Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

Discussion of science, technology, politics, and other topics that aren't strictly philosophical.
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Tomas
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

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

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They missed the best part:

"...racism is rooted in the lack of knowledge concerning the truth of human existence ... the product of his deviation from the true path of human life and the obligations of mankind in the world of creation. Failing to consciously worship God, not being able to think about the philosophy of life or the path to perfection that are the main ingredients of divine and humanitarian values, have restricted the horizon of human outlook, making transient and limited interests a yardstick for his actions."

He should be invited to the reasoning show!
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

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Diebert van Rhijn wrote:They missed the best part:

"...racism is rooted in the lack of knowledge concerning the truth of human existence ... the product of his deviation from the true path of human life and the obligations of mankind in the world of creation. Failing to consciously worship God, not being able to think about the philosophy of life or the path to perfection that are the main ingredients of divine and humanitarian values, have restricted the horizon of human outlook, making transient and limited interests a yardstick for his actions."

He should be invited to the reasoning show!
Mr. Ahmadinejad (provided the translation was correct) came across as right on tune with the "colored" people who remained. With the camera angles provided, I didn't see any darker shades leaving the hall.

Obama vs. Ahmadinejad. Now there's a no-brainer.

The boycotting tactics tend to backfire..
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

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When you, Tomas, say: "Israel should be wiped off the map!"
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

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If Ahmadinejad said that, I am impressed.
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

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Articles and commentary in Ha'aretz on Iran:

Israel Views a Changing Iran

No One Knows How the Protests Will End
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

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It's disturbing to witness how 90% of political and media discourse in the West & Israel nurtures idiotic and unrealistic views on what actually is happening in Iran. Which is that a disconnected, foolish group of folks with irrational "fire in their minds", carefully encouraged by foreign interlopers over the course of five years, are dreaming up a simulacrum of a revolution: a revolution without meaning, without body, without facts or plan. It was almost too easy you know, to get people born in a society build by revolution to start believing in yet another with them as leading part, living their own mooovie, blooog, tweeeet! A great feedback loop of media and idealism.

O dear, its me living in a society of extreme ideologists, hateful invaders and smiling TV faces bound on world domination: all have to submit to our version of reality, our gods, our stupidity, our void, our meaningless bladder.

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

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Underneath all the ideological fantasies lie more hard, more real power politics about dominance in the Middle East. The non-democratic regimes of Egypt and Saudi Arabia obtained various security guarantees from the US that the status quo would not change in their disadvantage. Iran is economically and socially an enormous threat to these "governments" and their specific and corrupt wealth distribution. It would destabilize them and eventually become a problem for the oil supply to the West as well as increased pressure on Israel, if you'd combine this with Iranian influence in Iraq and Afghanistan (which is the main reason the West would not leave, covered by humanitarian make-up).
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

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It's disturbing to witness how 90% of political and media discourse in the West & Israel nurtures idiotic and unrealistic views on what actually is happening in Iran.
Underneath all the ideological fantasies lie more hard, more real power politics about dominance in the Middle East. The non-democratic regimes of Egypt and Saudi Arabia obtained various security guarantees from the US that the status quo would not change in their disadvantage. Iran is economically and socially an enormous threat to these "governments" and their specific and corrupt wealth distribution. It would destabilize them and eventually become a problem for the oil supply to the West as well as increased pressure on Israel, if you'd combine this with Iranian influence in Iraq and Afghanistan (which is the main reason the West would not leave, covered by humanitarian make-up). Underneath all the ideological fantasies lie more hard, more real power politics about dominance in the Middle East. The non-democratic regimes of Egypt and Saudi Arabia obtained various security guarantees from the US that the status quo would not change in their disadvantage. Iran is economically and socially an enormous threat to these "governments" and their specific and corrupt wealth distribution. It would destabilize them and eventually become a problem for the oil supply to the West as well as increased pressure on Israel, if you'd combine this with Iranian influence in Iraq and Afghanistan (which is the main reason the West would not leave, covered by humanitarian make-up).
Well, there you have it then. It is interesting: Instead of focusing on the stories that we weave to support and explain our existence---always a kind of fantasy performance, a rehearsal of idealisms---we might propose that '90%' of all human striving is an assertion strictly for power, on all the different levels that that is possible. To understand any dynamic, it makes more sense and is pragmatic to examine to basic power-relations. And, if this is true, it puts a peculiar pressure on so many idealisms.

