Yves here. While this Thomas Neuburger post, and the Chris Hedges tweetstorm that inspired it, make the important point that violence begats violence, the framing bothers me. The focus on “lust for vengeance” puts the emphasis on the damage done by the victim striking back, as opposed to the [nearly always unnecessary] violence of the perpetrator who set chain of retributions in motion.
I read many important books at too young an age to fully appreciate what they conveyed. One was Machiavelli’s The Prince:” But above all he must refrain from seizing the property of others, because a man is quicker to forget the death of his father than the loss of his patrimony.”
Perhaps DLG, Reality Czar, will correct me. I used to make sense of this passage over the fact that quite a few men don’t get on with their fathers and so would not much miss them, but all young men would sorely resent having money they expected to receive take from them. But in the days of Machiavelli, the primary form of wealth was land. And land was not just property but conferred a position in society, as in status or standing. So taking a man’s “property” in this social context could be seen as stripping him of his position in society, which is arguably more demeaning that the loss of mere wealth alone.
In other words, the impetus for revenge is not just and perhaps not mainly wanton killings. It is the deracination, the unpersoning of the most basic operation of colonialism: of taking people’s ancestral lands from them. It should not be surprising that US and European imperialists can’t fully internalize what that means.
Of course, there are other ways to inflict deep wounds on an individual and community’s sense of who they are, such as desecrating or destroying sacred objects and sites, or violating personal/religious taboos. The Israeli plan to destroy Al Aqsa Mosque, the third most revered site in the Muslim world, would be the mother of all provocations.
By Thomas Neuburger. Originally published at God’s Spies
The noted journalist and writer Chris Hedges has published a long piece at Twitter, now called X. In it he makes a number of important points, but I want to emphasize one in particular: that there will be vengeance for Western complicity in the Israeli genocide.
From the piece (all emphasis mine):
Hate and a lust of vengeance, as I learned covering the war in the former Yugoslavia, are passed down like a poisonous elixir from one generation to the next. Our disastrous interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen, along with Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, which created Hezbollah, should have taught us this.
Those of us who covered the Middle East were stunned that the Bush administration imagined it would be greeted as liberators in Iraq when the U.S. had spent over a decade imposing sanctions that resulted in severe shortages of food and medicine, causing the deaths of at least one million Iraqis, including 500,000 children. …
Israel’s occupation of Palestine and its saturation bombing of Lebanon in 1982, were the catalyst for Osama bin Laden’s attack on the Twin Towers in New York City in 2001, along with U.S. support for attacks on Muslims in Somalia, Chechnya, Kashmir and the South of the Philippines, U.S. military assistance to Israel and the sanctions on Iraq.
Will the international community continue to stand by passively and allow Israel to carry out a mass extermination campaign? Will there ever be limits?
His answer to the question above is also my own: No, there will be no limits. Israel and the U.S. will stop when made to stop.
I fear, given that the Israel lobby has bought and paid for Congress and the two ruling parties, as well as cowed the media and universities, the rivers of blood will continue to swell. There is money to be made in war. A lot of it. And the influence of the war industry, buttressed by hundreds of millions of dollars spent on political campaigns by the Zionists, will be a formidable barrier to peace, not to mention sanity.
The U.S. is as guilty as Israel. Hedges details with breathtaking clarity our similar-to-Israel policy of torture and killing in Vietnam and Iraq.
“After the [Vietnam] war,” [Nicolas] Turse concludes, “most scholars wrote off the accounts of widespread war crimes that recur throughout Vietnamese revolutionary publications and American antiwar literature as merely so much propaganda. Few academic historians even thought to cite such sources, and almost none did so extensively. Meanwhile, My Lai came to stand for — and thus blot out — all other American atrocities. Vietnam War bookshelves are now filled with big-picture histories, sober studies of diplomacy and military tactics, and combat memoirs told from the soldiers’ perspective. Buried in forgotten U.S. government archives, locked away in the memories of atrocity survivors, the real American war in Vietnam has all but vanished from public consciousness.”
My Lai wasn’t a one-off; it was blessed by policy and broadly practiced. The same in Iraq.
The same with Abu Ghraib. Bagram. And all the other CIA torture sites we ran or run — Poland, Lithuania, Thailand, Cuba.
The U.S. is that bad. This is the real American method of war, blindly celebrated.
Mass Murder Will Find Its Way Home
Hedges fears a retributional return of evil for evil. I think this is guaranteed.
Humans are generally forgiving by nature — consider the relations between the U.S. and Vietnam now. If anyone deserves to be hated, it’s us by them. Yet today we are friends.
