperate need for a diminishing natural resource.
The current Lebanese war is about water.
Few Americans understand this, because few Americans can imagine living in a region where the demand for water exceeds supply. But this natural resource has long been at the real root of Israeli/Lebanese conflict. As this report notes: Almost half of the water currently used in Israel is captured, diverted or preempted from its neighbors." This is understandable, given water can be described as "Israel's vulnerable and fragile source of life.Moreover:
Today, in 2006, Israel lives with increasing water shortages and a rapidly decreasing supply of fresh water. The river Jordan may run dry within the next two years, because of the vast amount of water being drawn from the river by the people living in the area.(Emphasis added.) From a brief -- yet monumentally important -- 2002 New York Times story:
Senior officials from the United States Embassy in Beirut met Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri to try to defuse a dispute with Israel over Lebanon's plans to use water both countries say they need. Israel has said it takes a "grave view" of Lebanon's plan to pipe water to southern villages from the Wazzani Springs, three miles north of the Israeli border. The springs feed the Hasbani River, a tributary of the Jordan River, which is a major source of Israel's fresh water. Lebanon says that it is within its rights under international law and that it plans to open a pumping station soon.Few in the West now recalls that in 2002, Uri Saguy -- head of the Israeli water suppply, as well as the former head of Israeli military intelligence -- warned that "war or forceful confrontation" would result if Lebanon continued to access its own water. (This, despite the fact that the Lebanese had already allowed the bully to the south to install pumps at the Springs.) See also this story in the Christian Science Monitor.
Hariri is gone now, and those southern villages have been reduced to rubble. When the current conflict ends, Israel will control the Wazzani Springs.
UPDATE: Quite independently, Jeff Wells over at Rigorous Intuition came to much the same conclusion. He quotes from a book called Watershed: The Role of Fresh Water in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (unread by me); apparently, the Litani has played a major role in Zionist strategic thinking well before Israel came to exist. We also learn that the Ogallala aquifer in the U.S. may be endangered, and that none other than the Reverend Moon has been buying up territory surrounding South America's Guarani Aquifer.
Water. It's the new oil.
29 comments:
You forget to note one very important thing. Israel did not start this. Israel has zero interest in waging war on Lebanon. This whole mess started when Hezbulla attacked Israel, out of the blue, one Wednesday morning. Not only kidnapping soldiers (on Israeli territory), but by launching a barrage of rockets and mortar shells on Israeli towns a long the border on that very same day (prior to the kindnapping, during and ever since).
Yes, water issues are important in our region, but assuming that this is why Israel is bombing Lebanon is, well, ummmm, far fetched. Or do you think maybe Hezbulla attacked us because they want more water? I don't think so...
If we need more water, trust me, there other, much cheaper options available to Israel. Water desalination is one. Importing water from Turkey is another. Simply cutting down on agriculture is a third. Any of these, or a combination, would be much cheaper and more sensible then waging a war on a neighboring country.
The reason for the war? Hmmmm ask Nassarall, he would be the only one who actually knows. The rest of us can only guess.
As for the accusations about Chemical weapons... please, don't even go there. It's ludicrious, no other word for it. As a former captain in the IDF, let me give you my personal 100% guarantee that this is simply NOT the case. Really, the war is bad enough without adding fantasies and rumors to the mix.
Wow. I feel like I just failed to recognize the huge elephant in the room. The WATER. Of course.
I would only modify is the last sentence to state:
"When the current conflict ends, the United States will control the Wazzani Springs."
It is not enough to control the flow of oil. The United States must now control the source of life itself.
I have often wondered whether Justices Kennedy and O'Connor would have ordered the vote counting in Florida to stop in 2000, if they had been given even a small glimpse of the world in 2006. Tragically, the answer is probably no.
Kim in PA
Well now, isrealimom, since you've offered your "personal 100% guarantee" that these are nothing but "fantasies and rumors," I'm just so relieved. I mean here I was, worried about the fate of a planet controlled by insane, fundamentalist bullies on both sides of the Atlantic, but no worries now. Your impassioned, thoroughly objective, well-reasoned arguments have put my mind at ease. Thanks so much.
Now buh-bye.
Kim in PA
Fuck you "Israeli Mom."
In the first place, I do not agree with your presumption that you have a god-given right to live in that land. Frankly, I do not believe that it was rightfully your land even in the days of Solomon and David. Any objective, non-theistic reading of the book of Joshua will prove that point beyond reasonable dispute.
