Great words concerning the need for a new (non-polemical) language; oughta be the credo of good bloggers.

Interesting dilemma though, the more “impassioned” a person is about a subject the less able they are to discipline their thinking and language. Reminds me of an anecdote I heard about that Brit P.M. Balfour. A very unusual man, Churchill said he was convinced that his very nature was so imperturbably dispassionate you could stick a gun in his face and he’d not blink. At any rate he was talking about some hot issue once to his cabinet and someone suggested they get recommendations via forming a commission of people “concerned” with same, at which point he knitted his brow in thought and eventually said he thought that was the exact wrong way to go about it.

“Why” he was asked?

“Well, isn’t it just common sense that the people we’d most trust to come up with the fairest analysis of it would be those with the least interest in it?”

Not without some sense, to me at least.

In any event, as someone else once said an intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself, but lacking the ability I’m fine just relying you in the future.

Thanks again.

You are one of the great commenters on this blog. You are always insightful and you dont take cheap shots. Never. You invest in what you write. Which was why I was — really — leery about answering you as I did. And I dont mean to diminish the quality of what you wrote. I had to really think about it.

I really really understand being so sick of ideologues these days, on the Right and on the Left. So many so damned sure of the cosmic validity of everything they believe in, so damned sure of the black-heartedness of everyone who disagrees with them, making sweeping proclamations Right and Left. I understand this. I know this frustration. I have the same.

But me, the ex-ulta-right, has had to think about other solutions. I was a major asshole in the 90s. You would have despised me. But I changed. And I changed because Jeffrey Blankfort’s writing was beyond my intelligence and I had to recognize it; it was his words that said I was stupid to be so limited. He was a plain honest man whose words honestly hit me. And I had to recognize the same. Or prove him wrong, which I couldn’t.

Sin Nombre, I actually understood what you are trying to say. But those of us impassioned to change things, I think, as I believe you are, have got to learn a new vocabulary: I dont think you’re here because you like to see your words on a screen; I dont think you have that insignificant vanity. There’s a different moral imperative that drives people like you. And we need to reach that language. People are waiting for it.

I’ve read you here for a long time too and far from calling you foolish when you say I’m being unfair I take it seriously. And thus I’ve re-read what I wrote and feel obliged to say that you may well have a point with me wrongly lumping North in as just being another ideologue. While I’ve read some of his other stuff one should be more careful before making such generalizations, particularly when I took such exception to his own.

In this spirit I’d like to even forego the obligatory “but I stand by what I wrote vis a vis what he wrote *here*” clause that so often just means one is a self-defensive jerk and doesn’t really mean to be contrite because … I am in light of your prompting and my re-reading. But I do have to say it because I do stand by my criticisms of what he wrote here at least, sans my grand characterization of him.

Not exculpatory though, I’ll admit. I guess I’m just so sick of ideologues these days, on the Right and on the Left. So many so damned sure of the cosmic validity of everything they believe in, so damned sure of the black-heartedness of everyone who disagrees with them, making sweeping proclamations Right and Left … and here it looks like my own dispassion left me some too.

Thanks for the reality check. And apologies to North for my own sweeping characterization of him.

I’ve read you for a long time on this board, and I dont have the info to discuss this, but something tells me you’re being unfair. I know I’m sticking my neck out here with zero info or reason, but I haven’t found James North to be a fabricator.

The US WAS the fabricator of evil in Central America for a long time; ditto Latin America. Me, the ex-right-wing Republican! Saying all this! Heh. And it is still doing it.

I will stop now. Because, frankly, Sin Nombre, I have no leg to stand on vis-a-vis my opinion, and you have every reason to call me foolish. I am an ignoramus when it comes to all this. And what I’m saying or intimating here does not matter. But, I can tell tell you I’ve sat in NYC living rooms and listened to horrific US government plans to destroy Central and Latin America by the people who actually did it.

A single example: “But Haitians, and others, still question whether the mass slaughter was necessary. The Haitian black pigs had survived for 500 years and become resistant to disease, and by the time the killing started in 1982 the local pigs had already stopped dying.”

Oh, really?

A.) So pray tell us … just exactly *how* could they become resistant to an *African* disease that was first detected in Haiti in 1980?