But not all of us are forgiving. How many would kill the one who murders their child? How many would murder the many who murder their people? The answer cannot be “no one.”
Historical amnesia is a vital part of extermination campaigns once they end, at least for the victors. But for the victims, the memory of genocide, along with a yearning for retribution, is a sacred calling. The vanquished reappear in ways the genocidal killers cannot predict, fueling new conflicts and new animosities.
Given America’s remarkable vulnerability — “water and food supplies; chemical plants; energy grids and pipelines; bridges, tunnels, and ports; and the millions of cargo containers that carry most of the goods U.S. consumers depend on” — I don’t think it would take an attack of 9/11 complexity, by those who think we need punishing, to punish the U.S.
How many very large malls exist in America? What if five blew up at once? The so-called Mall of America welcomes 42 million people each year. How many show up on Black Friday?
What if a suicide bomber joined an airport security line, the one that piles up immediately prior to screening, just before Christmas in New York, Chicago, or Dallas?
How many what-ifs like these can you devise? They’re endless and everywhere.
I’m frightened for us — for how the West, in arming and protecting a genocide this public and large, has made retribution inevitable. When it’s too late, we’ll live to regret these choices.
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Yes, America’s foreign policy is a train wreck waiting to happen.. though I pray that the train is Not carrying armed Nukes when wrecking.
You almost have hope for Mr. Trump to win in November & in so doing, we’d be cross with just one nuclear rival. China.
True, the USG administrative state may collapse under the weight of Project 2025, however, nukes for breakfast is less appealing than losing Florida to hurricanes !
Who is this “we” that will regret these choices? It certainly isn’t going to be the people making them because it is profitable for them to make those supposedly regrettable choices.
The Israelis are exterminating the Gazans partly for their gas fields, which the government of Gaza has been blocked from for decades. Americans are forced through security theater because businesses are well paid to do the forcing.
I still marvel that in the summer before 9/11 the total time at LaGuardia to go from exiting the curbside taxi to sitting in my passenger seat took less than fifteen minutes. That included checking in and being screened by the single (unarmed) guard with the wand. The last time I left Boston, DC, and LAX, it took hours each way to get on a plane. We have the endless security theater and bureaucracy including the bands of gendarmerie profitably protecting their profits by “protecting” us.
Generational trauma is good for business. And if my country got 9/11’d again, it would got for business, and the business of America is business, isn’t?
The “we” are average US citizens who will be targeted abroad. I’m actually rather surprised nobody has started taking US tourists hostage or killing them yet. I’m also glad that when I do travel, I’m often mistaken for a Canadian.
been wearing Canadian clothes when abroad for 15 years!!
Israeli Jews are doing the slaughtering. Not Arab Israeli Christians or Muslims. Give credit where credit is due.
The blowing up of malls, or pubs, or buses, or other rather random civilian targets is the tell-tale sign of managed dissident operation, and won’t be taken seriously. If anything it will reinforce both crackdowns and complacency. When you start seeing infrastructure being attacked, factories, security buildings, or specific senior officers begin to disappear, that is when you realize you are vulnerable.
The retribution that will be attempted, unlike 9/11, will not be at the impact of military-scale destruction. But you may surely feel the impacts of isolated retribution.
I’m surpised that “terrorists” haven’t started targeting ‘soft targets’ like lower level politico’s; eg., Obomber and friends.
In a building downtown where I used to work, we have the control center for the power grid for this entire region of the country. It’s on the second floor. Access is easy. Security is minimal and unarmed.
Yves Smith: I think that you have interpreted Machiavelli well. There is a joke in Italy about Sicilians: Don’t ask a Sicilian to choose between his children and his money.
Wealth in the form of land, buildings (the city palazzo, the cascina of the Piedmontese countryside (for farmers), even churches matters in Italy because it can be transmitted from generation to generation. In Torino, the city is still organized around apartment blocks and palazzi with multiuse courtyards and stores on the first floor — a spatial – social organization that goes back to the Romans. This is the basis of a family’s wealth — and some of the cascine in the countryside outside Torino are quite large — because the barn was conjoined to the residence.
Contrariwise, in a society based on the family rather than than the individual, continuity matters. Certainly, Roman religion and Italian society include ancestor worship. Never speak ill of anyone’s nonna!
But the land and buildings sustain the family, and Machiavelli, ever practical, points out not to make enemies by making families destitute. (I recall posting at Naked Capitalism months back that the Israeli destruction of olive orchards is the equivalent of murder — in the Mediterranean world, desecrating an olive tree is shocking.)
The theme of your remarks and this piece is even bigger, though. The expression, “What goes around, comes around,” seems too quick, too clear. Yet torture has corrupted everything in the US of A. And creating enemies means endless panics in the “homeland.” “What goes around, comes around” is too stark, too true.
