Friday, December 17, 2004

If I have to go, I'll go. Next question?

In 1831, terrorists killed Americans because of slavery. Would ending slavery have been "giving in to terrorism"?
Can you answer that?

Why the hell should we give up an ounce of freedom just because special interests demand that the US policies remain unchanged? Why should taxpayers fork over billions of dollars to protect against something that we would not have to if it was not for these damn policies?
Elites lied about why Nat Turner and his men attacked in 1831. An 1981 Newspaper wrote that Nat and his men attacked "without cause or provocation"! When Nat Turner killed all those whites, people like you no doubt screamed bloody murder AND REFUSED TO EVEN THINK ABOUT WHY IT HAPPENED. People like you would have been pleased with their newspaper that assured them that slaves attacked "without motive or provocation". Today you can see the media playing the same game of feeding the public lies in order to serve powerful interests. Can you learn from history? We had a horrifically wrong policy and we suffered terrorism as the result of it. People like you insisted we continue with slavery because you were unwilling to even consider that a US policy could be wrong.

Don't act like we are not reacting to bin Laden. We are spending billions because of him and the people that insist on the specific foreign policies. why should we do that? why are you OK with that? Why are you OK with the enormous expense and the frustrating burdens placed on us because of all this? Why are these policies worth risking our lives and spending a fortune? So Israel can continue being racist? So that we can continue propping up oppressive regimes in the quest to control the oil for the benefit of particular elites? Why should our lives be risked for immoral policies and why do you feel obligated to obey US officials who are lying to us? Why are these policies worth more than our lives? Who is making this decision? The people lying to us about why we are in harm's way?

People who are serious about reducing the threat of terrorism will take an honest look at US foreign polices. Where immoral and unjust policies are identified decent people will demand that the policies be ended. Logical people will demand these policies be ended because doing so will dramatically reduce the threat we are facing because these policies are clearly motivating some people to acts of terrorism or violence. People who are serious about reducing the threat of terrorism will take an honest look at US foreign polices. Where immoral and unjust policies are identified decent people will demand that the policies be ended. Logical people will demand these policies be ended because doing so will dramatically reduce the threat we are facing because these policies are clearly motivating some people to acts of terrorism or violence.

what kind of things has the US done? Slavery (which was so off the wall wrong that it is incredible that today Americans could doubt that A US policy could be wrong!) and here is just one specific example in the Middle East: what if they were Jews?

and read this post please: "Now we see how much you really want to talk about it. You have been cluttering up this site with denunciations of how people are ignorant of Bin Laden's motives and will not discuss. Well, I know Bin Laden's motives, and I discussed them. I asked, very specifically, what is immoral about US policy, which justifies Bin Ladin, in your mind. "
I have made my position clear, bin Laden was not justified with the terrorist attacks on America. So please stop writing things like " which justifies Bin Ladin, in your mind"

The analogy I have used is of Nat Turner. His motive was objection to slavery. I point out that Nat's terrorism was not justified but that slavery was still wrong. Can I be any more clear than that?

I gave you a link to my blog that goes into detail about the wrongs of US foreign policies.

Your answer. Can't talk about it. Can't be specific. Read these books.

I gave you a link to my blog> http://representativepress.blogspot.com/ and to another post. Think it was right of US officials to orchestrate a coup that put the Baath party into power and to hand over the names of hundreds of people to be killed? Is that wrong or not?> http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/pol/52569972.html

If you want to assert that Bin Ladin's motives are legitimate,

I don't do that. My blog made that crystal clear. Did you read my blog or not?

You guys need to understand what motives are and what that means.

then you have to have the guts to argue directly why US policy is so immoral.

was what we did to these Iraqis moral or immoral? > http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/pol/52569972.html

this is the example I gave you. did you read it? Stop acting like I didn't provide info.

You refused to answer, not because it would take too long, but because you know how bad you would like if you openly stated your REAL opinions.

I gave you a very good example of an evil US action. did you read it? > http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/pol/52569972.html

I asked you, directly, why is a two-state solution immmoral?
for years the US blocked peace efforts and blocked a two-state solution, don't ignore history. . start dealing with the facts. and even if now the US says it supports a two state solution, BUT actions speak louder than words. The problem is that what has been offered is not a viable state, Israel continues to violate international law and has refused to implement the things it has agreed to. And you really should think about why it is that the US and Israel refuse the solution that is available simply by abiding by International law, the UN resolutions and even the promises made at one time. There is an international agreement and international law that is already there to solve the Israel/Palestinains conflict the US and Israel refuse to abide by International law and agreed upon obligations. Actual support for international law would mean not allowing Israel to continue to build illegal settlements, that is just basic.

As far as recognition. peace and everything, the Palestinians agreed to it all decades ago. The accepted a plan that the entire world accepted. Israel and the US refused. So who do you think you are kidding?