And I say all of the above as someone who is fully aware that he lives in territory that rightfully belongs to the Chumash Indians.
In the second place, your own former head of military intelligence said that there would be war if Lebanon did not insist on taking more of its own water from its own pumping station. That's a fact. You cannot dispute it.
Now there IS war.
How DARE you say that "Israel has zero interest in waging war on Lebanon"? WHAT A LIE! Water is the interest. Israel cannot survive unless it steals Lebanon's water.
During America's Indian wars, every act of aggression by the whites was justified as a counter-move against attacks by "hostile" natives. From the standpoint of history, we know that the real reason for the war on Native Americans was pure land theft.
Theft of national resources is also the reason for the war in Iraq.
And it is also the reason for the war in Lebanon. All other rationales are pure propaganda.
wow, joe. you've done more than digging for this work; it's more like divining!
i'm quite interested in israelimom's comment. it reminds me of several conversations i've had recently with folks who only get the msm angle on all this, and even some very progressive bloggers back away from any real scrutiny of israel for a variety of bizarre reasons, but often because they are themselves jewish.
your guarantee that israel does not use chemical weapons is hollow as a dried up well. and we should trust you that israel has better things to do than bomb for water? we should believe you that israel has no interest in invading lebanon? please explain previous invasions and the nearly 20 year occupation? and please explain how you can cast such unquestioning blame and dispersion upon a man whose name you cannot even spell. hezbollah's leader is sayyed hassan nasrallah, not nassarall.
i'm with joe full throttle on this. i harbor no inherent displeasure with jews as a people, nor against any other peoples. but when a country's leadership behaves badly, over and over again (israel's history with this goes way further back than joshua), when it attacks and oppresses others and justifies its actions in the name of god and being chosen, it frankly sounds delusional. very very delusional.
such is the language of the bush regime, and such was the language of hitler's regime.
do you honestly believe you as humans are incapable of those human evils? do you honestly believe you as humans have not become the worst monster of your own torment?
i would offer a mirror as a gift if i thought you had not been completely blinded.
I removed an earlier comment (an addendum to my words to "Israeli mom" because, writing at white hot speed, I made quite a few typos. Apologies. Here is a somewhat cleaner version:
* * *
Correction: I said "In the second place, your own former head of military intelligence said that there would be war if Lebanon did not insist on taking more of its own water from its own pumping station."
I should have said: "...if Lebanon continued to insist on taking more of its own water from its own pumping station."
It's cute. On the question of water, I am being asked to take the word of an anonymous "Isreali mom" over that of the former head of Israeli military intelligence. Sorry --- no sale!
Water desalinization and importation are terribly expensive options. So is war, but there you have the American taxpayers footing the bill. Desalinization and importation are yearly expenses; destroying southern Lebanon and stealing Lebanese water need only be done once.
The odd thing about "Isrealimom" (sic) is that his/her Blogger username misspells the name of the country that he/she purports to represent.
One might think that a real Israeli would not spell Israel as Isreal.
In any case, I gotta endorse Joseph's rebuttals to this commenter.
Joseph,
I seem to remember something about the dispute over Golan Heights having to do with source/origins of water as well. Do you know anything about that? And if that's the case, that would explain the refusal to return that area back, would it not?
The best article I have read so far about the situation in Lebenan is by Jonathan Cutler at ZNet www.zmag.org called "The Devil Wears Persian". Like Joseph, I have wondered about the method to this madness first in Iraq and now in Lebenan. I'd like to hear what others think about his theory.
I have seen that exact misspelling of Israel by another signer on another blog. Me thinks it might be same person playing games.
The coming "resource wars" have been predicted for a decade or so. We have no reason to think they haven't already started. In fact, we have considerable evidence that they are ongoing. Access to oilfields and pipelines has been THE number one factor in international relations during the past ten years.
For some reason, the concept of water as a scarce resource seems to fly under the radar. In time, that will change. Living here in eastern Oregon, where the limited supplies of freshwater are claimed by salmon fishermen, farmers, Native Americans, municipalities, and power plants, is an instructive experience in the problem.
Even if this water issue flies under the radar for the MSM and most citizens, The-Powers-That-Be understand it very well. I don't know if Joseph is right about its role in this particular military conflict, but anyone who says that the issue can't possibly matter doesn't grasp the importance of freshwater today.