And the U S of A is now reduced to a campaign in which Trump cannot decide if he’s in favor of genocide or not (given his donors and his remarks about Netanyahu finishing the job) and a supposed feminist in favor of the continuing moral disaster of a proxy war in Ukraine, the horrors visited on the Palestinians, the maintenance of the convenient lies about 7 October, and the destruction of Lebanon. War crimes? Dick Cheney? Biden gone mad yet somehow still in control of something or other? The war has come home.
What goes around, comes around. Happy vote counting!
One need look at the homicide rates in the United States (including the 3500 annual death toll at the hands of police) to see that there is always blowback. Unfortunately, the elite and policymakers never bear the brunt of the blowback and so the shitshows continue unabated.
Hedges’ piece is also on Substack. A must read with lots of concise history.
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/extermination-works-at-first
I visited Vietnam in 2003 when tourism was early in its development. As an Australian I was amazed and humbled at the total lack of animosity towards me given our country’s involvement in the Vietnam war.
Yeah, but you lost there…
When I visited Viet Nam in 2008 I was approached numerous times by former soldiers (I can’t say whether from the north or south). The common thread of their messages to me was let bygones be bygones. One can understand why it must be this way.
I sent the Chris Hedges Interview of Cornel West below to a sibling that suffers from a severe case of TDS. I thought the discussion of “radical evil” would sway her not to vote for either Dems or Repubs. Nothing. No amount of logic and facts will sway her…she said she respects my decision and I should respect hers. I said, no I don’t have to respect your decision. If you enable genocide and “radical evil” I don’t have to grant you that, no respect, sorry.
Thanksgiving dinner is going to be interesting this year.
https://youtu.be/RXs1xdPv0Pk?si=g7KVHhGKFfrxoaLW
as for the last 6 thanksgivings, i brazenly and shamelessly will use my disability to bow out early.
did the same with wife’s cancer…it was a good excuse to leave them all to the pretense of happy happy joy joy nonsense and fakery.
early on, wife was uncomfortable about this…but she grew into it.
she could do fake/”polite” for a time…but i never acquired that skill.
ask ‘hows it goin?’…and i’ll tell you.
my version of polite is remaining silent and/or surly.
i hate the dern holidays.
Land = the forms of capital.
Economic: I can sell it. Or, more to the point, rent it. Land is also heritable, so the family becomes the unit of analysis, not the mere individual.
Social: I have a position in society, as expressed by all the social relations required to own, maintain, and profit from the land.
Symbolic: I have the physical address, the deed, the listing in the land records office, the place on the voter rolls, etc.
So, yes, the loss or confiscation of land is a serious matter.
This explains the drive among some Americans to acquire generational wealth. That is the holy grail among professional athletes, masters of the universe, and politicos like Clinton and Obama.
Yes, and for professionals, both social and symbolic capital is very hard to pass along to the next generation*; the diploma on the wall is in your name, after all; and the connections in your social network are to you not your family (unlike feudalism). Hence getting little Madison onto the treadmill in the right daycare at the age of six, etc.
I think in Gramsci’s time and place (pre-WW I Southern Italy) a son could inherit his father’s profession. Perhaps an expert on Italy can (dis)confirm.
Land, in the time of The Prince, may also have been for cultivation of food crops, in which case it is the means for further subsistence. Threatening someone’s future food supply is not easily forgivable.
To the topic of the post: that we haven’t heard the last of this should be a given. I don’t think it is wishful thinking, however, to assume that government and military locations would be targeted, instead of malls and such. 9/11/01 struck at financial and military targets. The Bin Laden letter, in which the ‘justification’ for targeting civilians in the U.S. is laid out, ought to be seen as thoroughly discredited by now, for a number of reasons; it should be plain to the whole world that America is a democracy in name only, and the working class are imperial subjects wherever we are.
Also, one wonders, darkly, whether we’ll see ‘blowback’ from Ukraine or Palestine first.
Timeless really came across Phil Ochs, Cops of the World this morning.He had it down well over 50 years ago.And by the way did somebody nick one of his titles ‘Listen Liberal’ for his book?
https://youtu.be/fgrehW44g5s
Most perpetrators and victims have short memories and/or the later have better things to do than get fixated on some kind of “impossible” revenge. What were the Vietnamese supposed to do after getting their independence? Take the fight to the US and other Western countries? They know they will never win that kind of engagement. Same with other former colonial countries. Indonesia will never invade Holland for 300 years of colonial abuse because there’s more pressing issues and the country simply lacks the means to do so, and as the years go by, the people who still remember the old brutalities will continue to dwindle in numbers, and before long even that history will occupy an increasingly smaller section in the education curriculum.
