4 eyes for an eye
Hamas militants broke three weeks of relative calm in Gaza on Tuesday, setting off a bomb in what they said was an elaborate scheme that included a tunnel and a double agent. The attack killed an Israeli soldier and triggered Israeli retaliation that killed four Palestinian gunmen.
IBRAHIM BARZAK/Guardian UK 07. Dec.04
"They said" - plus you can't tell from the paragraph as written who dug the tunnel, who was the agent. Plus the "retaliation" is not a "they said" it's an "is". It's implacable, inevitable, ineluctable, an unstoppable force of nature. But what it does say unequivocally is this is a vengeful people, to whom revenge is not a questionable act.
So when we see this:
Israeli forces kill "unarmed, wounded" Palestinian
we know it's an act of retribution, necessary, mandated, a strong gesture of wholesome retaliation. Another sacred act by the Chosen People.
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Now the really arcane part opens up.
Before the rise of Al Capone to the nation's "Most Wanted" list, there was a presence in America, that was Italian, criminal, and had all the attributes now associated with "mafia" activities. But it wasn't called "the mafia" because that word wasn't common yet. Words like "dago" "guinea" "wop" and others were used, but you can see how anyone of Italian parentage would be lumped in with whoever was being described, and unfairly maligned. Once people had a name like "mafia" they could distinguish the criminal gangsters from the sons and daughters of decent law-abiding immigrants. Not that there weren't decent mafiosi, not that it isn't far more complex than simple terminology - the main point is that there was no way to even begin to discuss what was happening with people outside the events, no way to describe what was happening to those who weren't witnesses, because there was no word for who was doing it.
We don't have a word like that to distinguish Meyer Lansky from the Jews of his time, even though Lansky was more powerful than Capone. And most pertinent to this issue, Lansky was the vice-lord of Cuba under Bautista, before the revolution that brought Castro to power. There is a direct connection between what happened in Cuba when Castro came to power and a hazy, ill-defined, but increasingly powerful Jewish criminal underworld.
The common perception is there's only three major players in the Cuban situation:
Communists under Castro, small "d" democrats under the current American regime, and those loud and powerful "Cubans" down in Florida.
What I'm saying is there's an invisible fourth party here, and a seriously vindictive, retaliatory one. Lansky's heirs. A group of people we don't have a name for, who want revenge, as they wanted revenge in Babylon for wrongs suffered two millenia ago, and are getting it. It seems preposterous when looked at as an idea, but when you watch the news, and listen to the contemporary voices of the powerful, it's obviously possible. I'm saying it's what is, that's what's happening here. Revenge and retaliation.
So when Bush talks about treating Cuba to an "extreme democracy makeover" similar to the one Iraq's currently privileged to be experiencing, it's from within the context of his puppetry, and his servile obedience to those nebulous hands.
Haiti was invaded at their command as well, though the roots of the cause of that invasion are more hidden than any of the others.President George W. Bush will be committed during his second term to the "liberation of Cuba" by extending moral and political support to the Cuban people, a top State Department official said Friday. committed
Roger Noriega, who heads the department's Latin American bureau, also said once Cuban President Fidel Castro is no longer in power, the United States is ready to support broad economic and political changes in Cuba "to ensure that vestiges of the regime don't hold on."
[...]
The plan is spelled out in a report released last May and overseen by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. The assistance is conditional on whether Cuba is on a "democratic path" and whether such assistance is requested.
Having the Cubans make a gesture of solidarity with the Palestinian people just adds fuel to the fire.
Trying to get Americans to see these connections is a wonderfully impossible task. But an exhilirating one, all in all.
