"Is Israel not simply a response to outright hostile actions purported by the States of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Iran and Lebanon?"

The short answer is, no. Israel is a classic settler nation with all the existential attributes and brutality of a colonial ruler.

Sometimes an article deserves reprinting in full.

(copyfree)

Date : 2004-01-29
''Diagnosing Benny Morris: the mind of a European settler''

By Gabriel Ash - YellowTimes.org Columnist (United States)

Israeli historian Benny Morris crossed a new line of shame when he put his academic credentials and respectability in the service of outlining the "moral" justification for a future genocide against Palestinians.

Benny Morris is the Israeli historian most responsible for the vindication of the Palestinian narrative of 1948. The lives of about 700,000 people were shattered as they were driven from their homes by the Jewish militia (and, later, the Israeli army) between December 1947 and early 1950. Morris went through Israeli archives and wrote the day by day account of this expulsion, documenting every "ethnically cleansed" village and every recorded act of violence, and placing each in the context of the military goals and perceptions of the cleansers.

Israel's apologists tried in vain to attack Morris' professional credibility. From the opposite direction, since he maintained that the expulsion was not "by design," he was also accused of drawing excessively narrow conclusions from the documents and of being too naive a reader of dissimulating statements. Despite these limitations, Morris' "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugees Problem, 1947-1949" is an authoritative record of the expulsion.

In anticipation of the publication of the revised edition, Morris was interviewed in Haaretz - ( http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/380986.html,
Hebrew original at
http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/objects/pages/PrintArticle.jhtml?itemNo=380119). The major new findings in the revised book, based on fresh documents, further darken the picture.

The new archival material, Morris reveals, records routine execution of civilians, twenty-four massacres, including one in Jaffa, and at least twelve cases of rape by military units, which Morris acknowledges are probably "the tip of the iceberg." Morris also says he found documents confirming the broader conclusions favored by his critics: the expulsion was pre-meditated; concrete expulsion orders were given in writing, some traceable directly to Ben Gurion.

Morris also found documentations for Arab High Command calls for evacuating women and children from certain villages, evidence he oddly claims strengthen the Zionist propaganda claim that Palestinians left because they were told to leave by the invading Arab states. Morris had already documented two dozen such cases in the first edition. It is hard to see how attempts by Arab commanders to protect civilians from anticipated rape and murder strengthen the Zionist fairy tale. But that failed attempt at evenhandedness is the least of Morris' problems. As the interview progresses, it emerges with growing clarity that, while Morris the historian is a professional and cautious presenter of facts, Morris the intellectual is a very sick person.

His sickness is of the mental-political kind. He lives in a world populated not by fellow human beings, but by racist abstractions and stereotypes. There is an over-abundance of quasi-poetic images in the interview, as if the mind is haunted by the task of grasping what ails it: "The Palestinian citizens of Israel are a time bomb," not fellow citizens. Islam is "a world in which human lives don't have the same value as in the West." Arabs are "barbarians" at the gate of the Roman Empire. Palestinian society is "a serial killer" that ought to be executed, and "a wild animal" that must be caged.

Morris' disease was diagnosed over forty years ago, by Frantz Fanon. Based on his experience in subjugated Africa, Fanon observed that "the colonial world is a Manichean world. It is not enough for the settler to delimit physically, that is to say, with the help of the army and the police, the place of the native. As if to show the totalitarian character of colonial exploitation, the settler paints the native as a sort of quintessence of evil … The native is declared insensitive to ethics … the enemy of values. … He is a corrosive element, destroying all that comes near it … the unconscious and irretrievable instrument of blind forces" (from "The Wretched of the Earth"). And further down, "the terms the settler uses when he mentions the native are zoological terms" (let's not forget to place Morris' metaphors in the context of so many other Israeli appellations for Palestinians: Begin's "two-legged beasts", Eitan's "drugged cockroaches" and Barak's ultra-delicate "salmon"). Morris is a case history in the psychopathology of colonialism.

Bad Genocide, Good Genocide

When the settler encounters natives who refuse to cast down their eyes, his disease advances to the next stage -- murderous sociopathy.