“It’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission” is now passe, because nowadays “let’s just commit genocide because we can”.
Ever heard of Operation Nemesis ?
Well we know of at least one nation that believes we should “never forget” and in fact it is their slogan. Whereas if the Israelis had really and sincerely moved to make peace via that “two state solution” then I believe Palestinians would have been willing to forgive and forget. It’s only people with no hope who dwell on vengeance and the Israelis have made sure that no hope is, was and always will be the status of the Palestinians.
Of course the “never forget” slogan was an appropriation of the Holocaust for a Zionist movement that long preceded it and had much more to do with European 19th century ideas of a “white man’s burden” to civilize all the savages. Pretending that this situation is all about Hitler is just one of the many deceptions used to paper over an unsavory remnant of colonialism. America in Vietnam was defending a French colony and other atrocities took place in Indonesia and Kenya as the colonial world faded. For all the high minded justifications, “we have the Maxim gun and they have not” was true face of colonialism. It had always been savage.
I think Hedges is wrong as he often is while also often being right. The world will move on from this if given a chance. For all their current influence the Zionists are on the wrong side of history and the extreme actions of the moment are proof that that is true.
The old expression “If you live by the sword you will surely die by the sword” comes to mind. It may take centuries but justice will eventually be served.
Regarding your comment on taking of ones land, I do believe your assessment is correct. Much of the US declaration of independence can be traced to writings of John Locke and he listed inalienable rights as “”life, liberty, and property” (he said estate in the original, but meaning property).
What’s happening in Gaza definitively proves that our elected leaders can be bribed and intimidated into not only ignoring, but publicly and enthusiastically supporting ethnic cleansing, right now, in 2024.
It really does feel like the late USSR in the United States these days. We have all these high ideals…human rights, freedom, democracy, etc but no one believes in them anymore and even if they do we understand these have almost nothing in common with what the government actually does. We go through the motions, vote in elections, listen to speeches, watch the news, but we understand we are a captive audience and that they don’t mean it. Levels of greed, licentiousness, and corruption previously thought impossible are becoming normal.
Unfortunately the rulers who are the motive force behind the genocide will never be punished. If they were held accountable at a Nuremberg 2.0 trial followed by the death penalty and confiscation of assets to remunerate the victims, then perhaps there would be justice.
By justice, do you mean a resolution which we find morally correct? Lately, I’ve been toying more with Nietzche’s conception of it as “fairness among equals”; where there are none judged to be equal (by those with the means to ensure fairness), the concept doesn’t apply.
It comes down to pride. You don’t need to be religious to see wisdom in the teaching that pride is the deadliest sin for a reason.
When a person thinks they’re better than or above others, when they’re self-devoted, self-glorying, is also when they think they’re more entitled, including to to what others have, and that others owe something, that others belong to you, and you can take whats theirs as your own. Their tragedy and situation is belittled, minimized, which also makes it ok to commit murder, rape, theft against them
Now, when those inferiors prove not to be, the prideful will do anything and everything to keep them down, to reverse this. Pride leads to vengeance.
And it’s also when we think we’re better than others that we don’t forgive. Forgiveness needs humility or it won’t happen.
The same dynamics were in place in South Carolina when slaves escaped their plantations. Plantation owners formed a militia to roam the countryside hunting them. These were the paddy rollers, which became the KKK, which became modern day American police. Plantation owners felt a visceral threat the slaves escaping would lead to mass revolt, so engaged in preemptive defense.
And you begin to see why there’s such a close affinity between Israel and the US. And South African apartheid. Apartheid is white pride. And we also begin to see why the US is so belligerent and expansionist.
And similar to 1930s Germany with the ubermenschen attempting to increase their lebensraum, with the Japanese imposing their racial superiority on China, and with the Jews believing their own myths of “when the Lord your God brings you into the land … and you defeat them; then you must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them, and show no mercy to them. (Deut. 7:1-2). Why? Because “the Lord your God has chosen you” (Deut. 7:6).
Martyanov has shared that Vietnamese military professionals described the US war to him as systematic atrocities (Soviets were allies of Vietnam) as the war was taking place.
Our proteges in west Asia conduct war the US way, in his view.
Andrei Martyanov was 11 when the war ended.
Your point being?
I phrased that poorly. He said he had attended military training in the Soviet Union with Vietnamese officers who had seen the war. The point being first hand accounts of the war unfiltered by western media that described systematic atrocities as opposed to the one or few incidents that reached the US press.