You state that a power-deal was worked out between the US and Saudi Arabia/Egypt, and of course all interrelations between nations are constructed upon 'deals' of these sorts. Stability is the ideal, but in the interest of stability a great deal of wrongs will be tolerated. To rectify wrongs sometimes upsets (or more accurately, always upsets) stable power-relations, which is the ideal.

For example, one can read the commentaries that, for the Israel power structure, Ahmadinejad is more desirable than Moussavi, because you can rally people conceptually around the need to eliminate Iran's nuclear ambition with such a face. But the task would change in the event of a 'moderate' like Moussavi. It is easier if the contours of your enemy are more distinct. It follows logically that if your enemy is not evil enough, you can spend a little effort making him appear so. A little tweak in the make-up here, a different added light in the retouch there. Et voilà: Human enough to function in a realistic narrative, but Satanic enough to inspire reaction. A good villain is always a 'flat' character. But the heroes are 'round as the whole wide world'. (Exempli gratia Iago/Othello, etc.)

It happens all the time, on all levels. (And stories frame the very structure of the lives we lead).

I see all this operating at the level of the individual human being. It is far more accurate and useful to describe the human being (I am not excluding myself or any animals of the barnyard, FYI) as a biological and cellular entity necessarily driven to defend his lines of material support, though he may conceptualize himself quite differently. Our smartness, our self-centeredness, which is also blinding (self-deceiving), causes us to see ourselves in a different way, an illusory way. So much of our 'consciousness' is just the chatter and clip-clop of epiphenomena, like battery-powered castanets or chattering teeth. But underneath all that is the very real, the all-too-real, cellular drive and appetite, relentless need and desire, in the face of which we are powerless in just that ratio: 90 to 10.
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

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Talking Ass wrote: So much of our 'consciousness' is just the chatter and clip-clop of epiphenomena, like battery-powered castanets or chattering teeth. But underneath all that is the very real, the all-too-real, cellular drive and appetite, relentless need and desire, in the face of which we are powerless in just that ratio: 90 to 10.
This introduces the really interesting questions about the possible functions of the chatter. Venting? Blowing steam as release, to impress like an angry bull or as smoke screen? Like: don't look at the real motive as the whole social contract would stop functioning when we would. It would perfectly explain the increase and desire to increase the clip-clop.
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

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'The Evolution of God'

I don't know if we are now talking about the same thing, or not. The way I see it, it is somewhat simple: as biological entities in a completely material framework, all that we do, or the greatest portion of it, has to do with bettering that material position. Our lives are really lives of 'quiet desperation' and the solitude of our imperatives is a most fundamental subjective truth of our experience. We know our condition in the silence of our musing over it, which is not altogether intellectual, but rather experiential. If by 'chatter' you mean a monkey's jumping up and down and clamoring about his great theological edifice in comparison to anothers, while he is still, fundamentally, an upright killer-ape, the function of it is as a screen to cover-over his age-old strivings and assertions. Nothing new under the sun. If there are improvements that result, they are incremental.

Still, it seems to me, when we have subtracted the 95% of our pure, biological imperative, our materialistic drive to dominate and control, and when we give some time and energy to that mysterious 5%, it is in that that we may begin to understand something about the Divine, which for me is real. As Mr Wright says: "The good news is that there would be a divine being. The bad news is that it’s not the one that anyone is looking for."

