The other night Brian Williams on NBC lamented the fact that a
“prying” photographer had captured topless photographs of Kate Middleton, wife of Prince William of Great Britain, when the couple were on vacation in the South of France. I expressed my sympathy for Middleton, and my wife bridled. She said:
I have no sympathy at all for her. She accepted a job, and we all know what the job is. She’s going to be the queen of England, the richest woman in the world. Well there’s a tradeoff. You don’t take your top off on vacation.
She wanted to relax in a place where she could have expected privacy.
That’s absolutely absurd. No woman needs tanned tits. It’s stupid and vain, and completely unnecessary when you’re going to be the Queen of England. She’s obviously a ninny. And they’re both ninnies, to be so upset about it that they want to sue newspapers because a woman took a picture of them. They don’t get it: That woman was a paparazzi, she was doing her job. Miss Ninny Kate Middleton was not doing her job, which may be a ridiculous job but she will be paid an enormous amount of money for doing it. She’s a nitwit, she’s a Sloane ranger– and you can’t say any of those things about her grandmother in law, Queen Elizabeth 2. I’m not a royalist, and maybe it should be taken down, but if you’re going to do it, do it well. Queen Elizabath 2, that’s Kate Middleton’s role model, and she knows she is the richest woman in the world because of the job she’s doing, and there are many things she can’t do, the poor Queen.
Oh it’s not that bad.
I think it is that bad. It’s 365 days a year of working and serving and you can never be alone. That’s why Prince Philip got a urinary tract infection. He couldn’t even go when he needed to. But that’s the deal.
The paparazzi killed Kate Middleton’s late mother in law.
Right. And why didn’t Kate Middleton learn from that? The paparazzi– that’s the whole deal with the royal family. They’re special; so they get their pictures taken. If the woman who runs the dry cleaner goes sunbathing with her top off, the paparazzi would not be taking her picture.
Diana had her picture taken in compromising situations.
She was using the press, she was manipulating the press, because she wanted her husband to see how hot and beautiful she was as compared to the Rottweiler. And this little ninny seems to be doing it for no reason at all. Poor Diana lost the game, tragically, but she had a reason. She also had given up the job, not that it mattered.
How long had Prince Charles gone out with the Rottweiler?
I don’t know– since he was 13? He has mommy issues. Because again, Queen Elizabeth 2– she’s not a mommy, and she’s not an exhibitionist. She’s queen.
That family needs to give back the bloody money (goods etc) they stole from others. What is with the folks in the U.K. keeping these thieves as royals. What is up with that? All seems so silly, frilly and sickening
Listen to your wife.
Sloane rangers are female upper-crusters who live in Sloane Square, London; judge people by their class and go around saying “yaah” instead of ‘yes’. A Hooray Henry is the male equivalent. Snoots, in other words.
And the wife is right, Phil. Ninny ain’t doing her job right, doesn’t understand the job she signed up her life for. And the job demands you NEVER be natural, or yourself. Institutionalized decorum, decorum, decorum: for breakfast, lunch, high-tea and supper. Now I can’t think of a more disturbing lifestyle. Well actually, I can: colonialist zionism.
Kate Middleton was never a Sloane Ranger – not nearly posh enough – her parents were bloody trade! (go read Jane Austen to understand how derogatory this epithet is)
Just for fun, some Pommy posh people satire:
Catherine Tate – Posh People
And some real Pommy posh people:
Alan Carr, Chatty Man – Cast of Made In Chelsea
Seriously.
Isn’t this a bit off-topic? You’re setting a lousy example for the rest of us.
…keep this up and I’m going to post a screed about how awful cheap California Chardonnay is. There’s bass fishing…the Zen of gardening…getting useful labor out of teenagers…my exciting travel plans for next year…the pros and cons of slot limits for trout…
You don’t want to go there, buddy.
Well Phil promised us a change of plan. Look out for exciting features coming up in the new look Mondoweiss – “now for the other 98%” – including:
October Surprise. Who’d believe a pumpkin could be eaten? asks an astonished Phil after his upstate neighbour pops round with a delicious pie.
$20/gal gas! Can it ever be justified? asks Professor Slater as tension mounts in the Middle East.
Hooray Harry makes a Royal Ass of himself again! Why can’t the British Royals keep their clothes on? asks our royal correspondent Mrs. Weiss.
Is there a Nazi under your bed? asks Professor Ellis.
Deli-less in Dixie. Phil checks out the latest F150 as he heads south to his first NASCAR race and discovers grits along the way. Who’d believe I was still in America? he asks himself ruefully.
Mooser Award! Mooser Award!!
“You don’t want to go there, buddy”
Or the millions made off of bingo halls.
Will never forget the time (35 years ago) I went with my Catholic mother and a few (four) of her sisters to a bingo hall in the basement of a Catholic church in Dayton Ohio. I sat in amazement watching mostly older ladies some gents buy 20 -30 (don’t quite remember) bingo cards, line them up in an orderly fashion, put troll dolls, pictures of Saints, etc etc around their cards and prepare for their night of numbers, coffee, sugar and dreams of hitting the big number.
I sat in amazement watching how much money they were spending and how seriously addicted they were. Watched women with babooshka’s over their curlers and cigarettes hanging out of their mouths. The crowd was made up of working class folks who looked like the next stop would be the local bowling alley or the next Catholic fish fry where they could throw more hard earned money down a black hole. Tried to talk with my Aunt Eernice who was always more than willing to share an opinion and she snapped “Kathleen no talking.” Clearly this was serious business no room for spectators questions. I shut up and watched as mostly Catholic folks threw thousands down a black hole that night. Someone was at the other end of that money tunnel cleaning up.
