TAO Walker, July 5 at 6:53 pm
So the answer to that somewhat plaintive question
posed and repeated musically,
and played over-and-over-again fifty-odd years ago
(though it goes back much
further than that), “When will they ever learn?”,
appears to be….

Dead-certainly not in-time….if ever.

HokaHey!
=============================
I’m now convinced it will be never.
All of the evidence is in; and we’re terminally
stupid.
Pity, it was such a beauty (the Earth) before we got
sick…

None of this is about the real issue, the greatest threat facing the west is nihilism.  Materialism has not only had bad environmental effects it has had even worse effects on morality and on us. That is the problem, modernity has no morality, no one can assert any truths because it is all a matter of personal perspective.
Democracy is now that magic word, an incantation that sounds uplifting but in reality is just more noise.

Democracy building needs to be in fashion in the United States, as
currently the 70% Majority American Common Populace are
unrepresented in the making and enforcing of legislated law and
order in the Congresses and Courts of the United States.

Thanks for an excellent article.

Yes, the “geostrategic fairy tale” which continues to be used as policy by those in
our government.  This subject needs to be written and talked about because there
aren’t enough people among us who understand the dangers involved and the
urgent necessity there is to change this approach.

It is not at all “defeatist” to learn more about all this—if anything, confronting
ugly issues is the only thing that can open the door to a more optimistic view.
Those who are heroically working for good causes need that more people become
aware of why they are doing it.

So the most important thing is to prove who are the worst discriminators, the most despicable persecutors, the most aggressive/defensive races, religions, nationalities, ethnic groups, cults etc. etc. on and on?  NOT.

Might be more productive to bring on stage more information about people on all sides working for the benefit of all sides, and solving problems together for mutual life, liberty and that illusive “pursuit of happiness.”

Such as:  Israelis and Palestinians working together like Beth Shalom, The Other Israel, Christian PeaceMaker Teams, Women in Black, American Friends Service Committee, Oxfam International, Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders and many more.

I’ve asked Truthdig several times to research and present more productive articles and fewer defeatist ones, but so far not much luck. Pessimism not only drags us all down, but by predominating it makes those who bring in evidences of faith and hope appear naive, muddle-headed, inexperienced, simple-minded, inadequate and what all else. 

I think TD is missing an opportunity to contribute to much needed creative thought, and by default is contributing to mental cowardice and sloth.

Arab apartheid / Muslim apartheid are the largest ‘apartheid systems’, that exist today.[1]

Virtually all non-Arabs and/or non-Muslims are second class citizens.[2]

Among minorities that feel the wrath of the bigoted Arab-Muslim world are:

* Berbers (native N. Africans, before Arab invasion).

* Copts (indigenous Egyptians suffer from both: Arab racism and Islamic bigotry).

* Kurds. Examples include: in [Saddam’s] Iraq and in Syria.

* Blacks, in Arab lands or in Arab ruled Africa like the genocide in the Sudan and slavery in both Sudan and in Mauritania.

* Asians, particularly in the Gulf Arab states. [Sex slaves or “plain” slaves].

* Maronites-Christians [Native Lebanese] suffer from both Arab ethnic racism and religious bigotry, like the massacres in the 1970s by local Muslims and by Palestinian/Syrian forces.

* Assyrians, are/have been persecuted both racially and religiously. Still very much marginalized in Iraq, for example.

* Iran is not an Arab country but racism is huge against Kurds, Jews, Turkmens, etc. So is anti-non-Muslim bigotry against Christians, Bahai, Zoroastrians and others in the Islamic republic.

* Turkey is also a Muslim non-Arab country and Kurds, Greeks, Armenians and other ethnicities have been through much suffering, genocide. Still there’s great wide racism against non-Turkish ethnic groups. Turkey’s policy in Cyprus has also been recognized as a real Apartheid by many. All non-Muslims are automatically branded as “foreigners” at the “moderate” Islamic supremacy of Turkey.

* All non-Msulims in ‘Islamic Apartheid state’ of S. Arabia. Bibles and Jews are offivially banned.

