I have travelled this world much more extensively than either Obama or Romney, and I still do. I find everywhere, even in areas of conflict and economic difficulty, the vast majority of people are friendly, even kind, and have very similar aspirations, across cultures, to personal development and emotional fulfilment.
The striking thing about tonight’s US Presidential “foreign policy” debate, is when it did occasionally discuss foreign policy, the world out there was discussed not as a place of vast potential, but as a deeply disturbing place full of foreigners who are, apparently, all evil except the Israelis, who are perfect.
The vast benefits from cooperation and trade with “abroad” were not mentioned once that I noticed (though I confess the thing was so awful my attention wandered occasionally). Europe apparently doesn’t exist, other than Greece which is nothing more than a terrible warning of the dangers of not being right wing enough.
The correct attitude to all these foreigners that God so unfortunately and inexplicably placed on this planet, is apparently to maintain incredibly large armed forces, murder people with drones (they were both very enthusiastic on this one), place sanctions on them and declare them “currency manipulators”. The only surprising note was that both agreed that they could not kill everyone in Iran.
But “We can’t just kill our way out of this mess” was spoken with regret, rather than as an affirmation of the possibilities of cooperation instead. What a grim and joyless world view. Maybe I had better not step out of this hotel into Africa this morning; those Islamists might get me.
US foreign policy over the last few decades has been naive and reactive; here’s some more.
http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Resources/2012/06/08/Pakistan-defies-US-on-Iran-gas-pipeline/UPI-17951339183321/?rel=51941350480701
Related stories on this site (UPI):
Iran offers gas assurances to Turkey
Iran ready to help Turkey with natural gas
Iran examines shale oil, gas deposits
Iran issues South Pars ultimatum
Iran: Gas for neighbors good regionally
Iran: World needs our natural gas
Pakistan defies U.S. on Iran gas pipeline
Iran may build gas pipeline in Iraq
Why don’t the US put their money where their mouth is? According to global economic theory, gas going through Baluchistan to the deprived N of Pakistan will increase local prosperity, and help to stabilise the area. But, magically, not Iranian gas…
@Phil
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‘I had no idea Ross had undergone such a transformation.’
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More background. An audience at LSE last year was audibly not just startled but moved by his candid reply to my question on the topic:
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http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2891833/CarneRoss_Anarchism.mp3
Thanks for that, Jonangus. If that’s anarchy, I’ll have some please.
1. Romney thinks that Iran is landlocked.
http://consortiumnews.com/2012/10/24/moderate-mitt-neocon-trojan-horse/
2. Obama is going on a 48 hour ‘extravaganza’ tour of Iowa, Colorado, Nevada, Virginia, Ohio and Florida. He says he will not be getting any sleep. Romney is off to Nevada, Colorado, Iowa and Ohio. A lot of hot air will be generated in the last few weeks of this election campaign.
“Not sure I understand your drift, when you mention Jimmy Hoffa.”
N__;
Just some further context for the issue ‘non-violent/non-cooperative’ protest.
I think our discussion is nuanced over what ‘polite demos’ are, and the semantics has us running in circles.
Violence may be integral, or on the fringe of the movement. Either way it is counter-productive.
Examples abound.
“Violence may be integral, or on the fringe of the movement. Either way it is counter-productive.”
I’m sitting here thinking
Liberté, égalité, fraternité!
N___;
“Wasted life”….indeed.
That’s why conservatives are so apeshit over abortion rights and contraception.
The cannon fodder of the lower classes, whose employment seems to gravitate toward military, make it unnecessary for the war mongers to actually shed their own blood. And they don’t want the walking wounded to eat up their fiscal excesses. Caring for Veterans is too expensive. Better they die during deployment.
“Liberté, égalité, fraternité!”
Yes. Bonaparte was the outcome of the French Revolution. “Say hello to the New Boss. Same as the old boss”
Ben Franklin (Anti-intellectual Colonial American Savage version) 24 Oct, 2012 – 5:13 pm
“Say hello to the New Boss. Same as the old boss”
How are the new bosses in India and USA doing after the peaceful revolts?
Phil; Please elaborate. Which peaceful revolts? They don’t have Juntas in power, or Dicktators (sic)
Now if you want a Benevolent Dictator, I’m with you 🙂
Thanks for all the work you have done Clark, but I understand that it is quiet hard to work in a chaotic scenery as such here.
I hope that you will continue to post here, your logic has brought light to many issue.
Bis bald
Funny enough the audio link provided by Jonangus above is revealing about how those in power view marches.
