So glad we have Samson to keep us on track!  (joke)
I sympathize with him somewhat, however, because I am frequently annoyed by “off-track” comments directing me to “shit” on this or “piss” on that when what I realy want to do is .....

Anyhow, thanks to TaoWalker and Inherit for going off-subject with me—though it ain’t as off-subject as one might suppose.  If the Israelis in control of their “stockyard” could find a way to escape from their fixed ideas about (to borrow from TW) CONtrol over the CONflicts they engender—if they could just go outside and look up at the stars and Aldebaran would speak to them in no uncertain terms .... yeah!

As to the “commons” ideas and progress. take a look at it (them) as possibly offering some ideas to people who are earnestly trying to bridge the gap between now and what looks like a very misbegotten future. And may I say, Hokahey!

(I have fond memories of that word from long ago and far away.)

Years ago, I saw a fictional story about a thief.  She was in a new place, trying to make contact with other professional thieves.  So, she had her companion start a fight as a diversion.

She knew that theives would be trained not to watch the fight and the diversion, but would instead be scanning the room to see what else was going on.  When she met the eyes of another person who was doing this as she was, she’d made her contact with the local theives.

That’s a good trick to learn.  Specifically, when someone is trying to tell you not to listen to someone nor to pay attention to someone, what you should learn is to go check out what they are saying.

In that case, the most interesting question to ask is ‘why doesn’t this person want me to read or hear that?’

When you start following that thought with deliberately going to see or hear or read what this other person is saying that you aren’t supposed to hear, then you can find all sorts of interesting stuff.

That theif’s trick from some mediocre story is a good one to learn.  Always look in the opposite direction from where others are trying to make you look.

Web propaganda techniques.

If you read this article, then without reading the comments, what sort of conversation would you think that this might spark?

A serious discussion of problems in the middle east?

Or maybe more narrowly, a discussion simply of good books on the topic?

Instead, you find rants about immigration and gun control that eventually settles down on a discussion of Castenada’s books.

What you should note is which commenters steered the conversation this direction.

Welcome to 21st century web propaganda techniques in the age of viral marketing.

——————————
BTW, good books on the middle east would definitely include Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom, which is his first person account written after the war of the story that later became ‘Lawrence of Arabia’.  Also, both of Fisk’s major books ... Pity the Nation about Lebonan and The Great War for Civilization about the rest of the middle east are well worth reading.

Seven Pillars of Wisdom is one of the first books talking about guerrilla warfare that I can think of.  Since the rest of the 20th century and now into the 21st century has seen lots of guerrilla wars, its worth reading just for that.  If you read more modern theorists about ‘4th generation warfare’, you’ll find its beginnings in this book.

Lawerence would not at all have been surprised that the US Army has been unable to subjugate either Iraq or Afghanistan with its garrisons and firepower.  Read his discussion of the Turks situation in Arabia, and how he attacked it, and you’ll know why.

Let’s face also the likelihood Inherent The Wind remains pretty CONvinced there are ‘others’ already making-do with a lot less Life than the half he still has.
*******************************

Yup.

I live in New Jersey. “Toxic” is a pretty common problem on the Eastern side of the state.  We also now have a “Toxic” governor.  Go figure.

I like gerard, have read Casteneda in the seventies. Casetenea got his “experiences” through pyote and mescalline and his experience according to him, if I remember corrctly, were “weird” and not very pleasant, and what are their applications in our world and how it will contribute to solving its problems.  I still, also preferred my beer and whisky over a possible terror filled “trip”.

Inherit The Wind’s modesty is doubtless as genuine as it is commendable.  Of course this Old Man, who also has plenty to be modest about, isn’t in the habit of tossing-around terms like “spirits” and “spiritual,” either….and it’d be a big mistake for anyone else to apply them to Yours Truly.

