Showing posts sorted by date for query choose your side. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query choose your side. Sort by relevance Show all posts

Friday, April 26, 2024

"Never Again for anyone" - Discussions about ending the Israel-Hamas War: Shulman, Fox, Alkhatib, Friedman, Ganz, Elbein


Here are some interesting and useful commentaries about the Israel-Hamas War, including some discussion about how it can be brought to an end

First, this article is recommended by Eric Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money -- at the New York Review of Books, professor David Shulman writes Israel: The Way Forward - If Israel is to survive, physically and spiritually, it needs to undergo, collectively, a sea change in its vision of reality and face some unpleasant though obvious facts:
...Israelis will have to face unpleasant though rather obvious facts:
-Palestinians are human beings, no different from the Jews or anyone else. (They have a rotten political system, but so do we.)
-They are not going anywhere.
-There are two national movements in the territory west of the Jordan River, with their own legitimate claims and bloody record of atrocities; the two populations are now equal in size, some seven million each.
-Israel cannot suppress Palestinian and other Arab resistance by force alone. (The foundational axiom of the Israeli polity has always been that only brute force works.)
-Survival depends on sharing the land between these two peoples.
-The settlement project in the West Bank has to end.
-The barbarian extremists on both sides, as if colluding together, will, given half a chance, kill us all.
-God, if there is a god, is unlikely to save us from ourselves.
None of these points is going to be easy for Israelis to swallow. I can attest that most people find it easier to sacrifice the lives of their spouses, siblings, and children in a futile cause than to change how they feel and how they understand the world.
We have wasted several blood-soaked decades on the obscene dream of annexing the territories and expelling the Palestinian population there. ....
There is only one way out of the current morass. As it happens, it’s a good way and, in theory, feasible if we had a minimally rational government capable of articulating a way forward for the people of Israel. What we now call the Biden plan would revolutionize Israel’s place in the Middle East and in the world at large; at the very least it would reverse the present murderous escalation. Its guiding idea is that Israel would become part of a regional system bound together by ties of normalization and full diplomatic relations between it and each of the moderate Sunni states, thus creating a bulwark against Iran and its proxies; the new configuration would necessarily include, indeed depend upon, some acceptable solution to the Palestinian thirst for freedom. That means a demilitarized Palestinian state and the dismantling of the occupation. In the absence of some such systemic solution, Israel will continue to fight recurrent, catastrophic wars. In the end, the state will be overwhelmed. That, in fact, is the Hamas plan, with Iranian backing. The Iranians think they can destroy Israel by 2040, if not earlier...
We will be lucky if this government doesn’t precipitate a full-scale war in Lebanon or beyond. So far it lacks any intelligible plan to end the fighting in Gaza and any political goal of some positive import. Even worse, from the start it has been playing into the hands of Hamas’s leader, Yahya Sinwar: first draw the Israeli army into Gaza, then turn it into sitting ducks in a guerrilla war that can continue indefinitely; let Israel kill enough Gazans and wreak enough destruction to turn international opinion against it, while Hamas hangs out safely in the tunnels it has created until the Israelis go away, with nothing to show for their sacrifices. Wars are won only when they have an attainable political goal.
Meanwhile, Israel is well on its way to becoming a pariah state. The wave of anti-Israel feeling that is engulfing large numbers of people in the Western world has emerged not merely from the Gaza war, with its unbearable civilian casualties and now mass starvation. What that wave reflects, more profoundly, is the justified disgust with the ongoing occupation, its seemingly eternal and ever more brutal continuation, and the policies of massive theft and apartheid that are its very essence....

