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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Rowan Berkeley
Published Letters: 176
I quite agree with you, Mona, it's very unhealthy when all one's human contacts are virtual and none are real. But what can I do? I have been living "between two worlds" for years : the vast bulk of my emotional investment is not here in Britain. It's a pretty dull country, with no real pretentions to creativity, originality or cultural independence. It took a serious turn for the worse when the Guardian newspaper caved in to our equivalent of your own 'neocon tendency in the Democratic Party' (I use the quote marks to bracket off the thing I want to compare, like in algebra). Our equivalent is something called "the Euston Group" which used exactly the same rhetoric, cumulatively blurring opposition to US imperialism, opposition to expansionist religious zionism, opposition to zionism as such, and anti-Semitism, all in the same toxic broth, which they then tipped over the heads of the remaining anti-imperialists in the Labor Party. In terms of domestic policy, and in terms of passive support for US imperialism, the Labor Party had always been pretty limp anyway, and I had never been a member, but my late sister was a member for decades, and she finally gave up on it some time in the nineties, over the Iraq war, if I remember correctly. There's nothing for me here, and I don't think I would like the USA much, either. Paradoxically, perhaps, I would much rather be in Israel, where at least people are lively, and have a slightly manic awareness that what they think and do can matter.
I claim that understanding the re-religionising of geopolitics over the post-Cold-War period is fundamental to understanding everything else, and that understanding the relationship between the various forms of zionism and the evolving rationales for US imperialism is central to this. This subject is not relevant to any of Glenn's topics on the level of detail, but it's relevant to all of them in terms of background.
I don't need to go over the political economy of the military-industrial establishment, although I have given a link to the web page of Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler a hew times, because I think they are the best on this http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/
But my speciality, the area in which I feel I have something approaching unique insights, is this matter of religio political psychology, and that's why I keep returning to it. I think the reason I have these "something approaching unique insights" is also the reason I am so miserable : it's a thwarted zionist romance of my own, thwarted because of my stubborn irreligiosity, which prevents me from "converting to Judaism" and jumping onto the back of the zionist bus in that manner. If I had been born Jewish, I would have merged into the general run of left zionists without any particular controversies, I suppose.
I also follow Franklin Lamb's articles at CounterPunch very closely. They sometimes have the air of having been transcribed by someone whose english is a bit defective, which is odd, but generally I think they are excellent. However, I am a bit confused about "the Friday Lunch Club," because there is a blog by that name which doesn't name its author, but follows a close to Franklin Lamb type line. What exactly does the phrase "the Friday Lunch Club" refer to, if not "the Welch Club"?
Now as to the goody goody libertarians, I agree completely with Mike Sulzer, who said while I was either asleep or hiding my shame and not visiting the thread, "If libertarianism says that everything would be great if everyone would leave everyone else alone except for voluntary interactions, then the realist would say: but everyone won't. And because of that, and in reaction to that, we have governments," except that I would go further, and say that anyone who claims to believe that in the absence of "government" (and at this point one begins to wonder how they define "government") people would spontaneously revert to being nice to each other, is not just being naive, they are being disingenuous, by which I mean, they are sinister, cynical liars.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
