Commenter Profile

Total number of comments: 5 (since 2011-10-17 20:11:16)

Ines

Egyptian, Coptic housewife living in Egypt.

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• Occupy Wall Street and the struggle over Israel/Palestine
  • Ines November 10, 2011 at 3:12 pm

    The 99% may be the majority, but what distinguishes them from the 1% is that their needs and aspirations count for zero when choices are made that will shape the very environment in which they live.

    The 1% are small in number but they're huge in power. That's because they understand the power of solidarity, even, especially, across geographic or any other borders. The wider the network, the greater the power.

    While they're busily forging an intricate web of strategic alliances and a wide variety of mutually beneficial partnerships that spans the globe, they fight tooth and nail to make sure that the 99% remain divided and as narrowly focused as possible on issues that are deliberately framed as separate, when in fact they're not. On the contrary, in many cases they go to the heart of the matter.

    Israel is a great example: on its own, deprived of the global network that ensures this racist, expansionist, rogue terrorist state continues to enjoy a steady flow of extraordinary political, economic and military support, colonial settlers and legal immunity for its war criminals, it would very quickly end up in the dustbin of history, where it belongs.

    At the same time, no effort is spared to make sure that the Palestinians are isolated from the rest of the 99%, that their struggle for human and legal rights is compartmentalized all by itself, and that these victims of massive state terrorism are themselves labeled "terrorists" and therefore undeserving of justice or legal protection.

    Most Americans would probably be outraged if they knew how much their government's unconditional support of Israel has cost them, directly and indirectly. They're not allowed to know. But if they did, it wouldn't take them long to decide that their own freedom and that of the Palestinians are more connected than they ever imagined.

    This strategy reminds me of how globalization is labeled a good thing when corporations outsource jobs to sweatshops all over the world, but when laborers unite across borders to defend their mutual interest in guaranteeing decent living and working conditions, they are forced to defend themselves against accusations of "communist conspiracy". Workers can avoid such "harm to their cause" by focusing only on their own local issues, a great gift to the outsourcers, who are laughing all the way to the bank (the Cayman Islands bank, no doubt!)

    But that's what happens when the 99% allow the 1% to define the terms and frame the issues.

• Could Goldstone's logic in defense of Israel have saved apartheid in South Africa?
  • Ines November 1, 2011 at 12:53 pm

    The moral of this story is that those entrusted to carry out investigations, especially criminal investigations, should be chosen for their qualifications but just as importantly, for their independence and invulnerability to blackmail, pressure or bribery from any of the parties being investigated.

    Duh.

• What Palestine's UNESCO membership could mean on the ground
  • Ines November 1, 2011 at 3:13 pm

    Charon said: "In 1973 Golda Meir blackmailed the US into aiding Israel by preparing nuclear warheads onto missiles and threatening to nuke Egypt and Syria if we didn’t help them out."

    Actually, as far as I know, that's not true -- it was the United States that indirectly threatened to launch a nuclear conflagration to prevent the Soviets from intervening to stop Israel from violating the ceasefire. And it was Henry Kissinger, along with his protege Alexander Haig who basically hijacked the presidency in order to make this threat. During the 1973 war, whether by design or luck, President Nixon was drunk or drugged or debilitated by depression; in any case, he was incapacitated and out of the loop.

    Henry Kissinger took over the White House and nobody, including the Soviets, had any choice but to deal only with him.

    From a very interesting article in Vanity Fair published in May 2007:
    link to vanityfair.com

    "When Haig reported that Nixon was considering returning to Washington, Kissinger discouraged it—part of a recurring pattern to keep Nixon out of the process. Over the next three days, Kissinger oversaw the diplomatic exchanges with the Israelis and Soviets about the war. Israeli prime minister Golda Meir's requests for military supplies, which were beginning to run low, came not to Nixon but to Kissinger. Although he consistently described himself as representing the president's wishes, Kissinger was seen by outsiders as the principal U.S. official through whom business should be conducted. On October 7, for example, a Brezhnev letter to Nixon was a response to "the messages you transmitted to us through Dr. Kissinger." On October 9, a telegram to King Hussein of Jordan urging continued non-involvement in the conflict came not from Nixon but from Kissinger.

    Although Kissinger spoke to Nixon frequently during these four days, it was usually Kissinger who initiated the calls, kept track of the fighting, and parceled out information as he saw fit. On the night of October 7, according to a telephone transcript, Nixon asked Kissinger if there had been any message from Brezhnev. "Oh, yes, we heard from him," Kissinger replied, volunteering no more. Nixon had to press, asking lamely, "What did he say?"

    At 7:55 on the night of October 11, Brent Scowcroft, Haig's replacement as Kissinger's deputy at the N.S.C., called Kissinger to report that the British prime minister, Edward Heath, wanted to speak to the president in the next 30 minutes. According to a telephone transcript, Kissinger replied, "Can we tell them no? When I talked to the President he was loaded." Scowcroft suggested that they describe Nixon as unavailable, but say that the prime minister could speak to Kissinger. "In fact, I would welcome it," Kissinger told Scowcroft.