Morris, who knows the exact scale of the terror unleashed against Palestinians in 1948, considers it justified. First he suggests that the terror was justified because the alternative would have been a genocide of Jews by Palestinians. Raising the idea of genocide in this context is pure, and cheap, hysteria. Indeed, Morris moves immediately to a more plausible explanation: the expulsion was a precondition for creating a Jewish state, i.e. the establishment of a specific political preference, not self-defense.

This political explanation, namely that the expulsion was necessary to create the demographic conditions, a large Jewish majority, favored by the Zionist leadership, is the consensus of historians. But as affirmative defense, it is unsatisfactory. So the idea that Jews were in danger of genocide is repeated later, in a more honest way, as merely another racist, baseless generalization: "if it can, [Islamic society] will commit genocide."

But Morris sees no evil. Accusing Ben Gurion of failing to achieve an "Arabenrein Palestine," he recommends further ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, including those who are Israeli citizens. Not now, but soon, "within five or ten years," under "apocalyptic conditions" such as a regional war with unconventional weapons, a potentially nuclear war, which "is likely to happen within twenty years." For Morris, and it is difficult to overstate his madness at this point, the likelihood of a nuclear war within the foreseeable future is not the sorry end of a road better not taken, but merely a milestone, whose aftermath is still imaginable, and imaginable within the banal continuity of Zionist centennial policies: he foresees the exchange of unconventional missiles between Israel and unidentified regional states as a legitimate excuse for "finishing the job" of 1948.

Morris speaks explicitly of another expulsion, but, in groping for a moral apology for the past and the future expulsion of Palestinians, he presents a more general argument, one that justifies not only expulsion but also genocide. That statement ought to be repeated, for here is a crossing of a terrible and shameful line.

Morris, a respectable, Jewish, Israeli academic, is out in print in the respectable daily, Haaretz, justifying genocide as a legitimate tool of statecraft. It should be shocking. Yet anybody who interacts with American and Israeli Zionists knows that Morris is merely saying for the record what many think and even say unofficially. Morris, like most of Israel, lives in a temporality apart, an intellectual Galapagos Islands, a political Jurassic Park, where bizarre cousins of ideas elsewhere shamed into extinction still roam the mindscape proudly.

Nor should one think the slippage between expulsion, "transfer," and genocide without practical consequences. It is not difficult to imagine a planned expulsion turn into genocide under the stress of circumstances: The genocides of both European Jews and Armenians began as an expulsion. The expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 was the product of decades of thinking and imagining "transfer." We ought to pay attention: with Morris's statement, Zionist thinking crossed another threshold; what is now discussed has the potential to be actualized, if "apocalyptic conditions" materialize.

The march of civilization and the corpses of the uncivilized

It is instructive to look closer at the manner in which Morris uses racist thinking to justify genocide. Morris' interview, precisely because of its shamelessness, is a particularly good introductory text to Zionist thought.

Morris' racism isn't limited to Arabs. Genocide, according to Morris, is justified as long as it is done for "the final good." But what kind of good is worth the "forced extinction" of a whole people? Certainly, not the good of the latter. (Morris uses the word "Haqkhada," a Hebrew word usually associated with the extinction of animal species. Someone ought to inform Morris about the fact that Native Americans aren't extinct.)

According to Morris, the establishment of a more advanced society justifies genocide: "Yes, even the great American democracy couldn't come to be without the forced extinction of Native Americans. There are times the overall, final good justifies terrible, cruel deeds." Such hopeful comparisons between the future awaiting Palestinians and the fate of Native Americans are common to Israeli apologists. One delegation of American students was shocked and disgusted when it heard this analogy made by a spokesperson at the Israeli embassy in Washington.

Morris's supremacist view of "Western Civilization," that civilization values human life more than Islam, has its basis in the moral acceptance of genocide for the sake of "progress." Morris establishes the superiority of the West on both the universal respect for human life and the readiness to exterminate inferior races. The illogicalness of the cohabitation of a right to commit genocide together with a higher level of respect for human lives escapes him, and baffles us, at least until we grasp that the full weight of the concept of "human" is restricted, in the classic manner of Eurocentric racism, to dwellers of civilized (i.e. Western) nations.

