j_b

innocents (on both sides of the conflict to be sure) have died for years, so it's not recent. and they have been shooting rockets at crowded buildings and cars from helos and such for quite a while now. it's unfortunately much easier to think of the unthinkable these days.

true enough will. my point was that eventually you would have to consider public opinion. i guess it wasn't very constructive toward your riddle. well said arlen

if your purpose is to be more isolated than we already are, i suggest you go ahead with your scheme. international sales of major us corporations are already feeling the backlash from our iraq venture, so ...

i see, continuing with the rhetoric that simple-minded individuals can understand. hum, reminds me of someone else .... no, it isn't my argument. without western support these governments would eventually fall. no, i did not say overnight but it would eventually win the day. this is ineluctable given their exposure to democratic culture via the ever more omnipresent media. again, this is not my argument. my point is that if you do not give the opportunity to extremists to agitate the specter of the "great satan", they'll eventually disappear into insignificance, as you noted yourself in a previous post there is great desire for moderation in these nations. as if iran existed in a vaccum where reformists do not have to deal with fundamentalists prop-ed in their rage by western not so subtle interloping. similarly, iran was engaged in a terrible protracted war, that analysts likened to WWI, with a western ally. as if all of this did not affect the outcome of the iranian uprising. again you are distorting what i said. i was talking about durable positive change, as in sustained. in this context, iran had a popular revolution that could only be started in the dark corners of mosques due to tremendous repression. they immediately handed out power to conservative mullahs bolstered by continued us opposition. unifying against the common enemy is a global theme you know, and as it so often happen democratic reform is the first victim of war against a common enemy. in additon to my comments above, this is also a regional problem as shown by the tremendous impact of the palestinian conflict in the arab world. what inane comments. i am not sure where to start. first, i never claimed terrorists themselves acted in the name of democracy (will you get it right this time?). i actually think the opposite. second, although i believe al-qaeda claimed the bombing of un headquarters, you (and everyone else) have no idea who is committing most of these bloody senseless acts. a slew of entities are likely to benefit from civil war in iraq, including pro-western entities since it is likely we will not be able to impose our model onto iraqis.

if, like me, your readers are not too mesmerized by your prowess, they’ll notice that you are still cracking silly jokes instead of replying to my rebuttal to your initial post (the one in which you systematically distort my position and then bravely conclude that I am an apologist for terror). It is also interesting to note that you use the same tactics in this post (sc never said that terrorists wanted to redress poverty and inequality). But you keep going like if what others said did not matter. which you unfortunately overlooked because it did not support your diatribe and is still the case in egypt, pakistan, israel/palestine, jordan, saudi arabia, yemen, azerbaijan, algeria, afghanistan (all us allies by the way) and of course syria and iran. This is, of course, not an exhaustive list. [snip ass-covering exercise in obfuscation, continuum of oppression ] perhaps you should just cut to the chase and enunciate which authoritarian countries of the arab world have successfully undergone major durable change under the impetus of popular will in the past 50 years. can you think of many? if you do, place them in the category “sorry, pretty much none”. can you now think how many countries have crushed reformist movements (this, however, should be pretty easy). put these in the category “plenty gory”. now, count how many countries you have in category “sorry, pretty much none” and compare to the large number you should have placed in the category “plenty gory”. this simple exercise should hopefully provide you with a good idea of what is the probability for sustained popular change in the above countries in the context of the last 50 years. (note: if you followed the instructions correctly, you should conclude that said probability is poor) indeed, you do digress (what is it with you guys and the listing of gory details? is it for effect?). whether or not terrorists are sincere is not the point. what matters is they find support and recruits among disgruntled populations that have legitimate claims against their western-backed despots. what matters is that our policies are driving these populations directly into the arms of the terrorists. as long as our only answer to their grievances is total disregard for their interest and continual support for the tyrants, we are likely to pay a heavy price in blood. on another note, I don’t remember us turning up our noses (and list gory deeds), when we trained and armed these same terrorists because they were good allies against the soviets in afghanistan.

I don't quite understand your position above; most such attempts have been met with the most brutal oppression, be it in Saudi Arabia (our "ally"), or in Iraq (also our "ally", once upon a time). My point is that "popular movements" within such rigid police-states are incredibly difficult; that's part of the reason why bin Laden is looked upon favorably by 66% of pakistanis, and enjoys widespread popularity in many other (most?) "Islamic" countries. well, you know, "clear thinkers" like JayB can't afford to be held down by such trifling realities.