Honestly, I had wondered if at least a PART of the rationale for the Israeli "over-reaction" was a desire to disable a burgeoning economy unfolding within its neighbor's borders. At one time, Lebanon was a beautiful country with one of the most vibrant, cosmopolitan cities ANYWHERE: Beirut. Given that Lebanon appeared well on its way to recovering its once glorious past, could the Israelis have been just a bit envious as well as a bit concerned that growing levels of international investment in Lebanon might come at the expense of investment in Israel?
The H20 angle on all of this casts another interesting light on the escalating conflagration. And it makes sense entirely. Terrorism - ie, the bad guys - makes for a far more palatable justification for military engagement than does a fight over land, water, oil or the natural resource of one's choice. Let's face it, the international community and just about any reasonable human being would frown on such a thing. And if certain spoils were to be won in the course of rooting out those bloody terrorists, then all the better. Oil in Iraq. Poppy fields in Afghanistan. Water in Lebanon. Land in the American west. The list goes on and on and on.
Knowing just how deceiptful and treacherous the Israeli leadership can be, I would be surprised at very little that they might undertake. False flag operations are their hallmark. The Mossad wrote the book on them. In fact, the Mossad's motto is, "By way of deception, thou shalt do war." The 1955 Lavon Affair was one of their false flag ops that got away from them. With the Israelis, just about anything is possible.
"Isrealimon" need only refer to Israeli TV if she wants one explanation of the attack: to set back Lebanon by 20 years. A high military official said exactly that, for all the world to hear. The comment was reported by NPR once or twice on its hourly newscast, then disappeared.
The only U.S. newspaper to cover it (at least, that can be found through google) was the New York Sun.
For the rest of you: guys, be a little more careful and thoughtful. Israel may be a Jewish state, but the actions it's undertaking have nothing to do with being racially Jewish.
Israel is acting like a lot of rogue states (including our very own). It's unfortunate that a segment of its population has biblical fantasies, and that Israel has institutionalized racism to sustain the occupation and the seize mentality, but that's hardly unique to Israel either.
And miserable as the occupation is, neighboring [Arab] states have killed far more Palestinians than the Israelis.
Excellent article and links.
The argument by "isrealimom" that there are cheaper means of getting water doesn't address the Israeli threats over the Wazzani Springs pump noted in the Christian Science Monitor link.
If they didn't need this water, why make threats over it?
iLarynx
The Israelis are making a terrible mistake in Lebanon, whatever their secret agenda. No one is going to forget this.
Fuck political correctness. The reason Jews got targeted by Nazis in the Thirties was because of the privations that the Depression (and the WWI reparations) brought down on German citizens. Was the scapegoating of Jews entirely misplaced? Isn't it more likely that the Germans saw a connection between their troubles and the influence that wealthy Jewish industrialists and bankers had had on their country? Is anyone out there actually naive enough to believe the that there was no basis to the accusations the Nazis leveled?
Skip forward seven decades. When the global economic and financial collapse arrives, as it will very soon, is anyone actually naive enough to believe that people will have forgotten AIPAC, and how it steered American into squandering its treasury and moral integrity in Iraq? Is anyone actually naive enough to believe that survivors of the global crash will not blame Israel for the morally reprehensible behaviors it practiced when it felt it was above the rules of international law? How it bombed Lebanon in violation of the Geneva accords?
And when the new Holocaust comes, who will be surprised? The whole Judeo-Christian paradigm will pay the price when the piper makes his appearance and demands payment.
There won't be a church or a synagogue left unburned. Sic transit arrogance.
A question: in what country will the Bush crime family find legal sanctuary from the war crimes tribunals? Maybe China, which will own all our factories, ports, mines, and highways by then.
I am ashamed now to admit that as a kid I wished I was Jewish.
unirealist, always good to hear your angle, but i wonder if your take on the nazi persecution of jews in germany might be a tad overstated? when making the increasingly obvious comparison to our current rabid fascists, their ease in blaming liberals for everything from failure in iraq to economic ruin and wildfires. these folks don't need real evidence of anything, so i catuion against something akin to resorting to proof by the consequence in buliding a case against the jewish race.
on the other hand, there is no question that they have interestingly become almost as fascist and cruel as their nazi oppressors, and that every cruelty and brutality they perpetrate on the helpless will definitely be remembered by their victims.
as per my earlier point: these hostilities stem from long-remembered cruelties perpetrated by both sides from time immemorial. despite the immediate excuses, be they water or oil or national security, the inclination to use force to solve any and all problems, which requires the demonization of their perpetual 'enemy' (which they all find so easy to do), is the real crux of this and all such endless nightmares.
the use of force becomes an excuse in itself, and is exacerbated by the inability of all parties to reflect on this history, what it exposes about their arrested development in recognizing their own contributions to the destruction, and their refusal to consider the larger implications, let alone alternatives.
it will be their undoing, and will likely take us all down with them.
