Commenter Profile

Total number of comments: 25 (since 2009-08-14 02:19:15)

Gene

Just another human being.

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  • We're still losing
    • Gene May 12, 2012 at 11:03 pm

      The importance of substantial investment and an easy flow of human capital to and from other, capital rich countries such as, eg, the US, cannot be overstated. - Danaa

      You can add Canada to the list. I wouldn't be surprised to see Australia on such a list, as well as most of the European countries: France, UK, Germany, and others.

    • Gene May 12, 2012 at 10:52 pm

      Mr. Weiss, I think I'll send you to the tagline of this site here. Or as Beckett wrote: "I can't go on, I'll go on." What else is there to do?

      Which reminds of the following:
      It is time to think of resistance in a new way, something that is no longer carried out to reform a system but as an end in itself. African-Americans understood this during the long night of slavery. German opposition leaders understood it under the Nazis. Dissidents in the former Soviet Union knew this during the nightmare of communism. Resistance in these closed systems was local and often solitary. It was done with the understanding that evil must always be defied. The tiny acts of rebellion — day after day, month after month, year after year and decade after decade — exposed to everyone who witnessed them the heartlessness, cruelty and inhumanity of the oppressor. They were acts of truth and beauty. We must take to the street. We must jam as many wrenches into the corporate system as we can. We must not make it easy for them. But we also must no longer live in self-delusion. This is a battle that will outlive us. And if we fight, even with this tragic vision, we will lead lives worth living and keep alive another way of being. [my emphases] - Chris Hedges

  • Shmully and guilt
    • Gene April 27, 2012 at 10:26 pm

      That was a tough read. It's all rather simple though if you think this through the prism of 'Human Rights' as was commented above. I don't believe there is any other way to view the situation. May you find the right compass to guide you through this.

  • Krugman jumps into debate over Beinart with both pinkies
    • Gene April 25, 2012 at 8:00 am with 1 replies

      I think that he's just afraid, and I do mean 'afraid', of confrontation. I once saw him in a tv spot with Bill O'Reilly, and it was just very, very sad to watch.

  • The meaning of today's events in Egypt
    • Gene January 25, 2011 at 11:12 pm

      Mrs. Clinton's initial statement was pretty weak ...

      I suspect that is because she's waiting for her marching orders from Israel.

  • New battleline: 'Tablet' calls 'anti-Israel' blogs 'agents of influence'
  • Dershowitz and Jeffrey Goldberg are against apartheid
  • 'Forward': Finkelstein has a 'disease'
    • Gene April 15, 2010 at 1:50 pm with 1 replies

      Whenever I come across opinion pieces like that of the Forward, I rethink of that lede from Orli Fridman: A day will come when we will be ashamed. For sure, that will not happen to Norman Finkelstein. He, like many others including Weiss and Horowitz here, would have been on the barricade fighting the good fight.

      We often refer to them as pro-Palestinians. Perhaps they think of themselves as such as well. But to me they are doing what they do for the betterment of Humanity, and for that I am more than grateful to them. Not so long ago, I came upon something that read: If you have come to help me you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then les us work together. I find that this leads directly to the often repeated: "Why single out Israel?" It is because Israel is not only occupying a territory called Palestine and has entrapped a whole population. She has also entrapped our souls and as such we are as much "Occupied Nations" as Palestine is. Worse even, we cannot claim for ourselves a moral highground, something that Palestinians can lay claim to. We, on the other hand, are forced to participate in crimes that make us sick and hurt us to the core.

      Finkelstein, and those like him, provide us with a sense that not all is lost, however, and that we can be pro-active in our resistance to the crimes that Israel is perpetrating onto Humanity even as our governments have been rendered impotent. If for that he is said to be diseased, would that all of us were as sick as he is.

  • Planet AIPAC: Obama should declare 'I'm a Zionist,' Goldstone is 'token court Jew,' and please don't boo Hillary
    • Gene March 22, 2010 at 2:37 am

      they wouldn’t let me attend the conference, said there was no room at the inn ...

      A bit over the top, but cute. I found myself smiling.

      On that part about making the desert bloom, Lawrence of Cyberia put up this post lately that provides some information and some very interesting photos.