There’re a lot of received opinions about Life.  Even Inherit The Wind, though, might agree that a free wild Buffalo enjoys it much more fully than some two-year-old steer wading hock-deep in shit within the CONfines of a slaughterhouse pen.  One suspects he has no trouble imagining a much fuller and freer Life for at-least his LovedOnes, too, than the severely CONstricted ‘alternative’ that’s rapidly shaping-up to greet them instead….as the shit-pile of industrial waste products, and it’s less solid but every bit as toxic abstract equivalent (aka; “bullshit”), grows deeper every Day.

Let’s face also the likelihood Inherent The Wind remains pretty CONvinced there are ‘others’ already making-do with a lot less Life than the half he still has.

HokaHey!

THE Way out of “the mess” gerard acknowledges (As who with any sense could not?), is simply to clean it up.  There is no real obstacle whatsoever, either, in the actual Living World, to the millions (billions, really) who made it getting together to do that, either….right where (as this Old Savage has suggested here several times) they live-and-breathe, together, every Day.  The barriers are ALL in their eCONomic ‘programming’....in other words, entirely make-believe and imposed.  They’re certainly no less ‘effective’ for that, of course, for the purposes of those who still believe they can destroy the Earth without destroying their own silly ‘selfs.’

Here’s the “rub,” though.  The ONLY Way open for “....your huddled masses” to reach that “higher consciousness” gerard wishes-for them is….well, for the domesticated peoples who made (and continue to make) The-Mess they’re perishing-in to get together and start cleaning it up….literally.  The ‘pollution’ strewn all over the face of our Mother Earth is essentially a ‘projection’ of the poisonous ‘inner’-environment induced in it’s “individual”-ized captives by the operations of the machinery of the “civilization” process….but ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ “ecologies” are inseparably tied together, and it is only by attending conscientiously and completely to the latter that the former can be made clean and whole again.

No institutionalized ‘system’ can bring that about….by either persuasion or compulsion.  If it cannot emerge spontaneously out of our essential Humanity, here in this dire extremity of their at-least partly self-inflicted peril, then those millions (billions) gerard is obviously so sincerely concerned for are doomed in any case.  ‘Cause The Rule is:  “Abuse it….you lose it.”  Which is to say, She will ‘lose’ Her abusers. 

Meanwhile, this Old Indian knows Personally many who’ve already exercised the genuine Yaqui ‘option,’ which has nothing at all to do with ‘mind-altering substances.’  It is true, though, that it’s not accessible to those who are trapped in “the rational,” either….‘cause it sure-as-hell ain’t.

Makes a mere bureaucratic Catch-22 kind of kid-stuff, eh?

HokaHey!

Glad to know Tao Walker doesn’t consider it my fault I don’t live in a world of spirits and “higher reality”.  His frustration with all us half-lifers tells me he gets…frustrated.  Me, too!  So, I wonder: Is TW actually at peace with himself and his world?  Or, like so many religious folks, is he upset that he can’t teach the world about HIS truth?  But I still believe he really wants to help folks.

Whenever I hear someone say so-and-so is a “spiritual person” I know I can ignore it because they damn sure aren’t talking about me!

Next to “antonym of ‘Spiritual’” in the dictionary you’ll find my picture!

I read Casteneda in the 60s and enjoyed mentally “experiencing” his adventures with Don Juan, induced, I supposed, by peyote or mushrooms—psychedelic aids to achieve a personal, inner, super-consciousness that many people in those days were trying to achieve. According to statements of others who took drug-induced “trips” their experiences varied from wonderful to awful, depending upon circumstances. Being completelyi corrupted by rationalism, I did not venture into non-rational territories.
  Everybody living through that era remembers such events.  They are not exactly fictional, but they are not exactly “real” either—“real” meaning commonplace, easily available. 
  Surely every thinking/feeling person who sees what is happening in the world today wishes that some kind of hyper-conscousness was available to pull us out of our mess and guide the way to more humane alternatives.  Varous kinds of efforts at community-building and “consciousness raising” are being tried, many of them without drug use—Zen etc.
  Whether these efforts can possibly be made available to large numbers of people as an “escape” from the predicaments of “civilization” is my question. In my own personal life I have had more than enough of the preachments and practices of “elitists” of one kind or another.  Call me naive, smarmy, whatever.  I am more interested in more commonplace, possible, available answers that will help millions to “save the world” and in doing so, save themselves—and particularly their children’s children.

