[lbo-talk] U.S. in Israel's corner

[socialismorbarbarism]

Eric Beck: "Deleuze wrote an article (part of which is below) about
the events of
1978 and one of his main points was that Israel was basically a
laboratory for military and political techniques of how to deal with
and benefit from terrorism."

Change the (both too-narrow and too-sloppy) word "terrorism" to
something like, "Israel was basically a laboratory for military and
political techniques of how to deal with challenges to state authority
and how to benefit from new techniques of oppression," I would agree.

But that also explains why the US would in the past (and, for now,
still would) support them. And it's not as if the US hasn't been used
as such "laboratory," just simply not to the all-but-all-encompassing
political and social level of Israel. In fact one can argue that
Israel has fulfilled this role at the behest of and to the advantage
of the US.

"last year's, Gaza war was an experiment in what he [Weizman] called
lawfare: using military operations to push against the principles of
international law and making them more favorable to its needs;
lawmaking by warmaking."

Sure, but again, Israel is just following the US lead--doesn't the
occupation of Iraq fit this term to a 't'? Maybe Israel is a
"laboratory" again, trying to bring this to some demonstration-style
perfected form, or something--the one who agrees to take the bacillus
right in the vein to test the vaccine, if I may stretch the
conceit--but they just such a course has been evident in the United
States for years now. The continuously-developing open contempt for
legal norms, in all but the most grossly arbitrary and instrumentalist
forms, has been IMO an important turn in the US since (roughly) the
mid-1970s. although its origins obviously go back further; it was a
striking change in a theretofore key component of so-called
"bourgeois" ideology on the part of the vanguard capitalist state.
Yes, bourgeois law has always been class-biased and hypocritical; but
the attack on law *as such* is a real turn. (I will risk charges of
violating Godwin's Law simply for bringing it up, and note that Franz
Neumann considered this a central--maybe *the* central--feature of
Naziism.)

On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 8:58 AM, Eric Beck <ersatzdog at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 8:14 AM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
>>
...