Read more »
Posted by at No comments:

Saturday, October 21, 2023

Dueling videos -- Trudeau vs Poilievre

These two clips are being set up as "dueling" videos.
Last spring, Trudeau was talking to a right-wing teenager in Manitoba. This week, Poilievre was talking to a BC reporter while eating an apple.
So here are both videos, to compare and contrast.
Trudeau was, I thought, both gentle and respectful with this teenager, while still questioning his knee-jerk thinking:
 
Next, we have Poilievre talking to Oliver and Osoyoos Times Chronicle newspaper editor Don Urquhart. The right wing just loved this disrespectful, annoyed, apple chomping tone: As the apple-chomping clip spread on social media, reporters remembered the Trudeau clip too, even though the comparison isn't equivalent: In the Globe and Mail, Shannon Proudfoot wrote a useful analysis - Getting to the Core of Poilievre's biting "apple" interview where she talked about what was really happening during this exchange:
...Sure, Mr. Urquhart’s question was muddled – though show me a journalist who says they’ve never framed a question badly, especially when nervous, overworked or out of their element, and I’ll show you someone with their pants on fire. It’s perfectly clear what he was getting at. Mr. Poilievre is free to reject the premise of the question and deploy all of his considerable rhetorical talents to dispute it, because that’s the way this works.
But kicking a journalist in the shins over and over to throw them off balance so you can run away, then turning the exchange into a social-media flex is telling on yourself.
In order for this scenario to be the delicious come-uppance its fans believe it to be, you have to see Mr. Poilievre – leader of a major political party, a lifelong politician and, if the polls are right, the next prime minister – as the underdog here, not the overworked local reporter just trying to ask a guy from Ottawa a couple of questions in an apple orchard.
Yes, good points.  
And finally, I want to give Mr. Urquhart the last word by sharing some excerpts from the respectful and informative article that he wrote about his Poilievre interview and the rally: Pierre Poilievre was in town Wednesday capping the visit off with a rally in Oliver 
...When asked why Canadians should trust him with their votes given his demonstrable track record of flip-flopping on key issues and what some consider his use of polarizing ideologically-infused rhetoric suggesting he simply takes pages out of the Donald Trump populist playbook, Poilievre became acerbic.
Ultimately the answer was: “Common sense.” We’re going to make common sense common in this country. We don’t have any common sense in the current government,” he said.
The article went on to quote Poilievre's fantasy platform stump speech, concluding with this:
“I’m going to cut spending, cut waste so that we can balance the budget and bring down inflation and interest rates. If you want to be able to pay your mortgage again, if you want to be able to afford rent then you have to vote for Pierre Polly because I’m the only one with a common sense plan that will bring back the buying power of your paycheck,” he said sounding as if an election was just around the corner.
And finally the article also included this useful counterbalancing information:
Richard Cannings NDP Member of Parliament for South Okanagan - West Kootenay issued a statement on Poilievre’s Okanagan visit saying the Conservative Party leader’s talk is simply a performance act.
“Poilievre puts on a good show, but that’s all it is - a performance. He gets up and says all the right things, but then fights to save big bosses a few dollars at the expense of working people.
“Poilievre isn’t who he pretends to be. He doesn’t work for regular people; he works for rich CEOs.”
Cannings cited a number of instances over Poilievre’s 20 year career that highlight the contradictory nature of his claims including his support for a $60 billion tax giveaway to big businesses while cutting services for ordinary Canadians.
“Two times, he voted against having a minimum wage,” Cannings said adding that he’s tried to block dental care for Canadian families, despite having full coverage as an MP for almost 20 years.
“Canadians are struggling to find affordable housing and pay for grocery bills, and they deserve to have someone in Ottawa that has real solutions to their problems. And Poilievre isn’t that person - he’s proven it over a twenty-year political career.
So how do we like them apples now?
Posted by at 4 comments:

Tuesday, February 07, 2023

Today's Scene: We don't get to choose the battle. We only get to choose our side.