Here is info from a previous post:

In 1976 Arafat accepted the 1976 PLO peace offer (the acceptance of the Security Council Resolution of January 1976 backed by virtually the entire world, including the leading Arab states, the PLO, Europe, the Soviet bloc -- in fact, everyone who mattered. ) The Security Council Resolution of January 1976 was opposed by Israel and vetoed by the US. Remember this was a Security Council Resolution. The US vetoed it, killing a peace offer backed by virtually the entire world. Today THIS fact is effectively kept from the American public by mainstream media by now acting like it never happened.




(See the book World Orders Old and New)

Pirates and Emperors, Old and New : International Terrorism in the Real World

(See the book Pirates and Emperors, Old and New : International Terrorism in the Real World)

For examples of how these rejected Arab peace offers have been eliminated from history in the U.S., see Thomas L. Friedman, "Seeking Peace in Mideast," New York Times , March 17, 1985, section 1, p. 1 (chronologically listing U.S. and U.N. Security Council proposals, but ignoring all of the Arab proposals prior to those that led to the Camp David Accords of 1978)

Once the palestinians do that, then they will get their state and peace, just as Sadat and King Hussein did

I have news for you, Sadat offered peace in 1971, Israel refused. THis facts is basically suppressed in the United States. February 1971, when President Sadat of Egypt offered Israel a full peace treaty in return for Israeli withdrawal from Egyptian territory, with no mention of Palestinian national rights or the fate of the other occupied territories. Israel's Labor government recognized this to be a genuine peace offer, but rejected it, intending to extend its settlements to northeastern Sinai; that it soon did, with extreme brutality, the immediate cause for the 1973 war. http://www.medialens.org/articles_2002/nc_US_Israel.htm The plan for the Palestinians under military occupation was described frankly to his Cabinet colleagues by Moshe Dayan, one of the Labor leaders more sympathetic to the Palestinian plight. Israel should make it clear that "we have no solution, you shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave, and we will see where this process leads." Following that recommendation, the guiding principle of the occupation has been incessant and degrading humiliation, along with torture, terror, destruction of property, displacement and settlement, and takeover of basic resources, crucially water.

Sadat's 1971 offer conformed to official US policy, but Kissinger succeeded in instituting his preference for what he called "stalemate": no negotiations, only force. Jordanian peace offers were also dismissed. Since that time, official US policy has kept to the international consensus on withdrawal (until Clinton, who effectively rescinded UN resolutions and considerations of international law); but in practice, policy has followed the Kissinger guidelines, accepting negotiations only when compelled to do so, as Kissinger was after the near-debacle of the 1973 war for which he shares major responsibility, and under the conditions that Ben-Ami articulated.

please read the following, it may shed light on why you and others have such a distorted view of the history
The suppression of the 1971 peace offer is another example of the extremes of pro-Israel bias in the US. read page 127-128 of Understanding Power. I will summarize: One of the false premises is the one you hold about "Israel being the only one that wants peace". This is the false doctrine of "arab rejectionism". That doctrine is as Chomsky explains in "Necessary Illusions" "... to present the United States and Israel as "yearning for peace" and pursuing a "peace process," while in reality they have led the rejectionist camp and have been blocking peace initiatives that have broad international and regional support."

This is accomplished by suppressing facts that don't fit this premise. So for years writers have been pretending that Sadat didn't offer peace with Israel until 1977. The example Chomsky points out is just one of many. Writers that push these lies and they get away with it because people "play the game". George Will pushed it in his article in Newsweek. When Chomsky wrote Newsweek to tell them that George Will's article was false and that Sadat had offered peace back in 1971, Newsweek's research editor called Chomsky to ask him where he got the facts about the 1971 offer, Chomsky told her that it was published in Newsweek itself at the time back in 1971. The woman looked into it and agreed that Chomsky was right and she told him they would run his letter that pointed this out. BUT an hour later she called and said they would not run the letter because George Will was having a tantrum.

As Chomsky writes, "But the point is, in Newsweek and the New York Times and the Washington Post and so on, you simply cannot state these facts- it's like belief in divinity or something, the lies have become immutable truth.

your concern is with destroying the Jewish state.

YOU SUPPORT A "JEWISH STATE"?!?! Do you support a white state too?

A Jewish State is a system of discrimination against non-Jews. I am against discrimination. I think Jews should live as they in America. No allowing Jews to discriminate against people of other religions.

You don't realize how non-whites would be treated under a "White State"? Why do you have this idea in your heads that a discriminatory state is OK?

Stop with the BS that ending the Jewish State means genocide. Were all the whites killed in South Africa?