I think it should be mentioned that the neocons who start all these wars have a very interesting characteristic. They disregard history as irrelevant. Hostility in fact. If they are recruiting people and somebody comes forward with an extensive knowledge of the history of a region, they are immediately shown the door. That is why they never learn. You see this in this article where it was mentioned how they thought that Iraqis would be throwing flowers at invading US troops, disregarding that the US had caused over half a million children to die over the previous years. They think in terms of maps and resources and population but as far as culture and history is concerned, whasat? They don’t understand tribal allegiances & affiliations but think that a few bribes will make that all go away. And they don’t understand cultures which think in terms of decades if not generations. And long term revenge is not on their radar. We humans have many words for revenge and none of them good – payback, vendetta, revenge, a reckoning, retribution, reprisals, retaliation, vengeance, vindictive, etc. But neocons will not only not see it coming but can’t conceive of it happening to them. After all, what did they ever do to deserve it?
I’ve often wondered whether it’s true that Bush the Lesser didn’t know about the Iraq’s Sunni-Shia dialogue until after the US invaded the country. If true, not an earth-shattering surprise.
Apparently it is true. He never knew that Muslims could be divided up into Shia and Sunni elements. Sort of like a Muslim leader not knowing that Christians could be divided up into Catholics and Protestants. Bush was a very ignorant, provincial person who did not even have a passport until he became President.
He, Cheney and his gang should be in chains and frogmarched to Gitmo.
Indeed. I most often hear this line of thought when someone is trying to whitewash their own behavior.
> The Israeli plan to destroy Al Aqsa Mosque, the third most revered site in the Muslim world, would be the mother of all provocations.
In late June of this year I had to travel to Israel as part of a project for work and my colleagues and I were put into a day tour of Jerusalem led by an Israeli tour guide, paid for by the company hosting us. Jerusalem was empty of tourists – we were able to walk right into the Church of the Holy Sephulchre without waiting, I was told pre-Covid this would have been at least 4 hours wait and the entire tour would have been planned around the line time. The tour went around the main sites, including the Western Wall, but the mosque and temple are on elevated and sacred ground and most normal tourists are not permitted up there. At one point I stopped to take a picture of the golden dome of the mosque and the Jewish cemetary hill behind it, and it sparked the following conversation between the guide and a US orthodox jewish man who was in our group:
Guide: The dome is not original. It isn’t even a hundred years old.
Me: Really? I thought the dome was a thousand years old and has been replaced at least a couple of times. The plating is recent though, I think.
Guide: Well, yes, there was an old dome, they replaced it. But this version of the mosque – it’s not that old. Certainly not as old as the temple and all our buildings.
US Orthodox Jew: (chuckling) It won’t be there much longer.
The entire experience was revolting and corrosive. I have been looking for another job, I feel implicated even as a bystander/vendor.
So the guide tried to blame the lack of tourists on covid, not on the overalll boycot on Israel by the rest of the world, due to the genocide in Gaza?
There is no history of popular mass retaliation for either colonial era crimes or recent attacks on various countries. In the Balkans, for example, it’s an accepted fact that Shit Happens, that is it happens largely to the weak, and you kiss the hand you cannot bite. When I visited Belgrade shortly after the NATO bombing, there were a number of very pointed comments, but no suggestion of a desire for revenge. For what it’s worth, when I visited Vietnam for the first time in 1995, there was no general hostility towards westerners or, so far as I could see, to Americans. Of course history is a factor (one diplomat reminded me that the British mobilised surrendered Japanese troops to keep order there in 1945, and this was still (then) resented) but that’s as far as it went.
Reprisal attacks tend to come from “extremist” groups, in the literal sense of that term, although most are conducted either against fellow-nationals or in the region (as in the Balkans.) The closest analogue to what Hedges appears to fear would be the wave of bloody attacks in Europe in 2015/16. But these were dependent on (1) a radicalised Muslim community in certain countries in Europe (2) extensive logistic support through Islamic State networks in Europe, coordinated by the Military Council of the IS, which was largely made up of former Baath army officers and (3) a motive, to punish the French for their high-profile anti-IS role in Syria. Subsequently, as the IS began to fracture, (3) was abandoned and attacks were made wherever they could be.
I leave others to judge how far the situation in the US is similar. You would, however, need quite a sophisticated logistics and support system, as well as people prepared to die for the cause. Hamas are Political Islamists (linked to the Muslim Brothers in Egypt) so they certainly have people in their ranks who would undertake suicide missions, but whether they are technically capable I have no idea, and I’m not sure who does.
The Vietnamese won, so why be resentful, they have a life to live?