I said this years ago and I say it again today: 
 We don't get to choose the battle. We only get to choose our side. 
Right now, Canada finds itself dealing with Islamophobia and the anti-Muslim Bill 21 law in Quebec. This isn't an issue that anybody really wanted to deal with right now, at this time of wars and pandemics. 
But it's here, it's happening - we don't have a choice about that. 
We only get to decide whether we agree with what Quebec is doing, or whether we support Trudeau's appointment of Special Representative Amira Elghawaby to combat Islamophobia. 
I, on the other hand, do not. :
Read more »
Posted by at 2 comments:
Labels:

Monday, August 08, 2022

Today's News: Cheering

Big Democratic win today in the US Senate. This "Dark Brandon" meme seems to have legs: Rob Reiner knew: Somewhere, Harry Reid is looking down and nodding "Well played, grasshopper. Well played!"
Read more »
Posted by at 1 comment:
Labels: ,

Sunday, May 29, 2022

Today's News: Waiting for the other shoe to drop

Waiting for more shoes to drop: The careful phrasing of "shot and killed" may be a tip off. 
Here's the best story I have seen describing the chain of events in the school: The idea that schools need to be "hardened" even more is just so stupid - in Uvalde, it was the police who needed to be "hardened". When the NRA has lost Jon Voight: Here's a photo from the NRA convention in Texas that's getting a lot of comment:
Read more »
Posted by at 2 comments:

Wednesday, May 04, 2022

Today's News: "Abortion is a fundamental right"

(Photo of Supreme Court protest today, by Jabin Botsford, WashPost)

Today lots of comments and discussions about how the United States is criminalizing abortion again.
I'm not sure which Justice the Washington Post Editorial Board is trying to speak to with this strong editorial, but I think perhaps it was for precisely this reason that the draft decision was leaked, in time to get one of the Justices to reverse course: 
 ....If the justices embrace the sweeping document, they will deal a grievous blow to freedom in the United States — and to the legitimacy of the court itself.
...the draft ruling’s dreadful reasoning and extreme potential consequences are far more concerning than what the leak says about the court’s internal dynamics. 
Written by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., the document would declare Roe “egregiously wrong,” obliterate its guarantees of reproductive choice and empower lawmakers to abridge at will this long-held right.
...The court’s legitimacy rests on the notion that it follows the law, not the personal or ideological preferences of the justices who happen to serve on it at any given time. 
Americans rely on the court to exercise care and restraint against making sharp turns that might suddenly declare their everyday choices and activities unprotected or illegal. Over the course of nearly half a century, the court not only issued Roe but upheld its bedrock principles against later challenges. Throughout, the original 1973 decision enjoyed broad and unwavering public support. 
What brought the court to its current precipice was not a fundamental shift in American values regarding abortion. It was the shameless legislative maneuvering of Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), who jammed three Trump-nominated justices onto the court.
...Justice Alito’s draft claims that the court’s ruling would not imply that other constitutional rights, such as same-sex marriage or access to contraception, are in jeopardy. 
But given the brazen abandon with which he would discard abortion rights, his assurances ring hollow. He would inaugurate a terrifying new era in which Americans would lose faith in the court, distrust its members and suspect that what is the law today will not be tomorrow. 
They would justifiably fear that rights will be swept away because a heedless conservative fringe now controls the judiciary. 
I'm not sure Kavanaugh or Barrett or Alito or Thomas are intelligent enough to understand what they are doing but maybe Gorsuch can be convinced.
Here in Canada, Freeland made a strong statement in the House:
Read more »
Posted by at 3 comments:

Friday, October 14, 2011

Choosing your side

5f7b4 Technology occupy wall street What Is The Driving Occupy Wall Street Movement? [Pics]
I wrote several years ago that we usually don't get to choose our battles, we only get to choose our side.
Now that the Occupy movement is spreading, and crackdowns are increasingly likely, Montreal Simon says its time to decide. He quotes Truthdig's Chris Hedges:
There are no excuses left. Either you join the revolt taking place on Wall Street and in the financial districts of other cities across the country or you stand on the wrong side of history. Either you obstruct, in the only form left to us, which is civil disobedience, the plundering by the criminal class on Wall Street and accelerated destruction of the ecosystem that sustains the human species, or become the passive enabler of a monstrous evil. Either you taste, feel and smell the intoxication of freedom and revolt or sink into the miasma of despair and apathy. Either you are a rebel or a slave.
Posted by at No comments:

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Andrew Coyne fails democracy.