B.) And if they were resistant, then why were they dying at all?

And here are some relevant items from the very first Google hit after searching the term “Haiti African Swine Fever”:

A.) Not a scintilla of mention of any “resistance,” and

B.) The categorical statement that in fact more of these slyly hinted at “resistant” Haitian pigs died of ASF (500,000-600,000) than were killed in the entire eradication effort.

link to multinationalmonitor.org
with this piece being written by a program associate for Haiti with the Multinational Monitor, with even this piece being highly critical of the response to the Swine Flu outbreak North talks about and so obviously and if anything biased in North’s direction.

And then of course, even ignoring all the other things North slyly hints at and etc., there’s all those other things that North *doesn’t* mention, like … even the most obvious possible fact that without the eradication effort that North decries all the rest of the Haitian pigs would have died *anyway,* just like those 500,000-600,000 did, except this time without their Haitian owners getting even a cent for same much less the millions upon millions that they *did* get in the eradication effort. (At least $9.3 million of which came from the U.S.)

Nor of course is there any North mention of the fact that when ASF first hit the Dominican Republic, Haiti, *all on its own* and without a molecule of U.S. intervention, ordered the eradication of some 100,000 of its pigs in areas near the border with its island co-habitator, with absolutely *no* compensation to be paid for same. Nor any mention of the fact that Haiti *itself* then fully supported the big international eradication effort, which was far from being a sole U.S. effort and involved many many others, including Mexico. Or of why things went so bad with Haiti but not with the eradication effort on the rest of the island. (The Dominican Republic that is.) Nor of the *tens* of millions targeted to buy or give Haitian farmers new pigs *and* to help them develop a more modern pig industry. Nor of anything concerning—as one AID official said— “the [Haitian] problems of corruption which are unsurpassed [with] equipment has disappeared and swine [being] nonexistent [and with] veterinary supplies [being] sold for human consumption.”

Of *course* not: While, as that Multinational Monitor piece shows, there can certainly be criticisms of what happened, and even harsh criticisms, that’s not really North’s purpose. First and always guys like North never really care about the nuances and subtleties of things, nor indeed even their fundamental workings or truths; above all and indeed always and forever their sole interest in anything is how it can be grist for somehow tarring the U.S.

What, for instance, is the logical conclusion to be taken from what North writes? Not that he cares, but of course that the eradication effort should never have been undertaken at all, right? After all what did he write (slyly, as usual) but that “[c]ritics still argue that the United States was truly only concerned about protecting its own pig industry.”

So what indeed are his ‘druthers? (Not that he cares or dares to talk about same.) That the U.S., and Canada, and Mexico, and all the other countries involved in that eradication effort—and indeed *every* other country in the entire hemisphere including many many other poor ones in Central and South America—should have stood by and let their pork industries get infected and destroyed? An industry which feeds millions upon millions every day, including the poorest of the poor because of their particular reliance on pork in many areas?

All just my opinions obviously, but I can’t see that any of this matters to North: Not worth mentioning even. Not that he *wanted* that to happen, but if it happened, well once again one can bet that his sole interest in same would have been its potential propaganda value in condemning the United States. “Ah yes,” one would have then heard him screaming, “but for the greedy U.S. not spending a few million in Haiti it caused all this!!!” And if that propaganda value wasn’t there with that, well then it wouldn’t matter because he’d just make it up somehow, just as he did here.

Also denying that many Jews in the United States hold influential positions in several places also cannot denied. However, this also applies to several other groups of people in the United States.

But to say that American Jews pull all the strings is applying to one situation to every situation.

When it comes to issues that American Jews care about (Israel) they work tirelessly to promote it much like any other group would. Their success with promoting Israel should be seen as just that; a success.

Their success in this arena is largely due to good planning, a sympathetic audience, and several wealthy patrons.

However, when we look at other facets of American foreign policy we find that there really isin’t much in the way of American Jewish participation much less virtual domination in the same way that we see it in regards to Israel and the wider Middle East.

For example, I can’t think of to many Zionists running our foreign policy when it comes to the Pacific nations despite how critical this area is to American empire. I also don’t see to many Zionists running around Latin America even if there are neocons running around as well. Its the same thing with our Africa policy and to a large extent our policy towards Europe and also with South Asia.