Is there a 'God' who is concerned for the 95%? For our conquests, our expansion, our domination, for the replication of our genetic being? If you could posit a God that we become aware of, who is unlike anything we might have imagined, in that 5% of consciousness so difficult to access, it is hard not to see that there should be a relationship between one and the other. That as we explore that 5% it will expand and consciousness will penetrate into the remaining, mechanical and striving, materialistic ninety-five percent.
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

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Talking Ass wrote:The way I see it, it is somewhat simple: as biological entities in a completely material framework, all that we do, or the greatest portion of it, has to do with bettering that material position.
It might just look that way. The ones bettering certain positions are the ones who live to show them or perpetuate them in some way through time.

There yet might be a lot of room for the utter pointless and wasteful but it might be shorter lived and relatively go unnoticed. It doesn't mean it's only a small portion. All this numbering is utterly untested and unfounded.

One remarkable remark of Nietzsche influenced my thinking on this a lot and only expands a little on what you already stated. Meaning, it's not necessarily a materialistic of functional type of expansion. There are many types of power and expressions.
Around the whole of English Darwinism hangs something like the damp of English overpopulation, like the smell of the distress and overcrowding of small people. But one should, as naturalist, come out of his human nook: and in nature it is not the emergency that is dominant but the overflow and wastefulness, even to the point of becoming pointless. The struggle for existence is only an exception, a temporary restriction of the will to live; the great and small struggle always revolves around predominance, around growth and expansion, around power, in accordance with the will to power which is the will of life.
The Gay Science - Book V - We Fearless Ones - 349.
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

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Loose lips sink ships.
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

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That would be true, I guess, if Israel's intentions were not universally known. I also think that in these power-relation games, the players know much, much more than we know. We just witness the flicker of shadows of actions from the past.
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

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Talking Ass wrote:That would be true, I guess, if Israel's intentions were not universally known. I also think that in these power-relation games, the players know much, much more than we know. We just witness the flicker of shadows of actions from the past.
In this article posted, I just don't trust someone like Joe Biden, he's as slippery as they get.

He had those brainstrokes some twenty years ago, for some, (like my brother) the memory just fades away. Biden is just a heartbeat away from assuming full command of the world, one would think that 'loose lips sink ships' - but Biden is another story.

Biden plays both sides, Arab/Israeli, to him it's just another fence.... :-(

Also, Saudi Arabia has given the green light for Israel to attack...........

Yep, those shadowy flickers get more real in each passing day..............
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

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I doubt that what Biden said is his own opinion, or speaking loosely. It sounded more like information Obama administration wanted to put out there. A strategic release of information. Nicely timed since the world has recently received a pretty shocking view of the Iranian establishment.

I don't know anything about Joe Biden's medical history. But it sounds like you do.

What I mean by shadowy flickers is that we, the reading population, get news that is rather old. We are in the 'shadow' of what has already happened. And, I assume that all sorts of plans have already been worked out about Iran and the Middle East generally, and the main players know this. They are in the present, we will always be behind.

What do you think of oil futures right now?
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

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.


-TA-
I doubt that what Biden said is his own opinion, or speaking loosely. It sounded more like information Obama administration wanted to put out there. A strategic release of information. Nicely timed since the world has recently received a pretty shocking view of the Iranian establishment.

-tomas-
Biden has been a player and around much longer - than even the Clinton crowd - has. With the exception of his brainstrokes, he is an affable fellow. I liked him the few times I met him, (at dinners etc).. He just exaggerates :-(


-TA-
I don't know anything about Joe Biden's medical history. But it sounds like you do.

-tomas-
He submitted a one-page response to all of his medical history.

Skip Barack's medical, he didn't submit anything, (obviously because he wasn't born in the USA) he was hand-picked...


-TA-
What I mean by shadowy flickers is that we, the reading population, get news that is rather old. We are in the 'shadow' of what has already happened. And, I assume that all sorts of plans have already been worked out about Iran and the Middle East generally, and the main players know this. They are in the present, we will always be behind.

