[lbo-talk] latest installment from Beiruit

Chuck Grimes cgrimes at rawbw.com
Sat Jul 29 17:55:37 PDT 2006


uvj posted a link here:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n15/salt01_.html

This link goes to the London Review of Books. It covers the first few days of Rasha's siege notes. These notes end the day before the first series Doug posted. Doug's posted notes from today carry on from the his earlier post. All together they form a continuous diary.

I've been putting them together for my journal as a record. I do the same with excerpts from Riverbend, pieces of Juan Cole, and a few other odds and ends from other personal level sources. It seems to me to be the only route to reality. The standard media sources are just absolute bullshit.

Last night I got home from work and weekly grocery shopping to find one of my friends sitting on my couch talking on his cell phone, having climbed in the window and made himself comfortable. So I fixed us dinner, had some wine.

We caught the Lehrer Newshour political wrap up for the week with David Brooks and somebody substituting for Mark Shields that I didn't recognize.

I thought I was long passed being amazed. But I was taken back by the completely surreal world of Brooks and other US media with their off hand excuses. Obviously Israeli bombing of Beirut is an act of self-defense that follows from Israel's right of self-defense, and the ever ubiquitous right to exist and how. What world are these people living in?

On the list, we make occasional noises about the US Israeli Lobby, but it seems to me the Israelis have been playing monkey-see, monkey-do lately. Their outlandish military reaction, especially in Lebanon seems to follow Rumsfeld and Cheney's One Percent Solution.

This `solution' follows the premise that if there is a one percent chance that some Arab or Muslim group is planning or talking about planning an attack, wipe them out and wipe out everybody near them, in advance. I suspect that was revised with an addendum, that if an attack was carried out however minor, then kill as many people who look like the perpetrators as possible and let the media and pundits sort out the rightfully dead from the far greater mass of unfortunates.

Now I will concede that the US was probably inspired by Israel's normal military over-reaction to any Palestinian resistance to occupation or outright provocation, no matter how small. But in the case of Israel, there was always the excuse that Palestinians were in fact a threat. Let's ignore the reason for that threat for the moment.

The One Percent Solution is a calculation of over reaction in complete dis-proportion to any act or perceived `threat' or chance of a `threat' to collectively dis-suede and punish. By this measure of course most of the Arab and Muslim world has become such a threat. Hence the war of civilizations characterized by mass collective punishments. But the outcome of this calculated path will sooner or later follow with nuclear weapons used on `selected targets', which I take to be any pretext that might be found after the fact to justify such an escalated atrocity.

Thus the unprovoked US war on Iraq has become the new paradigm and made to appear normal. From this re-normalized perspective then Israel's bombing of Lebanon and Beirut are simply the expected course of foreign policy carried out by an ally in the war on terror.

This evidently is the road by which we arrive at the table with Brooks and the rest of the US media.

I won't make the obvious parallel with the Nazis racist thugs who carried out summary executions, shellings, bombings, demolitions and wholesale round ups on the population of occupied territories at a ten or more to one ratio for any assault on their military. We all agree the Israelis and Americans are not Nazis racist thugs and have no connection whatsoever with the National Socialists of Germany in the 30s and 40s. Such parallels only serve to obscure the normal course of business under a capitalist pig dominated state, etc, etc.

So, instead I would like to point out the parallel with domestic Nazis racist thugs, excuse me, the police, were every offense no matter how minor usually carries a ten to one ratio of violence against normal perpetrators where bad language and attitude during a routine traffic stop can become magically transformed into resisting arrest and felonious assault, especially if you happen to be non-white and or non-English speaking, and even if you are white but don't act white, cursing the motherfuckers in plain English---and hence deserve the de rigeur beating of your life. But we all know we don't live in a police state. We live in a democracy where only criminals and illegals are treated that way and of course richly deserve the ten to one ratio of violent prison times that are routinely handed out by the most well meaning of humanitarian judges and we have the free press to assure us of these facts of life. Thanks for asking....

CG



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