Escalation of Hostilities in Middle East

#465 by masadi on July 25, 2006 4:33pm PT

comrade masadi: do the math...

71% of Indians + 41% of Chinese >= muslim population of the world...

Contrary to tahmed`s BS ``proof`` on the image of America in the world, here is an actual tabulation of surveys over the years by Pew:



PEW GLOBAL ATTITUDES PROJECT

Note that the only country in which the positive image of America went up, (pre and post 9/11 compared) was ironically Lebanon, (data on India pre 9/11 is unavailable, though they have the highest #) now, if a survey was conducted today, it would be the lowest of the low in Lebanon. Also note that this is happening in an atmosphere of immense exposure to all the imagined positives (slogans and images) that the US pushes, using massive monetary inputs, to the world as a conseaquence of its media, movies and cultural hegemony.

tahmad......i think hezbollah will be more popular after this. whether they should or shouldn`t be, is a separate debate. but they will be.

there are five muslim democracies or fledgling democracies in the middle east: palestine, turkey, iran, iraq and lebanon. the first four have islamic govts. in power. the fifth had a minority islamic govt. and a majority pro-west non-religious one. now the fifth may go the religious way also.

i think people go through two phases when they are attacked: first they try to look after life and limb and save their assets. but i think after a certain point, when everything is destroyed, they don`t care about those things. it becomes an issue of national self respect and dignity.

having one`s country violated, for whatever reason, is similar to having one`s self violated physically. it eventually turns into a feeling of helplessness and humilitation. imagine if pakistan was bombed ruthlessly and pakistanis were helpless. would anyone care, after a while, what reasonings were given. this is the stage lebanese are in. even their govt. has now said they will fight alongside hezbollah.

at this point, the lebanese will support and respect anyone who fights for them. someone who doesn`t back down. whether he wins or loses is secondary. it is no longer about two or nine prisoners, anymore. in addition, they will support anyone who offers them social services in this crises.

fighting and provide grassroots social services is where islamic parties excel, as recognized by western commentators also. so if this analysis is correct, the fourth fledgling muslim democracy in the middle east is going in the direction of religious govt. after this.

i think bush must be steaming mad at israelis for doing this. lebanon was the model cedar revolutlon he advertised to the whole world. the last thing he needed was another country`s population against him, and that too led by a shia islamic militant group.

so mullahs are becoming popular, not because they are mullahs. but they seem to be the only ones who are willing to fight. and a situation where violence is going on is where they will gain the most prominence.

Hamidm writes <<< ............ it is a small price to pay to get rid of the hezbollah critters - why, just yesterday i paid the pest control guy almost three hundred dollars to set traps to catch the critter that has been running around in my attic .......... >>>

If somebody did to your children and family what Israel has been doing for decades in Palestine and Lebanon, then I am quite sure you wouldn`t come up with this prepostrous nonsense. Within the empire of stereotypes you`ve constructed, the suffering of millions of real people whose lives have just ended, frozen for decades because of what Israel has done is too distant for you to comprehend in a humane fashion.


HP to Hamidm <<< I share your sentiments but I think people matter. whether they are israeli or arab is immaterial.

Will look you up in Detroit next time in a few months... >>>

HP sahib, you don`t have to share sentiments with AHs. This miserable *** is always ready to ``blow`` up things that he according to his stereotypes finds distasteful. He has no clue about how to reason and argue. You present a report and he throws out the name of Al-Franken, these people are walking talking logical fallacies. Every time they have been stumped by reason they cling to falsehood. Can you imagine a religious zealot overshooting them in how they cling to their beliefs in the ``Anglo Saxon Ethos`` and other official BS. If your ``sentiments`` are against ignorance, prejudice and sloganeering, then I suggest you distance yourself from these AHs since they don`t share in your sentiments. If on the other hand your sentiments involve blowing up places of worship as Hamid is suggesting, then he is in your camp. But in my opinion you are much smarter than attesting that. Let me give you an example of the ``reasoning`` skills of these ``enlightened`` folk.

tahmed writes in #459 <<< #shahbano #442: You, and too many Pakistanis, may think that the US is hated all over the world. But look at the only non-Pakistanis we have on chowk, the Indians. It is obvious to anyone who has been on chowk that the Indians look up to the US, seek to make their country prosperous like the uS. While they despise the Pakistanis and muslims.