This is the same logic that allowed early Zionists to describe Palestine as an empty land, despite the presence of a million inhabitants. In the end, it comes down to this: killing Arabs -- one dozen Arabs or one million Arabs, the difference is merely technical -- is acceptable if it is necessary in order to defend the political preferences of Jews because Jews belong to the superior West and Arabs are inferior. We must be thankful to Professor Morris for clarifying the core logic of Zionism so well.

The color of Jews

Morris assures us that his values are those of the civilized West, the values of universal morality, progress, etc. But then he also claims to hold the primacy of particular loyalties, a position for which he draws on Albert Camus. But to reconcile Morris' double loyalty to both Western universalism and to Jewish particularism, one must forget that these two identities were not always on the best of terms.

How can one explain Morris' knowledge that the ethnic Darwinism that was used to justify the murder of millions of non-whites, including Black African slaves, Native Americans, Arabs, and others, was also used to justify the attempt to exterminate Jews? How can Morris endorse the "civilizational" justification of genocide, which includes the genocide of Jews, even as he claims the holocaust as another justification for Zionism? Perhaps Morris' disjointed mind doesn't see the connection. Perhaps he thinks that there are "right" assertions of racist supremacy and "wrong" assertions of racist supremacy. Or perhaps Morris displays another facet of the psychopathologies of oppression, the victim's identification with the oppressor.

Perhaps in Morris' mind, one half tribalist and one half universalist, the Jews were murdered to make way for a superior, more purely Aryan, European civilization, and the Jews who are today serving in the Israeli army, both belong and do not belong to the same group. They belong when Morris invokes the totems of the tribe to justify loyalty. But when his attention turns to the universal principle of "superior civilization," these Jews are effaced, like poor relations one is ashamed to be associated with, sent back to the limbo they share with the great non-white mass of the dehumanized. In contrast, the Jews of Israel, self-identified as European, have turned white, dry-cleaned and bleached by Zionism, and with their whiteness they claim the privilege that Whites always had, the privilege to massacre members of "less advanced" races.

False testimony

It would be marvelous if Morris the historian could preserve his objective detachment while Morris the Zionist dances with the demons of Eurocentric racism. But the wall of professionalism -- and it is a very thick and impressive wall in Morris' case -- cannot hold against the torrent of hate.

For example, Morris lies about his understanding of the 2000 Camp David summit. In Haaretz, Morris says that, "when the Palestinians rejected Barak's proposal of July 2000 and Clinton's proposal of December 2000, I understood that they were not ready to accept a two state solution. They wanted everything. Lydda, and Akka and Jaffa."

But in his book "Righteous Victims," Morris explains the failure of the negotiations thus: "the PLO leadership had gradually accepted, or seemed to…Israel...keeping 78 percent of historical Palestine. But the PLO wanted the remaining 22 percent. … At Camp David, Barak had endorsed the establishment of a Palestinian state…[on only] 84-90 percent of that 22 percent. … Israel was also to control the territory between a greatly enlarged Jerusalem and Jericho, effectively cutting the core of the future Palestinian state into two…" Morris' chapter of "Righteous Victims" that deals with the '90s leaves a lot to be desired, but it still strives for some detached analysis. In contrast, in Haaretz Morris offers baseless claims he knows to be false.

If Morris lies about recent history, and even grossly misrepresents the danger Jews faced in Palestine in 1948, a period he is an expert on, his treatment of more general historical matters is all but ridiculous, an astounding mix of insinuations and cliches. For example, Morris reminds us that "the Arab nation won a big chunk of the Earth, not because of its intrinsic virtues and skills, but by conquering and murdering and forcing the conquered to convert." (What is Morris' point? Is the cleansing of Palestine attributable to Jewish virtues and skills, rather than to conquering and murdering?)

This is racist slander, not history. As an example, take Spain, which was conquered in essentially one battle in 711 A.D. by a band of North African Berbers who had just converted to Islam. Spain was completely Islamized and Arabized within two centuries with very little religious coercion, and certainly no ethnic cleansing. But after the last Islamic rulers were kicked out of Spain by the Christian army of Ferdinand and Isabel in 1492, a large section of the very same Spanish population that willingly adopted Islam centuries earlier refused to accept Christianity despite a century of persecution by the Spanish Inquisition. 600,000 Spanish Muslims were eventually expelled in 1608.