Andrew Coyne has come out with one of the thinnest arguments ever produced for initiating a national political debate on abortion: It's undemocratic to have a country without an abortion law.

Luckily, Dr. Dawg does a complete dissection of Coyne's strange theory and shines some light in corners young Andrew didn't quite cover.

There is something which attracted my attention, however and it is how Coyne views the current situation. That of Dr. Morgentaler being appointed to the Order of Canada.

The furor over Henry Morgentaler's appointment to the Order of Canada, on the other hand, now that is about abortion. There may be some who object out of a disinterested concern for fairness, on the principle that an honour bestowed on behalf of all of the people of Canada should not be given to a man whose life's work is, still, so profoundly upsetting to so many Canadians. But for most people, it's about abortion. In honouring him, we are honouring it, normalizing it, stamping it with the seal of approval.

Or rather not abortion, as such, but the legal void that surrounds it, which Morgentaler did so much to bring about: the extraordinary fact that, 20 years after the Supreme Court ruling that bears his name, this country still has no abortion law of any kind. It isn't that abortion — at any stage of a pregnancy, for any reason, and at public expense — is lawful in Canada. It is merely not unlawful. When it comes to abortion, we are literally a lawless society: the only country in the developed world that does not regulate the practice in any way.

Perhaps the members of the Order's advisory council thought the continuance of this legal void, after so many years, signalled a consensus had formed in its favour. Perhaps they thought, by naming Morgentaler, they could impress one upon the country. Either way, the decision was revealing — as was the reaction. The letters pages of the country's newspapers were filled for days with passionate denunciations. Members of Parliament spoke out against it by the dozen. Several members of the Order returned their pins.

Stop right there, Andrew, old boy.

Firstly, the furor you speak of is a very small group of very loud people. And you're quite right: among them are virulent racists, woman-haters and unrepentant bigots. The problem is that the only people we're hearing from are those people and those who are promoting their favourite religious agenda. The truth is, despite the hyperbole of newspapers filled with letters of protest and "dozens" of members of parliament making their usual flatulent noise, the majority of Canadians are not opposed to Dr. Morgentaler's appointment. Letters to the editor are not representative of public opinion when it's an organized campaign by one side.

Who has returned their decoration to Rideau Hall? A couple of people have said they are going to do it but to date, the Honours and Awards secretariat has reported that none have actually been returned. The initial "return the gong" movement started with a Catholic group announcing they were returning the Order of Canada insignia of the late Catherine de Hueck Doherty.

Guess what, Andrew. When you die, so does your Order of Canada. It doesn't get handed down. The medal itself is a legacy item - not a perpetual honour. Which puts at least one other award supposedly "returned" into the same category. And if you're at all feeling brave you can read LifeSite news (look it up yourself) where they announce that three other previous recipients of the Order of Canada are "returning" their awards but wish to remain anonymous. I'll bet they do too, because they're hoping to play into the emotions of their religious constituency, have this whole thing quickly blow over and then attend the next major cocktail party with that familiar piece of hardware hanging from their neck.

The remainder of your argument, Andrew, is specious at best. Democracy has worked this through, as Dr. Dawg has pointed out, and the result is that we need no law. We have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms which would supersede any law which imposed the will of a minority on over one-half the population as a form of subjugation.

And that is, whether you choose to recognize it or not, what this is all about. You say the anti-abortion noise machine has been effectively silenced. What utter hogwash. They're noisier today than they ever were in the past and they continue to represent a minority of the population.

