Re: Need help with Wright again

Marius Hancu — Mon, 12 May 2008 15:51:56 GMT

You missed an article:

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Above all, integrity. The machine is the normal tool of our civilization,
give it work that it can do well --- nothing is of greater
importance. To do this will be to formulate new industrial ideas,
sadly needed.

I think he makes an analogy between houses and machines. Give each house by your design a destination/job/work that it can perform well, not something which isn't appropriate for it. A robot/machine can't do more than what it's designed for.

Re: A question about 'time'

milky — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 07:18:07 GMT

JKBelieve wrote:

I found this sentence in an article and found it very strange...

'Time was you could tell the urban refugees in places like this: corporate achievers who quit the rat race to open a bed and breakfast or a candle shop.'

the highlighted parts are confusing me especially the whole 'time was...' thing

Thanx ^^

It's the same as "there was a time when".

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A rat race is a term used for an endless, self-defeating or pointless pursuit. It conjures up the image of the futile efforts of a lab rat trying to escape whilst running around a maze or in a wheel. In an analogy to the modern city, many rats in a single maze run around making a lots of noise bumping into each other, but ultimately achieve nothing (meaningful) either collectively or individually.

The rat race is a term often used to describe work, particularly excessive work; in general terms, if one works, one is in the rat race. This terminology contains implications that many people see work as a seemingly endless pursuit with little reward or purpose. Not all workers feel like this. It is the perceived Conventional Wisdom, for example, that those who work for themselves are generally happier at work

More at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_race

Re: Crisises around the wolrd

J Lewis — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 11:01:42 GMT

Hi Joseph, here is a reply to your post. Itâs a long time after the original post, so you may not look at it, but maybe someone else will. My reply is rather long, but much shorter than your text, so maybe it will stimulate more discussion.

PS As I come to post my contribution I see that there have finally been some other replies.

First things first, as this is an English forum: the plural of âcrisisâ is âcrisesâ, not âcrisisesâ.

Iâve done my best to read your very long article. It contains a lot of interesting material, useful for other discussions. Unfortunately, much of it is not so useful for this discussion. Nevertheless, you make some serious points which require a reply.

1) You say Israel is not guilty of genocide. On this I agree. Some people do go to the point of saying that Israel treats the Palestinians as the *** treated the Jews and this is not correct; there is no programme of systematic extermination of Palestinians. However, not all critics of Israel make this accusation. The *** conquered a series of European countries. Although they did not set about exterminating the French, the Dutch, the Italians etc., they certainly oppressed them with brutal reprisals and no regard for human life. This is a better analogy in my opinion (it should be said that this applies to any conquering power, not just the ***).

2) Having said, correctly, âAfter all, it is difficult to blame Israel for genocide in Sudan or for civil war in Algeriaâ, you nevertheless list countless massacres of Muslims around the world. It isnât clear why. I donât know anybody who blames Israel for the massacres by the Suharto regime in Indonesia or even by Saddam Hussein in Iraq. In reality most of these regimes are part of the system of oppression of the ex-colonial peoples by the âwesternâ (i.e. US and European) banks and multinationals. It is in defence of those interests that the most brutal torture and oppression are carried out, with the approval and connivance (or sometimes half-hearted criticism) of the western powers. They are also prepared to carry out massacres of Christians, Hindus or anyone else who dares to question their rule. Although the state of Israel is not responsible for all these crimes, it is nevertheless an important part of this system of world control, as demonstrated by the fact that the same western powers who support Israel also supported Suharto, Pinochetâ¦ and even Saddam Hussein before he invaded Kuwait.

