Mr. Greenweld

http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/nationalism/english/e_nat

Copied the google search link by accident.

Hey, Win, it's a pleasure to have you here. It's nice to have someone more eloquent than I, speaking against the "blind, uncritical" anti-Israel rants common here.

Just wondering if my ISP is blocking Al-Jazeera. Try this URL:

http://english.aljazeera.net/

Can you pull it up?

Thank you, Derbig!

That video/song do bring back memories. It was my anthem for a good bit when a young lass. And I cried in solidarity w/ Bobby Sands et al. when they died by going on hunger strikes.

Perhaps one of my favourite songs (and one that chokes me up every time I hear it) is a song by Tommy Sands (yes, related to Bobby; a distant cousin AFAIK) titled "There Were Roses".

One of best renditions is by Moloney, O'Connell, and Keane (with the inestimable Liz Carroll on fiddle), on the album of the same title.

Link to Tommy Sands doing it at Youtube at sig. Other rendition here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DnjWIX5--8&feature=related

Cheers,

by Simon Tisdall, Published on Sunday, January 4, 2009 by The Guardian/UK (see sig)

Barack Obama's chances of making a fresh start in US relations with the Muslim world, and the Middle East in particular, appear to diminish with each new wave of Israeli attacks on Palestinian targets in Gaza. That seems hardly fair, given the president-elect does not take office until January 20. But foreign wars don't wait for Washington inaugurations.

Obama has remained wholly silent during the Gaza crisis. His aides say he is following established protocol that the US has only one president at a time. Hillary Clinton, his designated secretary of state, and Joe Biden, the vice-president-elect and foreign policy expert, have also been uncharacteristically taciturn on the subject.

But evidence is mounting that Obama is already losing ground among key Arab and Muslim audiences that cannot understand why, given his promise of change, he has not spoken out. Arab commentators and editorialists say there is growing disappointment at Obama's detachment - and that his failure to distance himself from George Bush's strongly pro-Israeli stance is encouraging the belief that he either shares Bush's bias or simply does not care.

The Al-Jazeera satellite television station recently broadcast footage of Obama on holiday in Hawaii, wearing shorts and playing golf, juxtaposed with scenes of bloodshed and mayhem in Gaza. Its report criticizing "the deafening silence from the Obama team" suggested Obama is losing a battle of perceptions among Muslims that he may not realize has even begun.

"People recall his campaign slogan of change and hoped that it would apply to the Palestinian situation," Jordanian analyst Labib Kamhawi told Liz Sly of the Chicago Tribune. "So they look at his silence as a negative sign. They think he is condoning what happened in Gaza because he's not expressing any opinion."

Regional critics claim Obama is happy to break his pre-inauguration "no comment" rule on international issues when it suits him. They note his swift condemnation of November's terrorist attacks in Mumbai. Obama has also made frequent policy statements on mitigating the impact of the global credit crunch.

Obama's absence from the fray is also allowing hostile voices to exploit the vacuum. "It would appear that the president-elect has no intention of getting involved in the Gaza crisis," Iran's Resalat newspaper commented sourly. "His stances and viewpoints suggest he will follow the path taken by previous American presidents... Obama, too, will pursue policies that support the Zionist aggressions."

[…]

As the Gaza casualty headcount goes up and Obama keeps his head down, those sentiments are beginning to sound a little hollow. The danger is that when he finally peers over the parapet on January 21, the battle of perceptions may already be half-lost.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/01/04-0

It is rare that I am surprised by Middle East news, but I just was. I always accepted the common wisdom that the US was just an apathetically wagged Israeli dog's tail. But it turns out that the ugly and stupid and colossally ham-fisted neo-con Bushies have a lot to blame here too:

Vanity Fair today: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/04/gaza200804.

Now the Bushies have an awful lot to answer for, even before this, but I did not realize that they had direct, deliberate Palestinian blood on their hands.

GBT said: "Obama will solve the middle east saga....Great leaders in our country do not come from your soil or neighborhood.....lol,lol,lol"

Ummm, wow.

The mideast crisis has been going on for 2,000 years, and you think it's going to be solved in less than a decade? Keep dreaming.

And I think the native people of this country would have to disagree with you about where "great leaders" have come from...Things were fine for thousands of years - and then these supposed "great leaders" came over from abroad and f-ed up pretty much everything.

Israel pounds a helpless Gaza, and the neo-con lunatics cheer. This contest is like the NY Giants playing a pop warner team. Gaza has nothing to defend itself with--no air force, no missiles, nothing to take on tanks, nothing. Creatures like Goldfarb, who would wet his pants on a football field, let alone a war zone, rejoice. And there are too many of them in positions of influence, like Arab-hater Eliot Abrams in charge of Bush's Middle East "policy".

People who care a bit about this situation should read Chris Hedges reports from Gaza and the West Bank, particularly his report on the death of Nizar Rayan (Truthdig). Read the interview of Hamas' Meshal in this month's CounterPunch, or those of Nir Rosen--the world is a much more complicated place than our media controllers, blindly pro-Israel all--would lead us to believe.

Hamas has repeatedly offered permanent truces based on a settlement along the lines of the Arab League proposal that has been on the table, and ignored by Israel, since 2002. It offered to extend the current truce, which it honored, if Israel would live up to its original promise to loosen the blockade of Gaza, but Israel said no.

The last irony--these "supporters" of Israel are doing it no favors in the long run--its US sugar daddy is in decline, and the American people one day are going to say "enough!" with our blind support, the damage this relationship does to our standing around the world, and enough with borrowing $3 Billion a year from the Chinese to give to Israel with no accountability.