Oh and no one was topless
How off topic is that?
Catholic… protestant… whatever… They are mostly old(er) people largely shunned by a society obsessed with eternal youth. It’s even worse for the working class who really have hardly anywhere to go. And then there’s the growing perception as the ‘superfluous’ aging ‘entitlement’ society who should just die. For the seniors the church and bingo halls are just about the only places left to hang out. It’s also a reflection of a successful exercise in divide and rule that has fragmented families and society, so fabulously exposed by Adam Curtis in “The Century of the Self” and his other docus.
We’re cheating ourselves out of a helluva load of wisdom. Soda or chemicals to clean the house? Exactly what the corporate would-be-overlords want. No?
Curtis’ work is a must in these times. Thanks for pointing his documentary out.
off topic colin? what an astounding display of ignorance. haven’t you checked out the ‘features’ link at the top of the page? where have you been? nowhere if you’ve not visited beyondoweiss!
Is that where the topless pictures actually are? Aside from everything else, I thought it was a tad scrooge-like not to illustrate this article.
well, i think william over reacted. he should let a little more diana rub off on him. i don’t agree with either you or cynthia, i think the definition of queen needs to morph a little. i think queens should be able to sunbath nude,and sometimes they just get caught that’s all. and if william doesn’t want nude photos of his wife he should post sentries all around the border (sans cellphones with cameras, yeah right) and make sure photographers are not hiding in the bushes. oh f it. women like to take their clothes off. why should kate be any different?
these people need to out themselves as somewhat normal because the whole thing is a facade anyway isn’t it? we could all play that part. think of that young actress who was from new york and found out she was the daughter of the prime minister. i can’t remember the name of the movie. colin firth was her father and tavolta’s wife was her mother. kelly something. anyway..royals are just people, so she should get used to it. besides, he probably married her because she’s got a tad of his mother in her, and look at what diana did for the royals. and besides, what does kate think of all this anyway? who knows. let her take her top off and change the definition of queen. there have been naked queens in the past.
maybe i will have a different opinion in the morning.
@ Annie Robbins
I kinda agree with your comment. She’s young, new at the ultimate royals game, and maybe she thought she had privacy at that moment–I read somewhere the photos were taken by someone from very far away. She might have got the idea when the royal couple walked around in that African village where it was natural and normal for the women to go naked on top. So she thought she’d give it a whirl.
It’s common in southern Europe for women to sunbathe with their tops off. Completely normal. Check out any public beach in the south of Spain (Catholic country too) any year you like. Sardinia. France. Portugal. Italy. Greece. It’s a vitamin D thing; supplements don’t produce vitamin D. It’s considered a health action.
link to health.usnews.com
You can always tell who the Americans are because they won’t do it.
On the other hand, sun causes skin cancer, especially in old white men. A rude awakening from one’s youthful freedom at “the ol’ swimming hole,” and playing “guns” & “Cowboys & Indians” in the sun in the days of Roy Rogers, The Lone Ranger, Howdy Doody.
Ten minutes a day is all you need to create vitamin D in the summertime. Sunscreen is causing osteoporosis in old folk as well. You need more as you age.
Actually, as you can get your Vitamin D in a tablet you need not expose yourself to the carcinogenic rays of the sun to get your Vitamin D. Sorry!
Sunscreen is not causing osteoporosis – just get grandma a tablet a day and she’ll be fine.
But if young women choose this method for getting Vitamin D, I’m all for it. Just so long as they don’t complain about possible consequences (when daddy finds out, etc.).
Clearly, it is much better to have a princess with no cloths than an emperor. Who wants to even imagine topless Netanyahu?
I would also argue that being a ninny is an integral part of the job of a princess. Check “Princess and a pea”.
But while the princess is doing her job of being princessy, journalists have to take care of the public right to know angle. Does Prince William starve his bride to death, or does he not? Also, what type of security arrangement did the royal couple have?
Sunscreen is not causing osteoporosis
Not according to my doctor, who used to be a rabid stay out of the sun type and preached +30 sunscreen. Now he says 10 minutes, butt naked, during high-noon, flip yourself like a burger, five minutes a side. ;-)
I know all about the D3 supplement, but the 80-year-old doc, who reads everything the NIH puts out it seems, says the sun does it better.
The point of mentioning it was that Northern Europeans know this and crave the sun in the summertime as a result. I was parked in a house above the hills of Marbella, Spain, and the Brits, German, and Norwegian tourists told me this directly.
@ MRW
I dunno. I’ve already had a bunch of surgeries to get rid of skin cancer, and all all the doctors I’ve talked to have attributed mine to being a white male, and to me being exposed to the sun too much in my youth, a youth spent outdoors in the summer, going to “swimming holes” a la Maybury USA, etc. I can tell you I had very limited exposure to the sun after age 17.
I don’t begrudge the princess her nude sunbathing but she shoulda known that in her high profile position she was likely to be caught at it.
Privacy is what you give up for being a high royal…sad fact.
Goes with the position. She screwed up.
Annie: First off, I agree with everyone who said this was off-topic. True! But I have to say that I can’t imagine why anyone would want to make the job easier, she is getting gobs of money and huge hunks of real estate to be a icon of the British Empire. Ridiculous, yes, but don’t make it easier, or morph it into something more pleasant so that they can have all that money and power and then just get to act like ordinary citizens who get privacy while they tan their tits.