-tomas-
See Map of the New Middle East: http://www.oilempire.us/new-map.html
See: Biden's false solution for Iraq
"He is a high priest in ranks of global elite enablers. The glow of the All Seeing Eye shines brightly on this ticket."


-TA-
What do you think of oil futures right now?

-tomas-
Depends what Medvedev (Putin, really) & Obama agree upon. Putin wants the foreign firms to come back as their reserves are about cashed out. Suppose it's what kind of deal they make on how to divide-and-conquer Afghanistan, the coming Pakistan breakup via (Helmand Province and Baluchistan) the pipeline through those two countries and into India. Russia wants to dump some of their oil into that Indian market, too.

As far as "futures" say - in the next week, look for the price to go up :-)

PS - I don't see Israel attacking Iran unless it's to make way for the false messiah (Obama) to spout his nothingness and make him appear stronger than he really is.

And finally, I am of the belief (and have been for 30+ years) that GOG is another name for the Republic of Georgia (g)e(o)r(g)ia. They, quite literally, have the horses necessary to attack present-day Israel (in whatever manifestations Netanyahu & the presently(temporarily)-disabled Ariel Sharon, creates for himself) as so-called 'elected leader of "Israel"'..

Israel is a pre-planned fluke country, designed for end-time consumption :-/

Another creepy website - archives - http://cryptogon.com/?page_id=6

Origin of Swine Flu - http://cryptogon.com?p=9662
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

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Tomas wrote:
Loose lips sink ships.
It's more like a broken record. All he did was summarizing American foreign policy existing already under Clinton and other administrations. Which is the right to preemptively start wars of aggression or campaigns of destruction, the same thing Hitler and his henchmen were convicted for sixty years ago. You only need an excuse that is not too outrageous and of course you need to be in "our" ideological camp protected by one or two vetoes in the security council.
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

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Sometimes I think, Diebert, that you do not understand how power functions in this world. You seem to want something that no player---not the US not Russia not Israel and not Iran---would ever give. To start from a realpolitik, to understand and to accept the way things are and always have been, gives one a platform to see the US strategies (in concert with a whole group of other powers in alliance) as a relatively benevolent and even 'enlightened' player. Taken on the whole, the 200 years of US influence have been enormous in scope and positive effect, and minimal in empirical excesses. It is folly and ignorance not to understand that the Mid East is at the core right now of a remodeling project, that it has to be done, and that it will be done.

Please deeply consider the words of Fearless Leader:

"By no means is America perfect,” the president said in a speech at the New Economic School, a graduate school in Moscow formed after the fall of the Soviet Union to introduce modern market economics to Russia. “But it is our commitment to certain universal values which allows us to correct our imperfections, to improve constantly and to grow stronger over time.”

Personally, I am convinced of one thing: Iran's nuclear and possible bomb-making program should be eliminated. Repeat, eliminated. No wavering.

Netanyahu on Iran. I pretty much agree with all of it. How backward I am!

"In our conversation, Netanyahu gave his fullest public explication yet of why he believes President Obama must consider Iran’s nuclear ambitions to be his preeminent overseas challenge. “Why is this a hinge of history? Several bad results would emanate from this single development. First, Iran’s militant proxies would be able to fire rockets and engage in other terror activities while enjoying a nuclear umbrella. This raises the stakes of any confrontation that they’d force on Israel. Instead of being a local event, however painful, it becomes a global one. Second, this development would embolden Islamic militants far and wide, on many continents, who would believe that this is a providential sign, that this fanaticism is on the ultimate road to triumph.