Inherit The Wind and gerard both illustrate, just below, the difficulties of trying to translate inborn organically fluid “holistic” (for lack of a better term in their native tongue) sensibilities, into the learned rather rigidly linear CONceits of standard american English.  This Old Indian’s figuratively ‘bottle-borne messages’ here originate in much more comprehensive circumstances not bound-by (in-fact quite literally surrounding) the made-up system of ideological/institutional/technological CONstraints inculcated into the “individual”-ized ‘minds’ of their domesticated (possible) recipients, who’re stuck involuntarily inside the CONfinement regime of the “civilization” CONtraption.  It’s sort of like trying to describe “water” (in all it’s naturally-occurring manifestations) to pet fish (or ‘farmed’ ones) kept all their miserable half-lives in variously-sized artificial CONtainers.

So gerard seems to this Old Man more-or-less compelled, by instilled habit and perhaps personal inclination, to call-up some familiar-to-herself example of some at-least CONceptually ‘structured’ arrangement (e.g.; a social/political “movement”) as a ‘local’ referent for something (a Tiyoshpaye, e.g.) that here in the actual LIVING Arrangement is completely ORGAN-ic and naturally-occurring….something that isn’t any kind of ‘intellectual’ invention at all.  Not to knock the ‘modern-medical-miracle’ mechanical (i.e.; artificial) ‘heart,’ for instance, but it is plainly a sort-of (usually desperate) ‘last-resort’ substitute for a Natural Living Organ rendered fatally dis-functional by damage most often the result of trauma-inducing abuses endemic to the domestication process itself….industrialized ‘feed,’ for just one glaring example.   

The greatly expanded Personal freedom accessible to Human Beings through (among others) the ‘teachings’ of Don Juan Mattus, is not any ‘blessing’ for those who are easily “bored.”  So there are plenty of ‘thresholds’ along that Way which a ‘modern’ “individual” will likely find extremely difficult to cross.  Carlos Castaneda recounted (with humor and modesty) his own struggles with these….at considerable length and to appreciable depths.  So maybe Inherit The Wind reveals much more about the deprivations of his own half-life’s experience to-date, including possibly a severely atrophied capacity to pay precious attention (THE price-of-admission, along with affectionate respect, to the never-ending Song ‘n’ Dance of Life Herownself), than he does about the proffered results of the Don Juan/Castaneda collaboration.

Neither gerard nor Inherit The Wind (nor the billions of their fella ‘n’ gal inmates) are in any way to-blame for the unfortunate condition their collective CONdition is in….anymore than an infant w/fetal-alcohol-syndrome would be.  They two appear to’ve reached, however, along with many of those billions, what might be called ‘the-age-of-CONsent’....complicit-in-their-own-degradation-wise.  So when the actually rather plain (if admittedly unCONventionally-strung-together) words, of a free wild Person fortunately not beset with the particular combination of “....care and woe” afflicting our tame Sisters and Brothers, are perceived by any of them as ‘beyond’ their ken, maybe it’s really not any semantic deficiencies in those words (or even the ‘strange’ arrangements), but rather an indication that it is their own Living ‘horizons,’ as Persons and Peoples, that need expanding.

Come to think of it, that’s pretty-much the ‘theme’ of just about everything this Old Savage has ever had to say here.

Hokahey!

I’m presuming, until I am corrected, that perhaps TaoWalker is indicating some sort of back-to-the-earth, natural living, community nurturing idea similar to what is sometimes called “the commons movement.” (For one project example, principles, methods etc.,  Google onthecommons.org—information on the Tomales Bay Institute, POBox 14967, Minneapolis)

I am sure he will correct me if I am wrong.

I enjoy Tao Walker, I really do, and he seems like a really nice, caring guy, but I STILL have no idea WTF he is ever talking about!

