Sumner viz the opening of American Imperialism

against American Imperialism

Personal Update: Computer woes & yard activities

So the LSI PCI Express Ultra320 SCSI Single-Channel Host Bus Adapter which controls my boot drive in my home workstation suddenly died. Fortunately my controller is only 4 months away from being out of warranty. But so far it looks as if they will replace my card.

Since the RMA process even with the best companies can take a few weeks, my online presence, already reduced for increased reading load, will diminish as I am compelled to use other computers for access to the 'net.

Like I asked on the facebook, is this a sign from God that I should not spend as much time on the computer or is this just normal chaos from a fallen universe? I don't know why it is that I expect things to go well on any given day, because it so seldom happens that there is no trouble in a day. Even Jesus said, "sufficient unto the day is the evil therein." (Matt 6:34b)

Anyway, as I spend time working on outdoor stuff on the house, and waiting for parts for my computer, I will be forced to shed my addictive obsession with the information ocean. It's a good thing, right?

Peace Out.

History of Zionism minus the propaganda

Blood Brothers, exp. ed. by Elias Chacour

From pages 122 to 135:

What was the true story of Palestine? I was aware as never before that people in the West held a view that went something like this. The Jewish people, have suffered tremendous persecution, needed a haven--a national homeland. Their Zionist leaders had chosen the "uninhabited" land of Palestine. Supposedly, the surrounding Arab nations were naturally antagonistic and jealous that the Jewish settlers had turned a wasteland into a paradise. They had risen unprovoked against the Jews, forcing them to fight a valiant War of Independence in 1948.

But I had grown up in Palestine in those years and that was not the full story, nor was it especially correct. I had witnessed a terribly ironic twist of history in which the persecuted became the persecutor. As one of its victims, I had seen the cruel face of Zionism.

Now I determined to find out how a peaceful movement that had begun with a seemingly good purpose--to end the persecution of the Jewish people--had become such a destructive, oppressive force.

Along with that determination, I was driven by a respect for history that Father had planted in me. Did the seeds of our future hope lie buried in our past, as he had so often said?

Aside from my seminary studies I began to spend hours in the libraries of Paris, hunting down books and news reports on the true history of the Zionists and the Palestine disaster. Whole books and reports unifying these accounts would not be published until years later. Yet my study pieced together a startling, documented story.

In 1897, I learned, a conference had convened in Basle, Switzerland, to "lay the foundation stone of the house which was to shelter the Jewish nation." The director of the gathering was a prominent writer named Theodor Herzl. He had fathered in Europe a new political movement called Zionism--an inspiring movement that hoped to rescue the downtrodden, impoverished and humiliated Jews in the big city ghettoes [sic]. By the end of the conference the delegates had agreed on two points--a flag and an anthem, the symbols of their unity and purpose. Beyond the pomp and emotional fervor the delegates were split on the location of this homeland that was being pushed by the leadership: Palestine.

Immediately, many disputed Herzl's statement that Palestine was a "land without a people, waiting for a people without a land." Though Herzl had been willing contemplate settlement in Argentina or Uganda as alternatives, his sights were clearly set on the Middle East. It was to this proposal that many delegates primarily and strenuously objected. By what right could Zionists expect to create a state in Palestine? It was a land with established borders and, more importantly, it had long been inhabited by people of an ancient, respectable culture. A homeland in Palestine, they declared with the overtones of a heinous prophecy, would have to be forgotten--or else established by force.

Devout Jews within and without the movement--particularly the Orthodox--fervently argued that Zionism was a blasphemy, because the elite, non-religious Jews felt that Zionism was the only Messiah Israel would ever have. Such talk incensed the religious, as did hints of militarism that already colored the fringes of the movement. Others, less religious and more pragmatic, believed that Zionism would feed anti-Semitism [sic] since it underscored the long-criticized "exclusiveness" of the Jewish people. They saw clearly that no land could be simply, peacefully "resettled" without violence.

Therefore, to appease the religious consciences the Zionist leaders adopted the principles of non-violence embodied in the Jewish Havlaga. This helped to rally support of the masses, the multiple millions who desperately hoped for an escape from the growing pogroms against them in Europe. Yet the leaders continued to formulate designs on Palestine. Though Herzl would not live much beyond the turn of the century, others would push his plans forward.

In Palestine, my own people were under too tight a thumb to take much notice of a conference in Basle, even if they had known of it. In the early 1900s, ours was also a downtrodden people, struggling and praying for freedom from our own oppressors. For hundreds of years we had suffered under the iron heel of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. When World War I engulfed the Middle East, the empire had begun to totter.

