Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Discussion of science, technology, politics, and other topics that aren't strictly philosophical.
Locked
User avatar
Diebert van Rhijn
Posts: 6469
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:43 pm

Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

vicdan wrote:bombings are the rational revenge impulse corrupted and subverted to serve an ideology.
The origins of suicide attacks lay purely in tactical as well cultural concerns, compare for example Samurai, Bushido code, Kamikaze attacks or the purely secular nationalist Tamil Tigers, the inventors of the suicide belt. It's always been part of theaters of war, as part of military maneuvers [suicide missions] or as part of extreme asymmetric warfare which by default expands the theater to include the largest possible scope. Attacks on Vietcong aligned villages or Palestinian and Hezbollah dominated neighborhoods are not less terror-tactic than a suicide mission in a civilian area. It's matter of scale and personalization of an event. Dying on the battlefield in a voluntary worn uniform is not less a choice for death than the one of a kamikaze pilot. Somehow we feel more comfortable with a 1% chance to be killed for a hundred soldiers at a front line than to assign one man a suicide mission and to let 99 others live.

It's not that long ago the West was mass killing civilians for the sake of winning or ending a war for the sake of 'brown-beating' a population to a changed attitude by high-altitude bombing or extreme sanctions. To turn around and demand everyone else to adapt our way of war, where nobody stands a chance to oppose the technological superiority and onslaught, seems rather convenient instead of some moral high ground. It would be more honest to just demand unconditional surrender of anyone not wanting to assimilate stock and barrel. But it's only with our mouths we preach tolerance and equality, like a religious formula, not realizing what it implies for our behavior.
IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon in 2002 wrote:...the Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.
What is really at stake is the presented choice between some messy urban warfare including suicide and terror missions, and the idea of giving up entirely an identity, independence, the belief, the dream - for one of parties involved, as open formal war is not an option for them because of the asymmetry in weapon technology or economical power.

The reality is that there's no such stark choice needed at all. Open borders will in time change all identities and mix cultures. Fear of that and blaming misfortunes on that process is essentially a fascist ideology, including the fear of terror that comes over any open border [check out Hitler's fear of communist and Jewish plots and terror attacks]. The cold war only arose because the USSR had to close down their own state against penetration and fleeing of their own people. The World Wars and many 19th century conflicts can be traced to protectionism and economical blockades as well. Free and open global markets have created relative peace the last fifty years where it was applied but the question is if such market is allowed to be when it inevitably will demand radical change in paradigm and identity to keep a local economy functional.

The causes of most large conflicts and sustained cross-border violence, including terrorism, over the last two centuries are easily traced back to specific policies of protectionism and economical blockades. Which are in place to protect a natural decline of an economy or imagined national identity. The dogs of war, with all the prequel of plots and terrorism soon follow.

Some slightly related reading: Does Israeli Intelligence Lie?
User avatar
Alex Jacob
Posts: 1671
Joined: Mon Jun 27, 2011 2:10 am
Location: Meta-Rabbit Hole

Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by Alex Jacob »

Geert Wilders, Wikipedia

My dear Diebert,

As much as I really do love you, I am not at all convinced of your ability to see straight, despite the sheets and waves of words, justifications, explications. It exists as a possibility to get so wrapped up in PC-thinking that one is incapable of assigning 'correct value' to things, and this has become the way I glimpse surreptitiously at the things you present, that is to say your 'world-view'. This entry from Wikipedia, at least, points in different directions than you indicate. I have no knowledge of the fellow, of course, and personally think his hairdo is fascist (and should be outlawed if not exiled).

Please don't think I am defending him or anything, or attacking the great multiculturist Dutch Project, or that I want to rip up the Koran, what interests me is that here in Colombia---in a place where things have REALLY gotten out of hand and where certain narratives have been allowed to operate without restraint, with no one capable of resisting them---there is also a 'movement' if you will, rooted in Roman Catholicism, that tries to posit a 'sane alternative' to a kind of unruly anarchism in the social body through the imposition of Order and Control. As has often been the case, the trend toward Order is often a Right-Wing project and so Catholicism often takes on 'fascistic' colors.

What I also find interesting in this 'conversation' (here on GF) is that the Koran, seen from one perspective IS a virulent hate-document, with outrightly violent tracts that are taken as such, that are acted upon as such, and yet, because of concepts of liberal religious toleration this document must be tolerated and defended by the PC cult, and yet the PC cult---reflexively---has to lash out at violent Israel that is defending itself against this stated and operative violence. It's like some weird kind of twist on the Stockholm syndrome. An enemy is located (and we all know that Israel is a prime enemy of mankind, bent on evil, in collusion with the Great Satan USA) and one is forced to rally in defense of the victim of this Evil.

C'mon man, tell me you at least see a little bit of what I'm talking about...

Moshe Ya'alon
_____________________________________________________

"On Tuesday (Sept 2008), Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the heads of UN member states,

"The dignity, integrity and rights of the European and American people are being played with by a small but deceitful number of people called Zionists. Although they are a minuscule minority, they have been dominating an important portion of the financial and monetary centers as well as the political decision-making centers of some European countries and the US in a deceitful, complex and furtive manner."

"Ahmadinejad then promised that Israel will soon be destroyed - for the benefit of humanity."

Diebert, is this true? Did he really say this? Did he really mean it? Or is this just hyperbole---theatre? What do you think of his core view? Is it true? Is that the way things really are?

Help me, dear brother, to organize within my poor misguided head the Correct understanding that will lead me to the Heaven of Truth and 'right action'. I am relying ON YOU...I call upon all Dutch Multiculturalists who see the world correctly to come to my aid! So much is at stake here, Diebert, you have no idea...

Oh wait! Here's a tid-bit of Guidance that appears through the Dark Mists that becloud my mind:

"Open borders will in time change all identities and mix cultures. Fear of that and blaming misfortunes on that process is essentially a fascist ideology, including the fear of terror that comes over any open border".

May I quote you?
Ni ange, ni bête
User avatar
vicdan
Posts: 1013
Joined: Sun Mar 18, 2007 11:48 am
Location: Western MA, USA
Contact:

Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by vicdan »

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:The origins of suicide attacks
I think you misunderstood me. I didn't speak about how suicide attacks came to be. I spoke about the cognitive mechanism which is used to make a person die willingly for some idea. There has to be an underlying psychological mechanism which overrides the survival imperative.

I think it's actually an interaction of the revenge/fairness complex, and the family protection complex. Both have genetic basis, both make our society possible -- and both get subverted to serve ideological ends of the third parties.
What is really at stake is the presented choice between some messy urban warfare including suicide and terror missions, and the idea of giving up entirely an identity, independence, the belief, the dream
bullshit. there are multiple other option. one of them, the Indian independence, is a stark and historical example of how it can be done.

Palestinians -- hamasniks specifically -- make the choices this narrow.
The reality is that there's no such stark choice needed at all. Open borders will in time change all identities and mix cultures. Fear of that and blaming misfortunes on that process is essentially a fascist ideology
Bullshit. historically grounded fear has nothing to do with fascism. you are simply bullshitting now.
Forethought Venus Wednesday
User avatar
Diebert van Rhijn
Posts: 6469
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:43 pm

Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Alex Jacob wrote:Geert Wilders, Wikipedia
My remarks were based on having actually followed this guy over the last years following many media, seeing the actual parliamentary debating, seeing his online movie, following and participating in the discussions around his ideas and his 'party'.

When I write about his irrelevance in political terms is that he doesn't represent a political entity as how it's normally understood in most democracies. For example his party has only one member: himself. While most political parties form a microcosm of ideas that democratically play out into a party consensus, there's no such moderation in his one guy undertaking. Even the underlying organizations have only him as only board member. There are many commentators and analysts that have pointed out these and others traits which make it look more as a cult. It's nothing but a mouthpiece of a dark brown undercurrent of society with absolutely no dialog internally and no dialog with any opposing party or group. Any call for a public debate from and with Islamic groups and representatives he has always declined.

And this is somehow representing a defender for Western values and democracy or a serious stirrer of debate? It's only demonstrating a level of ignorance that is breath taking. Yes, discussion is needed and real problems demand real solutions and constructive approaches. Wilders represents one of the problems, that is: obscuring the language, the discourse in a way that makes it near impossible to ever move forward. And yes, this is what makes him so perfectly aligned in my view with many Zionist and neo-conservative types. Not that the issues they raise are not important and worthy of debate, it's how they kill dialog before it can start as if their true motive is something completely different than stated.

It's not like I'm even considering Wilders being a danger in Hitlerean sense, but he's tapping into the same stuff at times. But him being some ego-maniacal dwarf, a parody on the fascist movement of old, I do not see him as risk, only a bit like alcohol: people might actually get dumber the more attention they give him.
"On Tuesday (Sept 2008), Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the heads of UN member states,
Diebert, is this true? Did he really say this? Did he really mean it? Or is this just hyperbole---theatre? What do you think of his core view? Is it true? Is that the way things really are?
Here's the whole speech

Does it really need defending that there always have been small factions playing with the beliefs of the masses during all of our history to further their own hidden and not so hidden goals and visions? It would be extremely naive to think they are not active in this age, that democracy somehow prevents this. Ahmadinejad is incredibly ignorant here to summarize this by the term 'Zionists'. Although at times it's hard to dismiss it altogether when the news reports a 50 billion dollar fraud performed by an influential Zionist American Jew, the amount of Zionist influence in the political subculture of neo-conservatism or Zionist leader Olmert boasting he can command president Bush around in the face of his own State Department and the UN security council. It's not exactly helping to dismiss these simplistic and rather populist theories.