(And I tried to read “The Teachings of Don Juan” by Castenedo in college, and got nowhere—bored to tears by it. Sorry)

Raise your hands, all here who have immediate physical access to an actual (as differentiated-from any merely ‘virtual’) alternate Living Universe….perhaps courtesy-of the Yaqui Indian Don Juan Mattus; according-to the college professor Carlos Castanedas.  That’s an ‘option’ those qualifying might want to exercise much sooner than later….but they’ll’ve already figured that out.

Now, for those (probably “....huddled masses”) of you “left behind,” it’d be an opportune moment to think about “How long can you tread water?”....ala Dr. Cosby.  Or you might ponder the implications of whether “fire-breathing” has as much to do with inhalation of the Element as it has to do with its complementary function, Dragon-wise….and how much of that could you stand to enjoy. You see, the “jealous god” of “the jews” (and many of their fundamentalist Xtian brethren and sistren) accepts either “wave offerings” or “burnt offerings”....and there you have your overworked “free will” in a nut-shell.

Of course there’s nothing to keep all or any of you from going-on slap-happily with your customarily trivial pursuits (call it “show-business-as-usual”), but be advised the “global”-ists’ zero-sum-game has, relatively speaking, only seconds to go on its non-resettable time-clock.  So y’ gotta ask your self, Amigos, if The-Play really IS “The Thing.”

‘Cause if it ain’t, your only viable option will be The Way….call it Tiyoshpaye.

HokaHey!

Robert Fisk has “creds” and a good body of work.  A side note: Edward Said and Noam Chomsky were friends.  That gives Said extra “creds”, as well as having lived through being exiled.

(I am an atheist Jew.)  I was one of those who didn’t want to get “involved” in the whole Israel-Palestine mess, but largely because of the work of Noam Chomsky and Phyllis Bennis, I did.  Chomsky has a good interview, and pieces of a new speech on today’s DemocracyNow (with which I have complaints about other things: such as quacky medical dr.-writer as guest and absence of disability issues/disabled people on the show) - but on some things, DemNow is my favorite..

Note #2:DemNow is a Pacifica Network radio show that began over a decade ago on WBAI, Pacifica’s NYC station.  There’s been a coup at WBAI (and Pacifica, the national owner of the 5 community stations). I support http://www.takebackwbai.org

Taboo Inhibits Frank Iran/Israel Talk

By Ray McGovern

“March 12, 2010 “Information Clearing House”—Participants at an otherwise informative discussion on “Iran at a Crossroads” at the Senate on Wednesday seemed at pains to barricade the doors against the proverbial elephant being admitted into the room — in this case, Israel.

This, despite the fact that the agenda virtually dictated that the elephant be allowed in. The cavernous hearing room also could have accommodated it — however awkward and untidy the atmosphere might have become.

Otherwise, as was entirely predictable, the discussion would be lacking a crucial element. Which it turned out to be.

The tongue-tied impediment displayed by some of the presenters can be chalked up mostly to the all-too-familiar timidity on Capitol Hill to countenance candid discussion of any issue on which Israel can be revealed to be a fly in the ointment.”

-”Do the Iranian leaders see as contrived the oft-expressed concern that Iran might eventually obtain a nuclear weapon, when American officials do nothing about Israel’s actual nuclear weapons, or for that matter, those of Pakistan and India?

-Why is it that Robert Hunter, a former American ambassador, and now adviser to RAND, a passionate opponent of nuclear proliferation, can state his support for a “nuclear-free Middle East,” and then with a wan smile simply throw up his hands lamenting that that’s never going to happen (presumably because Israel would never go along).”

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24972.htm

By gerard, March 14 at 9:17 pm #

No quotation marks were used.  I was simply providing a response to that post.

Nothing sinister.

Anent what christo-judean soyuz wants in expalestine it appears best to assume that this ad hoc alliance [for destruction of palestine] doesn’t want peace, but solely the land.