PP: you are misrepresenting what happened. sure, the bombing had an effect on the elections but the effect was not to change the opinion of the spanish people about us policy in the middle east. as before, the spanish are resolutely against terror as well as against the policy of escalation practiced by the us. now let's continue assuming the polls were right and the bombing forced the spanish to reassess their priorities, which is that opposing both terror and neo-imperial policies became more important than rewarding a political party for a good job on handling the economy. do you seriously believe that it is the first time that a terror bomb had a people behave in a way that they would not normally choose to. ahem! just consider what happened to us since 911 in term of losing personal liberties, invading 2 countries, becoming verbal and physical targets around the globe, spending many billions of dollars and sacrificing the health and lives af many individuals, etc ... do you really think al qaeda wanted it any differently? i am not saying all of these things were the logical outcome of 911, but our leaders for sure claim it is so. so here is my question to you: why do you think the spanish election will cause more terror while you seem to think that isolating ourselves politically and creating resentment all over the arab world is not the reward that al qaeda was seeking, therefore encouraging more 911-like actions on their part? klenke: you are just too funny. first you pester me endlessly to explain myself "in my own words" about my apartheid comment, then you say that i should stop asking you questions about it as if i were the one who instigated this tangent in the first place. whatever dude, i hope you had fun.

to me it looked like you were taking a cheap shot without actually discussing what i said. i suspect we are all entitled to different realities. all the linked articles contain undisputed evidence that israel is an apartheid state. the "security" fence is just the cherry on the cake; now, in addition to institutionalized discrimination against non-jewish citizens, they have a physical barrier to prevent arabs from accessing their lands as well as an advantageous boundary that might delineate future palestinian/israeli states. also watch your language, i am not sure what you call the "jewish conceit" but avnery only discusses how political zionism lead to apartheid. there is a big difference. now you are playing with semantics. i did not say that the fence was apartheid. here is the actual exchange that started this: klenke said: for instance, I am for the security fence.[within the context of discussing israel and the palestinians] j_b replied: were you in favor of south african apartheid? there is no difference in which it is fairly obvious that i equated sa apartheid and israel's, and not the fence with apartheid (although it is an element of it). so i am not really sure what you are getting at ...

did you forget to write down your argument or is it all you had to say? http://academic.udayton.edu/race/06hrights/VictimGroups/Palestinans/palestinans02.htm http://www.gush-shalom.org/archives/forum_eng.html#shohat http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/return.html

1)you are reducing my argument to extreme poverty. If you read all of my posts in this thread you’ll see that this is not what i said. 2)all regions have different history, culture and natural assets and thus will react differently to what are arguably different policies. Latin America for example has been a hot bed of violent opposition to 1st world policies for a long time. For example westerners are often the target of kidnappings that occasionally turn deadly and this despite the fact that the dominant culture is our own (religion, political institutions, etc ..). I am not going to write a treatise about why your argument is flawed but it is false to assume that different situations sharing a common trait (let’s say subservience to us interest) will react to it in the same fashion. It seems obvious enough to me and is fairly simple logic. I never said that eradicating poverty was their goal. Also i never said that their goal was to eradicate hopelessness either. What I said, however, is that terror is the result of hopelessness in bringing about change by other means. I assume you can appreciate the difference without my going further into it. The rest of your argument about whether there is money to be made by adopting terror is simply ludicrous (to put it mildly). [snip the rest of free-marketeer neo-liberal rant] let me nevertheless note that your simplifications are simply astounding (not that I am really surprised considering your posting history). addressing comparisons between korea/spain and feudal societies that have transitioned to despostism via colonialism, to ascribing arab terrorism to expansionism by islamists, to the lame accusation of being an apologist for terrorism is just too much for me to cover in one post. But basically it does amount to the usual, arab populations don’t have legitimate gripes, let’s make sure gas remain at ~$2/gal no matter what the cost in human life, you are either with us or against us, etc … no surprise here.