Like Hamas, Ahmadinejad's context is the analysis of Zionism as practiced in current Israel being essentially a fascist, Nazi-type of movement that cannot be accepted out of principle. To engage this type of perception one shouldn't shrug it off as some kind of 'destroy Israel' mantra. There is really a belief here it being a Nazi-derived ideology, kept alive by an essentially racial and power-hungry group who keep it center-stage and somehow succeeds to avoid any significant, or consequential criticism on the world stage. One has the engage this worldview as a whole, not only in terms of hatred against Jews or a Jewish country. It seems to me some people desire it to make it look like this to avoid any further debate.

This worldview cannot be beaten by dismissing it as mere madness. One has to confront it with dialog, accepting the outrage the other experiences on what they perceive and think they know about history and then try to move forward to mutual understanding and respect by actions. Not by denying anything, not even denying a denial. This only would make it go underground.
"Ahmadinejad then promised that Israel will soon be destroyed - for the benefit of humanity."
This appear to be not an actual quote and quite deceiving, poisoning the debate really. He said there: "Let's love the people of the world and respect their rights. Rectify past behavior. This will benefit you and the human community". But perhaps they mean this: "Today, the Zionist regime is on a definite slope to collapse, and there is no way for it to get out of the cesspool created by itself and its supporters."

And related to this, his famous quote about "wiping Israel of the face of the world" is actually a quote of an Ayatollah that was talking about the 'regime' occupying Jerusalem that should vanish from the pages of time". The fact the half the world thought he was talking about nuking the nation of Israel shows how warped the dialog has become. So poisoned that Israel was already making plans to nuke Israel first just in case Iran was actually planning or was capable even to nuke them. This destructive line of thinking is completely the responsibility of Israel and its supporters around the world, and hardly Iran's.
"Open borders will in time change all identities and mix cultures. Fear of that and blaming misfortunes on that process is essentially a fascist ideology, including the fear of terror that comes over any open border".

May I quote you?
Only if you understand what I'm saying. And what you probably will refuse to understand is how I'm not particularly interested in the world actually introducing open border policies or not. That's not my intent with these remarks or any remark. It's about showing cause and effect in this case, offering tools how to be able to approach topic like this more truthfully, more realistically. If a fascist pig claims he wants to strengthen the identity of his state and strengthen his industry by closing borders, immigration, promoting his own culture over others, etc, then I have no bone with him. As long as he's willing to face the violence and the war, embrace it, serve it and not squeal like a pig when it happens. Because that's delusion.
User avatar
Diebert van Rhijn
Posts: 6469
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:43 pm

Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

vicdan wrote:I think it's actually an interaction of the revenge/fairness complex, and the family protection complex. Both have genetic basis, both make our society possible -- and both get subverted to serve ideological ends of the third parties.
Okay, self-sacrifice itself could be seen in all its forms as a strategy for certain genetic or cultural entities, like genes & memes perhaps but not only on the individual and family level I'd think. Is this what you're suggesting? But how do you determine when it's "subverted" and how to draw distinctions between one ideological end or another? Depending on what end you are on or do you have some measure of success you like to apply?
What is really at stake is the presented choice between some messy urban warfare including suicide and terror missions, and the idea of giving up entirely an identity, independence, the belief, the dream
bullshit. there are multiple other option. one of them, the Indian independence, is a stark and historical example of how it can be done.
The key lies in the phrase "presented choice". I wasn't claiming there were no other options but I disagree with your claim that the Palestinians narrowed the choice. The whole cyclic progress of events seems to have introduced the idea at both sides that survival or security can only be guaranteed by pushing back the other in the extreme. There lies the mistake, it just doesn't work that way unless of course one would allow for genocide.

Indian independence, it has been done but it's interesting how many fascist elements are still there pushing to change the nature of that state. Including breathtaking acts of terrorism and attempts to drag the country into a war, destabilizing and sparking the nationalism. It still has to be tested.
The reality is that there's no such stark choice needed at all. Open borders will in time change all identities and mix cultures. Fear of that and blaming misfortunes on that process is essentially a fascist ideology
Bullshit. historically grounded fear has nothing to do with fascism. you are simply bullshitting now.
Fear to the dark side it leads. Do you really think Hitler's fears were not grounded in actual and earlier events taking place in and around Germany that appeared to be threatening the state or its identity and power? That he didn't think a German state was under threat with the presence of large and influential groups opposing the government, with a pushing and infiltrating communism from the East and economical blockades from the West? If anyone had a grounded reason to be paranoia that everyone was against Germany and his government, it was him.
User avatar
Alex Jacob
Posts: 1671
Joined: Mon Jun 27, 2011 2:10 am
Location: Meta-Rabbit Hole

Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by Alex Jacob »

Ahmadinejad Quotes against Israel

"The skirmishes in the occupied land are part of a war of destiny. The outcome of hundreds of years of war will be defined in Palestinian land. As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map."

Text of Ahmadinejad's Speech, makes good reading!
________________________________________________

Diebert writes:

"Does it really need defending that there always have been small factions playing with the beliefs of the masses during all of our history to further their own hidden and not so hidden goals and visions?"

I understand what you are getting at of course, and we are certainly in a state of history where 'we the people' get to ask all the really JUICY questions and get to mull over the answers.

"Ahmadinejad is incredibly ignorant here to summarize this by the term 'Zionists'."

It is really far more than 'ignorance', I honestly think. It has to do with specifically tempting anti-Semitic narratives, and I will say it again: people on this list, I won't name names, are directly playing in those existing and very destructive narratives. I am actually trying to help any one who can listen to begin the work of taking them apart. I don't as you may guess have a great deal of hope at this point, it is like coming up against an impenetrable WALL. This forum has a kind of Jew-obsession and it is fascinating for me to experience it, to be right in the thick of it! I have learned so much...

I assume it is all part of some Divine Plan....

In a more general sense it has to do with the way that certain kinds of narratives are taken up, and the way they are employed. It might have been Gandhi who could have expressed a large part of what he wrote in his speech, you know. But, doesn't it seem to be that at the end of the day what really stands out is that stubborn Will-to-Power? I wouldn't for one second trust the rhetorical machine that, expressed through an Islamic Totalitarianism, came up with that discourse. I'd say, Run for the hills, brother!

Here, at least, as I understand it, the goals of American hegemony are pretty openly expressed, and it has been set up as a joint-project in which a whole group of players gets to participate. You could if you wanted condemn utterly the post-war division, this cutting up of the world into sectors and also the setting up of a plan for ruling each of those spheres of interest that is the core of Chomsky's analysis (so delightfully Machiavellian and so clear-seeing in many ways), and you could make it all look like something hatched from the mind of Mephistopheles, but there is another option: looking at it for all the tremendously positive things it has 'brought to the world', and yet always (and it may always be like this) with some sort of price paid by someone. In my case, as I have meditated on things (the post-war world order) I am now unashamedly happy and even proud that it has been an American century, one that America shared and co-created with Europe and the Asian powers. It always has to end up in some one's hands, and I guess I am rather glad that it ended up in 'our' hands.

And, I am also by and large proud and admiring of the Jewish contribution to the 'world system'---and that contribution has been very real, very tangible. Fact is, Jews are still actively participating in the creation and the imposition of a world model, but this is a participatory undertaking, as has been the construction of the present world system. I feel, or rather I know, that Jews (if one can generalize in this way) have brought to the table many worthy gifts as far as the will to create an equitable and functioning world model, and I don't think anyone has to deny 'their' role in the world. It is a positive and creative role by and large. The Jewish will, as I understand it, is productive, far-seeing, open, tolerant, enlightened, and of course always concerned for the upper domains of knowledge. I could certainly go on and it wouldn't be vain braggery. I have faith in my own country, up to a point, and I have faith in the Western accomplishment, and I have faith in myself and in 'my own people' (though it is dangerous to speak of Jews as one block).

You wouldn't know, Diebert (from the look of it) what it is really like to rub shoulders with people who are really in the dark about how to organize the living of life, and how to go about setting up productive, efficient, relatively equitable models. I see this every day here in Colombia, and it makes me feel confident that, with reservations, I am a product of a genuinely productive system, one that has achieved great things. What these assholes have achieved, following their own stupid models, produces by and large misery and pain. I know that there are defects in 'my' system, and I know too that it has power-mongering elements, but I take this all as part and parcel of the human game.

Sometimes you really have to take a stand and be willing to impose your own will, but I doubt you could even THINK such a thought, as a soft, womanly European. It's all 'eek!' and 'eew!', but what the fuck do you know about handling power? Power is something that is handled, employed, wielded...