“Third, they would be able to pose a real and credible threat to the supply of oil, to the overwhelming part of the world’s oil supply. Fourth, they may threaten to use these weapons or to give them to terrorist proxies of their own, or fabricate terror proxies. Finally, you’d create a great sea change in the balance of power in our area—nearly all the Arab regimes are dead-set opposed to Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. They fervently hope, even if they don’t say it, that the U.S. will act to prevent this, that it will use its political, economic, and, if necessary, military power to prevent this from happening.”
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

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Talking Ass wrote:Sometimes I think, Diebert, that you do not understand how power functions in this world.
There are lots of forms of power, one of them is the power of seduction and illusion. For example the imagined "remodeling project". Only a few in the administrations you mention actually believe that, the ideological few. The real politicians just disable what could emerge as threat to what they think is status-quo. Most of the political process is geared conservatively: some method to guide, slow down, even hinder changes that could destabilize. Running on a platform of "change" is therefore the biggest campaign lie possible: per definition! Change is already there and government is always there to slow it, not to create any of it!

But one can talk endlessly about power. It's more interesting to talk about truth, consistency and transparency. A whole other ballgame and a different type of remodeling project happening right here in our own backyard.

Talking about misunderstanding: it's easy to misunderstand Biden in this context but it's really nothing special his remark. It has a bit more political subtlety to it than it seems because when exactly can one agree that a nation's security is threatened by another nation? This is the area of international law and their governing bodies to condone or not to condone. The US already has hinted their automatic veto at the security council to protect Israel from the rest of the world is at stake.
It is folly and ignorance not to understand that the Mid East is at the core right now of a remodeling project, that it has to be done, and that it will be done.
A very narrow viewpoint, heavily ideological. In fact the project doesn't exist as such, each imaginable trace of it being supposedly executed has miserably back-fired and it should be clear by any disinterested observer that the failure and the price is so immense, that whatever is happening there is actually something else entirely, perhaps unspeakable.
“But it is our commitment to certain universal values which allows us to correct our imperfections, to improve constantly and to grow stronger over time.”
Talking the familiar talk of last decade but will he ever walk the walk? The great challenge for the West as a whole where dishonesty and hypocrisy has become the major universal value that trumps all other.
Personally, I am convinced of one thing: Iran's nuclear and possible bomb-making program should be eliminated.
Any final solutions in mind?

Any criticism from Israel involving (not yet existing, phantom) nuclear weapons in Iran can only become credible when they themselves sign the nonproliferation pact, declare their arsenal and negotiate for a nuclear-free Middle East.

Over time the world will demand this basic rationality and decency from them and it's very easy to wipe Israel from the map, just diminish the massive political, economical and military support, like the alimony to an abusive over-spending alcoholic child-abusive mother.
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

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Russian-speaking Jew's strange view of Obama.
_____________________________________________________________
The real politicians just disable what could emerge as threat to what they think is status-quo.
That is also what I meant by 'remodeling project'. It includes the pressure that the region perform its function in the global structure of things, by force if necessary. In the sense I mean. to remodel means to neutralize recalcitrant pockets of resistance to the inevitable forces that determine the role of the region. If one understands that this is the bottom-line power-reality (realpolitik) it helps a great deal in coming to understand what are the possibilities for (liberal) reform in the region. There is likely a great deal of room for 'democratic reform' and improvement, within reason, as long as the region serves the role that has been assigned to it. What I am doing is taking a basic Chomskian analysis (he speaks of 'roles' assigned to regions and the bitter results when they seek to 'disobey') and placing it in a Machiavellian realpolitik. It is very true that a great deal hinges on the fact of petroleum reserves and extraction: vital to the whole Earth's economy right now. To imagine (to hallucinate) that power will behave differently toward the region is not to exist in reality. (Again, straight Chomskian analysis there, nothing new under the sun). However, incredible opportunities are offered within the general narrative line offered to the region. Intelligence is knowing the limitations Fate has placed on one and working within those parameters. It is clear as day that the Dutch, for example, are masters at playing by the rules. There are many nations who 'play by the rules' and benefit tremendously by doing so.
Running on a platform of "change" is therefore the biggest campaign lie possible: per definition! Change is already there and government is always there to slow it, not to create any of it!
Well, not in a Machiavellian sense. To change presentation and wrapping---at least form the look of it---has turned out to be a bold and intelligent choice. Bush & Company were unpopular int he extreme, no one could put up with the presentation. Now, the same forces are at work and the general goals are the same, but it is being carried out with a radically new 'make-over'. The power-structures of the whole Earth have welcomed this, it seems. All power-structures are involved in exACTLY the same game, Diebert. All of them. It is business-as-usual all the world over. I suggest that this fact be seen, be understood, be internalized, and we THEN return to our view of the world and see in what areas 'change' is possible. Many, many avenues are open. It's just that---and this is a choice made by all polities---some avenues are very clearly closed. And will remain closed.