Obviously, Islamic civilization had its share of war and violence. But, as the above example hints, compared to the West, compared to the religious killing frenzy of sixteenth century Europe, compared to the serial genocides in Africa and America, and finally to the flesh-churning wars of the twentieth century, Islamic civilization looks positively benign. So why all this hatred? Where is all this fire and brimstone Islamophobia coming from?

Being elsewhere

From Europe, of course, but with a twist. Europe has always looked upon the East with condescension. In periods of tension, that condescension would escalate to fear and hate. But it was also mixed and tempered with a large dose of fascination and curiosity. The settler, however, does not have the luxury to be curious. The settler leaves the metropolis hoping to overcome his own marginal, often oppressed, status in metropolitan society. He goes to the colony motivated by the desire to recreate the metropolis with himself at the top.

For the settler, going to the colony is not a rejection of the metropolis, but a way to claim his due as a member. Therefore, the settler is always trying to be more metropolitan than the metropolis. When the people of the metropolis baulk at the bloodbath the settler wants to usher in the name of their values, the settler accuses them of "growing soft," and declares himself "the true metropolis." That is also why there is one crime of which the settler can never forgive the land he colonized -- its alien climate and geography, its recalcitrant otherness, the oddness of its inhabitants, in sum, the harsh truth of its being elsewhere. In the consciousness of the settler, condescension thus turns into loathing.

Israeli settler society, especially its European, Ashkenazi part, especially that Israel which calls itself "the peace camp," "the Zionist Left," etc., is predicated on the loathing of all things Eastern and Arab. (Now, of course, there is the religious, post-1967 settlers who relate to the Zionist Left the way the Zionist Left stands in relation to Europe, i.e. as settlers.) "Arab" is a term of abuse, one that can be applied to everything and everyone, including Jews. This loathing is a unifying theme. It connects Morris' latest interview in Haaretz with Ben Gurion's first impression of Jaffa in 1905; he found it filthy and depressing.

In another article, published in Tikkun Magazine, Morris blames the "ultra-nationalism, provincialism, fundamentalism and obscurantism" of Arab Jews in Israel for the sorry state of the country (although Begin, Shamir, Rabin, Peres, Netanyahu, Barak, Sharon, and most of Israel's generals, leaders, and opinion makers of the last two decades are European Jews). For Morris, everything Eastern is corrupt and every corruption has an Eastern origin.

One shouldn't, therefore, doubt Morris when he proclaims himself a traditional Left Zionist. Most of what he says hasn't been said already by David Ben Gurion or Moshe Dayan. Loathing of the East and the decision to subdue it by unlimited force is the essence of Zionism.

Understanding the psycho-political sources of this loathing leads to some interesting observations about truisms that recur in Morris' (and much of Israel's) discourse. Morris blames Arafat for thinking that Israel is a "crusader state," a foreign element that will eventually be sent back to its port of departure. This is a common refrain of Israeli propaganda. It is also probably true. But it isn't Arafat's fault that Morris is a foreigner in the Middle East. Why shouldn't Arafat believe Israel is a crusader state when Morris himself says so? "We are the vulnerable extension of Europe in this place, exactly as the crusaders."

It is Morris -- like the greater part of Israel's elite -- who insists on being a foreigner, on loathing the Middle East and dreaming about mist-covered Europe, purified and deified by distance. If Israel is a crusader state, and therefore a state with shallow roots, likely to pack up and disappear, it is not the fault of those who make that observation. It is the fault of those Israelis, like Morris, who want to rule the Middle East from behind tall walls and barbed wire.

Morris is deeply pessimistic about Israel's future; this feeling is very attractive in Israel. The end of Israel is always felt to be one step away, hiding beneath every development, from the birthrate of Bedouins to the establishment of the International Court of Justice.

Naturally, every Palestinian demand is such a doomsday threat. This sense of existential precariousness can be traced back to 1948; it was encouraged by Israel's successive governments because it justified the continuous violence of the state and the hegemony of the military complex. It may eventually become a self-fulfilling prophesy.