And a great part of what it means to be a man has to do with this whole question. I don't think you learn such things picking your lunch out of Australian garbage cans BTW...(You at leat have a job).

With that said, I would sum it up by saying that we have a great deal to be proud of (I mean you and me), a great deal to defend as our positive and valuable creation, and just as well a great deal to be wary of, both in ourselves and in others who may not, in truth, share what I think we could genuinely and honestly call Western high-mindedness. In that, I think it is quite wise to be extremely wary of Islamic intentions, and I also think 'we' need to make very careful and also very difficult decisions about how 'they' will be or can be incorporated into an emerging world system. As some have wisely stated, a greater percentage of the world's population has no background in those visions and institutions that have informed us (China for example and the Muslim world), and they would not, it seems, create the sorts of systems, though they may be defective in part, that we have created.

You are quite free to fiddle around with those narratives that, if the truth were to be honestly told, would 'wipe Israel off the map' and so much more too, but I am just as free to send up counter-narratives or antidotes.

One of the most important things I ever got from reading Nietzsche was his idea of an 'undivided will'. That we need to mold for ourselves, from our existing moralities I suppose, an ethic and a morality that is really human or fully human, that takes into account our will to power, which of course has predatorial aspects even as it may have other, more lofty aspects. We cannot be divided against ourselves, but all of ourselves must move in concert toward the realization of our will.

I guess at the end of the day I have more faith in our will than I do in any other player I see out there. Iran? Russia? China? So, I know of what I am composed, I know what makes me me, and I know what I have to defend, and why. I am on my side, and I am on our side. I am not on their side.

So, I would tear to shreds the narratives that Ahmadinejad weaves with honeyed speech, which is not so very hard to do at all.
Ni ange, ni bête
User avatar
Diebert van Rhijn
Posts: 6469
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:43 pm

Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Alex Jacob wrote: "The skirmishes in the occupied land are part of a war of destiny. The outcome of hundreds of years of war will be defined in Palestinian land. As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map."
Could you explain to me where the difference is with for example speeches about Iraq being the "front" in the war with terrorists who are fighting against "humanity"? Or the PNAC policy drawn up by the US President advisers to 'restructure' the Middle East by wiping off a couple of regimes. Really, it's not the rhetoric that is different than 'ours', the concern is that we don't like the ones articulating it and what they stand for in our eyes. But since we actually know and understand so little of that we make a hypocrite statement about the rhetorical aspects!
"Ahmadinejad is incredibly ignorant here to summarize this by the term 'Zionists'."

It is really far more than 'ignorance', I honestly think. It has to do with specifically tempting anti-Semitic narratives
It's ignorant because Zionism and the attachment of many religious and fascist people to Israel as-is form just the tip of the iceberg. The reason some people on this forum are sensitive to this narrative is really no surprise looking at the atheist, Buddhist undercurrents here, which makes weariness comes natural, weariness of the delusions of Judeo-Christianity, the webs the ego spins and we fly so willingly in.
In my case, as I have meditated on things (the post-war world order) I am now unashamedly happy and even proud that it has been an American century, one that America shared and co-created with Europe and the Asian powers. It always has to end up in some one's hands, and I guess I am rather glad that it ended up in 'our' hands.
Comparison with events not happened and unimaginable is meaningless and therefore your gladness is vacuous. If you'd live in a modern Germanic, Roman or Islamic century you might think the same, as things tend to organize in certain ways, no matter the beliefs of the leadership.
The Jewish will, as I understand it, is productive, far-seeing, open, tolerant, enlightened, and of course always concerned for the upper domains of knowledge. I could certainly go on and it wouldn't be vain braggery. I have faith in my own country, up to a point, and I have faith in the Western accomplishment, and I have faith in myself and in 'my own people' (though it is dangerous to speak of Jews as one block).
The 19th century Germans were regarded in a similar way. It doesn't prevent fascist ultra-nationalist groups and beliefs arising and condoned, not resisted enough until it refuses to go away. The ancient Greeks are valued for their contributions but their values and ways of life nevertheless would be regarded as twisted in this age. With great qualities comes also great responsibility and ability to undertake the greatest feats of ignorance. And we, the less endowed, less enlightened gentiles are there to suggest a bit of down to Earthiness. :-)
I am a product of a genuinely productive system, one that has achieved great things.
So, what are you making? Aren't you dabbling with property values and markets? Or is there something else?
but what the fuck do you know about handling power? Power is something that is handled, employed, wielded...
Truth is a specific application of power but many hands are too small and sweaty to even grasp it. Many have to practice with smaller things first until they grow out of them, discarding the need.
In that, I think it is quite wise to be extremely wary of Islamic intentions
Which you know nothing about it seems. Perhaps it being alien stirs up your rhetoric? It's possible that the Islamic world will require fundamental changes combined with fundamental changes in the West to be able to integrate truthfully. Or it's also possible the Islamic faith will somehow transform in a belief that takes over the weary, nihilism cynical Western heart and we'll be taken over from the inside! Or a big clash of civilizations in the great Battle of Megiddo.
One of the most important things I ever got from reading Nietzsche was his idea of an 'undivided will'. That we need to mold for ourselves, from our existing moralities I suppose, an ethic and a morality that is really human or fully human, that takes into account our will to power, which of course has predatorial aspects even as it may have other, more lofty aspects.
How would you see Nietzsche's view of this will in relationship to the Jews? He did analyze their historical wrestling with it and their concocted solution.
I guess at the end of the day I have more faith in our will than I do in any other player I see out there.
There will always be will to go around, like wind and rain. My concern is truth no matter how small and insignificant the ways it might seem to manifest.
User avatar
Alex Jacob
Posts: 1671
Joined: Mon Jun 27, 2011 2:10 am
Location: Meta-Rabbit Hole

Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by Alex Jacob »

Diebert asks:

"Could you explain to me where the difference is with for example speeches about Iraq being the "front" in the war with terrorists who are fighting against "humanity"? Or the PNAC policy drawn up by the US President advisers to 'restructure' the Middle East by wiping off a couple of regimes. Really, it's not the rhetoric that is different than 'ours', the concern is that we don't like the ones articulating it and what they stand for in our eyes. But since we actually know and understand so little of that we make a hypocrite statement about the rhetorical aspects!"

In the theatre of life, dear one, in order to work your will, you need scripts you can really sink your teeth into. We create certain stories for ourselves, and then we spend our time acting out the roles we have devised for ourselves. You can see where I am going, but does this help you at all? You are smart enough---of course---to recognize that there is, at the core of all this, a kind of 'game'. Do you want me to come out and declare that the Iranian of pan-Islamic narrative is of equal value to 'ours'? Truthfully---though I am told they 'read Lolita in Tehran'---I don't think I can do it.

The rhetoric concocted for an invasion of Iraq seems to have been hyperbole, but I propose that, in the long run, and for the benefit of the greater number, including the numbers on my side (I have said I am on 'my side' and not on 'their side'), it may very well indeed be part of a necessary group of steps to control and direct the Islamic world. I would imagine that these levels of decisions---decisions of global scope---are made by the major powers who more or less 'own' the world, who direct it and control it. It would be a very simple and intelligible statement of fact to affirm that there are interests that make decisions of this scale. I think you just have to accept it as a given. With that said, it seems to be a given that the power structure that runs and directs the world is certainly not going to allow an oppositional pole to arise, to allow it to arm, and to function as-against the existing order. Do you have some kind of illusions that things are different? That they should be different?

It seems to me---and it always seems to be like this---that there are some people, some groups of people, who hold and wield power. It is inevitable. The main question is do they have the 'high-mindedness' to create systems of 'general equability'? When you take into account all the different elements and narratives that inform them, their knowledge base, what they hold as valuable and 'noble', but also in what way is their practical side expressed, their 'Roman' side if you will, who do you feel comfortable giving your allegiance to? I guess I accept it axiomatically, if you will, that the American-European-Asian power-structure (how should it be called? Who in fact composes it?) is a fairly good model, with certain obvious imperfections. What I mostly got from Chomsky was the knowledge, the idea, that the 'present world order' will not and cannot allow (especially bellicose) independent concentrations of power. The script was written in broad strokes at the end of WW2 and is, if we accept the National Security Documents as being truthful, by and large an American plan. A world system is developing that was designed by America power. I guess you just sort of have to say it: Either play in the game that has been devised or don't play.

I believe that what I am saying or describing is something about 'power and how power operates'. I don't have an illusion that it is ideal, but again what interests me is a unity of will-to-power, the self-knowledge of who we are (and aren't), and the willingness to act as holistic and undivided players in the world. We could shift the whole conversation and propose a romantic politics and it would certainly be fun and interesting, and the ladies would love it too, but we are men of action and not little girls! Up, Diebert! Gird up your loins!

"It's ignorant because Zionism and the attachment of many religious and fascist people to Israel as-is form just the tip of the iceberg. The reason some people on this forum are sensitive to this narrative is really no surprise looking at the atheist, Buddhist undercurrents here, which makes weariness comes natural, weariness of the delusions of Judeo-Christianity, the webs the ego spins and we fly so willingly in."

