China wishes it was Israel

Thomas' comments about sending Jewish people back to Europe was insensitive, ignorant and offensive.

That being said, there's more debate in Israel of Israel's actions than there is in our media. (© Glenn Greenwald)

That's pathetic and speaks volumes about our blind, uncritical and exceptionally expensive support of almost everything Israel does.

Regarding the China comparison, yeah, it is pretty much the same thing except for a few minor details.

Minor details like a forced ejection and diaspora from those and other lands some years back, various episodes of holocaust and genocide and other purges stripping them of possessions and wherever they called home at the time, and, I dunno...lack of already having the largest, most populous country in the world and existing military and industrial regional (if not global contender for) hegemon status, looking to roll into and seize any neighboring countries simply because they can, arguing that some part(s) of their historic empires (that have since withered and been defeated fair and square by other groups) controlled that whole area at some point.

But certainly those are all just minor details, otherwise it's pretty much the same situation.

As for the flotilla situation that probably prompted Helen Thomas's (of Lebanese descent herself) comments...

I agree with Boygabriel. It struck a nerve with her and her statement was ridiculous and offensive.

However, Israel's own ongoing actions provokes outbursts like this, with it's current practices of apartheid, repression and wayyyy over-proportionate responses -- including attacking a flotilla of (Turkish registry) aid vessels without cause and then issuing (disproven except to Glen Beck) flat-out lies that the ships contained guns and ammo hidden under bags of cement or something.

But I'd also add that this mess is too murky on both sides, both sides are equally guilty.

To borrow from a recent OT splinter on a tech-related list (of all places):

This is a long, long, long running dispute which originated decades or centuries or even millenia ago depending on your view of history. I am quite sure of two things:

1. Way too many people have died in the middle east
2. If the Palestinians stopped attacking Israel today, the violence
would end today. OTOH, if Israel stopped attacking the
Palestinians today, the violence would not end.

Hamas' charter still calls for the obliteration or nullification of Israel. Though the charter's status is somewhat unclear, Hamas has never taken a clear, public position that it wants to live side-by-side with Israel. I refer you to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas#Charter

Israel, OTOH, is publicly committed to a two-state solution (a Palestinian state side-by-side with Israel) and is much further along the path of realizing that solution in the West Bank (without Hamas) than in Gaza (ruled by Hamas).

However, Israel is definitely diminishing their position in recent years in my view by being more prone to building their death star and entrenching themselves to destroying the opposition at all costs (cue Emperor's March) instead of cutting out the heavy-handed stuff that utterly kills any hope for peace negotiations.

True. The charter is a statement of beliefs frozen in time, in a particular era based on a particular set of assumptions at that time.

In reality, peace discussions are more fluid, and seek to provide the new terms with which to update existing national (nation meaning groups like Hamas here, not necessarily governments) policy like the Hamas charter.

And true, Israel isn't exactly there on the two-state part, I should have edited that out instead of pasting in the whole email.

Agree 100% that they've shifted their focus to choking, revenge and retribution, which amounts to state-sponsored terrorism just as much as anyone might claim that Hamas etc. commit terrorism by their acts.

Israel's current policy seems to be more like 100 quid pro quo [sic].

armchair_warrior wrote: I laugh at your genocide, maybe cultural but not whole sale murder.

Perhaps you're not familiar with any of the episodes throughout history, such as the Spanish Inquisition, 1885 in Russia, or the Nazi Holocaust, just to name a few?

armchair_warrior wrote: taking over whole world is just a white paranoia, what neighboring countries are they trying to conquer????

Ah wait. I originally read your words above incorrectly as indicating this was more a white obsession, not fear. Hence my misdirected response here (which I am revisiting now):

Ever hear of the Ottomans, the Mongolians (under Ghenghis Khan, for example), or China itself with thousands of years of conquest and empire?

^ again, my mis-read that you were meaning something completely different.

Guess I'd just add that it's not paranoia, and not directed at any one country. Just the big ones that try to invade neighboring little ones. If you want proof of this, simply refer to Russia's nearly attempted invasion of South Ossetia to "reclaim homelands" [read: oil pipeline] from Georgia two years ago. The huge international outcry against Russia was the same as the outcry against China for wanting to invade Tibet or threats to do so in Taiwan, or Iraq's claims that it had grounds to reclaim Kuwait in 1990 (again, for oil).

These are checks and balances put in place to maintain regional balances of power, to avoid the hard lessons learned by not adequately confronting ambitious major regional powers early enough, such as Germany when it annexed Austria and invaded the Sudetenland and Poland.

Maintaining regional balances of power is not paranoia. It's the result of some of history's most painful lessons.

armchair_warrior wrote: only ones china has a problem is is contested land and they are contested when china was weak.