But this existential fear goes deeper. It is rooted in the repressed understanding (which Morris both articulates and tries to displace) of the inherent illegitimacy of the Israeli political system and identity. "Israel" is brute force. In Morris' words: "The bottom line is that force is the only thing that will make them accept us." But brute force is precarious. Time gnaws at it. Fatigue corrodes it. And the more it is used, the more it destroys the very acceptance and legitimacy it seeks.

For Israel, the fundamental question of the future is, therefore, whether Israelis can transcend colonialism. The prognosis is far from positive. In a related article in The Guardian, Morris explains that accepting the right of return of the Palestinian refugees would mean forcing Israeli Jews into exile. But why would Jews have to leave Israel if Israel becomes a bi-national, democratic state? One cannot understand this without attention to the colonial loathing of the Middle East which Morris so eloquently expresses.

But taking that into account, I'm afraid Morris is right. Many Israeli Jews, especially European Jews who tend to possess alternative passports, would rather emigrate than live on equal terms with Palestine's natives in a bi-national state. It is to Frantz Fanon again that we turn for observing this first. "The settler, from the moment the colonial context disappears, has no longer an interest in remaining or in co-existing."

Gabriel Ash was born in Romania and grew up in Israel.

Female hysteria manifests itself in many symptoms.

Your video, Muse - Hysteria, has made it into your personal Highest Rated Videos listing. Congratulations on a job well done. For you contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

My fave vid of their's is definitely Hysteria, but that's got something to do with the hot angry fella in it, gets me all worked up, phew And yeah Knights is just, well hard to describe, I don't think i've ever consistently got excited about an instrumental on a track as I do with that one, it just rocks the fuck out! EDD your blasphemy is duly noted, i'll be campaigning for your head

Irishman, I don't think Ron Paul's blimp was designed for transcontinental flight.

The point is that Obama has said a great many things to a great many people, some of which are good things, others not so much. He has also said things that are evasive, deceptive and contradictory. (So has Ron Paul and just about every politician who has ever lived btw) Am I happy about this? No. Do I have some worries? Yes. Have I given up hope already? Fuck no.

To get elected to office, you have to jump through a great many hoops, and keep the power mongers and money men from tearing you to shreds and leaving you in the dust bin of history with Ralph Nader and Ron Paul.

Will he cave to power? Will he wage war against them? I don't know, and neither do you. Most likely, he'll do something between these two extremes.

Perhaps, when Obama speaks about fighting terrorism, he is referring to 'actual' terrorism (remember Al Queda), as opposed to Iraq. He has said a great deal about communication, diplomacy and negotiation, which sounds like a step in the right direction to me. Perhaps he will be another raging neo-con, but it's all speculation at this point.

Have some patience, I'm sure there is a world of fresh new conspiracies for you to indulge in right around the corner. If Obama turns out to be George Bush #3 (#4 if you count Reagan), then I'll hit the streets and protest with you*. Cut and paste this paragraph if you like. Until then, it's just speculative, fringe hysteria.


*Said protest must take place within 100 miles of my residence in beautiful, sunny, southern California unless you want to pay airfare and travel expenses elsewhere.

>> ^SpeveO:
Some of the most suspicious behavior around 9/11 has nothing to do with the collapse of the towers, but rather lies with the government's behaviors before and after the attacks occurred. It's too easy to scream 'Troof' and to cast the issue aside . . . 9/11 was a disturbing indicator of the state of U.S governance.
I urge you to read Peter Dale Scott's book 'Road to 9/11.' Before you stick your foot in your mouth and call him a 'conspiracy theorist', yes he speaks at 9/11 truth movement events, yes he has co-edited a book with David Ray Griffin, but he has a very different analysis of the events of 9/11 and never steps into the realm of hysteria and accusatory assertion like others do. A contemporary of Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, he is a researcher to be taken seriously.
Those of you who talk about peer review and the scientific method will be pleased to know that his book is the only one currently published by an American university press regarding 9/11. Also, the University of California press spent 1 year rigorously fact checking the book before publishing.
To pass off 9/11 as a simplistic terrorist event is disingenuous. You owe it to yourself to delve deeper than that.


But talking about controlled demolition and planted explosives is NOT delving deeper, it's delving down a rabbit hole. It's garbage like this that distracts people from looking at the real problems.