You are really so far off track, man! The fact is, the facts are, that there are many within Israel who are acutely aware of the nature of the problems they face, and they are just about anything but 'fascist'. I think you must really have a problem with the whole concept of the use of power. Just like the whole liberal faction basically. Any use of power---ANY USE OF POWER---will be seen and described as 'fascistic'. That is pretty much what Carl said some pages back, or what he meant.

It is more truthful to say that, here, among these escapist girls of GF, no one of them can define a way that they are connected to their own physical selves. The GF forum is basically, and for this reason, pathological, and so many suffer from dissociative ailments originating in the mind and emotions. The architects of GF are a group of men who rely on the state for their dinner (with the exception of Kevin who, bless his heart, actually works for his bread). They have no physical selves! They are not beings with a physical root! To have a root is to exist physically, to affirm existence, and to exist physically is also, by extension, to defend one's physical realm. I think you understand where I am going with this, but it is very important to know all this, to realize all this. All their discourse is just fucking WIND and is useless for beings who seek to define themselves as undivided beings with a role in the world.

'Israel', it seems, is an idea that they cannot accept just as castrated dogs team up on dogs who still have their balls! If you really were to be willing to talk about the Jew-fixation of this forum, in all its absurd manifestations, you'd be having a conversation dealing with psychology and troubled teenagers. You and they are, in my estimation, cowards because you will not actually make the effort to see and describe what so challenges you about the existence and struggle of Israel. Tell the fucking truth, Diebert! Henry Miller wrote: 'There is something in a healthy Gentile that excites the Jewish mind', but oddly roles have reversed.

"Comparison with events not happened and unimaginable is meaningless and therefore your gladness is vacuous. If you'd live in a modern Germanic, Roman or Islamic century you might think the same, as things tend to organize in certain ways, no matter the beliefs of the leadership."

Well, it is an interesting question. What if all sorts of other things had happened, and if we (individually and plurally) had not chosen the paths we had chosen. But to have faith in one's destiny, to have worked rigorously and perseveringly for a 'batter world' is not to me a vain thought. Again, I think that we can look with a great deal of favor and pride on the world that was constructed in the post-war era. It is a choice I make, therefor, to see it as positive and to deliberately veer away from the negative inflection glued on our accomplishments (yours and mine) by paranoid, romantic minds. (It is in one sense a strange form of benighted mind that projects shadows everywhere, the goopy gunk of evil). It is quite possible that we in fact defeated and held back far greater evils than our own (which must always be considered).

"The 19th century Germans were regarded in a similar way. It doesn't prevent fascist ultra-nationalist groups and beliefs arising and condoned, not resisted enough until it refuses to go away. The ancient Greeks are valued for their contributions but their values and ways of life nevertheless would be regarded as twisted in this age. With great qualities comes also great responsibility and ability to undertake the greatest feats of ignorance. And we, the less endowed, less enlightened gentiles are there to suggest a bit of down to Earthiness. :-)

I never, ever would express Jewish influence as being in any sense superior to that of Gentiles. Not ever. Please don't paint me in that way.

I only say to you that (in respect to Israel), from my angle of view, you are deluded. I don't think you really know where 'Earth' is located for Israelis, nor do you really grasp what they are up against. Again, I don't think that you have the tools required to 'see clearly' in our world, and you are informed and driven by idealisms and ideas about right and wrong that function---I am certain they do---very nicely in your sophisticated Dutch setting, replete with hot milk and cookies, a hash-head princess, rooms with a view, pussy within reach of everyone with a few spare euros, etc.

Walter Kauffman, I think it was, wrote that working to improve our world is a manifestation of the very best part of ourselves, but he said that, I think, within a context more similar to what I am trying to express than in what you seem to want to express.

"So, what are you making? Aren't you dabbling with property values and markets? Or is there something else?"

If your question is serious, I see myself (in my context of Colombia) as representing something, a way of seeing the world and acting in the world. I see and deal every day with people who cannot organize their thinking, who are troubled by 'spirits' of unproductive ideas, conflicted ideas, resentful ideas. In that sense and in that sense alone do I feel I represent an 'antidote'. Intellectually, philosophically and 'spiritually' I am trying to define the activity of a whole person (in the Nietzschean sense). I have helped numbers of people finish their educations and get their heads straightened out so that they can enjoy 'life and life's abundance'. (It's a Jewish thing, man).

Do you laugh, brother Diebert? ;-)

"How would you see Nietzsche's view of this will in relationship to the Jews? He did analyze their historical wrestling with it and their concocted solution."

I try not to rely on his conclusions, but find the most value in the questions he proposes. I guess that is why he is relevant for so many different thinkers of different, and opposite, persuasions. In case it isn't obvious, my area of personal concern (and confusion or inclarity---uncertainty) is that between civilized order and freedom. I see myself as if whip-sawed between defending a 'sane order' and a 'decent organization' that allows for personal expression and growth, and another pole that is concerned for questions of 'ultimate freedom' and all that could mean.

Jews seem to have a 'universal role', given their presence just about everywhere, and if there is such a thing as a Jewish will-to-power one can at least be grateful that it will occur within a universal, a world-wide, context. I think it is a cosmopolitan, universalist and even 'enlightened' activity, taken on the whole and compared to others. You seem to want to paint it is dark colors, I think it can be painted in very bright and clean colors.
Ni ange, ni bête
User avatar
vicdan
Posts: 1013
Joined: Sun Mar 18, 2007 11:48 am
Location: Western MA, USA
Contact:

Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by vicdan »

Alex Jacob wrote:I believe that what I am saying or describing is something about 'power and how power operates'. I don't have an illusion that it is ideal, but again what interests me is a unity of will-to-power, the self-knowledge of who we are (and aren't), and the willingness to act as holistic and undivided players in the world. We could shift the whole conversation and propose a romantic politics and it would certainly be fun and interesting, and the ladies would love it too, but we are men of action and not little girls! Up, Diebert! Gird up your loins!

"It's ignorant because Zionism and the attachment of many religious and fascist people to Israel as-is form just the tip of the iceberg. The reason some people on this forum are sensitive to this narrative is really no surprise looking at the atheist, Buddhist undercurrents here, which makes weariness comes natural, weariness of the delusions of Judeo-Christianity, the webs the ego spins and we fly so willingly in."

You are really so far off track, man! The fact is, the facts are, that there are many within Israel who are acutely aware of the nature of the problems they face, and they are just about anything but 'fascist'. I think you must really have a problem with the whole concept of the use of power. Just like the whole liberal faction basically. Any use of power---ANY USE OF POWER---will be seen and described as 'fascistic'. That is pretty much what Carl said some pages back, or what he meant.

It is more truthful to say that, here, among these escapist girls of GF, no one of them can define a way that they are connected to their own physical selves. The GF forum is basically, and for this reason, pathological, and so many suffer from dissociative ailments originating in the mind and emotions. The architects of GF are a group of men who rely on the state for their dinner (with the exception of Kevin who, bless his heart, actually works for his bread). They have no physical selves! They are not beings with a physical root! To have a root is to exist physically, to affirm existence, and to exist physically is also, by extension, to defend one's physical realm. I think you understand where I am going with this, but it is very important to know all this, to realize all this. All their discourse is just fucking WIND and is useless for beings who seek to define themselves as undivided beings with a role in the world.

'Israel', it seems, is an idea that they cannot accept just as castrated dogs team up on dogs who still have their balls! If you really were to be willing to talk about the Jew-fixation of this forum, in all its absurd manifestations, you'd be having a conversation dealing with psychology and troubled teenagers. You and they are, in my estimation, cowards because you will not actually make the effort to see and describe what so challenges you about the existence and struggle of Israel. Tell the fucking truth, Diebert! Henry Miller wrote: 'There is something in a healthy Gentile that excites the Jewish mind', but oddly roles have reversed.
You know, i think you are onto something. This isn't just specific to GF, though. I think this is a malaise which pervades much of modern society -- people seek to deny what they are.

A man is a big fucking Robe Goldberg machine of stuff: kind and cruel, loving and aggressive, creative and destructive -- spiritual and intellectual and carnal. I think the people who try to distance themselves from human carnality, end up instead subtly envying those who embrace their flesh and blood and will-to-power.

Israel stands up and fights. This quintessential expression of carnality, the physical struggle for survival, seems to both offend and taunt those who foolishly try to deny their carnal nature -- taunt them the same way a popular highschool jock's very existence, his unapologetic physicality and sexuality, taunts the quiet virgin geek in the corner.

I used to be that geek, I remember how it felt.