...which means they lost it fair and square. Period. Just like anything else in history, and most f the reason why current borders anywhere exist where they do.

Problem is, nowadays (post League of Nations and UN) the rest of the world has an active say in maintaining regional balance of power and holding modern-day huge regional hegemons back from the temptation of selfish imperialism in their area.

You may see it as yet more unfair discrimination by one group against another, but ironically that's exactly what global bodies like the UN are set up to protect...both regional and global security, against the interest of those that would only seek to increase theirs at the expense of all others.

And before you say it, yes the US and major European nations have huge power in the UN. They sit on the security council.

But so does China, which pushes its own agenda like ignoring pollution agreements such as Kyoto, allowing for unfettered counterfeiting and wholesale theft of intellectual property, maintaining a poorly regulated industrial marketplace allowing its companies to produce and flood world markets with hazardous products, funneling money and raw materials and other trade to corrupt African nations toward which the rest of the world is attempting sanctions, and capturing and imprisoning any of its citizens that speak out against any of this or anything else in their government.

And they block much of the internet, since it's inconvenient to their "culture." Sure, all sounds perfectly benevolent and gentle.

The US has it's own issues, that's not in question here.

But China isn't some little victim. It's huge. It's among the very top, few, most powerful countries in the world. It has its own agenda that often works directly against the majority of other countries positions with respect to global security. It plays dirty and in its own selfish interest against the greater good, just like the US or anyone else often does.

It is a true measure of just how powerful they are that they can resist worldwide calls to float their currency and have their own markets be subject to the Phillips Curve and other effects of over-industrialization like any other country out there.

The sheer market power to refuse that, in turn, results in trade deficits with just about every superpower out there, which only increases the debt they hold over the world's superpowers, so as the world's creditor at this point they can pretty much dictate what world rules and fair practices they want to follow, and which ones they don't.

In that sense, they are well on their way toward global domination.

How do you explain that as just a White or European pursuit, in the face of history and current events?

It is limited to no region or people. Kind of narrow and suspect to state otherwise.

armchair_warrior wrote: The only people in the world that has a agenda to take over the world is white people.

I believe I have disproven this above. And, come to think of it, there are other countries that have silently indebted the world's superpowers while refusing to let their currency float freely like anyone else's.

Can you name a few?

If gaining control and dominance over of the world's present financial markets (and therefore political ones) is not conquest or quest for ruling the world in a modern sense, what is?

armchair_warrior wrote: let me see a minority of humanity came out of europe and now is every where, from north america, to south america to the pacific. White people projecting themselves onto other people. china's history of conquest is different from white conquest. it's mostly cultural.

Tell that to all the people killed in China' s own "cultural revolution."

Or anyone else in the region up until 1900 or occasionally after 1950.

How can a person even suggest that it was not military...

Does any empire get to be so large merely by offering it's "culture," and all the areas being offered this just say "oh cool, this rocks! Go right ahead and take our lands and ship all our stuff back to your emperor, and we're fine with the taxes and impounds, no worries, this culture stuff of yours is much better than our own."

Seriously..."china's history of conquest is different from white conquest. it's mostly cultural." Please tell me this was one big joke that I somehow missed.

armchair_warrior wrote: oh wait you forget history just projecting.

Um, you'd really better re-read the above.

armchair_warrior wrote: I don't have to make this stuff up just look at history.

Really?

armchair_warrior wrote: and for israel.


let me see a bunch of white europeans claims land in the middle east. whom another bunch of white europeans feel sorry for after they massacre them.

Okay, I will grant that you may have room for debate there.

armchair_warrior wrote: Israel should of been created in europe not the middle east.

Yes, I see. Because it's their spiritual home, right?

armchair_warrior wrote: If you are foolish enough to look at the bible new and old or even the Koran as a history piece.
...<snip>...
Look at the words chosen people and given to by god. that statement is racist elitist and asinine. Any group that says about themselves today are like of the KKK, Aryan nation etc.. where do you think they got the idea from?

The massacre of the native Americans was justified by the using of the bible. The lovely Abrahamic(Judaism, Christianity, Islam) religions cause more death and destruction than anything else in human history. Don't use it as a excuse to murder and steal.

Um, are you somehow denying that for thousands of years the Chinese emperors (that were just as interested in increasing the size of China's empires, how else did it get so huge...) did NOT claim their throne, power and right of rule and law by divine right, given by God?

Yes, I will be the very first to agree with you about all the hypocritical murdering and stealing that's been done (and still is) in the name of religion.

Wait, why are we discussing that part here again?

And yes, it's true. Someone here does have a creative sense of history.