Wake up and smell the coffee, brother!
A very narrow viewpoint, heavily ideological.
In politics, it seems, it is the narrow viewpoints that win the day. Meaning, the defined, basic, 'sensible', practicable. Again, perhaps you could reexamine your Discourses (Machiavelli) and refresh your mind about the true basis of power. All theatre, all novels and stories, all the narratives by which we guide ourselves through terrestrial life are 'narrow' in the sense you are resisting. I am genuinely sorry that this offends your refined sensibilities! The American structure of view (again I will refer to Chomsky) that has been imposed on the post-war world is ideology condensed. Any structure of view, and any structure of view that is moulded into policy, is by definition ideological. What sort of drugs are you on, Diebert? The ideological views that underpin American post-war design of a world system have provided a platform for an astounding period of cultural growth and achievement. It would take an ideological position (yours for example) to fail to register what is positive in that achievement---which has been a shared achievement by the major powers. Read Power and Ideology by Noam Chomsky to get the essential blueprint for this post-war project. And it has been remarkably free of excessive violence, though there have been notable deviations. It is general stated though that the American alternative has been the better choice of all the post-war alternatives. I tend to think that is true.
Talking the familiar talk of last decade but will he ever walk the walk? The great challenge for the West as a whole where dishonesty and hypocrisy has become the major universal value that trumps all other.
Well, it could be an interesting exercise to examine the other players in the world-game (in the post-war era) and ask yourself if it is possible that they might have engaged in even greater hypocrisy. A great deal hinges on your answer. In history, you never get to see the alternatives---what was avoided---and we can only speculate. But it does seem pretty clear that the post-war alternative, engineered and implemented by the Americans in concert with the major powers, have created a pretty goddamned sane world out of some pretty frightening circumstances and chilling alternatives. It is wise to count one's blessings.
“But it is our commitment to certain universal values which allows us to correct our imperfections, to improve constantly and to grow stronger over time.” ---Pres. Obama
These universal values are: to flourish within a defined structure, one that (through political machinations) all the players agree on, basically. The underpinning is purely 'Roman' but all sorts of nice things can be overlayed on top of that basic (brutal) structure. He might say 'We seek a consensus among the powerful to define the basic structure and then we ask that people play within those rules'. (And that is 'universal values'). The 'imperfections' (to translate) are too-bold declarations, too much Texan arrogance. But let a Harvard political scientist, with a far broader sweep of understanding, work his rhetorical magic and watch the world respond.

You know, Diebert, they have this expression, 'I got fucked but I never got kissed'. Obama is a big kisser and he returns to a romantic (I hope someone notices the pun), candle-lit politics where the 'little-lovers' in the world system, while they are forced to play in the world-game, also get some romantic kissin' and a dozen roses before the lights are turned down low.

Who said that 'romance is dead' anyway? ;-)

Don't be mad at me, man, I am just telling you how things are.
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Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today

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On the theme of 'change', which you seem to think is false, I suggest that this is a real part of the change envisioned. Working within the existing structures, and making them better. It is a radical and timely message. The change-message is 'get with the program'.
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