The resentment of Israel when it comes from the left -- which resentment so rapidly replaced condescending admiration, once Israel had conclusively proven its superlative ability to kick ass -- seems to me to be in part of the same nature: the impotent resentment and envy directed at those who embrace their struggle and make no apologies for being themselves; those who are not sorry about the will-to-power, and imprint themselves forcefully upon the world. In a way, Israel's very existence casts doubt on the European project, the ideal of the peaceful, calm Eutopia ruled by a straight-jacket of comity and cooperation, with power kept in a teeny tiny box under lock and key.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons why in Europe football fandom reaches such insane, even murderous, intensity: sport is one of the very few outlets for carnality there which are culturally sanctioned.

let the accusations of fascism commence...
Forethought Venus Wednesday
Leyla Shen
Posts: 3851
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:12 pm
Location: Flippen-well AUSTRALIA

Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by Leyla Shen »

Israel stands up and fights. This quintessential expression of carnality, the physical struggle for survival, seems to both offend and taunt those who foolishly try to deny their carnal nature -- taunt them the same way a popular highschool jock's very existence, his unapologetic physicality and sexuality, taunts the quiet virgin geek in the corner.

I used to be that geek, I remember how it felt.
[laughs] Oh, you don't say, Victor!

Freud was onto it years ago - its called "the phallus."

To some of us, really - you are simply insane; those of us who already possess the phallus, that is...
Between Suicides
User avatar
vicdan
Posts: 1013
Joined: Sun Mar 18, 2007 11:48 am
Location: Western MA, USA
Contact:

Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by vicdan »

Leyla Shen wrote:[laughs] Oh, you don't say, Victor!
Indeed I do. The operative word is 'used to be'. I have perspective from both sides of the divide.
To some of us, really - you are simply insane; those of us who already possess the phallus, that is...
To 'some of you' -- genocide deniers, for example, or marxists -- i am 'insane' because I make your delusional lies look like, well, delusional lies.
Forethought Venus Wednesday
User avatar
Diebert van Rhijn
Posts: 6469
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:43 pm

Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

vicdan wrote: Israel stands up and fights. This quintessential expression of carnality, the physical struggle for survival, seems to both offend and taunt those who foolishly try to deny their carnal nature
Only when it relies for most part on deceit and covert manipulation and only if the 'foolish' offended have some kind of attachment to truth. And this is what again and again becomes the center of the discussion: can deceit and manipulation be admired as a form of power wielding too? "By way of deception, thou shalt do war", after all.
The resentment of Israel when it comes from the left -- which resentment so rapidly replaced condescending admiration, once Israel had conclusively proven its superlative ability to kick ass
Nazi Germany was deemed overly superior to anything in the rest of the world for a decade. How long would Germany have lasted without WW2? Would it still be going strong? Would they have just displaced most targeted groups instead of mass-murdering them when pressure mounted? Things to ponder.

Well yeah, you are a closet fascist, like so many once bullied geeks tend to become, as if they have much choice when trying to climb out of the cesspit of their soul! The only other option is comedian.
User avatar
Alex Jacob
Posts: 1671
Joined: Mon Jun 27, 2011 2:10 am
Location: Meta-Rabbit Hole

Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by Alex Jacob »

Henry Siegman

You will likely describe CAMERA as an Israel-Nazi front organization, nevertheless the point I wish to make is that there always seems to be counter-narratives. You have established your pet idea of what is Israel, and what it does, and why, and your core decision, it seems, this 'putting your foot down' determines what sources you will highlight. Importantly, you won't acknowledge the murky intentions of the Left (generally), a murkiness not hard to spot IMO.

If it is any concession to you at all, I am certain that Israel, as it has reasserted itself, reasserted its nationhood, has displaced some people, and that this is 'unjust' in the most strict sense. I can easily see and explain injustices that are part of the foundation of my own country, and they almost 'wipe it out of existence' right from the start. Australians have similar skeletons and though they are older and more settled, so too do the Dutch. The whole issue might have been solved early on in a different context, in a different moment of history, and with more reasonable players. But that wasn't the way it played out. Depending on what your personal point of view of 'righteousness' is, will determine what narratives---among so many narratives all begging for a home like lost puppies---one picks up and hurls.

Hamas has 'Enormous Responsibility'

Louis Michel
Ni ange, ni bête
User avatar
Diebert van Rhijn
Posts: 6469
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:43 pm

Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Alex Jacob wrote:Do you want me to come out and declare that the Iranian of pan-Islamic narrative is of equal value to 'ours'? Truthfully---though I am told they 'read Lolita in Tehran'---I don't think I can do it.
You value what you're valuing - there's no issue here. But are you aware you're just doing that, without any means of accurate measurement? Just a hand full of sentiments, habit, tradition and indoctrinations mostly. It's not a fault, unless you try to turn them into something more than this.
the American-European-Asian power-structure (how should it be called? Who in fact composes it?) is a fairly good model, with certain obvious imperfections.
Such structure doesn't really exist, it's constantly in motion and does not represent a unity or constancy that can be used as argument. For a short period of time several fundamentally differencing sets of interests are aligned. Don't make more of that than it is.
What I mostly got from Chomsky was the knowledge, the idea, that the 'present world order' will not and cannot allow (especially bellicose) independent concentrations of power.
Of course. But all systems will collapse when the natural symbolic order is ignored which a system always does eventually. You've got that from me.
I think you must really have a problem with the whole concept of the use of power. Just like the whole liberal faction basically. Any use of power---ANY USE OF POWER---will be seen and described as 'fascistic'.
No, you confuse it with phallic. Truth as well as lie are both expressions of power, but different routes. To wield and to strive to be open and honest about it is manly, to continuously gravitate to wielding it in secret is womanly. Of course this leads to the famous hand-wash question: "What is truth?".
To have a root is to exist physically, to affirm existence, and to exist physically is also, by extension, to defend one's physical realm.
Essentially some kind of religious point of view trying to appear as if it's not. The question remains, in all conflict: what is exactly defended and affirmed? What is fundamental to it and what are we using just as decoration for our celebration? You might confuse the two and actually we all grow up doing that so don't take it too personally.
I see and deal every day with people who cannot organize their thinking, who are troubled by 'spirits' of unproductive ideas, conflicted ideas, resentful ideas. In that sense and in that sense alone do I feel I represent an 'antidote'. Intellectually, philosophically and 'spiritually' I am trying to define the activity of a whole person (in the Nietzschean sense). I have helped numbers of people finish their educations and get their heads straightened out so that they can enjoy 'life and life's abundance'. (It's a Jewish thing, man).
You're a better man indeed but no need to credit any Jewelry for that. Any person with a higher sense of consciousness engages in these type of activities quite naturally. It's a human thing, man.
Jews seem to have a 'universal role', given their presence just about everywhere, and if there is such a thing as a Jewish will-to-power one can at least be grateful that it will occur within a universal, a world-wide, context. I think it is a cosmopolitan, universalist and even 'enlightened' activity, taken on the whole and compared to others. You seem to want to paint it is dark colors, I think it can be painted in very bright and clean colors.
Lets paint it then with Nietzschean colors for the sake of discussion, since you brought him up. He's known for praising and admiring the Jews, hating antisemitism and still see them as originators of a confusion with great consequences. Perhaps this is why so many expect the Jews as well to supply a savior??
Nietzsche in Der Antichrist wrote:The Jews are the strangest people in world history because, confronted with the question whether to be or not to be, they chose, with a perfectly uncanny deliberateness, to be at any price: this price was the radical falsification of all nature, all naturalness, all reality, of the whole inner world as well as the outer. ... That precisely is why the Jews are the most fateful people of world history: by their aftereffect they have made mankind so thoroughly false that even today the Christian can feel anti-Jewish without realizing that he himself is the ultimate Jewish consequence. ...

Psychologically considered, the Jewish people are a people endowed with the toughest vital energy, who, placed in impossible circumstances, voluntarily and out of the most profound prudence of self-preservation, take sides with all the instincts of decadence - not as being controlled by these, but because they divined a power in these instincts with which one could prevail against "the world" ... they have known how to place themselves as the peak of all movements of decadence (as the Christianity of Paul), in order to create something out of them which is stronger than any Yes-saying party of life.

Everything that contains its value in itself is made altogether valueless, anti-valuable by the parasitism of the priest (or the "moral world order"): now it requires a sanction after the event - a value-conferring power is needed to negate what is natural in it and to create a value by so doing. The priest devalues, desecrates nature: this is the price of his existence.
User avatar
Alex Jacob
Posts: 1671
Joined: Mon Jun 27, 2011 2:10 am
Location: Meta-Rabbit Hole

Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by Alex Jacob »

Diebert,

Do you suppose that ALL the alarms, discourses, studies, theses, life works, major investigations that deal with Islam as a 'threat to the West' and 'our system of values' have no foundation at all?

While I certainly have not made a study of it, I am not ignorant either. Islam seems to me, speaking quite generally, to be a belief-platform that can quickly and easily allow totalitarian and absolutist forms to appear. I am also aware that 'the Islamic World' represents a population resource that the West wishes to penetrate and incorporate-exploit.

What do you wish to teach me here, Diebert?

You ask:

"But are you aware you're just doing that, without any means of accurate measurement? Just a hand full of sentiments, habit, tradition and indoctrinations mostly. It's not a fault, unless you try to turn them into something more than this."