And not just 1 billion Indians. Ask the europeans. Despite differences, the fact is that on 9/11 even the french said that ``we are all americans today``. >>>>

Here is a person who will spare no time, from the limited time that God has given him on this earth, to argue and prove the Indians wrong. However, when it comes to supporting his assertions on the Americans, he will show the same Indians as being the criteria of truth and falsehood. Then he thinks that just because ``the French`` by which he means the official spokespersons called themselves Americans after 9/11~ part of which is due to cultural hegemony and race and the stereotypes they hold of Muslims- he thinks that is the criteria for determining fact- ok then, so when the French called for a ceasefire early on, why didn`t you jump on the ``authority`` argument bandwagon and ask for one. This person is a walking talking logical fallacy. He will talk against dictatorship while supporting US global dictatorship, cry and wail against misuse of the public domain by officials in Pakistan yet support colonization and the ``Anglo Saxon`` ethos, which involves globalized misuse of the public domain. He will talk against dependency employment like domestic servants yet support the economic relationship with the US that produces just such dependency on a global level. He will talk about the state asserting its control in southern lebanon and in Waziristan where it concerns the poor public but will never ask for such state intervention where it refers to private enterprise of the rich industrialists. He is a walking talking garbage can.

Come on HP sahib, these AHs don`t deserve your support. Let me know when you are in detroit, maybe I can make a long detour and we can have a better conversation than this AH who drinks lattes as he calls for genocide against Muslims and Arabs.

source of the story:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/ad2b2a3e-1c07-11db-a555-0000779e2340.html

imagine the sickening death-like feeling you would experience were you to visit the kaaba and see a jewish temple standing in its place. that very feeling is experienced by a jew when he or she visits the most sacred jewish spot on earth - the western wall atop which sits the dome of the rock built smack dab on top of the holy of holies. so why do jews live with this feeling rather they could very easily get rid of it by destroying the dome? clues to the answer are found below:

Inside Lebanon: why Hizbollah may be winning the battle for hearts and minds
By Roula Khalaf

``...The men say their houses and businesses have been destroyed, but they insist the “party”, as Hizbollah is referred to by its constituency, is fighting for them and their people – and that it will not be cowed.

“We’re proud and we believe in our fate,” declares Mohamed, a father of five. “My aluminium plant has been ravaged but we’ve finally lifted the heads of the Arabs. What none of the Arab leaders could do – confront Israel – one person, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah [the Hizbollah chief] is now doing.”

Israel’s offensive has caused massive damage, killed more than 400 Lebanese, most of them civilians, and displaced over half a million others. More than 40 Israelis have died. Yet Israel has yet to achieve its objective: limiting the military capabilities and the political power of Hizbollah, a disciplined political party representing a large part of Lebanon’s largest minority which is backed by both Iran and Syria.

Instead, the offensive has incited Arab anger and elevated Mr Nasrallah to hero status in the Arab and Muslim world. It has also forced many of his political rivals in Beirut to mobilise against the Israeli onslaught, and shelve – for now, at least – their fury at the party that started the conflict.

Alarmingly for Israel, ordinary Lebanese, whether Shia, Sunni or Christian, are becoming convinced that the Jewish state, which invaded Lebanon in 1982, is waging war against the whole country...``

thank goodness real muslims are not the like the khussies found on this website.

tahmed
You are disappointing me. Now Indian Leaders do not become a puppy of US yet they are respected, in fact feared. No wonder Indians love U.S. Respect is mutual. You think if India & China were treated like dogs & words like ``mother Selling`` were uttered without a regret, an apology, or removal from position to show an iota of ``respect`` to the one who not only works for them as a donkey, grovels like a dog, and yet is treated as a leper be it clinton bush or anyone.

Do you feel proud as a Pakistani, even if you do not want to be mistaken as a muslim, that it is you they are talking about. In ``their`` eyes you are the Pakistani, you are the mulla, Islamist, muslim or whatever . Don`t you think you are mistaken by them Desi, a Paki, and a `mozlum`. Or how have you fooled them, tell me please that you are not one of us...your friends & relatives.

Thank you in advance for being honest. Is that a wrong expectation?

arjun #458 see, even monkey-men like you are not totally useless. I can use you to knock some sense into my beloved countrymen. ha! ha!

#457 by tahmed32 on July 25, 2006 2:44pm PT


While they despise the Pakistanis and muslims.


That`s right prophet tahmed(peace be unto your self-righteous left rear)...Indians are full of hatred..Pakis, OTOH, are full of the milk of human kindness and never support islamic terrorism(or when they do, it`s the Indians who make them do it)..