so the bush administration tells us they are considering a compromise with iran ("Mr Bush was looking for an "opening" with Iran"), but they can't really talk about it ... considering the source and the adminstration's record in international relations, i'd say it must be an election year. seriously what are really the chances our politicians would study a compromise with iran on nukes, israel and terrorism? unless of course, they are not really talking compromise but a one-sided solution (which then would be foreign policy per usual)

come on PP, i suspect if i were klenke i'd say: "don't insult our intelligence". you used the word appeasement to describe the spanish vote as the title of this thread, and we will know how loaded this term is in the context of opposing terror (i.e. refusal to acknowledge our role in promoting huge inequalities/unfair policies combined with a military response to terror which encompasses all those who oppose us militarily). you wrote 2 quotes to the effect of: "don't give in one inch, smash their faces in". and finally you had 2 quotes by prodi (euro official) discussing how a 3rd way was possible (not terror, not the us answer). upon which you concluded that europe would lose its 1st world status in the near future. all of this combined with reading your other posts over the years (we know where you stand on these issues), and we should conclude that today you are totally innocent of insinuating there is no alternative to continuing current foreign policy. exactly, who do you think you are fooling? well, at least not me.

well, i certainly don't feel that way but thank you. to be more accurate, you should have said that my tone is bothersome to some people but what people find offensive is a matter of sensibility. i will make no excuses for finding right-wing rhetoric the product of either cynical or simple minds. which, combined with my tendency to express my thoughts openly, certainly makes for potentially explosive verbal jousting. the fact that you find what i say offensive certainly says as much about you as it says about me. moreover (and this is also for fellow progressives who may find me too aggressive), right-wing rhetoric in this society is the norm (at least for economic, foreign and labor policies), progressives are supposed to be indirect and guarded in their discourse since everyone with openly progressive views is virtually certain to be branded some kind of collectivist (as we have often witnessed on this board). i'll just say that being direct and forthcoming is necessary if one wants to reclaim freedom of speech for progressives. actually, i was being nice in giving you the benefit of the doubt. my comments would have been quite unfriendly if on the contrary i had assumed that you were aware of israel systematic policy of ethnic cleansing toward arabs and you still supported the barrier.

listen, i have been sufficiently clear. whenever a specific issue arise i'll let you know my feeling. in the meantime i am not running for public office, so ... as for withdrawing from iraq, first put the troups under international command (un) to make sure the transition is not too bloody. i know some people don't like that idea but we are past this kind of consideration, nobody asked us to go there in the first place and we got plenty of warning about the mess we were stepping into. Now you're just insulting me. There is a difference and you know it. Please don't insult me like you try and insult PP. I have not insulted you. I have tried only to get your ideas for how to deal with terrorism out of you. me insulting you and PP, where? please provide the quote where i have done so and explain how what i said constitutes an insult. believe me, if i insulted you, it would be abundantly obvious and there is no difference between sa apartheid and israel's apartheid. we should also not forget that conservatives had no problem with south africa until the 25th hour, i.e. when it became clear they had no other choice (and now they all line up to get some of mandela's mojo, too funny really)

the sooner, the better they can deal with the businesses they want to as long as their governement are representative of the wishes of the populations and not our or someone else's puppets. that's for them to decide. self-determination is key. you did not wait for very long to contradict yourself. without a $6billions us aid package per year, israel would have delt fairly with its palestinina problem a long time ago. were you in favor of south african apartheid? there is no difference. you may be right about the individuals but as i mentioned earlier you won't be able to deal definitely with the true loonies until you address the often legitimate gripes of the populations that support them.

thinker: i partially agree. many of the exceptions you could think of are for one reason or another fringe lunatics that can be delt with socio-economic/police measures within the framework of a democracy. also don't forget that eta operated for 35years under fascism, and since franco's death most separatists have renounced violence. as for arab extremism, this is an entirely different beast. these groups have the tacit if not overt support of large segments of the population in the arab world. if you want to isolate these groups from their support base (a sine qua non to do away with the weirdos) you'll have to deal with the policies of the empire.

you have not been paying attention. i have been saying since my first post in this thread that terror has its roots in despair. stop predatorial policies enforced by the most powerful army/economy in the world and it'll take care of itself.