I see most of life, if not all of life, not only in regard to 'external knowledge' but especially toward all that is subjective and personal (which seems to be the prime motivator in human beings straight across the board), as being impossible to 'measure accurately'. The more truthful we might want to become (with ourselves and about our condition) it seems that the more we have to confess ignorance...about just about everything that moves us, molds us, makes us, influences us, impels us. NEVERTHELESS, one is called and to a large extent forced to make decisions on the basis of partial information, sometimes purely intuitive, sometimes as arbitrary as in some sort of Delphic oracle where certain forms take shape in the smoke (or what have you) and you have 3 seconds to form an opinion, make a decision and act.

[Speaking of that, and only because it is interesting, I read recently that vis-a-vis the God Mercury, one method of getting the answer from this wily and dishonest God of Thieves was to approach the temple muttering under one's breath one's question, leave an offering, and then stop one's ears and leave the temple grounds. After walking away, you then unstopped your ears and the first words you heard was your answer, and you had to then make decisions on that basis.]

You are asking rather arcane questions, I would prefer to keep it more simple.

"Such structure doesn't really exist, it's constantly in motion and does not represent a unity or constancy that can be used as argument. For a short period of time several fundamentally differencing sets of interests are aligned. Don't make more of that than it is."

Fundamental disagreement from my camp, which does not exist, but nevertheless disagrees fundamentally. I accept as likely that the planet was consciously and rationally divided up by the post-war powers and that a general division was established, and enforced. Resistant pockets were identified and tactics were discussed to break them apart and re-assimilate them. Much of this is done on the fly, and strange things always happen with the recipe ('rulership of state like frying of fish'), but all this takes place in real time, with real players, real winners and losers. And you tell me it doesn't 'really' exist? Next, you'll tell me that I don't exist. I see the post war era as a more or less straight line of development to where we are now. I think you can still point out the main areas and describe, rationally, how they got to be what they are, though I admit to greater complexity.

"No, you confuse it with phallic. Truth as well as lie are both expressions of power, but different routes. To wield and to strive to be open and honest about it is manly, to continuously gravitate to wielding it in secret is womanly. Of course this leads to the famous hand-wash question: "What is truth?".

Phallic, shmallic I say. You are taking this in some weird Dutch direction. It is sad, I think, because those were some relevant paragraphs I wrote, or at least I thought so. One important issue is that Jews in European history did not have a means to defend themselves. Gaining a state, and gaining a military and becoming militant was and is a huge and important step in Israeli culture. Israel defines itself, physically, as a place, and there is no doubt about this locality. The ability to defend this place, and to continue to assert power in it, is what I was talking about. As Victor said some pages back, this is an unthinkable and deeply offensive fact for Arab culture, where Jews are defined as weak, lesser beings. Similarly, in the European mind, it is shocking to see Jews using concrete power, raw power, to assert, claim and defend themselves. Before, and for so many, it was and still is only imagined what nefarious deeds Jews performed in secret, in the mists, using potency that no one could ever really define, because it hinged into diabolism.

Jews assert themselves in history and demonstrate a pure will to defend their existence. Others oppose this will for all they are worth. Israel, as I read the facts, refuses to submit to any 'narrative' that works against its continued existence. The game is thoroughly understood at a core level, and will be played in life and in death. If that is 'phallic' for you I don't know what to say.

"Essentially some kind of religious point of view trying to appear as if it's not. The question remains, in all conflict: what is exactly defended and affirmed? What is fundamental to it and what are we using just as decoration for our celebration? You might confuse the two and actually we all grow up doing that so don't take it too personally."

No, I don't see this as a religious issue. I see it as the very basis of physical, manifested life. I think it is all about biological and existential questions. What I am trying to describe is not religious view camouflaged, it is that basic and primary (human) area where power is asserted.

"Any person with a higher sense of consciousness engages in these type of activities quite naturally."

Could be, except it is more likely that the impetus toward helping other people is so linked to Biblical ideas. And also, where do they get that 'higher consciousness'? It is carved out of them, it is a recess that is created, and invested.

"Lets paint it then with Nietzschean colors for the sake of discussion, since you brought him up. He's known for praising and admiring the Jews, hating antisemitism and still see them as originators of a confusion with great consequences. Perhaps this is why so many expect the Jews as well to supply a savior??"

I am not sure how to comment on Nietzsche's (strange) ideas about Jews. Some have said that he only repeats general, accepted prejudices and that he is not bringing any great revelation to the table, except to enforce some standard ideas. As to the invention of a 'counter-narrative' to the ur-narrative of Nature, there is some truth in this, but isn't the same thing done in similar ways with Buddhism and also in the Hindu tradition? Gandhi could successfully conjoin Christian (Tolstoian) ideas with the Krishna of the Bhagavad-Gita. It wasn't that difficult of a manoeuvre.

I don't know if I'd turn to Nietzsche for any ultimate statement or definition of what Jews are or what they do. But it is safe to say that Nietzsche was quite obsessed with the meaning and the fact of Jewish concoctions, as was all of Europe.

To be truthful, I don't see Israeli pragmatism as following the traditionally 'Jewish' line, and it could hardly be considered Christian. My understanding, as I said, is that it might represent the reality, the crucial need, to only function from the 'unified' position of survival. I said that I thought that Nietzsche pointed up the need for all of us to arrive at 'undivided' moralities, moralities that allow us to defend our physical relationship to the place we are, the systems that maintain us. Liberal Europeans and the Left generally seem to feel comfortable living in a divided reality, and 'deny' their own complicity in the physical structures and systems which allow them to exist. You can't deny yourself and affirm yourself at the same time.

And also---this as an afterthought---Jesus is a fundamentally unreal figure, and for that reason, I am supposing, could never really be embraced as Jewish. Jews would have a very concrete way, even legalistic, of determining if it were 'right' to wage war.
Ni ange, ni bête
User avatar
vicdan
Posts: 1013
Joined: Sun Mar 18, 2007 11:48 am
Location: Western MA, USA
Contact:

Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by vicdan »

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:Well yeah, you are a closet fascist
And once again, an accusation without the slightest shred of support.

Did I mention that you are a poopyhead?
like so many once bullied geeks tend to become, as if they have much choice when trying to climb out of the cesspit of their soul! The only other option is comedian.
So to be a bullied geek is to have a cesspit for a soul -- and the only way of climbing out of it is to become a crypto-fascist (which is, erm, not cesspitty at all), or comedian. Hmmm.

Dude, your horizons are just a tad narrow. Just a teeny tiny bit. :D

I would be curious to see you offer any actual evidence of my fascist inclinations. Anything at all. Take your time.
Last edited by vicdan on Sun Feb 01, 2009 11:53 am, edited 1 time in total.
Forethought Venus Wednesday
User avatar
vicdan
Posts: 1013
Joined: Sun Mar 18, 2007 11:48 am
Location: Western MA, USA
Contact:

Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by vicdan »

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:No, you confuse it with phallic. Truth as well as lie are both expressions of power, but different routes. To wield and to strive to be open and honest about it is manly, to continuously gravitate to wielding it in secret is womanly.
Are you suggesting that honesty and openness are phallic? That sure seems to be the case.
You're a better man indeed but no need to credit any Jewelry for that.
Sorry, I just thought this was a funny typo.
Forethought Venus Wednesday
User avatar
Alex Jacob
Posts: 1671
Joined: Mon Jun 27, 2011 2:10 am
Location: Meta-Rabbit Hole

Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by Alex Jacob »

Obama's recent message in the Arab press (transcript)

"THE PRESIDENT: In my inauguration speech, I spoke about: You will be judged on what you've built, not what you've destroyed. And what they've been doing is destroying things. And over time, I think the Muslim world has recognized that that path is leading no place, except more death and destruction.

"Now, my job is to communicate the fact that the United States has a stake in the well-being of the Muslim world that the language we use has to be a language of respect. I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries."

[...]

"Q: President Bush framed the war on terror conceptually in a way that was very broad, "war on terror," and used sometimes certain terminology that the many people -- Islamic fascism. You've always framed it in a different way, specifically against one group called al Qaeda and their collaborators. And is this one way of --

THE PRESIDENT: I think that you're making a very important point. And that is that the language we use matters. And what we need to understand is, is that there are extremist organizations -- whether Muslim or any other faith in the past -- that will use faith as a justification for violence. We cannot paint with a broad brush a faith as a consequence of the violence that is done in that faith's name."
Ni ange, ni bête
User avatar
Diebert van Rhijn
Posts: 6469
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:43 pm

Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Alex Jacob wrote:I see most of life, if not all of life, not only in regard to 'external knowledge' but especially toward all that is subjective and personal (which seems to be the prime motivator in human beings straight across the board), as being impossible to 'measure accurately'.
This was about you proposing any "power structure that runs and directs the world is certainly not going to allow an oppositional pole to arise". This is called unilateralism, it's a specific ideological political philosophy with real consequences that can indeed be measured and deduced to be related to unipolar power projection. One cannot just recoil and claim impossibility of measuring the consequences of acts, even on the geopolitical stage, which is indeed complex and often multi-interpretable.