I’m with hubby on this one, and not because of any residual royalist sentiment. They were on an estate of some 640acres (one square mile) and should have been able to ‘shut out’ the rest of the world. The ‘paper rat’ intruded and trespassed and used powerful lenses to steal images. They are on the cusp of being able to access and use drone cameras. Should we then say, ok, no one at any time shall have any expectation of privacy in the new future? Will the press be given the right to use their camera drones as they wish and to use whatever images they can for the titillation of the masses? We know our (UK) police are investing in drones, and there is plenty on the web about the msm in the US investing in them. A test case before they really get common, on this stolen images situation, could be of value to many more than this couple and the rest of the royals in years to come.
I do not understand the aristocratic expectation that a square mile estate should assure you more privacy than my 20 ft x 20 ft backdoor patio. Nobody took my topless picture in spite some theoretical possibilities — like me spending some time there in shorts only.
so no topless beach jaunts in cannes or bora bora for queenie kate eh? darn.
Apparently she was giggling at bare breasted tribal dancers in the south Pacific while the crisis was raging in the UK…
she doesn’t look distressed. the hubby on the other hand looks like he swallowed a porcupine.
@Weiss-Wife
Don’t I remember hearing Diana complain about being cash poor? She insisted that her cash allowance wasn’t what you’d expect. She suggested that the Royals have billions in assets but not so much in ready cash.
Yay, Annie and Mrs W!
Kate would do well to take a cue from her defiant MiL and use her position to kick some of the silly mores to the curb. If/when confronted by the media she should reply with: ‘why are we OK with, even deferential towards, nudes in the arts? why is it OK for men to run around with exposed jiggly boobs? why is a little partial nudity in a secluded spot (out of consideration for the sensitivities of the general public, natch) considered offensive? Also, the photographer came to her, not the other way round.
I’m cool to be confronted with exposed breasts. I’m not cool being confronted with a cop’s taser, army’s guns or retarded social/religious mores.
The scorn for topless women is, as are females wrapped in L-size sheets with a chador on their faces, a reflection of insecure males, i.e., not my or my hen-friends’ problem. William’s silly outrage validated those antiquated ideas. Kate is his missus, not his property. Ignore/deflate the hoopla and the ‘problem’ is no more.
The Royals’ role is to enhance the tourist trade to the UK. If it weren’t for the occasional ‘scandal’, the trade would be like that in Sweden, Denmark or Belgium, i.e., less profitable. A good part of the family’s wealth comes from profit participation derived from tchochkes (sp?) sold to said tourists, and legal kickbacks from businesses who use the ‘by appointment…’ signature on their products that oh-so titillates the buying snobs: income that generates taxes that further enhance the purse of the welfare state that can and does take care of its less fortunate.
The Royals are also viewed as a pacifying alternative to the actual rulers of the Isles: less offensive compared to Blair, Cameron or the corrupt MPs.
Unlike our 1%ers, they have sent some of their kids to the frontlines.
As long as they earn their keep and pay taxes, I’m ok with Royals anywhere. Their antics, including exposed boobs, neither harm nor hold back no one.
What A Girl Wants (2003)
While we’re gingerly off-topic, here’s some fun Einsteinian stuff:
link to reuters.com
@ Taxi
French researcher Emmanuel Ben-Soussan on how doctors performing colonoscopies can minimize the chance of igniting gasses that make their patients explode. (Damn, I never knew there was a chance of that happening!)
In the salmon test, the team showed photos to the dead fish and asked it to determine what emotion the person was feeling.
lol, scientists with too much time on their hands.
RE: “Brian Williams on NBC lamented the fact that a
‘prying’ photographer had captured topless photographs of Kate Middleton, wife of Prince William”
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• Ben Howard – The Fear (VIDEO, 04:25) – link to youtube.com
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“It’s 365 days a year of working and serving and you can never be alone. That’s why Prince Philip got a urinary tract infection. He couldn’t even go when he needed to. But that’s the deal.”
Well we all have jobs, sometimes some of them mean we are unable to go to the toilet every single time we need to. I’m sure all the people who have a work related illness or injury in Britain on an NHS waiting list are all overjoyed to contribute (without choice) some of their wages to giving Prince Philip the absolute very best medical and support care in the world. It’s just a shame that these ungrateful cowardly helicopter pilots didn’t try harder to get him to his hospital wing in less than the 35 minutes an ambulance with police escort and whatever necessary traffic control measures would have taken.
link to oyetimes.com
I know someone who had a minor accident on the Balmoral estate. His companion flagged down a speeding Range Rover driven by Prince Philip on one of his days off. He simply looked at them, pointed forward and said “down the track” before driving off again. Thanks!
Once again your wife has it right. Don’t want photographers taking pictures of your naked breasts? Keep your bikini top on. Show some class. Doesn’t seem too huge a personal sacrifice.
Disagree on the ‘class’ thing. It has nothing to do with a bikini top/bottom: on or off. Class is how you handle any issue.
I’m neither a monarchist nor a fan of Will & Kate but:
- In an interview, the reporter who took the pics said she was “about half a mile away” from the private château.
- If some guy was using a zoom lens to take pics of your wife from half a mile away, I wager she’d be calling the cops and complaining about invasion of her right to privacy. And she’d be right to complain.
- IMO, Will & Kate are entitled to the same expectation of right to privacy.
- IMO, Will & Kate are entitled to the same expectation of right to privacy.
But weren’t they on a balcony open to the public at the time? (And by open to the public, I mean, in a place where the public, standing on public land, could see them…) If so, then I don’t see where they have a right to expect the public be required to refrain from looking in their direction.
>> But weren’t they … in a place where the public, standing on public land, could see them…
Based on these photos, I would say ‘no’.
The article says that the area where they were is visible from the roadway.
>> The article says that the area where they were is visible from the roadway.