After the war, as the empire crumbled, the Palestinian people felt the first winds of freedom. The League of Nations bore their hopes aloft further by proposing a plan that would help "subject peoples." Larger, powerful nations would assist weaker nations in establishing their own independent governments. This was known as the Mandate system.

The British, who desired a foothold of power in the Middle East, saw in the Mandate system a great opportunity. Secretly, they made a proposal to Palestinian leaders: The British would help oust the Turks; in return, they would set up a temporary Mandate government in Palestine with the promise that they would slowly withdraw, leaving an established, independent country governed by the Palestinians themselves. In desperation, the Palestinian leaders agreed to this strategy. Freedom was in sight--or so they supposed--and little notice was given to the tiny Jewish agricultural communities that were sprouting in a seemingly scattered fashion across the landscape.

What I learned next in my readings truly saddened me. Once the British rule was established, the story became convoluted with political intrigues and double-dealings.

Immediately, the British met in secret with the French and Russians to divide the Middle East into "spheres of influence" with Palestine to be governed, not by the people of Palestine as promised, but by an international administration. The secret agreement was uncovered several years later, in 1917, when the Bolsheviks overthrew the czarist regime and could not resist making public such "imperialist" duplicity. Palestinian leaders were dismayed at this news and at once sent delegates to the British to protest. They chose the diplomatic route while an elite group, whose sights were set on Palestine, had already begun influencing British bureaucrats.

The year 1917 will forever be scarred with the brand of infamy for the Palestinian people. The Zionists had aligned themselves with Great Britain's Christian Restorationists, a group that believed they might bring to pass--by manipulating world events and reestablishing the nation of Israel--the Second Coming of Christ. The Zionists ignored this view, but the benefits of such a plan for them were obvious. They saw in Britain's new hold on Palestine their secret inroad to the Middle East, and so began a strange marriage between Zionist and Restorationist. It was in 1917 that the British Lord Arthur Balfour made his famous declaration--not in public at first, but privately in a letter to the powerful Lord Rothschild.

Lord Balfour wrote that the Cabinet "viewed with favor the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine. And in the same letter; with the stroke of a pen, he reclassified the people of Palestine--ninety-two percent of the population--as "non-Jewish communities." Not only did this renege on the promise of independence, but it effectively handed over Palestine to the Zionists. The prime mover behind the British decision was the Zionist leader, Chaim Weizmann.

If Lord Balfour was acting out of his own religious conviction or a love for the Jewish people, as some historians declared, I was unconvinced. In 1906, he had played a major part in passing the Aliens Act, which expressly sought to exclude Jews from Great Britain.
Nor was Lord Balfour oblivious of the political treachery in which he was enwebbed. In 1919, in a memorandum to the British Cabinet, he declared:

In Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country. So far as Palestine is concerned, (we) have made no statement of fact which is not admittedly wrong, and no declaration of policy which at least in the letter (we) have not always intended to violate.

To me, it seemed that the Zionists had entered into an unholy marriage, an alliance motivated by power and convenience, consummated in treachery.

At once, Palestinian leaders were dismayed. For the next sixteen years they continually presented their fears to the British through diplomatic channels, appealing continually to royal commissions while unrest grew throughout Palestine. And the Zionists, funded by international money collected by the Jewish Agency, rapidly settled kibbutzim in a clearer and clearer pattern throughout Palestine, slowly forming the skeletal outlines of the land they meant to declare as their homeland.

Through the 1920s, European immigration to Palestine rose dramatically and the Zionist leaders became less and less guarded about their plan. Weizmann told an American secretary of state that he hoped "Palestine would ultimately become as Jewish as England is English." And thereafter, another Zionist leader told British officials, "There can only be one National Home in Palestine, and that a Jewish one, and no equality in the partnership between Jews and Arabs, but a Jewish predominance as soon as the numbers of that race are sufficiently increased."

Increasingly, many Zionists themselves were ill at ease with those who insisted on Jewish "predominance" in Palestine. Yitzhak Epstein, an agriculturalist, had warned an international congress of the Zionist Party that they had wrongly consulted every political power that held sway over Palestine without consulting the Palestinians themselves. He feared the fact that Palestinian peasants had already lost so much land as a result of Zionist purchases from absentee landlords, and that this loss was sure to breed resentment. He argued ...

W: LP: GRP: CP: Boneshaker

Boneshaker by Cherie Priest

I just started this novel, so more comments may follow beyond these next few words. Imagine the 19th century, compressed, twisted, and an unusual fantastic element added, and you have the Steampunk universe of this story. I like how the style of the beginning of the story is very like many nineteenth century stories I have read. More later...