If you want to deal with the world purely subjective and personal, I don't think political discourse is the stage you can do that without becoming a major hypocrite. At least pretend objective, measurable goals and effects are in place, it really can facilitate many kinds of processes.
One important issue is that Jews in European history did not have a means to defend themselves. Gaining a state, and gaining a military and becoming militant was and is a huge and important step in Israeli culture. Israel defines itself, physically, as a place, and there is no doubt about this locality.
You mean for example like the ethnic Poles did? It didn't save them either in WW2. But apart from that, there's a lot of doubt about Israel even now. It still looks like 18th century colonialism. There's still no way forward visible to integrate with neighbors and former inhabitants. Any birth of a modern nation has its own dynamic that takes centuries to take shape. The real power, real existence of a country is grounded in history, in its relations with its context. This is why Israel still has not been able to define itself in real power terms and it won't be able to without continuous buying and begging their support elsewhere.
Israel, as I read the facts, refuses to submit to any 'narrative' that works against its continued existence. The game is thoroughly understood at a core level, and will be played in life and in death.
So now we're suddenly factual again? Or just facts that cannot be measured accurately? Continued existence is not a realistic concern. The religious Jew understands that better, he's not concerned with these things as it's only the concern of G'd to give and take, to start and end. It's a more modern falsification, secularization that has warped the ideology into the delusional refusal to any narrative but their own, even it happens to be reality. Actually reality if possible has to be destroyed if it would somehow require fundamental change. But they don't need to, modern mass media does that by its own.
To be truthful, I don't see Israeli pragmatism as following the traditionally 'Jewish' line, and it could hardly be considered Christian.
It's more the priestly line, if we'd stay in the narrative. Judaism has only been instrumental to fuel and spread this, through Christianity and diaspora into a modernized universally applied version. Call it the sneaky line - from the Middle English sniken, to creep, crawl, stealth?
User avatar
Diebert van Rhijn
Posts: 6469
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:43 pm

Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

vicdan wrote:
like so many once bullied geeks tend to become, as if they have much choice when trying to climb out of the cesspit of their soul! The only other option is comedian.
So to be a bullied geek is to have a cesspit for a soul -- and the only way of climbing out of it is to become a crypto-fascist (which is, erm, not cesspitty at all), or comedian. Hmmm. I would be curious to see you offer any actual evidence of my fascist inclinations. Anything at all. Take your time.
The comedian option is one I've seen a few times implemented and is somewhat related to the fascist option. In both cases one warps reality by putting oneself out there in a grossly distorted fashion. The comedian type does it only to gain acceptance and valuation by laughter and respect that often comes with it. This breaks the comedian out of the bully cycle and the ability to function in life is majorly improved.

To explain my term closet-fascism further here seems like a bad idea. As it stands it was not a remark about your politics although there's an interesting link with your defense of current Israeli policies.
You're a better man indeed but no need to credit any Jewelry for that.
Sorry, I just thought this was a funny typo.
As it happens, it wasn't a typo. In the 19th and early 20th century the Jews dominated the diamond industry here, and there's still a lot of stuff around to remind everyone, so it seemed an appropriate inside joke with some philosophical undercurrent present as well.
User avatar
vicdan
Posts: 1013
Joined: Sun Mar 18, 2007 11:48 am
Location: Western MA, USA
Contact:

Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by vicdan »

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:The comedian option is one I've seen a few times implemented and is somewhat related to the fascist option. In both cases one warps reality by putting oneself out there in a grossly distorted fashion.
Right. Because, in your view, one cannot actually change themselves.

Like I said, you have narrow horizons...
To explain my term closet-fascism further here seems like a bad idea.
probably because you can't do it coherently, at least not without seeming a douche; so I will take a stab at it for you.

You are probably thinking of fascistic fixation on virility and aggression, the fascist embrace of natalism, their worship of vigor and overt masculinity; the poor man's ubermensch. Am I on the right track?
Forethought Venus Wednesday
User avatar
Alex Jacob
Posts: 1671
Joined: Mon Jun 27, 2011 2:10 am
Location: Meta-Rabbit Hole

Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by Alex Jacob »

Diebert writes:

"This was about you proposing any "power structure that runs and directs the world is certainly not going to allow an oppositional pole to arise". This is called unilateralism, it's a specific ideological political philosophy with real consequences that can indeed be measured and deduced to be related to unipolar power projection. One cannot just recoil and claim impossibility of measuring the consequences of acts, even on the geopolitical stage, which is indeed complex and often multi-interpretable."

I wrote that this grasp of post-war politics is the center-piece of a Chomskian-Machiavellian view of the present. I have decided to try to understand it as a fact of modern existence, and almost to imagine Wall Street types, or their counterparts in 'the civilized world' as supporting and understanding this set-up. I think you are wrong to name it 'unilateralism' because it is specifically based on a tripartite division of the world: US with its regions, Europe with its regions, and Japan (and the 'Asian Tigers') with their region. According to Mr Chomsky, this set-up was designed by powers in the US. You could call it the post-war world order. I suggest---only---that one could decide to view it, one could make the choice, as a 'positive' thing and not exclusively a negative thing. One could say, 'Man, for all I know things could have turned out much, much worse!' and then make a decision to work within the context of the present, with its warts and imperfections, to strive for 'positive values'.

"If you want to deal with the world purely subjective and personal, I don't think political discourse is the stage you can do that without becoming a major hypocrite. At least pretend objective, measurable goals and effects are in place, it really can facilitate many kinds of processes."

Whoa, Nelly! That's a spirited nag you're riding, Diebert! Don't let her get out of hand.

I said, anectdotally, that I personally think it is very hard for an individual to get all the facts. Sometimes huge 'think-tanks' can't or don't get their perception quite right. I shared a personal conundrum, just as I shared a personal view as a way of responding to what you had written about ignorance of Islam, or the region (huge and vast).

I have not deviated from my core view: Israel exists now. It has a right to exist now. And it has a right to continue to exist. It also has a right to defend itself against those enemies who, for whatever reason, would do it harm or do away with it. Everything that I would stay begins there and returns there. By extension, the 'Palestinian problem' could have been solved a long, long time ago with the right decisions by the Palestinians themselves and the other players in this 'game'. I think that I am saying that all this is quantifiable, but I am aware that so much depends on who is taking the measurements (certainly in respect to interpretive problems). Apparently, different minds see this issue differently, and they reach different conclusions. You are such a mind, as am I. You say 'we' are liars and of course 'we' say that 'you' are liars...or you leave out parts.

My only solution as an independent 'atomized' thinker is to start from the core, as Chomsky says 'the basic power principal', the very basic fact of Israel's existence. It is not negotiable. Everything about Israel is coversable, and in Israeli society every single aspect is conversed, with breadth and dimension that pales that of Israel's critics. (That cannot happen in a traditionally understood fascistic polity BTW). But this core issue is not conversable, and I choose to resist all narratives that, whether they state it openly or not, have this end in view, the 'erasing Israel from the map'.

It is all very, very simple Diebert.

"But apart from that, there's a lot of doubt about Israel even now. It still looks like 18th century colonialism. There's still no way forward visible to integrate with neighbors and former inhabitants. Any birth of a modern nation has its own dynamic that takes centuries to take shape. The real power, real existence of a country is grounded in history, in its relations with its context. This is why Israel still has not been able to define itself in real power terms and it won't be able to without continuous buying and begging their support elsewhere."

I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you are genuinely and honestly interested in helping Israel gain what it needs to exist peacefully and productively with its neighbors, and also that you are actively working to alter those stances which proclaim destruction as their goal. The points you make, like the 'colonial outpost', has of course a relationship to reality, if we were all to be truthful. But, it is also modified by other facts.

"So now we're suddenly factual again? Or just facts that cannot be measured accurately? Continued existence is not a realistic concern. The religious Jew understands that better, he's not concerned with these things as it's only the concern of G'd to give and take, to start and end. It's a more modern falsification, secularization that has warped the ideology into the delusional refusal to any narrative but their own, even it happens to be reality. Actually reality if possible has to be destroyed if it would somehow require fundamental change. But they don't need to, modern mass media does that by its own."

I don't feel I have changed, but I also don't claim to understand everything here. I say that 'continued existence' is the central and overriding concern, and I don't give a holy fuck what the religionists think, or Neturei Karta, or I admit it all gets very confusing!
_________________________________________________

Neighborhood Bully
Lyrics

"Well, he's surrounded by pacifists who all want peace,
They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease.
Now, they wouldn't hurt a fly.
To hurt one they would weep.
They lay and they wait for this bully to fall asleep.
He's the neighborhood bully."

[...]

"The neighborhood bully just lives to survive,
He's criticized and condemned for being alive.
He's not supposed to fight back, he's supposed to have thick skin,
He's supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in.
He's the neighborhood bully."
Ni ange, ni bête
User avatar
Diebert van Rhijn
Posts: 6469
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:43 pm

Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

vicdan wrote:
Diebert van Rhijn wrote:The comedian option is one I've seen a few times implemented and is somewhat related to the fascist option. In both cases one warps reality by putting oneself out there in a grossly distorted fashion.
Right. Because, in your view, one cannot actually change themselves.
That's right though, I do believe that any fundamental change from tendencies learned in the formative years, is extremely difficult. So difficult that it's better not to think in those terms at all. Compensate yes, redressing yes, actual change: no.