The article also says that the photo was taken from a distance of 1.6 kilometers using a super-telephoto lens.
This isn’t a matter of the public being “required to refrain from looking in their direction”: The couple was as much as 1.6km away from the nearest public roadway and no-one’s vision is that good.
“The article also says that the photo was taken from a distance of 1.6 kilometers using a super-telephoto lens.”
So what? If they were observable, they were observable. (The UK security people must be chasing their tails these days, because the photographer was in sniper range…) It’s not like they didn’t have notice that these lenses exist.
And I would question the “1.6 km.” claim. The photo that accompanied the article (from Google Maps) is located only about .3 km from the place and it’s not even the closest public road. (The spot which the London Daily Mail indicates as being the photographer’s position is about 1 km.)
>> So what?
It means that an expectation of privacy was reasonable.
It means that no-one was “required to refrain from looking in their direction”.
It means that photographers with high-powered lenses should not be rewarded for doing to public persons what they would be arrested and charged for doing to private persons: stalking them and, while loitering on public roadways, snapping pictures of them in private surroundings.
There was no reasonable expectation of privacy. This technology has existed for 100 years. And these people, of all people, should understand that what comes with their unearned wealth and privilege comes the fact that they will have virtually no expectation of privacy anywhere where they could be seen. They will always be subject of photographers taking pictures of them. If they don’t like it, they can give back the money, denounce the titles and go get real jobs.
“It means that no-one was ‘required to refrain from looking in their direction’.”
Sure it does. You’re specifically saying that these photographers should have not been permitted to stand on public land and take a photograph of someone who was standing outside, in clear sight. That’s nonsense, in my opinion. If they don’t want to be photographed, they should not go outside where people can photograph them.
“…should not be rewarded for doing to public persons what they would be arrested and charged for doing to private persons…”
But they aren’t private persons. They’re public persons. And the photographers shouldn’t be arrested for doing that even to a private person (although I recognize that every country’s laws are different. I’m talking about what I think is right, not about what the French law holds.) They weren’t in private surroundings. It’s not like someone shot through closed curtains. They were on a balcony which could obviously be seen for a mile around.
>> eljay: It means that no-one was “required to refrain from looking in their direction”.
>> WT: Sure it does.
No, it doesn’t. Anyone walking or driving down that road is free to look in the direction of that house. You’re talking about someone stationing themselves on a public roadway for an indefinite period of time for the sole purpose of invading someone else’s privacy using a high-powered lens.
But never mind all that. You win.
“You’re talking about someone stationing themselves on a public roadway for an indefinite period of time for the sole purpose of invading someone else’s privacy using a high-powered lens.”
Again, you are assuming they had a right to privacy when they’re on a balcony visable to the public. That, to me, is nonsense. And if there is no law against sitting in the place where the photographer sat, then the purpose that he or she was there is irrelevant.
>> Again, you are assuming they had a right to privacy when they’re on a balcony visable to the public. That, to me, is nonsense. And if there is no law against sitting in the place where the photographer sat, then the purpose that he or she was there is irrelevant.
Points taken.
“photographers with high-powered lenses (…) in private surroundings.”
The Royals are private persons when they are not attending a public function. The issue is not with the Royals, but rather with the silly public hot and bothered by a pair of unclad boobs. A public that is ok to pay for, or be distracted by, a non-issue is deserving of any epithet of one’s choosing and aim.
The Royals broke no rules, written or implied. It’s the dumb public who will not honor the do-unto-others deal. As for the paparazzi: it’s a job. We’re ok when they snap a picture of a corrupt deed in progress, no?
“The Royals are private persons when they are not attending a public function”
Are they?? When people meet the queen when she’s not at a public function, or when she speaks to one of the palace employees behind closed doors, are they welcome to just call her “Liz” or even “Mrs. Mountbatten”?? Or is it bending and scraping and “Ma’am” this and “Your royal highness” that, all day long? Sorry, they accept an office that, by it’s very nature, strips them of their private individuality. She ceased being “Kate Middleton,” private person, the moment she agreed to be the “Dutchess of Gloucester” or whatever silly title they give each other.
“The Royals broke no rules, written or implied. ”
Sure they did: If you don’t want your breasts photographed by the paparazzi, don’t expose them where paparazzi can photograph them. And if you’re stupid enought to do that, then for pete’s sakes, have some class, own up to your mistake and stop throwing a tantrum, as if being “royal” actually means anything. These people should be happy the British public hasn’t decided to nationalize all of the their property and toss them on the street to look for honest work.
Woody says: “And I would question the “1.6 km.” claim.”
Call me cynical — but I’ll tell you where that ’1.6 km’ comes from. 1.6 km is about a mile. Somebody originally described the distance as ‘a mile’ and converting the figure into kilometers had the no-doubt undisturbing consequence of lending the cite a spurious air of precision.
>> Call me cynical — but I’ll tell you where that ’1.6 km’ comes from. 1.6 km is about a mile. Somebody originally described the distance as ‘a mile’ and converting the figure into kilometers had the no-doubt undisturbing consequence of lending the cite a spurious air of precision.
Too funny! Well, I’ll call you cynical *and* I’ll call you quite mistaken.
Somebody (me) quoted the photographer, who said she was “about half a mile” (i.e., not 1.6km) away from the villa.
Then somebody else (also me) quoted another article, in which the distance from the villa was pegged at 1.6km (i.e., more than half a mile).
Nice attempt at a “spurious air of precision”. Too bad it failed. ;-)
Colin,
When I said to question the 1.6 km claim, I did so in the context of the Daily Telegraph article, which said 1.6 km, but used a photo illustration that was only .3 km from the chateau, while the Daily Mail identified a spot which, according to Google Maps, is just a hair over 1 km from the chateau.