And then later by use or threat of use of wmd against any arab land or bloc of lands prevent arabs from acquiring wmd which solely cld wrest palestine or parts of it from the christo-judean alliance.

Facts on the ground + words spoken by the land robbers strongly support the validity of the latter assumption.

This is also, i suggest, a US position: get the land and we will worry later ab what to do to keep it!

This explains why ‘jews’ are frightened at the prospect of an islamic country like iran obtaining wmd.
 
Once iran obtains wmd, christo-judean plan evaporates. Now, instead of land first and at any cost, peace-survival becomes ahead of anything else.

Facts also suggest that the US-israel alliance cannot attack or are frightened to attack iran even if its on its way to buying or acquiring wmd.

The alliance talked too much and too long ab an attack on iran. Osirak reactor, on the other hand was bombed, but not a word prior to attack on it had been uttered.

However, the main factor in deciding the fate of palestina, are the world plutos. They surely do not appreciate a tiny and impoverished land like israel to hamper their trade or endager their safety-wealth.

Most of them may abhore the three cults or parts of them; worshipping solely their addictions to money-power.
 
Thus US prezes do nothing; singing the same music and lyrics for 60 yrs or playing a good cop role while hated ‘jews’ play the role of bad cop which even ‘insults’ biden by just announcing a new expansion of settlements.

If biden had been insulted as some people say, he is not as yet banging his head against the wall nor screaming at BHO for sending him to israel to be so rudely surprised. Maybe he’s waiting till he comes home to do that in deference to ‘mighty’ israel?
Or is everything prescripted?!
Well, if one believes that US is good cop and israel bad, i got me a second wife,a very young and butiful woman i want to sell u! tnx

Patrich Henry:  It appears that you are quoting me when you use “By gerard.”  What follows, though I largely agree with it, is not a quote from my comment.

My point in the previous comment related entirely to my wish that people generally knew about those ordinary Arabs, Palestinians, Israelis and Christians who have been opposing the war and making peace among themselves for decades. I think they deserve public recognition (which they never get) as they are stalwartly pointing out day after day that, contrary to common impressions, peace is possible among them all.  If it were common knowledge, I would not need to bring the matter up.

By gerard, March 14 at 3:45 pm #

The present Israeli, Palestinian and Iranian governments need to be layed off, replaced top to bottom by younger more moderate leaders, ones without blood on their hands and willing to talk.

Disputes need to be resolved by the United Nations with minimal U.S. participation, abstain. 

American support for Israel, since its inception has been an anathema example of democracy in the UN.  Our security counsel veto against the remainder of the worlds opinion embarrasses us all.

Sorry to bore you.  Get over it.

I’m not going to repeat myself. If you continue to put forth that Arab myth as fact there’s nothing to debate.  In fact, it means you MISSED the entire point of the thread, which was about multiple viewpoints.

Since you are incapable of anything but a parrot-like repetition of fictional dogma, you’ve just gotten totally boring.

What can be gleaned from a brief review of recent books on Israel/Palestine?  Each has its viewpoint and contains more or less rational beliefs to support that viewpoint, pro/con this or that.  The same opinions aired in more detail than articles offered by the daily press?  Well and good, but ...

Where are average readers to find on-sight accounts of the decades-long efforts of hundreds of both Israelis and Palestinians to find ways to live together in peace?
  Such efforts exist and are on-going, but the world never hears of them nor are they asked to contribute to the still-only-half-hearted efforts to make peace.
  Surely such people as these would have something positive to contribute, and their case for peace would strengthen the frail efforts of “diplomats” mainly working in the interests of “outsiders.”
  There is something basically fractious in all these high-level meetings that get nowhere.  The less settlement, the more settlements—that’s clearly in evidence.

One correction for Mr. Fisk—Joseph and Mary were travelling not to Jerusalem, but to Bethlehem (Luke 2:4).

Re:By Inherit The Wind, March 14 at 10:03 am #

What are you talking about??!! Again you are resortig to putting words in people’s mouths that they didn’t say and attributing to them attitudes that they don’t have.
You tried to equate the zionists who went to Palestine and displaced and murdered the poor helpless and hapless Palestinians and took their land and houses with the illegal immigrants to the USA.
All I said that equating the two situations is completely false and it is completely false.