3) Let us put to rest the ghost of anti-semitism. An anti-semite is someone who oppresses Jews, not someone who criticises Jews when they oppress others. The fascist thugs in Europe who desecrate graves in Jewish cemeteries or attack Jewish shops never take the side of the Palestinians. These elements hate Arabs as much as they hate Jews; if they can beat up a Jew one day and an Arab the next, they are happy. It is pure dishonesty to reply to critics of the state of Israel with the accusation of anti-semitism: âWeâll do what we like, because if you dare criticise us weâll call you ***â. It is akin to the McCarthyite lie that anybody who criticised the U.S. administration was an agent of the Kremlin. Critics (even unreasonable ones) should be answered with reasoned arguments, saying where they are right and where they are wrong, without resorting to insults. The danger does exist, however, of another kind of anti-semitism, whereby all Israelis, or even all Jews, are blamed for the crimes of the Israeli state. While progressive people should oppose this way of thinking, its existence is entirely the fault of Israelâs rulers and of those who support them in the world. Consequently you cannot combat this kind of anti-semitism unless you yourself make it clear that the crimes of the Israeli government are not supported by all Jews (and this is true; not even all Israelis support them).

4) Israel is said to be a âdemocratic stateâ. This is true, within Israelâs official boundaries, even with all the limitations that âdemocracyâ usually implies. It is wrong of some critics to refer to the âIsraeli military juntaâ. However, observing that a countryâs internal regime entails democratic rights for the population does not help to understand that countryâs foreign policy. The internal regime reflects the relationship between a countryâs rulers and its population, while foreign policy reflects the relationship between that country and another country. There is no connection between the two. Britain in the 1930s was considered a democracy, but 500 million Indians did not have a vote and were brutally oppressed by the British authorities. The USA is a democracy, but this in no way justified the Vietnam war (not to mention other, nearer wars), which was waged for anything but democratic reasons.

Not all critics of Israeli policy necessarily make correct, consistent and honest criticisms. This is due to a lack of analysis more than to bad will. It is the same lack of analysis which leads those on both sides of the debate to list âgoodâ and âbadâ countries without explaining why God, Allah, Jehovah or whoever should decide, in His infinite wisdom, to make some countries good and others bad.

Here I want to add some more specific comments.

1) The territories of Gaza and the West Bank were occupied as a result of the Six-Day War in 1967. That war was presented to the world as a response by poor little Israel to an unprovoked attack, but there is good reason to believe the Israeli government wanted the war. Israel occupied the territories and subsequently began to âcoloniseâ them with Jewish âsettlementsâ. This cannot be justified in terms of defence needs, which might at most explain the setting up of military bases. There have been numerous declarations by Zionists to the effect that these territories are the historic land of the Jews. That has nothing to do with a response to an attack by neighbouring states. It is therefore reasonable to assume that the occupation of these territories was part of the original war aims in 1967. The recent withdrawal from Gaza is a fiction; Israel can intervene when it wants and frequently does so, brutally.

2) The birth of the state of Israel did not come about just from the will of Jews fleeing oppression in Europe. The 1918 Declaration by the British minister Balfour, in view of the imminent fall of the Turkish Empire, proposed the setting up of a state of Palestine as a pro-European outpost in the Middle East (which was becoming important because of the oil deposits), with a mixed Arab and Jewish population but governed by a European Jewish elite. This fitted in with the general policy of dividing up the Arab lands and creating fictitious nations, such as Kuwait, with pro-western regimes in order to weaken local opposition to Western exploitation of the resources of the area. However, after the second world war this imperialist plan was not enough for the Zionists, who preached the myth of âa land without a people for a people without a landâ, simply ignoring the fact that there were 850,000 Arabs living in the area which is now officially Israel. A campaign of intimidation and harassment forced many Palestinians to leave; only 130,000 remained. These have been dubbed âIsraeli Arabsâ; they are considered few enough not to present a threat and their presence serves to give the impression of a multi-racial, multi-cultural society. They have formally the same rights as Jews, but in reality suffer discrimination. Some Zionist extremists talk about expelling these people too.