Some of the most suspicious behavior around 9/11 has nothing to do with the collapse of the towers, but rather lies with the government's behaviors before and after the attacks occurred. It's too easy to scream 'Troof' and to cast the issue aside . . . 9/11 was a disturbing indicator of the state of U.S governance.

I urge you to read Peter Dale Scott's book 'Road to 9/11.' Before you stick your foot in your mouth and call him a 'conspiracy theorist', yes he speaks at 9/11 truth movement events, yes he has co-edited a book with David Ray Griffin, but he has a very different analysis of the events of 9/11 and never steps into the realm of hysteria and accusatory assertion like others do. A contemporary of Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, he is a researcher to be taken seriously.

Those of you who talk about peer review and the scientific method will be pleased to know that his book is the only one currently published by an American university press regarding 9/11. Also, the University of California press spent 1 year rigorously fact checking the book before publishing.

To pass off 9/11 as a simplistic terrorist event is disingenuous. You owe it to yourself to delve deeper than that.

Cause nobody can do it like Mix Master Mike can,
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He'll tweak ass your ass across the cross fade
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3 MC's and one DJ
We be getting down with no delay
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Sweet and sour like a tangerine
Fresh like a box of Krispy Kremes
Kenny Rogers' Gambler is my gambling theme
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The bass is booming from down below
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Three MC's and one DJ
We be getting down with no delay
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Mix Master cut faster

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Pretty much the exact logic which led me away from the mass hysteria of Christianity. I don't think I truly understood the aspect of the holy spirit until after wholeheartedly leaving the faith. Instead of moments of ecstasy, my heart is lightened with the wisdom and reassurance of the choice I made to not believe such obvious, peer pressured, fear-driven baloney.

Every now and then I witness the strife many of my peers go through as they lose their faith and then "regain" it. It's sort of like watching a high schooler struggle through their very first calculus exam -- Thank God(ha!) I don't need to go through any of that again.

Some skilfull pole routines, unfortunately an edited version..

The music reminded me of Muse - Hysteria
http://www.videosift.com/video/Muse-Hysteria
*commercial

Blimey, i somehow read the title as "Muse - Hysteria". Ah well, this is nice, too.

Godwin, 4:10 - http://www.videosift.com/video/Mass-Hysteria

How gay marriage wrecked Mass... and another Godwin's Law sighting--
http://politics.videosift.com/video/Mass-Hysteria

How gay marriage wrecked Mass --
http://politics.videosift.com/video/Mass-Hysteria

"Barry" voted yea for "an amendment prohibiting the use of any funds appropriated in the FY2007 Department of Homeland Security Act from being used to confiscate legal firearms during states of emergency or major disasters."

I'll give him some credit, but also: Big Deal. He never would've come up with it on his own, and anyway, it's crap from both sides of the aisle. The 2nd Amendment already covers 'states of emergency'.

This is an unfortunate feature of nearly every politician. Even the conservatives haven't been very conservative during the course of my lifetime. I don't agree with this approach either, but that's not to say that throwing money at a problem doesn't get results sometimes. Counting this against him is not unlike accusing him of only having two arms. When a three-armed candidate surfaces, then I'll care that the other candidates only have two.

I agree with you. But conservatives failing to be conservative and liberals being liberals are still two different animals.

>> ^quantumushroom:
He uses accusations of "racism" whenever he loses an argument (tho not exclusively a Marxist principle).

I've seen these accusations before but I've not seen the evidence. Perhaps you can show some? I'll continue to consider it partisan nonsense in the meantime.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/09/17/obama_invokes_rush_limbaugh_in.html

Here's the latest kerfuffle, Obama's campaign rearranging Rush Limbaugh's parodies to make him sound like a racist. Partisan? Yeah, the party that freed the slaves versus the party of Je$$e Jack$on.

And let's not forget this, Obama speaking: The choice is clear. Most of all we can choose between hope and fear. It is going to be very difficult for Republicans to run on their stewardship of the economy or their outstanding foreign policy. We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run. They’re going to try to make you afraid. They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?

Poor-me racially-charged victimhood from a man who is an American success story by ANY standard.