It's a bitter pill to swallow for some but it's something I slowly started to realize as I got older and noticed how nobody actually managed to change the deeper lying patterns. Under all the lifestyle and philosophical twitter there were still the basic individual tendencies they had as a teenager or pre-teen.

This understanding could be said to lead to stagnation (as in: 'why bother') but actually it leads to liberation and a deeper understanding of oneself and how the world of humans around you work. It also can as by-product create shit-loads of empathy, acceptance and respect for what is essentially different to you.
To explain my term closet-fascism further here seems like a bad idea.
probably because you can't do it coherently, at least not without seeming a douche; so I will take a stab at it for you.

You are probably thinking of fascistic fixation on virility and aggression, the fascist embrace of natalism, their worship of vigor and overt masculinity; the poor man's ubermensch. Am I on the right track?
It seemed like a bad idea because it might go in a personal subjective direction and I've never seen a discussion become more clear and interesting from that. It might get too long and winding too.

But I'll make a fresh attempt to summarize how I see fascism especially tuned to the level of the personality, stressing that I really do not know in how far this is relevant to you apart from the way you participate and reason when it comes to a few topics where your mind is so made up about. As a person I suspect you're more like a bleeding-heart friendly guy overall who really tries to be fair and square with most things in life. A tit-for-tattoo or something.

While there are many ways to think of fascism as political ideology, the most common elements that stand out for me are indeed a fixation on the application of force, combined with its organization, 'bundling' of centers of power, like industry and state, military and law, etc. On the other hand it's linked to the binding, by extensively managing mass opinion and perceptions, as to create a movement that can be made into a tool, by unifying them under a flag or an abstract concepts, essentially submitting to a singly authority, forging a diversity in a more useful single entity. This makes it a natural match for a 'cult of personality'.

Now back to your "fascistic fixation on virility and aggression, embrace of natalism, worship of vigor and overt masculinity". Natalism I'll leave out here as that can have many ideological grounds. Fixation on virility and aggression with fascists is an expression of a lack, not a strength. Virility as envy, something to borrow, adapt and stay close to. Aggression only as form of desperation, or mere survival, land or ego and not as force to liberate, explore or just good sport. Same for worship of vigor and masculinity, which sounds like penis-envy to me. Fascism can be described as some kind of perverting force, it leaches on to external powers, it rides the beast but never is the beast.

So here you have it in a nutshell. While at the core of fascism lies the natural desire to wield power, to be close to power, it doesn't actually become any source of power. It remains an empty shell. That it flocks around everything which does have strength, whispering in its ears, perverting the ideas and directions is its very nature. It's like everything that comes alive in and around an already dying tree.

Fascism is the corruption and anti-thesis of strength, masked as its worshiper. And the means are the signs: overly display of strength and aggression, far outside the bounds of reason or strategic sense.
User avatar
Diebert van Rhijn
Posts: 6469
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:43 pm

Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Alex Jacob wrote:By extension, the 'Palestinian problem' could have been solved a long, long time ago with the right decisions by the Palestinians themselves and the other players in this 'game'.
Meaning that the Palestinians had to agree not to exist in a similar way as Israel decided to exist. If only Israel dared to phrase it like that! It would clear up so much.
Everything about Israel is coversable, and in Israeli society every single aspect is conversed, with breadth and dimension that pales that of Israel's critics. (That cannot happen in a traditionally understood fascistic polity BTW). But this core issue is not conversable, and I choose to resist all narratives that, whether they state it openly or not, have this end in view, the 'erasing Israel from the map'.
The discussion is about a specific regime, a specific politics that parties are demanding it should disappear from the stage. What would make Israel different from any other country undergoing regime change, some by force, external or internal, others by softer, slower influences or grass root changes.

It seems to me this has been the main demand from anti-Zionist protests: the need to change a regime. How does it differ from the calls for forced regime change in Iraq [ 2003], Serbia [1999] or Iran [1953]? It's time to understand that calling for a regime change is not a damning act, whatever the country involved is. Unless one damns them all of course. It's all about consistency here.

In case of Hamas it's pretty clear to me that deals can be made with them despite rhetoric, despite stated grievances. This is what happens all the time in this world. I think it's called democracy. It's called real politics. You can see the US making deals all the time with groups that are deeply opposed to their policies and ideology. This is because underlying it all the purity of power dynamics rules and is recognized by skillful negotiators. Rhetoric and ideology suddenly stand at the side line, having no role to play at this level.
User avatar
vicdan
Posts: 1013
Joined: Sun Mar 18, 2007 11:48 am
Location: Western MA, USA
Contact:

Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Post by vicdan »

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:It's a bitter pill to swallow for some but it's something I slowly started to realize as I got older and noticed how nobody actually managed to change the deeper lying patterns. Under all the lifestyle and philosophical twitter there were still the basic individual tendencies they had as a teenager or pre-teen.
<shrug> I changed. Between about 17 and 20, I changed myself radically and purposefully. When I went back to visit Ukraine at 20, my old friends very much noticed the general change in my disposition, and openly envied it, so it wasn't just my imagination. I changed myself to be more the sort of person I wished to be. It cost me a few years of introspection for half an hour or more a day.
It seemed like a bad idea because it might go in a personal subjective direction
As opposed to simply calling me a fascist.

You are a passive-aggressive douchebag.
As a person I suspect you're more like a bleeding-heart friendly guy overall who really tries to be fair and square with most things in life. A tit-for-tattoo or something.
As a person I am first and foremost a fair guy. I can't recall having ever cheated or betrayed anyone in my adult life, except for one small incident when i was 16, which incident I still deeply regret. I do have some bleeding-heart tendencies, which I generally starve.
Now back to your "fascistic fixation on virility and aggression, embrace of natalism, worship of vigor and overt masculinity". Natalism I'll leave out here as that can have many ideological grounds. Fixation on virility and aggression with fascists is an expression of a lack, not a strength. Virility as envy, something to borrow, adapt and stay close to. Aggression only as form of desperation, or mere survival, land or ego and not as force to liberate, explore or just good sport. Same for worship of vigor and masculinity, which sounds like penis-envy to me. Fascism can be described as some kind of perverting force, it leaches on to external powers, it rides the beast but never is the beast.

So here you have it in a nutshell. While at the core of fascism lies the natural desire to wield power, to be close to power, it doesn't actually become any source of power. It remains an empty shell. That it flocks around everything which does have strength, whispering in its ears, perverting the ideas and directions is its very nature. It's like everything that comes alive in and around an already dying tree.

Fascism is the corruption and anti-thesis of strength, masked as its worshiper. And the means are the signs: overly display of strength and aggression, far outside the bounds of reason or strategic sense.
hehe. I thought I pegged you right. I was correct. :) I held my shot until I made sure I read you accurately.

Two things which you, of course, missed, because your mind doesn't seem to work that way.

1) I am not interested in strength or power. i am interested in wholeness, of which strength and power are aspects. Think hellenic balance between mind and body, arete -- the excellence of being -- rather than the fascistic obsession (and yes, it stems from weakness) with strength. Mine is more of a hellenic (more specifically athenian) model rather than fascistic model; though it's not really balance i seek, because that implies that one must come at the expense of the other, and i think that this is only a part of the story -- various aspects of a man complement each other, and work in synergy. This is why for example i reject the passion/reason dichotomy: because IMO they must work not in balance but in synergy.

2) My drive and control are directed inwards. As it happens, this topic tangentially came up at my friend's blog recently, in relation to some pseudo-zen guru. here is what I had written (you can check the timestamps to verify that this was written two weeks ago, and not in response to this thread):
elsewhere, Victor wrote:2) Controller. Immediately another red flag. When he asked, whom do you wish to control -- my immediate visceral answer is "myself", before anyone in the audience spoke up (it's not the only thing I want to control of course, but the first and most important one). He acts as if everyone secretly wishes to be king of the world. I score near the bottom on authoritarianism and social domination scales, but I am not alone. he is not addressing how people are, he is addressing how people conveniently fit into his narrative.
See, Diebert, I have absolutely no interest in controlling, or exerting power over, you or anyone else. My ability to exert power outwards, whatever its magnitude, is purely a side effect of what I am; a fringe benefit, not a goal. At 15, I led a small new-age cult in my highschool. Since then, my ability to exert power over people has increased, but my interest in it has dropped to near-zero.

Similarly, when my wife, kids, and I played the "which superpower would you like to have?" fantasy game, my choices are always self-directed: knowledge, ability to control my own body's physics, shapeshifting, and somesuch. Ability to control others, even as a matter of fantasy, holds absolutely no appeal to me. If anything, such external-control notions (e.g. mind control) make me recoil in disgust.

Incidentally, on the authoritarianism scale where the scores run from 20 to 180, I score 25 -- way, way near the very bottom, way below the mean score of about 90.

I suspect your obliviousness to the above-mentioned two issues comes from the same place as your difficulty with internal change. You seem to be projecting your own issues onto others. :)

P.S. Did you read "Watchmen"?
Forethought Venus Wednesday
Locked