How about respecting the Right of Return like Israel promised to do as a condition of being admitted into the UN?Israel was accepted into the United Nations on condition that it accept the Right of Return of the Palestinian refugees. Admission of Israel to membership in the United Nations (General Assembly Resolution 273 of May 11, 1949 ) requires Israel to comply with General Assembly Resolution 194 of December 11, 1948 and Israel stated it agreed to comply with this resolution. But of course they immediately refused because the racist agenda of the Zionists is to remove as many non-Jews as possible It is a disgrace for these bastards to push people out of their homes and refuse to allow them to go home.

There are so many facts that are distorted and so many lies that are told it is no wonder people don't know the truth about Israel. Here are some facts:

Myth of Israel’s ‘generous offer’ damages truth, peace
By MIRIAM WARD

The myth of then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s “generous offer” and “Israel’s painful concessions” in the summer of 2000, and the consequent portrayal of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as a “truculent rejectionist” in the mainstream media needs to be examined.

Although an American (Robert Malley) and an Israeli (Ron Pundak), diplomats intimately involved in the Camp David negotiations, went public some 12 months after Camp David with more nuanced versions of what really happened, the “generous offer” continues to be damaging to truth and ultimately to peace. Taken out of context, the question “Didn’t Barak offer 95 percent of the occupied territories to Arafat at Camp David?” is exploited to the fullest and enters the mythology of Israeli propaganda. Repeated enough, people believe it.

So just what was the offer made by Mr. Barak in July 2000?

According to Malley and Pundak, both Barak and Arafat made serious tactical errors based on misperceptions of the other. Neither side exhibited sensitivity to the others’ concerns or suffering. Barak wanted to bypass interim agreements and present Arafat with an “all-or-nothing” proposal, with no fallback options. He presented nothing in writing; proposals were stated verbally.

Conclusions of what proposals might be were drawn from maps. Israel would not return to its 1967 borders. Barak’s offer would have left the main Israeli settlements and their Jewish-only bypass roads intact. Palestinian villages would continue to be “islands” isolated from each other, “Bantustans” completely surrounded by Israeli military who could and do blockade entire villages from travel. Except for three villages, Barak excluded the 28 Palestinian villages Israel illegally annexed to Jerusalem. Israel would accept no responsibility for the Palestinian refugee problem. To his credit, Barak broke long-held taboos in discussing Jerusalem and the refugees.

Arafat was reluctant to go into the talks without reasonable assurance of success. President Clinton promised Arafat that if the talks failed, Arafat would not be blamed. Yet, when the talks failed, Clinton placed most of the blame on Arafat and contributed to the misleading, simplistic propaganda of the “generous offer” by Barak, which was then picked up by and carried on in the mainstream media. Given the history of broken promises and increased land confiscation and accelerated settlement expansion under Barak, Arafat didn’t trust these verbal promises. He wanted proof of Israel’s seriousness in implementing the agreements previously made (and negated by Netanyahu), and feared that in accepting an “all-or-nothing” final status proposal, the entire basis of international legitimacy would be undermined.

In the 1993 Oslo Agreement, by recognizing Israel’s right to exist, Palestinians already gave up 78 percent of their land and accepted the formula “land for peace” within the context of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which calls for the withdrawal of Israel from the occupied territories. This meant Palestinians were willing to settle for 22 percent of originally mandated Palestine. To put it bluntly: You take $100 from me and later offer to repay $22. I cut my losses and give up $78. Still later you want more of my remaining $22. In short, Arafat felt Palestinians had made real concessions in settling for the territories occupied since the 1967 war. Sheer ineptness and internal squabbling among Palestinian negotiators confounded the Palestinian presentations.

Even without the valuable insights of Malley and Pundak, a cursory look at a map of the settlements and their bypass roads amidst Palestinian cities and towns strikingly reveals the impossibility of a viable sovereign Palestinian state. Sovereignty presupposes contiguous territory. How many of us would agree to travel 40 miles from one town to another when the actual distance between them is only five miles?

Jeff Halper, a professor at Ben Gurion University, calls it a “matrix of controls” a system of “facts on the ground,” settlements, military checkpoints, permits for travel, permits for building, closure political control over every aspect of Palestinian life. Israeli military decide if and when one can go to work, to market, to school, to the doctor or hospital, to church/mosque, or to visit relatives, leave one’s home or one’s village.

Control means when and how much water will be allowed Palestinians. In a sense, control is as important as territory. A member of the Israeli peace group Gush-Shalom says, “Prisoners may occupy 95 percent of prison space, but it is the other 5 percent that determines who is in control.” Palestinians feel helpless and hopeless against the whole apartheid system of control, control backed by F-16s, Apache helicopter gunships and tanks.

There is no way Arafat or the Palestinian people could have or should have accepted Barak’s offer. Palestinians are not asking Israel for concessions, but compliance with international law not to give up, but to give back land.

Sister of Mercy Miriam Ward is a founding member of Pax Christi Burlington, Vt.

also see http://www.ifamericansknew.org/history/camp_david.html

http://www.ifamericansknew.org/history/origin.html

http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/roadmap.html

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