What is really interesting though, Andrew, is your take on how all this works. That somehow democracy demands that the government get to work introducing some form of legislation and then we, the unwashed masses, get to hear all sides of an argument, including the loud minority side for whom the legislation was placed in front of us in the first place.

Quaint, but wrong. That is democracy turned on its head. The politicians work for us; not the other way around.

How is it "democracy" when we only get to choose from a menu produced by a political class? Yes, I realize that is the conservative view of democracy, but most of us don't adhere to the dogma of conservative politics. That being, "I will direct you. You will comply. In return I will guarantee to protect you from (fill in the blank)." Honestly, Andrew, the cost of such a deal is just to high. And it still boils down to putting over one-half of the population of this country on trial for the freedoms they are guaranteed.

Politicians are like dogs. They constantly think of their own survival, no matter how comfortable they are. In that we elect them, they are all too aware that inflaming the people with a debate in which they do not want to engage, to satisfy a minority group whose position is borne out of some religious doctrine, would be guaranteed political suicide.

It isn't a brave politician that will start such a debate; it is a stupid one.

Democracy says the people will decide; not the politicians, the pundits or the columnists. The people have decided that there is no need for a law, either way. I know that's a hard pill for a conservative to swallow.

Try not to choke on it.

Cross posted from The Galloping Beaver

Posted by at No comments:

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Hegemony, smegemony

There is a saying which goes something like this: better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
Bill Clinton was smart enough to make sure the United States kept its mouth closed [insert snarky joke here and read on] But George Bush and Dick Cheney actually believed all the hoke and hype about how the United States was the world's only superpower and how the leader of the United States was the leader of the world and how the United States could do anything it liked, striding the globe like a colossus.
So they started flapping their gums, so to speak. And now the world is sneering.
Ian Welsh writes:
Walk with me a while and imagine you are mad. Crazy. Insane. It's an interesting sort of insanity where you see the world as something other than it is. You are dead convinced that people are out to get you, but these people have almost no means to harm you and fear your retaliation greatly, because you're a powerful person and they are weak.
You believe that you are hale and hearty, but in fact you're ghastly, obese and ill. You think you're rich, but in fact you're poor . . . Your once lean body, packed with muscles, has been replaced by a flaccid one, paunchy and fat . . . The "you" I'm referring to, as I'm sure many have figured out by now, is the US.
It starting to dawn on them now -- with the largest miliary budgets in history they've spent seven years fighting wars against teenagers; their president visits the Middle East and nobody cares; the housing bubble and the plummeting markets of the last week have demonstrated uncomfortable weakness in the American economy. The New York Times piles on:
. . . Many saw the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as the symbols of a global American imperialism; in fact, they were signs of imperial overstretch. Every expenditure has weakened America’s armed forces, and each assertion of power has awakened resistance in the form of terrorist networks, insurgent groups and “asymmetric” weapons like suicide bombers. America’s unipolar moment has inspired diplomatic and financial countermovements to block American bullying and construct an alternate world order . . . now, rather than bestriding the globe, we are competing — and losing — in a geopolitical marketplace alongside the world’s other superpowers: the European Union and China. This is geopolitics in the 21st century: the new Big Three. . . . The Big Three make the rules — their own rules — without any one of them dominating. And the others are left to choose their suitors in this post-American world.
And Atrios concludes:
it's been quite obvious for some time that the neocons who dreamt of American hegemony have basically destroyed it.
On a side note, the NYT also writes:
Condoleezza Rice has said America has no “permanent enemies,” but it has no permanent friends either.
To which I must add, except Canada. Right or wrong, through thick or thin, sink or swim, we're stuck with 'em.
Posted by at No comments:

Saturday, June 03, 2006

Harper's war on gay people: I know which side I'm on.