To (mis)quote from memory, a US diplomat says: “The only pressure they apply is on the grass”.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2891833/CarneRoss_Anarchism.mp3
And without the french revolution the rule of monarchy would have longer plagued europe – far worse than bonaparte.
That’s a disappointing response Phil.
I have to run some errands.
@Ben
You seem to be maintaining that non-violent protest is, and has ever been, the only valuable means of dissent.
You’re right, dictators were not installed in India and the US but neither were the people emancipated, merely delivered into a more modern system of oppression.
Besides, even Ghandi believed violence had it’s place. He urged his son to use violence in self defense. Here’s a Ghandi quote: “Where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence I advise violence.”
@Ben
Sorry if my comment disappointed but I am multi-tasking here, and I think we have cross posted a bit. Let me know if you want to continue when you’ve finished your errands.
Craig you are absolutely right Obomber the great disappointment and Romney the best liar on the planet. However, there is hope! Read my favourite section of Aung Sang Su Kyi’s speech in June 2012…enjoy:
“Absolute peace in our world is an unattainable goal. But it is one towards which we must continue to journey, our eyes fixed on it as a traveller in a desert fixes his eyes on the one guiding star that will lead him to salvation. Even if we do not achieve perfect peace on earth, because perfect peace is not of this earth, common endeavours to gain peace will unite individuals and nations in trust and friendship and help to make our human community safer and kinder.
I used the word ‘kinder’ after careful deliberation; I might say the careful deliberation of many years. Of the sweets of adversity, and let me say that these are not numerous, I have found the sweetest, the most precious of all, is the lesson I learnt on the value of kindness. Every kindness I received, small or big, convinced me that there could never be enough of it in our world. To be kind is to respond with sensitivity and human warmth to the hopes and needs of others. Even the briefest touch of kindness can lighten a heavy heart. Kindness can change the lives of people. Norway has shown exemplary kindness in providing a home for the displaced of the earth, offering sanctuary to those who have been cut loose from the moorings of security and freedom in their native lands.”
Why was Phil’s response “disappointing”, Ben Franklin? You sound a little like a teacher giving a mark to his pupil. I for my part feel that Phil has dealt with you more than adequately, so adequately in fact that I shouldn’t really wonder who you work for. But I do…analysis of your posts, both on this thread and on others, makes me rather suspicious.
The irony of any whistleblowing blog that self censors certain subjects would be pleasantly ironic if it wasn’t so hypocrytical and odd
@Mary Quite agree N_. In 2007 a small group of us tried to have these lobby groups (all parties have FoIs) shut down but were unsuccessful.
Hi Mary – I’d be very interested to hear your opinion of my hypothesis that the ‘MPs’ expenses’ scandal, spearheaded by the Daily Telegraph, was carried out to further the AIPACisation of Westminster.
The hypothesis is that it was part of a campaign that involved
– putting in lots of more helpy MPs
– setting up the Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating Antisemitism, which issued the London Declaration, which assisted with further advances of Zionist propaganda, intelligence and influence in the British ‘education’ system
– removing Michael Martin as Commons Speaker and replacing him with John Bercow, and changing the remit of the office, which now includes ‘co-operating’ with ‘voluntary’ organisations (see ‘AIPACisation’)
– hasbara advances made in connection with the Gaza massacre
All of this happened around the same time.
Anyone who thinks Westminster has been cleaned up as far as lobbyists go should have a look at the role of Barry Sheerman, chair of the Education Select Committee and founder of the Policy Connect lobbyists, er, I mean ‘not-for-profit think tank’. It’s completely ‘in your face’, but does he get any flak in the MSM?
@Craig
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‘Rubbish about Nazis collaborating with Zionists is one of the very few things that will get me to hit the delete button.’
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Might I urge a perusal—at the very least—of two works by the Jewish-American historian Lenni Brenner, ‘Zionism in the Age of the Dictators’ & ’51 Documents: A History of Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis.’
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The first alleges that Zionism ‘sought the patronage and benevolence of the avowed anti-Semites and, ultimately, the collaboration of the Fascists and Nazis’ & that ‘from the beginning Zionism’s leaders were prepared to go to almost any length to achieve the goal of a separate Jewish homeland.’
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The distinguished author & journalist Edward Mortimer, former director of communications to the UN Secretary-Generala—& these days, among other things, on the advisory council of Carne Ross’s organisation Independent Diplomat—may be known to you personally. He has said of ’51 Documents’:
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‘Brenner is able to cite numerous cases where Zionists collaborated with anti-Semitic regimes, including Hitler’s.’
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A less than perfect PDF of ‘Zionism in the Age of the Dictators,’ first published by Croom Helm, is available here as a free download:
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http://vho.org/aaargh/fran/livres/LBzad.pdf
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PS: Need I emphasise, Craig, that I find anti-semitism in any of its dotty varieties utterly abhorrent.