I hope Israel completely demolish Lebanon! Citizens of Lebanon allowed and supported Hezbollah to attack Israel, thus they brought it on them selves!
It's Israel right & duty to respond accordingly and defend themselves, and by that defend the western world from any future 'cancers' like Hezbollah.
to: unirealist 6:51
Shame on you for saying that the Nazis had reason for blaming jews for economic problems in Germany post WWI. This is blatantly false. scapegoating Jews then as now shows your ignorance with world history.
The Nazis liquidated the Jews in Germany and surrounding countries in the years leading up to WWII and throughout WWII in order to not only help finance new prosperity for Germans but also to help finance WWII and pad their own bank accounts.
confiscating the businesses, bank accounts, personal possessions, properties of Jews enabled top SS officers to also pad their own bank accounts. Let's not forget that a novelty item amongst top senior SS officers was to have custom made lamps with lamp shades made from the skin of murdered jews starting in the late thirties.
Much of the wealth taken during WWII from millions of Jews which included taking gold fillings from ripping their teeth out, not just from their jewelry. This misbegotten gold got melted down into bars of gold that eventually made its way into the vaults of Nazi friendly Swiss banks (tests were done on bars of gold stored in Swiss vaults showing a high rate of dental gold fillings from teeth), SouthAmerican countries like Chile/Argentina/Venezuela, SouthAfrica to help finance their next plans for an eventual "fifth column" Nazi style third reich government that works via gullible, anti-semetic, ignorant elected officials/captains of industry here in the United States.
Joseph and Unirealist et al, I disagree with you: israel has a right to defend itself. Even if Israel's lastest Lebanon incursion does have something to do with controlling scarce water supplies, again Israel has the right to defend itself. the Hezbollah is documented to embed its missle launchers and weapons within heavily populated civilian areas, i.e. under mosques, underneath the residences of or adjacent to the houses of large families who are so poor they can't afford to live anywhere else except nearby Hezbollah weapons caches.
The only thing that stops the middle east islam fanatics like Hezbollah and hamas from waging war against Europian countries and the US is Israel itself. It is tragic that innocent civilians have been killed, maimed and dislodged from their homes in Lebanon as part of Israel's attacks against Hezbollah. However Hezbollah initiated the latest round of attacks by launching rocket attacks on civilians in Haifa and other Northern Israeli towns. Israeli civilians don't have their houses next to weapons caches or missile launchers like poor Lebanese families do. Hezbollah would be happy if they could kill every last Jewish Israeli they could get their hands on and that is their intended goal: to drive the Jews out of Israel into the sea.
so think again. there was no link between Jews and economic problems in Germany post WWI. But it is always so easy to blame and scapegoat the jews.
Unirealist: what a tired poor excuse to say that the Jews brought onto themselves their own halocaust and genocide.
Joseph: I applaud you for documenting water issues in Israel but I don't like the "f-- you" stance in reply to Isrealismom. Perhaps "isrealimom" is a real person who was a captain in the IDF and she deliberately misspells Isreal because of her blogname.
Israel is forced to respond in kind because its enemies dictate that it do so. If Israel had Canada as its neighbor instead of Lebanon with Iran/Syria as its sponsor, they would not engage in the current warfare taking place today.
there is a saying by real estate sales agents that I think applies to Israel's situation: location, location, location is everything and Israel is a completely different country when you have armed Islamic radicals massed on its borders chomping at the bit for your destruction. These same radicals teach their babies to hate Jews/Israelis by teaching them songs about killing Jews/Israelis, etc.
lastly, the Palestinians lost their true homeland which is modern day Jordan and they are not welcome in most Islamic MidEast countries because they are too well educated and more intelligent so all the better to keep them focuses on fighting Israel.