Harper has declared war on gay people. Again. And once again, this is not a fight Canadians wanted. But fight we will.
Dave over at Galloping Beaver lets us know that petulant little Stevie is blinded by the right -- he is pandering to the wingnuts by announcing a vote about gay marriage in the fall.
[The] religious right . . . wanted a vote delayed long enough to mount an intensive campaign and to lobby, threaten or otherwise secure the votes of MPs . . . This is nothing more than proof that the religious right commands a priviledged position in the Conservative Party and that we can expect their homophobic, anti-abortion, bigoted perspective to be advanced at any opportunity.
So now we all get to listen to a whole summer of "well, of course I'm not prejudiced against gay people but I really do believe that civil unions are good enough for the likes of them!" Subtext: you should be glad we let you ride on our bus at all, so just sit at the back and be grateful!
And so to anyone who dishes out the "I'm not prejudiced" argument, I repeat what I said back in January:
We don't get to choose the battle. We only get to choose our side.
I have been thinking lately about how to reply to the apparently-reasonable-sounding argument that I hear from Conservatives and religious people that a person can support gay rights without supporting gay marriage.
But you can't. Not anymore.
We don't get to choose the battle.
No one decided that the second world war would start in defense of Poland. But once Germany invaded, no one could just sit back any longer and say "Sorry, boys, can't fight now because we just aren't organized well enough quite yet. Let's put this off until something else outrageous happens."
No one decided that the right to have an abortion should define the women's movement. But this issue came to symbolize the most basic right, for women to control their own bodies, and therefore people who do not support a woman's right to choose are not feminists and cannot claim to be.
No one decided that the black civil rights movement would make its bones through a bus boycott in Montgomery. But once this boycott began, the black people of Montgomery had to keep on walking no matter how tired they were and how violent things became. The people couldn't say "Sorry, boys, this is really inconvenient for everybody, so can you please take your cause to some other city?" No, Montgomery became a battle that had to be won.
And so it is now with gay marriage. The battle is real and immediate and personal to many gay people, but its has also become symbolic. The Christian Right hysteria against gay marriage is one of the factors that has made this battle so important, because the core of their opposition to gay marriage is bigotry and hate against gay people, which cannot be allowed to win.
When someone says "I don't support gay marriage but this doesn't mean I am a bigot", this simply isn't true. Not anymore. The battle lines have been drawn.
The choice is which side you are on.
You ARE a bigot if you don't support gay marriage.
Posted by at No comments:

Thursday, January 26, 2006

We can only choose our side


We don't get to choose the battle. We only get to choose our side.
I have been thinking lately about how to reply to the apparently-reasonable-sounding argument that I hear from Conservatives and religious people that a person can support gay rights without supporting gay marriage.
But you can't. Not anymore.
We don't get to choose the battle.
No one decided that the second world war would start in defense of Poland. But once Germany invaded, no one could just sit back any longer and say "Sorry, boys, can't fight now because we just aren't organized well enough quite yet. Let's put this off until something else outrageous happens."
No one decided that the right to have an abortion should define the women's movement. But this issue came to symbolize the most basic right, for women to control their own bodies, and therefore people who do not support a woman's right to choose are not feminists and cannot claim to be.
No one decided that the black civil rights movement would make its bones through a bus boycott in Montgomery. But once this boycott began, the black people of Montgomery had to keep on walking no matter how tired they were and how violent things became. The people couldn't say "Sorry, boys, this is really inconvenient for everybody, so can you please take your cause to some other city?" No, Montgomery became a battle that had to be won.
And so it is now with gay marriage. The battle is real and immediate and personal to many gay people, but its has also become symbolic. The Christian Right hysteria against gay marriage is one of the factors that has made this battle so important, because the core of their opposition to gay marriage is bigotry and hate against gay people, which cannot be allowed to win.
When someone says "I don't support gay marriage but this doesn't mean I am a bigot", this simply isn't true. Not anymore. The battle lines have been drawn.
The choice is which side you are on.
You ARE a bigot if you don't support gay marriage.
Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)