BobW --- Yoshie Furuhashi <critical.montages at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/18/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> > Washington Post - September 17, 2007
> >
> > Hamas's New Order Exacts Toll On Gazans
> > Party Cements Grip With Harsh Tactics
> >
> > By Scott Wilson
> > Washington Post Foreign Service
>
> The case of the Hamas government shows that the
> US-led multinational
> empire's most effective weapon is political and
> economic, not
> military: economically deprive the enemy,
> financially support
> collaborators, and wait till the desperate populace
> begin to desert
> the enemy and to support the collaborators. Coups
> and other military
> means, if they become necessary at all, are often
> mainly just the
> finishing touch.
>
> This mode of subversion is especially suitable for
> the enemy who lacks
> domestic economic resources for independent survival
> to begin with, as
> is the case with the Palestinians now and the
> Haitians before them.
> (What has happened since the elections that put
> Hamas in power, by the
> way, demonstrates that the idea of a "two-state"
> solution is merely a
> mirage that obscures the reality of the Jewish state
> from the sea to
> the river.) It moreover has a crucial ideological
> advantage: the
> empire can pretend that its hands are clean, and its
> populace either
> consent to that pretension or (more typically)
> remain completely
> ignorant of what is done and to what effect.
>
> Unlike wars, which considerable numbers of people in
> the global North
> may be moved to oppose in the streets, as they did
> before the invasion
> of Iraq, there is no tangible opposition in the
> North to economic
> sanctions of this or that government in the South.
>
> Whither Hamas? If pushed against the wall, they may
> very well
> (belatedly) decide that entry into electoral
> politics was an error and
> go back to armed resistance. Or they may fade into
> nothingness,
> leaving the vacuum filled by terrorist cells of the
> al Qaeda variety.
> I hope for a different outcome, but from here there
> is nothing I can
> do to help the Palestinians find it.
> --
> Yoshie
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