But check out for instance Hungarians, who ruled the roost for 900+ years but then kicked out of some nice pieces of estate. The resentment is palpable even today. The Romanians have no resentments, and have no problem intermingling and intermarrying. But my grandpa, who was Hungarian, was ostracized when marrying a Romanian girl and had to move in the Romanian half of the village.
I date two Hungarian girls in my youth, but they were ultimately forbidden to mix with a Romanian boy (was only 3/4 Romanian, but no matters).
Arabs in middle east, allowed to live their lives beside Jews, in dignity, would not have a problem. But the daily abuse, injustice, and deprivation of dignity is waaay over the top, almost like slavery…
“Vengeance — this is a breath of life one shares from the cradle with one’s fellow clans-men, in both good fortune and bad, vengeance from eternity. Vengeance was the debt we paid for the love and sacrifice our forebears and fellow-clansmen bore for us. It was the defense of our honor and good name, and the guarantee of our maidens. It was our pride before others; our blood was not water that anyone could spill. It was, moreover, our pastures and springs — more beautiful than anyone else’s — our family feasts and births. It was the glow in our eyes, the flame in our cheeks, the pounding in our temples, the word that turned to stone in our throats on our hearing that our blood had been shed. It was the sacred task transmitted in the hour of death to those who had just been conceived in our blood. It was centuries of manly pride and heroism, survival, a mother’s milk and a sister’s vow, bereaved parents and children in black, joy and songs turned into silence and wailing. It was all, all.”
— Milovan Djilas, *Land Without Justice* (1958), p. 107
The key word here is justice. In a place without justice, one goes to “vengence”, or extracting justice by his/her own means…
I really dislike this framing altogether.
I’m frightened for us — for how the West, in arming and protecting a genocide this public and large, has made retribution inevitable. When it’s too late, we’ll live to regret these choices.
If the thirst for revenge mechanically drives human behavior, then you’d never get to complex social systems and rule of law. Putting aside Gaza, if you look at “how the West was won”–was it driven by racial hate and animosity (probably) but the lust for free land probably outweighed any hatred. I doubt Gaza is any different, the biggest fanatics are the settlers, and they are in it for free land.
Will there be some form of blow back for the US as a result of it serving as an accomplice to Israel’s butchery, certainly. People should be more concerned about the long-term diplomatic damage then some crazy blowing up a mall, as the long-term is going to be more important to the future.
But what really bothers me here is the framing: we should be opposed to genocide because its wrong, not because we are afraid that some nut is going to blow us up. Further, the geopolitical impacts, while abstract and deferred, are much more terrifying in the long-term than any terrorist episode. We liable to lose more to hurricanes in a given year than from terrorism.
Thank you, Yves.
Yves: “It should not be surprising that US and European imperialists can’t fully internalize what that means.”
In 1997, as Blair prepared to become PM and then took up residence at No 10, the hand over of Hong Kong featured on his plate. Blair did not know about the opium trade, concessions in China proper and imperial wars (including the fighting from 1931 and number of Chinese deaths in WW2) and asked why the Chinese were so bothered and can’t get over it (their history). BTW, Starmer is no better. Lammy is, well, Lammy.
Colonel Smithers:
In 1997, as Blair prepared to become PM and then took up residence at No 10, the hand over of Hong Kong featured on his plate. Blair did not know about the opium trade, concessions in China proper and imperial wars (including the fighting from 1931 and number of Chinese deaths in WW2) and asked why the Chinese were so bothered and can’t get over it (their history). BTW, Starmer is no better.
[ Stunningly and importantly, so. ]
People like to fight, and they easily find reasons to do so. Revenge is just one reason. The advent of nuclear weapons puts an end to the practice of applying superior force to secure political goals. But the cultural inertia of prevailing by force is propelling the world toward catastrophe. The U.S. has abrogated or abandoned all nuclear arms control treaties and is rushing toward doomsday. We will be punished severely for our collective stupidity.
This is not a time for levity but…
Political Science (Randy Newman)
No one likes us, I don’t know why
We may not be perfect, but heaven knows we try
And all around, even our old friends put us down
Let’s drop the big one and see what happens
[Verse 2]
We give them money, but are they grateful?
No, they’re spiteful and they’re hateful
They don’t respect us, so let’s surprise them
We’ll drop the big one and pulverize them
[Verse 3]
Asia’s crowded, Europe’s too old
Africa is far too hot and Canada’s too cold
And South America stole our name
Let’s drop the big one, there’ll be no one left to blame us
[Bridge]
We’ll save Australia
Don’t wanna hurt no kangaroo
We’ll build an all-American amusement park there
They got surfing too
[Verse 4]
Boom goes London, boom Paris
More room for you and more room for me
And every city the whole world ’round
Will just be another American town
Oh, how peaceful it’ll be
We’ll set everybody free
You wear a Japanese kimono, babe
There’ll be Italian shoes for me
They all hate us anyhow
So let’s drop the big one now
Let’s drop the big one now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqBrw3rQvKo
No, people like to win fights.