  • The David Project swarms an apartheid-week event, and pathos prevails over logos
    • Gene March 6, 2010 at 9:36 pm

      Right, Sumud, that's how I understand Finkelstein's stance as well.

      Speaking of international law, this is well worth a listen. Very informative.

  • Canadian liberal leader says calling Israel 'apartheid' state is anti-Semitic
    • Gene March 2, 2010 at 11:28 am

      This may prove useful although many of the addresses are now outdated.

    • Gene March 1, 2010 at 9:48 pm

      Thanks, Shmuel, for this great quote that I've included in my blogpost here. I'm trying to follow the repercussions from that outrageous move from our parliamentarians & shall be updating the links in the next couple of days. Thanks also to MRW (and Mondoweiss obviously). You guys are the best!

      Check this. You might like it. I don't know how long the video will remain available. You know how that works.

      Thanks for your support. BTW, Shmuel, if you can't publish your letter in the Globe and Mail, try the Toronto Star. It is a bit more balanced. Take care!

  • Where's BDS? Israeli firms to secure World Cup
    • Gene February 25, 2010 at 11:52 am

      Comment cont’d: … For example, many events are happening under the radar in Canada [see here, here and here].

    • Gene February 25, 2010 at 11:52 am with 6 replies

      I don't want to hijack this thread but I feel this is relevant information that may be of interest to the BDS people who come to this site. While there have been important developments in the boycott of the Israeli regime, there's still very long way to go. It seems that those BDS successes have been mere crumbs thrown our way. Is it too far-fetched to surmise that the BDS movement may have been corrupted in a way that prevents it from seeing the forest for the trees? For example, many events are happening under the radar in Canada [Links provided below to avoid complications from Mondoweiss’ spam firewall]. The BDS movement has been totally silent on those (or may be I just missed their outcry? I can only hope.)

      We are swimming upstream in this struggle, as Gideon Spiro noted:

      The Palestinian armed resistance has been successfully suppressed by the iron fist of the Israeli Occupation; our health-care system is more advanced than that of the USA; the number of students relative to the population is among the highest in the Western world; our universities enjoy international prestige; the high-tech industry is advanced; first-rate international artists perform in Israel; Israeli artists are invited to cultural events all over the world; the Israeli currency is stable; despite the apartheid regime Israel is not being boycotted; so far all attempts to boycott Israeli exports have failed; all attempts to declare an academic boycott on Israel have failed; countries like Spain and Belgium have changed their laws in order to spare Israel the embarrassment of having its war criminals put on trial; the British foreign minister apologized to Israel for a British court’s issuance of a warrant for the arrest of Tzipi Livni, Israel’s foreign minister during the Gaza War, on suspicion of war crimes; hundreds of thousands of Israelis travel abroad every year and the Israeli passport today permits entry into over a hundred countries; generous foreign assistance from the USA and Europe continues to flow towards Israel, and Israel enjoys freedom of action to develop nuclear, biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction. - LINK

      Right now, I'm rather inclined to agree with this: "What are you saying? That it's in vain? I know it. But one does not fight in the hope of success. No. It is much more beautiful when it is in vain." I guess we fight also because it allows us to overcome the urge to vomit when we look at ourselves in the mirror every day.

  • David Brooks's dilemma (and ours)
    • Gene February 21, 2010 at 9:01 pm

      Here's a little something that hopefully will help ;-)

      Revolutionary change does not come as one cataclysmic moment (beware of such moments!) but as an endless succession of surprises, moving zigzag toward a more decent society. We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world. Even when we don’t “win,” there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that we have been involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile. – Howard Zinn

      This is helpful, too, I find.

      Last time I checked my blogsite's stats, I saw that somebody has opened one of my old blogpost. I forgot what I wrote there & wanted to refresh my memory. I found this quote there: “[N]othing is more intolerant than a power which in order to defeat its rival is obliged to manipulate the credulity, the fears and the hopes of men.” – Etienne Balibar in Spinoza and Politics. I think that applies here.

    • Gene February 21, 2010 at 8:09 pm with 1 replies

      [W]hen Brooks writes a column about the American power elite and its weaknesses, he needs to avoid one of the essential aspects of his subject. That can’t really be satisfactory to him, or to his readers. It’s a dilemma with no obvious solution to it.