I have always been a proponent of cutting off all aid to the middle east, Arab and Israeli.

We have enough problems in this country to keep us occupied and we can use the money here.

truedigger3, March 14 at 6:45 am #

You are trying to equate a group of people who are sneaking across the border to make a living with a different group of people who are invading a land expelling and murdering its inhabitants and taking their land and their houses.??!! Are you serious?? You gotta be kidding!!
Nice try! Try to find another piece of bullshitting from your endless supply of blatant sophistry.
*********************************************

Oh, sure. Every Jew making Alia is rubbing his hands and grinning and laughing insanely and sadistically at the joy of displacing some Palestinian, and if he’s lucky, murdering the poor Arab.  Maybe next you can tell us how the Jew will use the Arab’s blood to make the matzoh for Passover.  Have you got any more stereotypes of Jews to trot out? How about long, hooked noses, black beards and thick lips?  And money.  Don’t forget money.  All Jews are known to love money and have demonic ways of getting it that normal folks can’t understand. Oh, and don’t forget the horns and demanding Christ be killed while you are at it.

I don’t expect you to see past context of ONE group moving into a nation on masse versus another.  It’s just too simple when your entire thesis is “If Jews do it: Bad. Anyone else does it: Good”.

One can NEVER make a sound argument for an action if one cannot remove the context and contrast it with a similar situation and argue for the SAME action.  You’ve rarely shown any capacity for rational discussion. I tried to pose this that way, but you, with your narrow tunnel one-track dogma, are incapable of doing so.

Inherit The Wind wrote:
“If one defends the legal and illegal immigrants in the US, is one now bound to defend the immigrants into the ME?”
____________________________________________________

You are trying to equate a group of people who are sneaking across the border to make a living with a different group of people who are invading a land expelling and murdering its inhabitants and taking their land and their houses.??!! Are you serious?? You gotta be kidding!!
Nice try! Try to find another piece of bullshitting from your endless supply of blatant sophistry.

Re:By gerard, March 13 at 11:58 pm #

gerard,

Lawerence of Arabia was not a naive character from the backwoods. He was in “her majesty” secret service, in service of the “British Empire”. He knew exactly what the British establishment is and its long history of deceit and broken promises,  what was required from him doing and what the outcome will be of his “services”.
Of course he will proclaim that he was “deceived” too, and that he tried to have his promises fullfilled but “failed”, and he is haunted by “guilt”. What a pure bullshitter he was.

Calling T.E. Lawrence a “Cracker” was a good call, but the identifying of Osama bin Laden by saying,

“... He arrived at this intense condensation of himself in God by shutting his eyes to the world, and to all the complex possibilities latent in him which only contact with wealth and temptations could bring forth.”

misses the mark by 20 or 30 million bucks, and a sowing of wild oats in Lebanon.

Lawrence says of the desert dweller, “He made nakedness of the mind as sensuous as nakedness of the body.” While we in the west make nakedness of the body boring, and nakedness of the mind quite acceptable, even preferable, and highly rewarding.

George Antonius’s mind was nattily attired when he said:

“No code of morals can justify the persecution of one people in an attempt to relieve the persecution of another. The cure for the eviction of Jews from Germany is not to be sought in the eviction of the Arabs from their homeland ...”

As Mr. Fisk makes obvious, Benny Morris’s mind performed a very public striptease:

“Benny Morris was the most prominent Israeli researcher to prove that it was indeed Israel’s intention to evict the Palestinians from their homes in their tens of thousands in 1948 – the fact that Morris has since gone completely batty by claiming the Israelis didn’t ethnically cleanse enough of them …”

Fisk says,

“So I suppose we have to say that “any fit reader” of the Middle East must read Edward Said.”