What is propelling the world towards catastrophe is the fact that people who expect to benefit even if their country loses the fight are now in charge, people like Harris and Zhelenski and Netanyahu.
I can’t help but think that blow-back and mass killing of the US population would be welcome as the chaos and strife would allow our oligarchs to take even more land for themselves, and have weaker persons to exploit.
From Yves’ intro:
I think it’s necessary to go a bit further: land was – and still is – the most important means of production. It was/is not simply wealth, it is the ability to produce wealth, and for many it is the ability to survive. If you take away someone’s land, you are not only stripping away their position in society; at best, you turn them into a wage labourer, when not condemning them to death or forcing them into slavery or servitude.
Let’s not forget Michael Hudson’s angle.
He says the whole point of the ancient debt jubilees was to return the small holdings to the debtors so they could again become productive self sustaining citizens.
They would then be available for corvee labour or army service which as indebted wage slaves they weren’t.
According to Cold War studies, humans in general don’t hold grudges forever , but do act on the principle of equity , i.e. once a wrong is atoned, then life as before. Israel plays a dangerous game, if it thinks it can flatten Iran without getting flattened itself (its vulnerabilities include, food productions, fuel and power availability, manpower, military morale, and a pariah status amongst most nations). The hubris of the Likud Party and those steering foreign policy in the US prevent the consideration of a loss or the ability to see ourselves as others see the US, e.g a video of a burning family screaming from a bombed out hospital tent has the potential to set in motion a wave of moral outrage from Morocco to the Casucasus to the Karakoram. That rage (Arab & Muslim) could send an infinite supply of soldiers, arms, and money to a front in Lebanon, thus guaranteeing that Israel will have no peace of mind for centuries, if it can last that long. And an event, once established in the history and culture by oral tradition doesn’t disappear rapidly.
yeah…that video was the worst thing ive ever seen.
as for the premise, while reading the hedges thing, itself, i found that i kept putting myself in the shoes of a palestinian farmer guy.
i reckon i’d be a bit radicalised, too…
my place is all i got.
woe be to whatever mining company, whatever takes it from me.
many moons ago, a fracsand company bought up 100 acres a lil over a mile to my north.
all my neighbors, repub, dem, apolitical,white, brown, all got together and fought it.
and won(largely due to changing market conditions, it turns out).
they would have ruined the water table, and coated a vast region with fine particulate dust(so, silicosis for everybody).
since i was about 400 foot beyond a mile from the company’s property line, i didnt have standing(!?)…but i supported the neighbors who did(they learned from me what direct action and caltrops were)
property, especially if its productive, and keeps body and soul together, is well worth going to the wall for.
I am not Muslim, nor Arab and I am outraged daily, and Alice here cries on a daily basis. Please don’t deprive us of our humanity, that we are not outraged by what Israelis are doing. Heck, a lot of Israelis and a lot of Jews are beyond themselves in outrage. And even some of the actual perps start to show symptoms of PTSD (walking over bodies) and refuse to report to duty…
There is some truth in the truth commissions if used properly.
And not just the official ones: our summer home is located in an area that saw plenty of violence during the local civil war over a 100 years ago – and when a local history of that era was published, the locals were actually quite disappointed that the writer did not dare to name names and tell the events like they happened. Some were still looking for justice, most just wanted the hear (well, read) the truth. We’re talking about grandchildren and great-grandchildren generations here.
I believe people will move on, but they won’t forget and will need “closure” even after generations have passed.
the Hoodoo War (wiki: mason county war) is still a sore spot around here.
families split apart, and changing the spellins of the family names, etc.
still dont talk to each other.
such things can persist.
i know descendants of both sides.
I now live in a city and neighborhood where parking a huge travel trailer (caravan to non-US) beside your house is the ultimate accomplishment in life. They come from the manufacturer with huge monikers emblazoned them. These monikers are becoming increasingly belligerent. And yes, the worst of them is “Vengeance”.
It says much that the slaughter of an entire population of neighbours and co-religionists barely warrants a shrug, but to threaten to knock over a pile of bricks and mortar “would be the mother of all provocations,
Such judgment. Those must have been your ballistic missiles falling on Tel Aviv. Mossad sees you Habibi.
Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1849439520028266917
Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand
Macron just accused Israel of “barbarism” in response to Netanyahu’s oft-repeated claim that he was defending civilization: “I’m not sure you can defend civilization by sowing barbarism yourselves”.
https://x.com/BFMTV/status/1849366530603028656/video/1
See you tomorrow for his apologies to Netanyahu and a statement explaining how Israel has “the right to defend itself”…
I wish I was kidding but that’s exactly what “macroning” is, saying something one day and its polar opposite the day after… He’s completely obliterated the little credibility France had left and managed the rather amazing feat of positioning himself as France’s most pro-Israel president ever in the eyes of the Muslim world, and anti-Israel in the eyes of Israelis…
When you try to please everyone you displease all
9:15 AM · Oct 24, 2024
In general, successful civilisations do not practice large-scale revenge except under special circumstances. The USAAF and Bomber Command were basically vergeltungswaffen which were allowed to carry out their plans of killing vast numbers of civilians in Germany, Japan and Italy (and also in France, something the French aren’t happy about to this day) but after the war was over more sane people carried the day and there was much less in the way of revenge.
In South Africa there has been very little in the way of revenge for apartheid. (Criminals who justify their crimes against white people by saying that it has something to do with apartheid are just pathetic.)
Terrorism is basically a weapon of the weak (“a terrorist is a guy with a bomb but no air force”) and tends not to be carried over after the battles are won, unless of course the organisation which has succeeded has ulterior motives. For instance, the Serbs after the Balkan Wars carried out terrorist campaigns in the territories they had seized to ethnically cleanse the territories and make them more stable. The Israelis have been doing much the same with the territories they seized in 1967 and 1982. That’s relatively unusual behaviour, usually associated with extreme racial nationalism.
I have respect for Hedges, but he has been wrong about too many things (generally speaking veering between wild optimism and hapless pessimism) for me to take him very seriously on this issue.
Amidst the the hate and fear that flows, a concern for justice needs to remain central. Like the Jews held folk like the Swiss bankers accountable, the Palestinians will have to hold Israel and its enablers accountable. Compensation will have to be paid.
And well, here an ‘eye for an eye’ is apposite; which is also part of Quranic guidance.
When looking at justice, one needs to remember the “get out of jail” card for the Allies – Germans could not be held guilty (of then as yet to be defined) crimes (which was the German argument) which the allies also committed – like mass bombing of Dresden.
These days, both parties are held to the same standard. But as a Third Worlder, this leaves me cold. There is no equivalence between the parties. And worst part of it all, legal scholars will tell you that the right to resistance is not well developed in law. Au contraire, usus (state practice or use) is a guide, and well there are many tales of resistance and victory over colonialism. If international jurists have not codified it into law, they should make the effort. But one only has to look at the quality of the then American justice and her interview to get a sense of how much of an ass the law is.
But as we see with mass atrocities, like in Rwanda, there are diminishing returns to imposing justice, and in wonderful African style, the Gacaca was introduced as a form of communal accountability and healing.
American Exceptionalism will come into play of course, just like they were never held accountable for open support for Apartheid in South Africa – and Jim Crow lives on in the Neocon Zionists along with the Neoliberal friends.
From the War on Drugs (where secret operations are conducive to off budget activities, eh?) to the Global War OF Terror, nations are rejecting the American option. Slowly, slowly, it will turn.
The violence of Gaza is apparent in every sector on a structural basis from US & EU subsidised food that decimates local production (as our markets are open) to limiting access to compulsorily licenses HIV or COVID vaccines.
USA will do what it does, as an Empire. My antipodean perspective, of ordinary folk, is to try and contemplate how ordinary USers will get rid of the robber barons and financial Mob (as Roosevelt called it)… at a time when they lauded as celebrities and saviours. (Because if you all don’t Gaza will go global – and if you think they are not capable… )
As Tenesssee Williams put it, to effect, ordinary Americans need to be taken gently, and handed their lives back to them…
Leaving me to wonder why there has never before in history been such a gathering of “the world majority” against the predations of a powerful minority. Maybe it’s just that the time has come. And naturally all I hear is crickets. We don’t have the words yet.
Remember April 25, 1945, as the Russian Army entered Berlin to get revenge, and were ordered by one general to murder, rape, plunder and destroy the Germans.
Yes, according to (pro-)Nazi sources. Also, it’s not one, but all the generals, and it was exactly at the moment they entered Berlin, not a second earlier, because the have not encountered Germans until that point. Same sources proved that it’s those Slavic barbarians that started the war in the first place, because they are not compatible with EU civilizational values. Just like today.
My sources are the San Francisco Chronicle and the Oakland Tribune. A period when the League of Nations was meeting in San Francisco and Franklin Roosevelt was having a stroke. “I have such a terrible headache”, were his last words.