While I don’t doubt that you are right about the conversion being the genesis of the 1.6 km figure, I don’t know where the 1 mile comes from (I assume it is someone doing a rough estimate.)
and sometimes when two people argue, neither one is right. the criticism of what’s-her-face exposing her breasts in public feels like run of the mill american, schizophrenic prudery. oh, yes, she got what she deserved for showing her t*ts for nothing. if frau weiss is in the mood to lecture on the evils of ‘vanity’ and exposing your ‘naughty bits’, she can go to just about any public beach/pool in w.europe and whip out her soap box. i’m sure she’ll be greeted warmly.
but, really, “who cares”, and i can’t even be bothered to hold the shift button to add the question mark. the royals are parasites and pigs. if this is the worst that happens to that vapid couple, well, then . . . .
Now Mondoweiss has zeroed in on Princess Middleton’s body parts, way over in Europe.
I used to wonder why no one in Mondoweiss is willing or able to front-page proposals to totally boycott Israel, to cut all ties to Israel, until Israel is abolished.
Now I see that Mondoweiss is a comfort zone for Americans who are not too bothered by America’s crass racist brutality– except in the case of Palestine.
Mondoweiss is comfortable with giggling over a faux pas committed by a mass media celebrity, or with mild-mannered activism that never demands the total rejection of Israel.
True, Mondoweiss finds Israel’s brutality excessive, and truly would like it to be toned down. Therefore, cute videos showing dances for “BDS” are allowed in Mondoweiss. (BDS has come to mean this: very gentle boycotts of a cosmetic here, a hummus there, never defiance against the existence of the Israeli state)
But boycott Israel? Abolish Israel? Oppose imperial power?
No — not Mondoweiss’s department. Too bad for Palestine.
Brian Williams? Has he done his job ?
Blaine,
Some of us, not that many, but some of us are utterly opposed to the colonialist state of israel. Some of us support the Palestinian Arabs as being the only legitimate rulers of the holy land.
I say, if you’re a non-jew like me, it’s a breath of fresh air NOT to talk about jews and zionism for five minutes once or twice a year on mondo.
Taxi ?
Would you mind sending me your messages first from time to time so that I can post them under my name and enjoy the fame of the best posters on Mondo too ?
‘S-up WeAreAllMadeOfStars!
Mi casa es su casa, mi posta es su posta.
Thank you for that anti-colonialist thought!
I want the U.S. to boycott Israel until that apartheid state is abolished, just as happened to apartheid South Africa.
As with South Africa, racism is the problem. Colonialism, too.
Colonialism is racism with a tank.
Most of the current Palestine solidarity crowd has no problem with U.S. colonialism — their distaste is only for Israeli colonialism.
The current Palestine solidarity crowd has no quarrel with the Israeli state, and the Israeli nuclear arsenal, as long as a small pacifist Palestinian state is allowed to survive next door, in an oxygen tent. That’s all they want.
The current Palestine solidarity crowd is all about “The American Interest”, as defined by State Department types. Many were, or aspire to be, those types.
Their priority is to strengthen the United States government, as it continues its violent and racist crimes around the world. Their case is simply that Israel hurts “The American Interest”. They are willing to throw the rest of the world, including Iran, overboard, as long as the U.S. downgrades its alliance with Israel.
The problem is the official “American Interest”, as practiced, has meant the destruction of Black America, and the destruction of Vietnam, Nicaragua, El Salavdor, Guatemala, Iran, Indonesia, and the Congo. And the destruction of much of the Arab world.
In most of these cases, Israel was heavily involved, cheek-by-jowl with the United States.
Again, I want the U.S. to boycott Israel until that apartheid state is abolished, just as happened to apartheid South Africa.
And I don’t care whether that is in “The American Interest” or not.
oh plllease!
No Annie,
I am sick of subtext.
You tell me where anyone in the “Movement” has demanded total boycott against Israel, total abolition of the Israeli state, the kind of shunning we remember happened to Apartheid South Africa.
At most, all you will find is hedging and double-entendres about “BDS”, whatever that means now. So in public, the BDS-ers claim fervently that they are not anti-Israel. In private — who cares what they say in private? Not me. Not anymore.
So the legitimacy of “Israel” is denied where, exactly? By now, it should be denied everywhere, and for the most obvious reasons.
“i>You tell me where anyone in the “Movement” has demanded total boycott against Israel, total abolition of the Israeli state, the kind of shunning we remember happened to Apartheid South Africa.”
I’m up for that.
I proposed to copy the sanctions imposed on Iran. My full proposal is to copy the frequent attitude of misdirected punishment (like killing people in Gaza for misdeeds of different folks): threaten Iran to lift sanctions on Israel if they (Iran) does not offer sufficient concessions, and likewise for Israel. It could be even effective!
It would be worthwhile to read a careful study of the campaign against South Africa and note what worked, when.
Boycott worked. Total boycott, total rejection of the apartheid state, and the abolition of the apartheid state.
That worked.
No one in the boycott movement asked for “dialogue” with that racist state.
The issue is not with Israel, but with the opportunistic and violent parasites that have corrupted the founding ideals and like the true psychopaths that they are – insist that it is the Other (Palestinians, Arabs, Iranians, the past, the nukes, etc., ad nauseam) – to blame. They don’t even care that they are causing harm, current and delayed, to those whom they profess to be defending.
