Letters to the Editor
Rowan Berkeley
Published Letters: 176
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It seems to me to be a means to cover Kadima's rear
[Read the article: Taking back the debate over Israel]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]That is to say, if you watch their video advert, the positive payload is on Olmert, which means Kadima. Now, Kadima is itself a sort of centrist fusion of cadres from Likud on the one side and Labor on the other, with the sadly insignificant Meretz hanging onto its coat-tails. Olmert and Co. are well aware that as things stand in the USA, the AIPAC machine could bring down the Kadima government within a month or so if it put its mind to it, and naturally they don't want that to happen.
But, really, what IS the Kadima policy? When Olmert took up the prime ministership in 2006 he was talking in terms of something called in hebrew, "hitkansut," which is usually translated as "convergence," more or less accurately, but the essential idea was that the settlers would be "converged" behind the wall, and the settlers who still remained beyond it would eventually have to look after themselves. However, this is not quite as straightforward as it seems, because at no point did he even consider giving up control of the ribbon of land immediately abutting the west bank of the Jordan river. If you visualise this, you will see that it is not the settlers who are being "converged" (i.e. concentrated behind a protective barrier) but the remaining Palestinians who are being "converged" by being concentrated in the remaining space between the Israeli controlled territories to both West and East of them. This is not a problem that can be solved by any amount of stylistics, and it is not on JStreet's agenda, or anyone else's, to abandon the aforesaid ribbon of land on the riverbank. See the problem?
p.s. - on a personal note - I am one of the reportedly non-existent Kansas O'Flaherty fans. I have links to all sixteen episodes on my blog somewhere.
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Now I see why it's called "irony"
[Read the article: Why the Jeremiah Wright story deserves more attention]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You "ironed" that out so flat there isn't a single inflection, wrinkle or crease in the prose. Superhuman, subhuman, or inhuman prose control. I'm not too sure which, it took my breath away for a moment.
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Black American politics has a different center of gravity
[Read the article: Breaking the Democratic deadlock]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Any chance of obscuring this fact has been destroyed by Rev. Wright, for reasons that might seem "ultra-Left" and "unrealistic" to those who have not been forced to take the difference seriously. The only commentator I have seen who has really expressed this accurately is Glen Ford in Black Agenda Report, whose article "Pop goes the race-neutral campaign," is also online at CounterPunch.
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One bouquet and one brickbat for Glenn
[Read the article: Fred Hiatt on the noble glories of occupation]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm with Glenn on this (especially because I am not a USAian but a Brit, and I have never subscribed to Salon or otherwise contributed anything to its welfare, except the occasional compliment) : "If the Air Force wants to finance anti-war commentary, more power to them." I have something from USAF via PRWeb on my blog, congratulating themselves on "the millionth mission in the War Against Terror." It's so sick, it's funny. Hence my caption, "Brickbats and Bouquets," which is a reference to Joseph Heller's "Catch 22."
But I also agree with the commentator who pointed out that "internal displacement" is Pentagon-speak for USAF-created refugee masses. It's hard not to internalise one or two of their turns of phrase, because they are designed exactly to slip under your semantic radar.
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The term of art for punitive airstrikes
[Read the article: Fred Hiatt on the noble glories of occupation]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's "countervalue strikes," as opposed to "counterforce strikes," which aim at military targets. This phrase is used seldom in material intended for mass media. In discussing the latest offering from RAND I had to insert it myself.
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Two interrelated (and controversial) points
[Read the article: Fred Hiatt on the noble glories of occupation]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In the first place, I see no indications that any sector of US political culture except the far Left has really faced up to the issue of implicit racism. I say 'implicit' because explicit racism is very properly condemned, but the WAY in which it is condemned contains a subtext, to the effect that it is cruel to make explicit the actual and concrete position of inferiority in which US Blacks are trapped - and the only explanation for this subtextual nuance is a widespread assumption that US Blacks DESERVE inferior status, which in turn is derived from a sense of cultural and geopolitical superiority, on which all US citizens are encouraged to rely, as a means of evading the horror of their real global actions over the entire span of their history. To say, well, Rowan, you're a Brit, we learned white supremacist imperialism from you, is true but irrelevant - the USA purports to be 'better than that,' and it isn't. The second point is that white supremacism is maintained largely via a mystifying proxy which is (a) religious rather than explicitly racial, and (b) Jewish rather than Christian - Christianity being re-written as supportive of Jewish global rights as progenitors of 'Western values.' Sorry to have to say that, because I am deeply in love with the Jewish people, no point in my trying to hide that.
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On the way "Dr. iRack" at "Abu Muqawama" framed this story
[Read the article: Who needs Dana Perino when you have the NYT's Michael Gordon?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I noticed exactly the same thing that Glenn is talking about (in his Update Two) and I left a note at Abu Muqawama saying:
"I find your rhetorical method so peculiar here that, unless it is subject to instant bloggy-right, I think I shall paste it over to my place. What you do is, first, create a spurious air of scepticism, with the long paragraph about echo chambers, then blithely discount your own scepticism and say you think it’s probably pretty much true regardless. The elegance of this swerve is presumably supposed to dispense you from any responsibility for due diligence regarding the claim. There’s a formula here — I’ve seen this done before."
"Dr. iRack" came over and let off a smoke bomb or two, natch.