    ...

    The Middle East situation remained dangerous. On the afternoon of October 23, Moscow and Washington began exchanging messages on the hotline about Israeli and Egyptian violations of the cease-fire. The Soviets were particularly concerned about the Egyptian Third Army, which was cut off in the Sinai. The next day Brezhnev complained that Israel was ignoring the cease-fire, and he proposed a joint military intervention to implement the agreement. He warned that if the United States would not agree to this Moscow might decide to act alone. Kissinger cautioned the Soviets against unilateral intervention.

    ...

    Kissinger and Haig decided to convene a meeting of national-security officials to devise a response to Brezhnev. Kissinger acknowledges in his memoirs that Nixon was by then asleep, and that he and Haig decided not to get him up. "Should I wake up the President?," Kissinger asked Haig during a 9:50 p.m. phone conversation on October 24, according to the transcript. "No," Haig answered. A half-hour later, in another phone conversation, it is Kissinger who has become reluctant. "Have you talked to the President?," Haig asked. "No, I haven't," Kissinger replied. "He would just start charging around I don't think we should bother the President."

    Haig persuaded Kissinger to at least shift the meeting from the State Department to the White House, as a way to leave the impression that Nixon was "a part of everything you are doing." Was Nixon on sedatives that would not allow him to function effectively? Had he been drinking? Was he simply preoccupied, as Kissinger suggests in his official recollections? For whatever reason, Kissinger did not want the president involved.

    It was an extraordinary turn of events. None of the seven officials who met for more than three hours, until two a.m., had been elected to office. Yet they were setting policy in a dangerous international crisis, and coming to a decision that should have rested with the president: directing U.S. forces to raise America's worldwide level of military readiness from Defense Conditions 4 and 5 to Def Con 3, a level reached only once before, during the Cuban missile crisis. (U.S. readiness would be raised on only two subsequent occasions, during the 1991 Gulf War and on September 11, 2001.) The worldwide alert was coupled with a message delivered to the Soviet Embassy at 5:40 a.m. It described "your suggestion of unilateral action as a matter of the gravest concern involving incalculable consequences." Although the White House issued a statement attributing to Nixon the decision to put the nation on high alert, and Kissinger repeated this assertion at a press briefing, it was Kissinger and the six other national-security officials in the early-morning hours who actually chose to do it, though presumably confident that they reflected Nixon's wishes. But how confident could they really have been? As Kissinger would remind Haig the next day, according to the transcript of a phone call, "You and I were the only ones for it. These other guys were wailing all over the place this morning.""

  • Ines November 1, 2011 at 12:45 pm with 2 replies

    The US Congress passed very strict laws in 1990 and 1994 that prevent the US from being a member of any UN organization that recognizes Palestine as a state. The laws were designed to be water-tight and to prevent any attempt to get around them, by the president or anybody else.

    The idea was to blackmail the UN, but these laws cut both ways, especially since the international community appears to be approaching the end of its tether and displaying some promising signs of spirit.

    Indeed, the implications for the US itself are rather amazing: since the Palestinians intend to apply for any UN agency that will accept them, and since they will almost certainly be accepted, because it shouldn't be hard for them to drum up the 2/3 majority vote they need to get in, that means that the US' subservience to Israel will lead to the US automatically being forced automatically to withdraw from some pretty important agencies, possibly including the UN's nuclear watchdog the IAEA, the World Health Organization and the UN Conference on Trade & Development, to name but a few from a long list.

    In other words, to please Israel, those who are entrusted with governing the US on behalf of the American people are voluntarily giving up their own country's ability to have an input on issues that directly affect its own interests as well as their nation's credibility and reputation in the global arena, and gratuitously, irrationally, not to mention immorally, choosing to join Israel in its increasing isolation.

    Being Israel's "ally" is a very, very expensive undertaking. It may be too costly for even the world's sole superpower to carry for much longer without collapsing under the burden.

    The question is whether the Zionists will ever find such a sweet, besotted, groveling and unbelievably generous sugar-daddy ever again. Doubtful, though not for lack of trying.

• The joyful theater of Tahrir
  • Ines October 18, 2011 at 10:23 am with 1 replies

    Thank you so much for this. I try to make it to Tahrir at least every Friday, but on October 7 I was away for the long weekend. I go there to cut through all the lies and confusion in the state (and most private) media. There, the only chant that is guaranteed to attract all the voices, in crowds big or small, is: "Down with the Field-Marshall!"

    And yet, there he still is, our absolute military tyrant, overseeing Egypt's descent into chaos, economic ruin and violence.

    At least the US administration is full of praise for his performance!

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