If Israel is the result of Zionism (and it is) and if Zionism is the belief that Jewish people, and they only, share in sovereignty over the Holy Land by right, others only by grace (which I think it is) then this belief, being profoundly false, could never have had a good outcome and never had an innocent phase.
There was one really compelling argument for Zionism in the first half of the 20th century–the widespread prevalence of anti-semitism, which sometimes turned murderous and (long after Zionism had started) ultimately genocidal. If I were Jewish and living in the first half of the 20th century or the last part of the 19th, I might well have thought that Jews had to have their own country, where they would be safe from pogroms or even just to be treated as equals.
Where it went wrong, and very early on, was in the thought that Palestine could be taken over against the wishes of the people already there. I’m guessing there was some mixture of outright racism on the parts of some, and wishful thinking (or doublethink) on the parts of others. But something like the Nakba was inevitable if you have the attitude that your group has the right to an already inhabited land. And really, with the history of Western settlement and conquest and imperialism already centuries old, this should have been obvious. Here the problem might have been in part that people who see themselves (correctly back then) as members of a discriminated against and oppressed group just couldn’t see themselves as the oppressors. Of course that attitude continues today in some people who aren’t remotely members of a victim class.
my post must have been good– to have elicited this precise and pithy statement of I/P history… thanks donald
“my post must have been good– to have elicited this precise and pithy statement of I/P history… thanks donald”
Darn, I didn’t even notice what post it was–I was responding to a couple of the comments above. I’m completely off-topic here.
Not that I object to the post, you know–I enjoyed it and think you should throw in stuff like this once in awhile just to make sure we’re paying attention. (I wasn’t.)
Wasn’t Antarctica virtually free of humans back then?
Even today it’s still very big and free of natives: link to indexmundi.com
>> But something like the Nakba was inevitable if you have the attitude that your group has the right to an already inhabited land. And really, with the history of Western settlement and conquest and imperialism already centuries old, this should have been obvious.
I don’t doubt that it was obvious, but it appears that Zio-supremacists understood history as a blueprint rather than as sage advice or even a warning.
Donald, when journalist Theodor Herzl can offer to have ‘Jews pay off the Ottoman national debt in return for a Jewish national home in Palestine’ then we are dealing with more than a reaction to anti-semitism, real as it was back in the 19th century.
And how many of the early secular Zionists actually bothered to immigrate to Palestine? I think the background had more to do with geo-political considerations, much as history tends to romanticise Zionism.
@xanadou:
Do you want to point out what the founding ideals of Israel are? Are they the plans Zionists made to ‘spirit away the local population’ or was it when they actually implemented the program of ethnic cleansing? The Zionists who wanted coexistence were very few even prior to the founding of Israel. Then it was all about creating their own institutions separate from those of the rest of Palestine so that the Jewish state could be created. Just look at the history of ‘Hebrew labor’ as an example in the inter-war period. There was definitely a lot of ‘Other’ing going on.
I was listening to Miko Peled talk about the 1967 war which his father was involved in as a general. Apparently the Israeli cabinet had not given the authorisation to take what is now the OPT but they did it anyway. His explanation was that it was part of the founding ideals of Zionism to take the whole land to themselves. It was a continuation of 1948, not something different or apart. I find this whole romantic notion about the founding ideals to be a delusion, to comfort those who need to deny the harm that their beliefs have caused to others. It’s kinda ironic that you don’t see how the founding ideals are polluted by what you criticise.
Inanna says: “@xanadou:
Do you want to point out what the founding ideals of Israel are?”
Now I am impressed. How did we get from Kate Middleton’s tits to the founding ideals of Israel?
I’m not even going to look. It would spoil the magic.
Inanna, the ideal was for a safe home for the Jewish survivors of the world wars, and victims of endless tensions/violence between the native and Jewish populations fueled by the power elites who needed the discontent to further their own interests. Just like our contemporary 1%ers need to pitch the ‘moochers on entitlements’ against those still with jobs.
This was actually a crooked multi-way street: very well illustrated by prof. Israel Shahak in his “Jewish History, Jewish Religion”. It also explains why Israel has degenerated into a state that does not even bother with pretenses anymore, including the slide back behind the medieval walls. So does, to a certain extent, Norman Finkelstein’s “The Holocaust Industry: The Business of Death”.
The figure of 6M dead was used in the aftermath of both wars. It would appear, however, that following WW1 the victors were too busy redesigning Europe and, more importantly, carving up the defunct Ottoman Caliphate intended to enhance their own possessions, to care about the claim of 6M Jewish lives lost, a need for a safe home for the survivors, etc. Any racist aspects, even if known to the colonial vultures, would have not have even registered. Racism was par for the historical course. The issue was about enhancing and perpetuating the old colonial possessions, and no one was going to share the spoils, certainly not with a perceived ambitious non-entity intent on realising the Romantic ideals of a nationhood for themselves.
Following WW2, that MO was no longer relevant. The French, British, etc., empires were dead or dying. The US was the new undisputed global power. Whether the US or anyone else cared about the zionists’ ideals is irrelevant. They did, however, make for a good premise for the US with which to create a new sphere of control to benefit the US expanding interests using good ol’ divide and rule to create and stoke the inevitable tensions between client states in the region to benefit this new hegemon. No one conceived of an Israel having plans of its own.