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Mark:
‘In my book 9/11 was the kicker that let the ‘external enemy’ back out of the ‘sacred chest’ – I want a way of putting it back…’
Are you parodying Flanders and Swann ?:
‘The purpose of satire, it has been rightly said, is to strip off the veneer of comforting illusion and cosy half-truth. And our job, as I see it, is to put it back again.’
The Syrian Free Army suspect Mr Brahimi of secretly wanting to help Assad re-group and get supplies which they are blockading.
When they signed the deal and took the cash with the Zionists to start a civil war against Assad, who did they think they were signing an agreement with? Honest brokers in the affairs of a proud independent Arab Syria??
When Al Qaida signed the deal to fight in Afghanistan, and admit responsibility for 9/11 in exchange for the Zionists de-stabilising Pakistan, who did they think they were signing an agreement with? Honest brokers in the affairs of a proud independent Muslim Pakistan?
Of course the Zionists are going to build up the strength of the enemies of Islam at the same time as opening an opportunity for Islamists to wage war against backsliders in Islam. (Backsliding into Sufism, secularism or Shi’a moral and spiritual decadence}.
Oh dear. the way to put the ‘external enemy’ back in the box is know, in the bottom of your heart that political pollution of Islam by colluding with the enemies of Islam will NEVER strengthen the moral and spiritual higher ground of Islam. It will always damage it.
The Jewhadists in Syria killed the Mufti of Syria’s son, as I heard, and it may not be true, because they do not wish to try to win the case for Islam by example and argument. Nor does Israel want that. It’s a no-brainer. These political Islamists have become a laughing stock. They break every principle of Islam by colluding with its enemies.
They will soon be replaced by a popular rising of real Islam across the Muslim world. Is that part of the political plan? No. The political mind will take credit for the rising of Islam, while in fact they only serve their own aspirations for pre-eminence, money and power.
Some people will turn to God in the distress of war, but in effect the politicists’ strategy is like David Cameron trying to replace social welfare with the Big Society. Pathetic, but powerful, idiots. They haven’t got a prayer.
@Craig – a word to the wise: it may be that if you enforce the line on your blog that all suggestions of co-operation between Zionists and Nazis are “rubbish”, then whoever is posting here as ‘A Simple Jew’ may have achieved their objective.
In the meantime, it sounds as though you should read Lenni Brenner‘s well-researched book, and acquaint yourself with the history of Zeev Jabotinsky’s brownshirts; Irgun; the Nazi round-up of Jewish people in Budapest (Jim Allen got called an anti-Semite when his play about Zionist co-operation with that round-up, called Perdition was to be staged in London); the official Haavara agreement between the Zionists and Hitler; and, in the present epoch, the English Defence League’s Jewish Division and its admitted links with the US-based Jewish Task Force terrorists; how some Zionists responded to Anders Breivik’s massacre in Norway, etc. (Gilad Atzmon has written usefully on Breivik, here and here.)
@Jonangus – sorry, I didn’t see that you’d got there first, and also wisely referred Craig to Brenner!
” I for my part feel that Phil has dealt with you more than adequately, so adequately in fact that I shouldn’t really wonder who you work for. But I do…analysis of your posts, both on this thread and on others, makes me rather suspicious.”
Then, by all means, be specific about your ‘suspicions’. I’m sure there is a cock you can ravish in here, somewhere.
N_ A great link, cheers http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/gilad-atzmon-was-the-massacre-in-norway-a-reaction-to-bds.html
America’s Unknown Commitment to Israel
A US / Israeli Defense Treaty?
by BARRY LANDO
Several questions asked in the third presidential debate were never clearly answered. One of the most vital concerns Israel: What exactly is the U.S. commitment to that country? It’s a question that an American president may suddenly be confronted with, some chaotic night at three A.M.
The reporter moderating the debate attempted to get an answer.
/..
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/10/24/a-us-israeli-defense-treaty/
Trang Tin Cong Nghe
One angry troll – Ha ha!
Lando answers that question here, Mary:
http://barrylando.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/what-obama-should-have-told-aipac.html
The reality and the alternative.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/10/now-that-was-a-debate/
David Swanson
My dear Ben,
There you are, you’re at it again (1.43pm)with your teacher-pupil act. Actually, I don’t think I’m obliged to set out my suspicions for your benefit : YOU know, I suspect, and OTHERS are intelligent enough to make up their own minds if they so wish.
PS – I suppose the throw-away abuse (“cock”)is part of the tool-kit?