a scratch pad for half-formed thoughts by a liberal political junkie who's nobody special. ''Hard Heads, Soft Hearts'' is the title of a book by Princeton economist Alan Blinder, and tends to be a favorite motto of neoliberals, especially liberal economists.
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Arthur Silber - Ordinary Evil

David Plotz - The Bulldozer rolls on.

. . .The tough-Jews philosophy was coupled with scorn for Arabs. In his autobiography, Warrior, Sharon depicts Arabs as infantile, timorous, and untrustworthy. As one former U.S. official who knows him puts it, Sharon has the same condescending disregard for Arabs that Southern plantation-owners had for blacks. . .

. . .Some old soldiers want to fade away: Sharon would rather spend his dotage stifling the intifada that he helped create. He believes there has never been a normal day in Israel. And if he has his way, there will never be one.

The only update to Plotz's piece is that there's no longer any "if". After these recent murders of Iranian scientists, Israel has plumbed new depths, doing things the Americans & Russians chose not to do the Nazi scientists, the Americans & Russians, the Indians & Chinese, the South & North Koreans, the Pakistanis & Indians, chose not to do to each other, no matter how much they may have hated and feared one another. If India had tried to murder Pakistani scientists, it would not have stopped Pakistan, obviously, from pursuing their nuclear program, and these murders of Iranian scientists are not going to stop Iran, also obviously.

And if the logic of these murders is accepted and endorsed, there are many, many, more murders coming on the way. There are thousands of Iranian teenagers with the talent and desire to improve their country's military capability. Is Israel going to murder all of them too?

If the logic behind these murders is accepted, the Israeli vision of the future is of a white-skinned boot stomping on a brown-skinned face, forever.

I believe redemption is possible for everyone and everything, even these recent murders. But not unless you want it.

next blog post: Jan. 27

posted by Anonymous at 5:30 PM