if it was all that he said, it'd be fine. but here is what he also said: "To cringe to the things that are called evils, to surrender to them our freedom, in defiance of which we ought to face any suffering" and "There can be no appeasement with ruthlessness. There can be no reasoning with an incendiary bomb". quotes that clearly attest to his thinking that there is no alternative to a continuation of the policies we have been pursuing (despite his subsequent denial when i pointed out to him). next he'll tell us that hating us and our way of life is the reason for terror. don't forget he is "bending surface truth" for our own good

how convenient! why let oneself be constrained by facts? are spaniards (and western europe in general), moroccans, turks, iraqis safer from terror today than they were before the iraq war? btw most people feel that the iraq war has increased the terror threat so i am hardly alone in thinking so. my, if you think they are reasonable (coming from the so-called liberal media too ). this is the same usual tripe: you are either with us or against us, a vote against bush/aznar is a vote for terror, yadda, yadda. well, it seems people worldwide are refusing this blatant manichaeanism because one can fight terror and not align themselves with current us policy. otoh, this guys has his head on his shoulders: http://www.davidswanson.org/columns/spanish.htm until you substantiate your assertions with evidence, they'll remain unsupported assertions .... i don't hold my breath though: as per usual, you'll fade away without providing substantiating evidence. we already know perfectly well that you want to take events out of context and pretend there is no linkage between the iraq war and the increase in terror. the spaniards did not fall for it though.

you are conveniently ignoring that the terror threat is now greater than it was one year ago as is shown by the increased frequency of bombings and the very fertile ground for recruitment by terror organizations (facts acknowledged by many security analysts). this escalation is the direct result of our invading 2 muslim countries to control oil resources, to put the squeeze on iran and syria, only paying lip service to a fair resolution of the palestine conflict, etc .. all in the name of the war on terror. your suggesting that spain should not have voted the way they did because it would foster more terror is outrageous because it is precisely the continuation of present policies of confrontation (by aznar and his would be successor by proxy for bush) that would lead to more violence in spain, the uk, the us and arab nations. basically your comments amount to a refusal to acknowledge alternatives to the current disastrous policies and to frighten people into supporting perpetual war. you implied they made the wrong choice because it would encourage more terror, which as i explained above is dead wrong. i'll repeat it again, bush's policies of imposing his will upon arabs is the cause of more terror, refusing to stand by bush on the contrary will foster conciliation and conflict resolution. did you not suggest that the spaniards exercising their right to implement the policies they want was detrimental to the war on terror, therefore it was wrong? whereas in fact it is exactly the opposite? which exactly points to your unability (or unwillingness) to comprehend/acknowledge the implications of your words. why do you feel this way? because the euros are not supporting predatorial policies toward arab nations under the disguise of the war on terror?

i strictly call you upon your outrageous comments. you think we should not budge from our policies and force arabs to buckle; fine, you can feel that way but perhaps you should commit to those feelings and act upon them instead of letting others be on the frontline. you want the riches conveyed by military might? go get them my dear. i'll wait for an explanation because your next sentence does not follow? why do you feel that the spanish people who have expressed themselves massively and continuously against bush's war on terror, should not have the right to choose a governement that will act according to their wishes? this my friend is anti-democratic. if the spaniards want to take themselves off the frontline where they were placed by a governemnt that did not listen to popular demands, more power to them. let those that benefit from controlling oil resources and finance israel land grabbing be their own agents. if the warmongers had to conduct their own war, they'd find compromising alternatives in a heartbeat.

hey PP, you seem so eager to fight it out, i am surprised you haven't signed up yet. what about putting your feet where your mouth is? in the meantimes, some of us will continue saying that fighting this kind of terrorism by force while we keep trying to impose our will on the populations they are issued from is a no-win situation. if you want to remove the threat of terror, give them something to lose such as the right to self-determination. it seems obvious enough.

the new mark fiore animation

however spain, so far, was not the target of muslim extremists and, apparently, this has changed due to aznar's support for shrub's bloody escapade. so much for decreasing the threat of terror. the heir to franco was carrero blanco, a fascist himself. far from me to condone or justify the methods of eta but consider that being an active separatist in franco's spain eventually got you the garote (praticed until 1975 mind you), see graphics to admire the contraption: http://www.shanmonster.com/witch/torture/garrot.html and we won't discuss the 10,000's of disappeared after the civil war. i almost forgot. i do resent your using this photo PP and for 2 reasons: a) illustrating the protest against war of millions of spaniards with that of 2 individuals is farfetched, and b) you are trying to get a cheap shot on war protesters at the expense of ~200 dead spaniards and 1200 wounded.

"We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull." G.O. 1984