I’ll agree, any mind that seeks to be outfitted with the best attire should read, Edward Said, but when Fisk says that criticism of Dershowitz is loony, it means that he is much too forgiving of Dershowitz. Dershowitz has all the loony bases covered, and somebody needs to tell Dershowitz that his mind isn’t wearing any clothes.

Fisk says,

“The Soviet Union, of course, always had a problem with the Prophet, because Mohamed was a bourgeois merchant. At least Jesus was a worker’s son, although just how much Stakhanovite endeavour his father Joseph actually performed we are not told. But I must say the fact that Joseph and Mary had to travel all the way to Jerusalem to be taxed is truly Ottoman in its bureaucracy. And that no hotel could find room for a pregnant woman has a special Middle Eastern flavour – but now I’m becoming an “orientalist”.

What’s your point Mr. Fisk? He should stop spelling words like a hoity toity Brit. His mind seems to be a little chilly, and it needs to bundle up a little.

Stakhanovite endeavour? Mr. Fisk’s mind’s attire is much too skimpy. He should try the “Seattle Grunge” look, its warm, proletarian, and it symbolizes an intellectual understatement that is appealing to the common folk.

The rest of Mr. Fisk’s article is more accessible. Apparently he’s arguing that, In Lebanon, even those Arabs whose bodies were well dressed, replete with roses and perfumed handerchiefs were a bunch of scumbags. I maintain that there was too much wild oat sowing going on. When Orientalism meets Westernism, schizophrenia seems to be the result.

The “Charmante” reference may come in handy sometime, thanks for sharing Mr. Fisk

One can write anything.  What is left out and misunderstood, while colonized inhabitants are being psyched out, is how colonialism’s oppression and tyranny in whatever country causes withdrawal into oneself in many ways.

truedigger3:  I think perhaps you oversimplify Lawrence’s character.  If you read the book you will find that he tried very hard to prevent the outcome that was so disastrous for the Arabs, and to his dying day felt he should have been able to do something to prevent it.  What he tried seemed all he could do at the time, but he failed and the guilt haunted him.  I hope you have read the book. It is an early experiment in cross-cultural revelation.

Robert Fisk wrote about Edward Said:

“But at least one of his supporters fears that Said did not take account of the vast “orientalist” literature of Italy, Germany and Russia.”
_____________________________________________________

And why Said should take take account of codscending, arrogant, malicious, bigotted and extremely biased literature whose only purpose was to defend western colonialism of “those Arabs”??!!.
Add Lawerence of Arabia to those “oriantalists”.
He was nothing but a British Intelligence officer whose primary mission was to trick, bamboozle and mislead “those Arabs” and set the stage for the creation of Israel.

A ‘dimension’ of the conundrum Robert Fisk sketches-out here, one that seems rarely if ever to get taken into account, is the simple ‘physics’ of it all….the sheer mass and momentum of it that’s sweeping the hapless Human component along like grains of sand in a desert windstorm.  Also, it seems from here in Indian Country an exercise-in-futility to try isolating “The Middle-East” (and its sub-textual Palestine/Isreal CONflict) from a “global” CONtext driven by the same fundamental-ist imperatives of its own disaster-destined ‘dominance’ paradigm.

That ‘borders’ are at-best institutionalized wishful thinking isn’t a ‘secret’ anymore….even from the wishful thinkers.  That whatever ‘this’ is, we’re all in it together, can only be denied these Days by ever more rabid resort to the kinds of willful blindness that make all the violence besetting the unfortunate sub-species homo domesticus possible in-the-first-place.

THIS that we’re all in together, in the since-time-immemorial experience of us surviving free wild Human Beings, is a LIVING Arrangement.  Treating it as anything else, as do virtually all of our tame Sisters and Brothers, is a guarantee of disastrous CONsequences (exactly like those now overwhelming theirownselfs in the make-believe world-o’-hurt) for the mis-treaters.

It’s too bad the Shemites are mauling each other over mirages….but they’re no different than any of the rest of you in that.

HokaHey!