Mark my words: the next war against Jews will take place not in Israel but in the United States. Once this country if fully shifted over to a dictatorship style police state, political dissidents such as liberals, anti-war protestors and Jews will be arrested, moved to one of the new Halliburton concentration camps being built and liquidated.
hey Unirealist, there is so much money to be made from liquidating the personal property of Jews and political dissidents ! The past repeats itself, doesn't it as with this article:
http://www.consortiumnews.com/1990s/consor24.html
"The tracks of secret financing for the Nicaraguan contra war may cross a troubling money-raising tactic passed on from Adolf Hitler's Nazis to their ideological heirs in Argentina: the liquidation of property from victims killed in death camps.
An investigation in Spain is examining evidence that an intelligence officer in Argentina's Dirty War was responsible for selling the property of Argentines after they were "disappeared" -- that is, taken to secret concentration camps and murdered. Money from the victims' property may have ended up in Swiss bank accounts maintained by Argentine military officers."
Joseph you can get pissed off with my post and with folks like Israelimom but I'm still and will always be your fan and supporter. I think your blog is excellent and at the top of my blogs I check frequently and I thank you for sharing with us the fruits of your research and contacts on this sunday morning.
Well it's going to be a really hot hot day today not just in most places in the US but also around the world, hopefully not as hot as 115 degrees in the shade as it was a week ago in Woodland Hills!
anon from SF
I'd have deleted unirealist's comment, (which I discovered just now -- a blogger's gotta sleep SOME time, right?) but he's been taken to task by others, and I want their remarks to remain and to make sense.
I am distressed at how rapidly criticism of Israel transforms into criticism of Jews in general. Many of the people I have most admired (Mahler, Einstein, Feinman) were Jewish.
As I may have mentioned before, my mom was Italian and my stepfather was Jewish. (So if there's one thing I understand, it's guilt -- or so runs the standard family joke.)
So I have personal reasons for hoping that if this year were 1935 -- the year of Mussolini invaded Ethiopia -- we could mount an unrestricted denunciation of the Italian government without hurling racial or cultural insults against the Italian people.
joseph,
Israel has/is/will make mistakes with regards to its Palestinian problem and these mistakes are deserving of criticism without this criticism regressing to hatred of Jews.
Israel privides European style freedom that is denied in mideast islam countries.
but unfortunately Israel has to engage in acts of war in order to stay on the map because it's immediate neighbors will continue to wage war against Israel until Israel is wiped off the map. that's the unfortunate truth.
take a look at Wayne Madsen's latest report that the latest lebanon invastion by Israel was preplanned with Cheney's help here at a meeting in Colorado June 17/18:
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/
yes, a good night's sleep is priceless and the bloggers posts will get sorted out one way or another.
anon from sf
(how hot is it in your home town? anyone think this hotspell has anything to do with global warming)
audible sigh.
another.
see. here. we all demonstrate what i have previously attempted to expose.
this discussion has instantly become a microcosm of the larger conflicts.
these biases run so deep, and rule out any openness to contradictory or even alternative perspectives, while they narrow our capacity to see what others have suffered.
of course israel has the right to defend herself, but why does this principle not also apply to palestine and lebanon?
and to use the term 'in kind' here with regard to israel's responses is ludicrous; in every single hostility, the ratio of non-israeli dead to israeli dead always exceeds 3-1; currently the ratio of lebanese to israeli dead exceeds 10 to 1.
on the other hand, for hezbollah and hamas to resort to the slaughter of innocent civilians by suicide bombings is no more humane, and no less terrorizing than israel's abuses of power.
but, no more so, either, if you bother to read first hand accounts that are woefully under-publicized.
and now look at us. we collect and share all our supporting evidence, and it is ample on both sides. we stake out our claims, and have at it.
i have no personal skin in this game. those of you who are jewish or muslim do, and i can respect how that will color your reactions, based on your respective backgrounds and your personal experiences.
but i do have principled skin in the game, and it is truth. for what it's worth, though each side harbors some real truths in these discussions, when sides are taken, none of us is immune to the inevitable blindness to ...hm, inconvenient truths, if you will, those that don't conform to the perspective of the side we've taken.
and so it goes.
there are larger truths here, and it is imperative that we recognize them.
one i like to start with is this:
i personally and principally find it very difficult to sympathize with claims of victimhood from those in power, and those who have unequivocal backing from big power. the tendency to become a bully is just apparently too irresistable.
an even larger truth: this irresistable tendency dwells in all of us.
ALL of us.
and that means that, were the power on the side of muslims, they would suffer equal irresistable tendency to use that power to bully the israelis. just as the israelis have converted their experience of victimhood at the hands the nazis into now bullying the weak in their world.
and so it goes.
until we each recognize this human fact, we will be doomed to keep repeating these destructive consequences in perpetuity.