Post WW2, the 6M Jewish dead resonated loud and clear as the pictures from the camps, the Nuremberg trials, etc., had shamed, stunned and silenced Europe into granting the demand for a Jewish state. The declared ideals of the new state were accepted without much, if any, quibbles. Concurrently, the Euro Cold War was in its early stages. Once gain, no one paid attention to the zionists: what they were saying v. what they were doing. And still, racism was decades away from becoming a universally unacceptable option. No one cared about the Naqba; it had no bearing on Europe’s and the US’s concerns at hand, i.e., the USSR-USA power struggle. This time the zionists were more than ready to use the mess to their advantage. For a short while pictures of hard-working idealistic kibbutzniks busy creating a ‘blooming desert’ dominated the news from the ME. The Palestinians had no one, neither in Europe nor in the US to present their POV for decades. Put upon brown people? Puh-leeze. Israel could do no wrong.
Sixty-four years later, racism is universally shunned, and the for-Jews-only state gunning for an Eretz Yisrael has become a widely known new ambition for Israel. The communal kibbutzes were replaced with settlers’ colonies built on the land stolen from Palestinians, b/c according to the newly modified ideal peddled in the 1980/90s – there was no Palestine, and no Palestinians: Israel was created on “a land without a people, for a people without a land”. Today, the avalanche of ghastly images on computer screens have ripped the scales off the world’s eyes and the world opinion is turning against Israel; the once victim, now an unconscionable oppressor that appears too far gone in its corruption to even acknowledge the reversing tide.
I sometimes wonder if Netanyahu’s rush to attack Iran at this time is a calculated move to revive that post-WW2 messy gambit, only this time with Israelis as the pawns to be sacrificed by the zionists in the game for a Greater Israel, (to be blamed on Iran, of course) before the out-there world steps in and puts a kibosh on Israel’s bloody political machinations. Or is there a problem at Dimona? Israel will not openly admit to having nukes. Nor is it a signatory to the NNPT. Nukes, means waste. Where is it? Is a war necessary to divert the world’s attention from a possible looming environmental catastrophe?
Ideals, shmideals. Whether of social decorum or equality of all humanity, panta rhei.
What do you think?
I think that’s a pretty good summation, Xanadou.
I also think that nuclear waste has already poisoned the desert of the holy land – old nukes do leak and the world DOES need to know how israel is managing it’s nuclear waste.
Trust the zionists to bring the ultimate weapon of evil (nukes), to one of the holiest sites on earth.
The proposition that some people are victims of injustice in some places does not imply that they have rights, let alone exclusive rights, somewhere else. It implies that they should have had in the past, and should have in the future, just and fair treatment everywhere. It wasn’t idealistic nor utopian nor unrealistic to demand fair treatment for Jewish people living in the west after WW2: they received fair treatment.
Ok I like that a lot better. But what I was objecting to in your first comment was that the process of ‘Other’ing on the part of the Zionists created founding ideals that in and of themselves were tainted. People (such as Donald above) always point out the anti-semitism in Europe as justification for Zionism. Fair enough. But as soon as that project involved ‘spiriting away the local population’ (Herzl) the founding ideals are not longer so ideal.
Founding ideas that depend on claiming exclusive rights on grounds of race are always tainted from the beginning and inherently, not only when the question of what to do with the other lot comes to the fore. Is that not so?
I’m listening to a drama about Gaza at the moment, on bbcR4. Don’t know if it’s listenable further afield, but:
link to bbc.co.uk
I think Mondoweiss does invaluable service in bringing the Palestine question to such conscience as the western world possesses. I don’t grudge Phil his extremely occasional forays into other subjects, even matters such as this that are not so deeply serious. I support the institution of monarchy (maybe that makes me a PEM) and suppose that it needs a bit of mystique. But I think it would be better to ignore minor punctures in mystique such as this.
1. Who cares what people wear on the beach or at their multi-gazillion dollar villa? Topless, naked, white tie and tails — to each his/her own. If modern humans weren’t so obsessed about appearance, this wouldn’t be news at all.
2. All this really tells us (besides 1) is that Britain is about 400 years overdue for a republic. My suggestion regarding royals is the same as my suggestion regarding presidents who support drone strikes on innocents. But I can’t state my suggestion explicitly without breaking the law in the US. Just look to the French of 1789.
Just FYI: No, they didn’t. The drunk & drugged driver of Diana’s car did.
“The drunk & drugged driver of Diana’s car did.”
Aided and abetted by the designer of the tunnel who failed to include guard rails along the pillars.
this might give you pause, if you’ve got the time:
link to youtube.com
Who’s Kate Middleton?
F these people, all of them.
Utterly delightful writing. When power and sexuality overlap, the wives usually have the best insights, I’ve found.
I’m not sure what your wifes argument is…
“No woman needs tanned tits. It’s stupid and vain, and completely unnecessary when you’re going to be the Queen of England.”
just sounds catty to me.
It really sucks, royally and otherwise, to have a sexy frock with the decolletage showing the tan line. It may be less a catty thing, and more an issue forgotten by someone who is either no longer willing to go that deep with the cut under the chin, or one with another definition of what constitutes a sexy frock.
They do have Tanning Salons for that kinda decolletagic ‘problem’.
Quite. But those salons are gaining an unhealthy reputation. And, Boehner’s orange visage doesn’t help.
That will be QUEEN Rottweiler for the paesans, I think.
The emperor has no clothes, as the Danish know.
Kate will be queen not only of the UK (maintained by the English low class), but also of the 40-state-solution they try to maintain. link to youtube.com (check 5:00).
Her naked kingdom could not keep New England, Republic of Ireland, India. They have to stuck with Falkland Islands, North Ireland, and Tuvalu link to angryarab.blogspot.nl
Phil, you are spot on topic.
There is also Diego Garcia where the princess could get some first class privacy, or South Georgia which could be even better (unless a parapazzi can dress like a king penguin).
did the happy couple not like the pics? she could just get a boob job, then.