“...all the complex possibilities latent in him which only contact with wealth and temptations could bring forth.” (taken from T.E. Lawrence’s “Seven Pillars of Wisdom” by Fisk to illustrate the radical changes demanded from people rapidly emerging out of “simpler” cultures to face “modernization” etc.) If one cannot empathize with that trauma (and most people seem unable to do so) then “intercultural understanding” grinds to a hault and the fighting starts.
  America is particularly culpable for not being able to understand because its own history is replete with examples of people (our own families) making the rapid changes necessary to cope with radically different environments and periods of rapid change. Some efforts were very reprehensible; others more or less commendable. 
  If anyone should know how, and be open to understanding what is sometimes roughly called “assimilation”, it should be us.  But no.  We are repeating the worst of primitive human history by girding our loins to fight against the “migrants” we ourselves once were.
  There is a cure for this.  It is “empathy.” Where does empathy come from?  How do you get it?  Is it teachable?  Is it contagious? Is it some kind of skeleton in the closet by human depravity?

It may be that dualism is the basic template of
human thought. night-day; good-evil; on-off;
up-down; and with politics THEM -US. Fisk
points out how the boundaries between “them
and us” are fluid and often self serving. The
added horror is how the mystic, the mono
seeker the individual seeking the abnegation of
dualism is so ill prepared for the operative
world. It is interesting that the prince of peace,
the embodiment of love is seen by some as a
trinity that makes one.

‘Religions’ [cults] build thicker and taller walls bwtn people than chinese and israelis have.

Cults also prevent building better-structured and idyllic socities.
And all ills that befall us on int’l and interpersonal levels are caused by our iniquitous societies.

Thus, we can expect more atrocities and ill treatments of all kinds by the hands of stronger societies against weaker ones.

Expect at least 30 more wars of aggression by nato-US ad hoc alliance [for land grab].
tnx

A surprisingly thoughtful and non-confrontational article by Fisk.  He doesn’t really offer any answers, either “instant” or long-range, other than saying it’s a lot more complicated than anyone will admit….So I’m forced to admit it’s more complicated.  I’m sure a flurry of posts that miss the point—from EVERY POV will rain down.

One question I find keeps popping into my mind is the growth of both populations in the area, one via births, the other via births and immigration. 

With the word “Immigration” I’m forced to think of the immigrants in America that come from all over, but mainly Central America and Mexico.  With millions and millions of LEGAL immigrants, and the 11 or 12 million illegal immigrants, the US population will move Whites to a minority status very shortly.  Since one of my kids is White and the other is not White, the “browning” of America is by itself of no more than curious note to me.

Yet the issue of the changing of American society via the Southern influx is of MAJOR concern to many, many Americans, and the color change only exacerbates that for them (and makes a bigger excuse.  They hated Irish, Germans, Jews, Norwegians, Italians, Poles and other European White groups long before the Brown skin became an issue).

I like to take an issue, particularly a hot emotional one, and compare it to another that has surprisingly similar facts but a totally different context and players and see what implications and inferences shake out.

So…immigrants from the South and population growth and change in the US vs immigrants into the Middle East and population growth there as well.

If one defends the legal and illegal immigrants in the US, is one now bound to defend the immigrants into the ME?  Is the birth rate changing the ethnic structure of the US good or bad?  Is it the same in the ME?

There are more illegal immigrants in the US than there are people in Israel.  Do we throw them out? If yes, then should we throw illegal immigrants out of Israel?  If no, do we therefore NOT throw illegal immigrants out of Israel?

Context in moral choice should not matter unless you believe in moral relativism. I try not to and try to apply the same morality to similar facts in different contexts.

So before someone posts the usual “but that’s DIFFERENT” (which usually means “I have my views and I’m not letting facts change them”) please think about WHY it’s different, substantively different and not simply a difference of context.

An attempt to be morally consistent has pushed me to accept certain positions I NEVER would have thought I’d consider, such as what the 2nd Amendment means in the “penumbra” of the Bill of Rights.  I’m not sure the NRA is right, but I’m not sure they are as wrong as the Left makes them out to be.