* Al-Akhdam in Yemen.

* Gypsies in Jordan.

—-

Islamic-Arab “Palestine” apartheid:

* Ahmadiyya Muslims are harshly persecuted in (Pakistan and in) the “Palestinian” Apartheid authority and/or by Hamas.

* Descendents of slaves of the Bedouins are still stigmatized by racist “Palestinians.”

* Christians are discriminated, persercuted against [especially since Y. Arafat’s Islamization of Bethlehem], by Palestine authority and Hamas militant-Islamic regime.

—-

From anti-Jewish Apartheid:

- The Arab racist apartheid against the Jews attempted genocide ever since the 1920s, (Like Mufti of “Palestine” at his incited massacres, and Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood who called simply ‘to kill Jews’).
- Chased out a Million Jews in the late 1940.

- Has boycotted and demonized [every logical defensive action is branded “racist”] the Jewish democratic-free-equal-to-all state only because it’s the “other.” It is neither Muslim nor purely Arab.

- The Arab racist world continues to play with Arab-Palestinians (grandchildren of Arab immigrants[3]) like a ping-pong against Israel.[4]

gerard at 9:55 PM, 5 July, accurately says:
‘As to the U.S. trying overtly to “lead” them toward democracy or encourage them to duplicate our mistakes—they can probably do better by themselves for themselves, and we should probably butt out to the utmost degree possible, at least for the present—until we get some of our own discrepancies and misconceptions straightened out.’
How “ironic”, to be polite about it, that our latest if not quite Brightest or Best re-inventors of the White Man’s Burden yearn not only once again but ever more blindly to match their [safe-from-sideline] enthusiasm with good old Imperial hubris, neophyte’s addiction to predecessor folly, and now boringly bad new stupidity.
Physician, Heal Thyself, our Play-actors need to be told. AGAIN

“The momentum of Asia’s economic development is already generating massive pressures for the exploration and exploitation of new sources of energy and the Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin are known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea.”

- Zbigniew Brzezinski

“I’ve learned an immense amount from Dr. Brzezinski.”

- Barack Obama

http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2008/10/30/the-ones-who-attacked-us/

Interference, by the West, in the affairs of these various Countries, has been the sole reason that these peoples have been unable to assert their true potential. Every time they tried to, their uprisings were put down with mostly, covert help from those same Nations who are so keen to help them now.
As the saying goes, ‘beware of Greeks bearing gifts’.

It is obvious by now that American (“western”) culture—mainly what is called democracy—is a mixed bag. Younger people are apparently vastly attracted to the “freedom” (meaning lack of traditional and/or enforced restraint) yet do not buy the underlying dominance of money-based, material values. Chances are that “democracy” means as many different things (and arouses as many mixed feelings)  throughout the world as it does to those of us who have grown up and watched it “morph”, both for better and for worse.
  But fundamentally it is probably accurate to say that those who are trying to gain more equality and justice in the streets there now, have been influenced to do so by what they know of the best of the United States and Europe—at the same time they are repulsed by the blatant snobbishness and militarism, which they rightly despise as oppressive and reactionary.
  As to the U.S. trying overtly to “lead” them toward democracy or encourage them to duplicate our mistakes—they can probably do better by themselves for themselves, and we should probably butt out to the utmost degree possible, at least for the present—until we get some of our own discrepancies and misconceptions straightened out. 
  This includes our military pressures and emphasis on force and mercenary provisions.  Years and years ago I heard a young man from Nairobi, tears streaming down his face, plead with those present to “please just stop your country from sending my brothers guns to kill each other!” As yet we have never been able to even get that plea anywhere near the ears of the military/industrial complex people—for mean-spirited obvious reasons. 
  The United States can do better.  Why not turn over a new leaf and try?

So the answer to that somewhat plaintive question posed and repeated musically,
and played over-and-over-again fifty-odd years ago (though it goes back much
further than that), “When will they ever learn?”, appears to be….

Dead-certainly not in-time….if ever.

HokaHey!