>> ^quantumushroom:
I safely predict Orwellian hate crimes and hate speech laws will strengthen under his rule, the closest to outright banning free speech we'll have.

I don't see any basis for this statement except perhaps the idea that 'them Negroes is always conspirin' against us good white folk.' I did notice that Obama voted against a bill to amend the constitution to make "Flag Desecration" illegal. That's big free speech support right there if you ask me. [ref]

I have said nothing here that indicates Obama's race factors into whether or not he supports hate crime legislation. It's more a left-wing thing, not a race thing. Hate crime = thoughtcrime, and I don't see Barry or any other left-winger challenging the constitutionally-unsound hate crimes laws. The right, as usual, will just be accused of being racists by the left when they point out the emperor wears no clothes.


>> ^quantumushroom:
A question for Obama supporters: let's say he gets his way and increases taxes on only "the wealthy". Do the middle and lower classes really think they won't suffer any adverse effects by having their employers' earnings slammed?

That all depends on what is done with the money. Not waging a 100 year war with no goals would be a good start.

McCain wasn't referring to 100 years of war, it's a deliberate distortion. He meant something along the lines (I think) of North and South Korea, establishing a lasting military presence there. And yes, I like the idea of B-52s less than 10 minutes from Tehran.

"What is done" with the money, I think you already know, most of it will be pissed away by graft and corruption, bailouts, paying for ongoing failures like the Wars on Poverty, Drugs, and yes, even Terror. I don't see why the Fire Chief of Speckville, Indiana needs a million-dollar APC to defend against terrorists.

There is nothing magical that happens when you give your money to the government. You and I know the value of a dollar, and I trust a dollar in the hands of the average citizen will go much farther than it will in a politician's budget. That's the essence of libertarianism. BTW, it's YOUR dollar!


Obama is nearly a lifelong member of a "church" that promotes Black Liberation Theology. Few things lie closer to a believers' hearts than their faith, whatever it may be. How is it Barry has to disavow his church? Could it be because it's backwards and against not only basic Xtian principles but American principles?

Was a member of said church for less than half his life, actually. If you read up on Trinity United, you'll see they've promoted a number of different ideas about race interaction over the decades as the times and leadership have changed. So, too, has "Black Liberation Theology" changed its implications with time. I know you like to put -ism and -ist labels on everyone and everything, but sometimes it's not that simple and you need full sentences, paragraphs or even pages to explain something adequately.

You and others wish to blast Palin on the "Sambo' remark, which was a fabrication (aka a LIE). You've already decided she's a racist based on something that didn't even happen. Now you expect me and every other person who has a problem with Obama's radical, racist church to simply forget he was a member for over 2 decades and gave them 22K? I'm not saying Obama shares all of Wright's wacky beliefs, but then if McCain said "Bless You" when David Duke sneezed, we both know the level of liberal hysteria that would ensue.

Since you've not attributed this quote, I'm not going to address it. Without knowing if it's from a reliable source or just some conservapedia article, I've really got nothing to go on.

Fair enough. http://www.publicallies.org/site/c.liKUL3PNLvF/b.3960231/

Obama's relations to this organization.


>> ^quantumushroom:
What I'm addressing here has nothing to do with why people support Obama. Facts and logic are out the window, Obamites are electrified by these vague messages of "hope" and "change" or still part of the "Anybody but Bush" mindset.

There is some validity to what you say here. Obama is a charismatic and exciting guy and many people have not looked beyond that. It's important to acknowledge that this is the failing of those people and not of Obama, just as it is your failing to make so many false assumptions about him based on his party, race and background rather than documented facts.

You recognize that it is a failing of the people to not know their candidate. Yes, I will blame the American people if Obama is elected, just as you will blame the other half if McCain is elected.

Yes, I have some assumptions about Obama, but they're based on the many quotes he's made as well as the considerable information about his background, his (in)experience, the company he keeps and his voting record (to the left of Ted Kennedy). I personally don't give a damn about his racial background; if he supported conservative principles with the same thin resume, I'd have a serious choice to make whether he would be better than McCain.

Thanks to all who responded. Yes MINK, you're the Master of Europe and I am at your mercy. You and I have written enough to make a book.