Correction: The guy I admire is Richard FEYNMAN, not Feinman. My ladyfriend positvely worships Feynman, and she will no doubt give me every conceivable form of hell when she discovers that I spelled incorrectly the Holy Name.
Of all the comments on this subject, I agree with III. The fact is that Israel is bullying it's neigbors at the moment because they have the upper hand, just like they were bullyed by the Nazis at one point. If the Moslims had the upper hand, they would be doing the bulling.
On the subject of historical "evidence" that supports one side or another, it really all depends on who wrote the history. History is like the media. It is controlled and whitewashed just as much. A guy with some title writes a book and if his perspective is agreeable with the powers in charge, then his book is published and praised. There are documents that are classified or destroyed even 100 years after the fact, just to keep a myth going or the truth from coming out. So, I am not buying all the historical refrences recited here either.
On the subject of Nazis or Fascists in general, one has to only look at the direction our country is heading to realize that Fascism is not and has never been an enemy of Capitalism. Hitler just tried to take a bigger piece of the pie than he was promised. The real enemy is the hated "left", which advocates a change in the social system and equatable distribution of wealth. All this talk about democracy and fair play and living in harmony is just window dressing for Imperialism. If Hitler hadn't gotten too big for his britches, France and England and America would have happily sided with him (as they did against USSR in the begining) even if he kept killing the Jews. Many of our esteemed industrialists (Barbara Bush's family as well) happily sold much of what hitler needed to him for a very long time. The only reason US is backing Israel is that Israel is on the side of Imperialism and if they get some arms and aid and protection and allowed to bully, well, they aren't going to turn it down.
Isn't the object of Imperialism dominance? or rather bullying?
I stand by everything I said, and if you read my comment more carefully perhaps you will see that your kneejerk reactions fall wide of the mark. Sure, the Nazis saw the purge of Jewry as a great opportunity to plunder Jewish fortunes (and teeth). Did the Jews deserve the Holocaust? No. No people deserve that. It is my impression, in fact, that the vast majority of Jews in Germany and Poland were impoverished, and had no say in the larger events.
But that's not the point. The point I made was that very likely that THEY (and the stupid self-righteous fundamentalist Christians) will very likely take the blame AGAIN, as THEY did BEFORE. Look at the membership of the PNAC; almost all Jewish. Look at AIPAC; where do you think its financial support comes from, if not from Jewish contributors? Look at the Likud Party in Israel, freely elected into power by the Jewish voters. It was PNAC and AIPAC and the Likuddians who got us into this Iraq war, as well as this Lebanon/Israel war.
This is not to let the Christian fundamentalists off the hook, not at all. They have formed an unholy alliance with the neocons, in a breathtakingly arrogant power-grab.
When the collapse comes, somebody is going to take the blame. Who do you all think it's going to be? Come on, speak up. I can't hear you.
unirealist,
Your points are valid, and I am not sure that it differs much from the general trend of this comment thread (well , excluding ISRAELIMOM). I think we all have our pet sensetivities, and thus this conflict raises different alarms for different people.
Peak oil is bullshit and so is this water theory.
C'mon people.
Let's not forget that a novelty item amongst top senior SS officers was to have custom made lamps with lamp shades made from the skin of murdered jews starting in the late thirties.
Yeah right.
And don't forget the bar of Jew soap on the nightstand beneath that lampshade.
If unirealist's stood up and said slavery was in retrospect justified, so many African-Americans having proven shiftless and indifferent to the benefits of education, a tendency also seen in the backwardness of the African continent, he'd be dismissed outright as a racist and a fool.
Blaming 6 million Jews for their deaths at the hands Nazi Germany -- and I wonder how many predatory bankers were among those 6 million? -- is no less vile and revealing of the speaker. Like so many "conservatives", it would seem unirealist views the world through his own pathologies.....
Cheney and Rumsfeld brought the Neocons, AIPAC, JINSA in to get dirty with them so they could use them as buffers agaisnt criticism and also as scapegoats if needed. They know they hold an "untouchable" status with the media. Sort of the same way they used Colin Powell to get dirty with the whole WMD thing. And how they use Condi and Alberto Gonzales as "minority firewalls" to deflect blame from themselves.
Although many are dirty from all of this. The source of this rotten mess is Cheney and Rumsfeld. Don't be fooled.
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