#shahbano #442: You, and too many Pakistanis, may think that the US is hated all over the world. But look at the only non-Pakistanis we have on chowk, the Indians. It is obvious to anyone who has been on chowk that the Indians look up to the US, seek to make their country prosperous like the uS. While they despise the Pakistanis and muslims.

And not just 1 billion Indians. Ask the europeans. Despite differences, the fact is that on 9/11 even the french said that ``we are all americans today``. I didnt hear anyone saying ``we are all these poor, conspiracy-theory weaving muslims today``. Look at china - do you think they look to the US or to muslim countries for inspiration? Their democracy movement even had the statue of liberty as their symbol!! And Russia? ask Putin what he thinks of muslims. Dont get misled by criticism of specific US policies - look instead at where people are putting their money where their mouth is.

These are the hard facts of life that you may hate me for bringing to you attention. Also read the last para. of my post to bulleya below. We in Pakistan feel safe due to the nuclear shield - like I write to bulleya, even that is not going to last forever. We have a window of a decade or so to fix our problems with rampant mullahism - or else we too could become another lebanon.

Zeemax.....in the end it comes down to power: military power, economic power, diplomatic power, power through alliances, media power. Whomever has it, can do whatever they want. The rest of the world can scream and shout, it doesn`t really matter.

Israel has so much military power that it can take on all its neighbors simultaneously and win comfortably. Its nuclear arsenal is second only to the USA. Its Air Force is amongst the top five. Every Israeli has to serve in the military for 3 years, giving them a million trained soldiers. It is a well-established democracy. It has the highest number of scientists per sq. ft in the world. It controls the most powerful lobby in the world in the USA.

Bascially, Israel can beat up on anyone in its neighborhood, whenever it wants. And does so. Any country that has power, be it USA, Russia, India, Pakistan or Togo that can beat up on weaker neighbors, does so.

I really don`t see much of a future for Palestinians. They will are slowly being uprooted. They`ll never be offered anything worthwhile in the form of a country. They have tried everything from passiveness, to politics to the UN, to human rights, to throwing rocks, to terrorism. Nothing has worked. Pretty soon they will not have any land left. There are more of them outside Palestine than inside. In the big historical scheme of things, no one will remember them. Much like no one remembers the Cherokee or the Apaches.

Having said that, I think the Israelis make a strategic error by relying on religion to select where they wanted their country. So they have many long term problems, also.

As for Lebanon, once the Israelis feel they have done all the bombing they want to do, they will stop. Not before then. Nothing much will have happened to Hezbollah. It will come out of the underground more popular in Lebanon than before. Olmert and Hasan Nasrullah`s ratings at the polls will go way up. While the rest of the country will be in taters. And we will be back to square one, as we always are.

#438 bulleya: Regardless of how this conflict ends, one thing is for sure - lebanese people are dying and the hezbullah are too busy hiding themselves to be able to do anything to protect them.

If war is too important to be left to the generals, it is certainly too important to be left to the mullahs. What were the persian mullahs thinking when they gave thousands of katyusha missiles to the hezbullah mullahs? What were the hezbullah mullahs thinking when they started tossing those missiles into israel and kidnapping their border guards?

Of course these mullahs should be disarmed and military power should be controlled only by properly elected leaders who are accountable to their people for acting in a responsible manner. And if muslims dont do it, there is no shortage or capability in the rest of the world to do it. As the israelis are demonstrating. That is the lesson of lebanon that we pakistanis must learn. Even the nuclear shield gives us protection for only a decade or two I think, given technological advancements that people are blissfully aware - after that all bets are off.

#452

I share your sentiments but I think people matter. whether they are israeli or arab is immaterial.

Will look you up in Detroit next time in a few months...

#450

It is a paid service and got nothing to do with dems....

Dispute the content if you can, it is just an analysis...Dispute what is analyzed.

What do they say ``Aam say matlab, ghutlion ka kiya karana ``( or something like that)

hp......

and one more thing - please don`t quote al franken and those other clowns on air america ........... by the way, has anyone ever heard air america ?

the nelson report, indeed ! ......... next thing we know you will be quoting echoboom ....

p.s next time you are in detroit, look me up ..... we agree on more stuff than we disagree on - as far as i am concerned i just can`t get too excited about what happens to the arabs ...... for all i care the israelis can blow up kaaba and you wouldn`t hear a peep out of me ............

Re: # 450

hp,

...... who is nelson and where can i find this ``one of the most reliable sources for inside information in this administration`` ? ....... and who says it is reliable - the democrats ?

......... i gave up smoking that stuff about 25 years ago !