      Actually, there's the book by French economist Jacques Attali entitled Les Juifs, le monde et l'argent. As far as I know, this important work has not been translated in English. Perhaps it's time that it is. Attali said this on the need for the Jewish community to address this particular issue: «il est essentiel pour lui-même d'affronter cette partie de son histoire qu'il n'aime pas et dont il aurait tout lieu d'être fier».

  • Sullivan doubles down
  • Jews aren't smarter (I lift my curse, and yours)
    • Gene February 10, 2010 at 8:59 pm with 1 replies

      [...] behind your back, those Chinese kids call you a "barbarian" and laugh cause you eat with a fork.

      I'm ok with that. Humans (most of them at any rate) have those little stories that they tell themselves about their great origins and their superior mores & how the Other is soooo to be pitied. I get it. That's partly what being human is all about.

      One of the very few advantages of having grown up in a place that has been colonized by the French first, and then by the British, is that you eventually get to see the strings. In our French classes, we were told that France & the French were the greatest. In our English classes, it was "Rule Britannia - Britannia rule the waves" rah! rah! rah! Something was amiss there.

      Eventually (that word again – indeed it was a long process) we found out that everybody plays those little games, from the Indigenous Peoples in far away places and nearer home to our own, I guess what can be called, nationalists and supremacists. Still, all those stories are earth-bound. If there are deities somewhere, we all know they are impotent and mostly serve as metaphors for our own strengths and weaknesses. Fundamentalist Zionists, on the other hand, have meshed the 'Here and Now' with the 'Beyond' (whether ontologically or politically is irrelevant) BECAUSE together with collaborators & compradors, they have had the means and power to impose their version of the Time-Space continuum on the rest of Humanity with no benefit whatsoever to the latter.

      Phil's dilemma, I think, comes from his insistence on tribalizing Jews in their totality whereas it is fairly obvious that the notion of tribe is very fluid and contextual. Thus, instead of recognizing that only some Jews have morphed into colonizers and predators (and not just in Palestine), he insists on grouping all of them together. Yes, they are very powerful, but they're still only a part of the whole. Their legitimacy is still up in the air. Perhaps the first question that he needs to answer is why is he doing that.

      MRW, great links! What a ship! Thanks!

    • Gene February 10, 2010 at 4:04 pm with 5 replies

      If they are so smart, how come we have this terrible conflict in Palestine? And I don't think that we are all becoming Jewish either, whatever that means. Rather I believe that those who had put themselves above Humanity are being brought back into the fold. There is nowhere else to go anyway, is there?

      Where I come from, the Chinese were thought to be the smart ones. Faced with discrimination albeit subtle, they banded together, had their own educational institution where the kids went after regular schooling mind you, to study the Chinese language and other cultural mores of the 'motherland'. Their community was very tightly knit. Yet, I have never felt that they put themselves above everybody else. Quite the contrary.

      Speaking of smart, I came upon this page recently. Historian Fasolt is right when he said that History is political. There is a reason that such knowledge about other 'smart peoples' had been kept from us for so long.

  • Ban's collapse on Goldstone 'shocks and appalls' representative for Palestinian victims
  • Canadian official 'repudiates' B'Tselem's funding
    • Gene February 5, 2010 at 10:19 pm

      It's not just the Harper government. This guy here is, believe it or not, a member of Parliament from the Liberal Party - the opposition party for those who may not know!

      There truly is nowhere to hide anymore & it takes a helluva lot of stamina & yes, courage, to stay in this fight. Almost everyday I feel the need to mull over Howard Zinn's words:

      Revolutionary change does not come as one cataclysmic moment (beware of such moments!) but as an endless succession of surprises, moving zigzag toward a more decent society. We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world. Even when we don’t “win,” there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that we have been involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile.

  • My wife tells me a good friend of mine is anti-Semitic
  • Student confronts Obama at Tampa town hall over human rights hypocrisy
    • Gene January 29, 2010 at 8:19 am

      The part that shocked me most in his response was the 'what not'. It was so cold and dismissive and for someone who, together with his wife, kept lecturing us about empathy during the campaign, the 'what not' showed a total lack of sensitivity.

      His wife also kept telling us that he was 'special'. He's special alright. The best description of Obama that I've found to date is blathering milquetoast.

  • I was with the neocons-- (Then I went to the Middle East)

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