I’m sure the public enjoyed them anyway. if not, then they can storm the French embassies everywhere! oh, except that the French like to close their embassies after they offend people.
nice to be able to just censor it all instead, huh?
Guys you gotta understand why Ninny’s bare boobs are a big deal in England. You gotta remember that Prince William’s great-great grandmother, queen Victoria, requested her subjects cover the legs of their household tables with oversized table-cloth so as to not sexually excite the males of the species (true story). Victorian sexual repression still runs in the blood of many Establishment Brits to this day. Yes, till the sexual revolution in the 1960′s, Britain was a fundamentalist country in many ways. We can even equate here the obligatory bone-stitched victorian corset with the burka – both were imposed and both are clothy instruments of repression and torture.
And the other thing is that British humor is probably the most cynical and cruel in the western world. Millions of Brits in cafes and pubs would have sniggered at the royal milky mammalians and cracked copious whipping jokes about them to no end.
No it’s not good to be queen when the whole nation’s seen your tits.
I support abolishing the British Royal Family. Or, if we’re going to keep them, they should be FORCED to wear those idiotic royal costumes that we see on PBS television. No street clothes, no business attire. Members of the Royal Family should wear the costumes from hundreds of years ago at all times, no matter how hot it gets.
Somehow, ALL English language sourced are censored. No one dares to provoke the wrath of the British royalists. To see the princess in some detail, so to know what is the whole story about, it helps to learn some Italian: Come ampiamente annunciato, il settimanale scandalistico “Chi” ha pubblicato le immagini della principessa Kate in topless
We live in the age when reasonable good photos of buildings and vehicles are obtained from geo-stationary orbit, about 22,000 miles above. The optics of that class should allow to analyze hair follicles etc. from a mile away.
As a Brit I wholeheartedly support the Monarchy and often wish the monarch could take back some of the authority now exercised by prime ministers, the declaration of war for example. As for criticising and satirising the individuals, that’s fair enough, goes with the job. This sort of prurient press intrusion, however, is a symptom of debased Western values on a par with hacking voicemail and disgusts me regardless of the victim.
“and often wish the monarch could take back some of the authority now exercised by prime ministers, the declaration of war for example.”
Great. We’d have an ignorant dimwit like Charles Mountbatten, as a result of unearned privilege, deciding whether to nuke someone. No thanks.
“This sort of prurient press intrusion, however, is a symptom of debased Western values on a par with hacking voicemail and disgusts me regardless of the victim.”
Baloney. She was in public.
Well, Woody, if you relish the notion of the likes of John Prestcott and his bouffant spouse in Buck House, good luck to you, there’s no more to be said. However, I do not see any Prime Minister supporting the abolishment of the monarchy for the simple reason that a President, however chosen, would mean a diminution of prime ministerial authority. The great advantage of a monarch is that he/she is less likely to be consumed by egregious ambition. Seriously, wouldn’t you like to have someone there to say No! when the populace is overwhelmingly opposed to a course of action like complicity in the invasion of Iraq?
Nick, I agree that no Prime Minister will likely favor the diminution of his own power. But yet I still don’t favor giving unelected, unaccountable people power over a country simply on the basis on the accident of their parentage.
“Seriously, wouldn’t you like to have someone there to say No! when the populace is overwhelmingly opposed to a course of action like complicity in the invasion of Iraq?”
Sure, and I want that person to be answerable to the people. If Elizabeth Windsor-Mountbatten (or her vile son) wants to be that person, let her put her name on the ballot like anybody else, campaign, shake hands, kiss babies, and prove to the British people that she is the right person for the job.
Organic farmer Charles Mountbatten would be far less likely to bomb anyone, imho, than every mountebank elected to office in the last hundred years or so.
If that’s the case, it’s solely the result of luck. Who’s to say that he doesn’t turn the corner is his brain and orders the strike before the insanity otherwise manifests? What if he son is a maniac? Or his son? Or his? Deciding that a person gets the power to end life as we know it simply because he slid into the world through a particular vagina is not my idea of reasonable policy.
Two comments:
1. From link to 4information.com
‘Soon after he capitulated to the French at Fort Necessity, in the spring of 1754, George Washington, then twenty-two years old, wrote a letter to his younger brother, John Augustine, in which he said: “I have heard the bullets whistle; and, believe me, there is something charming in the sound.” This letter somehow found its way to London, where it was printed with appropriate comments by Horace Walpole. When it came to the attention of George II the hero of Dettingen is said to have observed: “He has not heard many of them or he would not think them very charming.”’
George II was the last British king to lead an army in battle. The world would be a better place if political leaders, be they monarchs or presidents, were still required to lead their armies into battle.
2. A few years ago Australia held a referendum on whether to replace the Queen (that is, the Queen of Australia who happens also to be the Queen of the UK) by a president. The country was offered by the then government (led by a Royalist Prime Minister) a president to be chosen by parliament. The people of Australia voted – for whatever reasons – against this proposal. If Australia were at some time to move to a republic, I doubt very much whether anything approaching the US model would be adopted. Personally I’d favour the Irish model.
The weirdest part of this story is that France ended up blocking publication of the pix of Kate in her birthday suit, defending Charlie Hebdo’s right to publish derogatory cartoons about Islam and then denying the public the right to protest against them. Se mélanger les pinceaux I think they call it.
Oh well, kamanja, France is the home of Bernard Henri-Levi so they have the intellectual rationale for that all sewn up, I think.
At least they have public intellectuals there. Here, we have Jon Stewart and Bill Maher, sigh. And before you start about Chomsky and co, they’re sidelined and black listed. No more Buckley vs Vidal, no more Dick Cavett, sigh.