3) This represented a distortion of Britainâs plans, as an openly Zionist state was to be a source of greater instability. However, the British, and particularly the USA, afterwards decided to make the best of it and ever since then the Israeli state has survived with the help of massive American subsidies. Interestingly Stalin, with typical obtuseness, seeing this conflict with British interests, actually supported the formation of the state of Israel. When things became clearer even to Stalin, the Soviet Union then switched over to seeking friends among the Arab regimes, including the most reactionary ones.

4) After the expulsion of the Palestinians, the neighbouring states of Jordan and Egypt did little to help them or to absorb them into their own populations, preferring to maintain the ârefugee campsâ for propaganda purposes; both pro-Western Arab regimes and those in the Soviet sphere of influence used the Palestinian question to divert the attention of their populations from their own problems. This is often mentioned by pro-Israelis. However, that situation existed for two decades, from the foundation of the State of Israel to the 1967 war. Four decades have now elapsed since then. Has Israelâs behaviour been any better? Although Israel occupied the territories (which it delicately refers to as âadministered areasâ), it never incorporated them into its state. The reason is clear: it would have had to declare their inhabitants to be Israeli citizens with the right to vote, compromising the Jewish nature of the state, or else deny these rights in an openly racist stance. Instead, in order not to give them rights, the idea was maintained that these people were not citizens of Israel (but of which state they were citizens was not specified). Thus they can work in Israel for Israeli bosses but are not allowed to join Israeli unions; they pay taxes but are not allowed to vote on how they are spent. And how are they spent? On repression of the Palestinian population and on subsidies for Jewish settlements, which take the best land and water resources.

5) As said above, the âPalestinian stateâ (with its so-called road map which cuts the body of Palestine into pieces and makes normal life impossible) is a fiction. Israel has simply handed administration of the territories over to those organizations that are most prepared to co-operate in holding down the population. As soon as someone is elected who does not suit the tastes of Israel or the USA, resources are denied, there are assassination attempts etc.

6) All these things are an open provocation to the Palestinians. It is all very well for the Israeli government to say, âNow that Iâve taken away your land and livelihood [by non-peaceful means] I want peace and canât understand why you are not satisfied.â It is not surprising if some young Palestinians, pushed to the point of despair, are prepared to carry out suicide bomb attacks.

7) As has been pointed out in other threads on this forum, it is pure hypocrisy to support official violence (âstate terrorismâ) and then morally condemn terrorist attacks by individuals. However, this does not exhaust the issue. The real question is: can bomb attacks solve the problem? And the answer is No. On the Israeli side, a bomb in a disco or a market does not help people to understand the Palestinian problem, but simply increases their fear and hatred of Arabs and makes them cling even more tightly to the Israeli state. On the Palestinian side it makes people a passive audience for these âheroic actionsâ.

8) The only key is the active involvement of the population. Thirty years of IRA terrorist attacks never moved Ireland an inch nearer to unification. In Palestine, the intifada, which was a movement of the population and not just of a few conspirators, did far more than any bomb attack to arouse sympathy for the Palestinians, both in the world and in Israel.

9) However, even the intifada had its limitations, both in its aims and in its methods. It should be remembered that Israel, like any other country, is a nation divided between rich and poor, between exploiters and exploited. The conflict is not in the interests of ordinary Israeli citizens; like the Arab governments, the Israeli government uses the Palestinian question to maintain its support among the population. The recent invasion of Lebanon was mainly to distract the attention of Israelis from a programme of cuts in public spending. In the future, Israeli workers who are suffering from the attempts of the government and the bosses to make them pay for the economic crisis will begin to question the authority of their state. This will make it possible to organise some kind of united action, first of all with Israeli Arabs. A strike of Jews and Arabs together (and these have taken place) will frighten the Israeli authorities far more than any bomb attack.

How far and how fast this process can go will depend on people developing an internationalist outlook in both communities. It will also depend on events in other countries in the Middle East and the rest of the world.

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Re: Need help with Wright again

Re: A question about 'time'

Re: Crisises around the wolrd