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Nathan Newman on the tragedy of Israel and Palestina:

And I make these comparisons to highlight what I am not saying. I would never say that Israelis are uniquely evil, only that they have backed themselves into a horrific policy, much as many other nations have, step by step, accepted the dehumanization of another people for reasons that seemed so acceptable at the time. Focusing on Hitler misses the point– the issue is how a people– German, American, Israeli — can accept policies that violate every sense of decency against another people, no matter how logical or necessary it seemed at the time, whatever justification was offered by its government at the time.

The sad fact is how easy it has been in history, repeatedly, for this kind of degradation to happen and how easy many people find it to justify it at the time.

What pains me most is that when I was in Israel and the West Bank in 1999, it was so clear that both Jews and Palestinians I met wanted peace, yet they could not quite pull away from destruction, as the Israelis kept building settlement walls throughout the Oslo process, constricting the potential movement of the Palestinians even as they promised freedom. And eventually, the reality of walls overrode the promises of freedom, and the second Intifada broke out.

Brisbane

John Quiggin reports on the peace march
and then examines Blair’s moral case for war with Iraq.

Like millions of others, I went to a peace rally yesterday. There were about 50 000 people in Brisbane*. I think it’s clear that the case for an immediate war aimed at getting rid of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction has not convinced the majority of Australians. That could change, given new evidence, but it’s clearly going to take a lot more than we have seen so far.

[* Crowd estimates are always tricky. The march took about an hour to pass any given point. Assuming 15 people per second passed each point (the marchers were about 15 abreast) that would make 3600*15= 54 000.]

Acceptable racism

Orcinus, who should really lay off the “smart quotes”, on why bigotry against Asian -Americans is een as more acceptable than other forms of racism:

Ignoring bigotry about Asians in fact underscores white Americans? unspoken attitudes about blacks as well. That is, they know that there is now a great social stigma attached to expressing commonly held views about blacks — that they are stupid and lazy and inclined to criminality, especially. So of course they don?t dare to express it, even if they may privately believe it. And even if they don?t believe it, they?re perfectly aware that this is the baseline view of African-Americans.

But when it comes to Asians, they don?t hold those particular views. Thus, by this logic, their attitudes about Asians can?t be bigoted — even though these views are that they are inscrutable and untrustworthy and, ultimately, insect-like.

Rome

From American Samizdat:

Chiara and I went to the manifestation yesterday. Participating were 2 – 3 million people (here there are always post-manifestation polemics regarding the actually number) and local news claims that Rome had the biggest turnout worldwide. Most everyone had a rainbow colored banner with PACE written on it. Groups of children were also present, their slogan being: pace – pace- la guerra non ci piace. And I ran into my next door neighbor who walked with a group of women aged post 50. Their slogan was: soldati, terroristi, noi siamo femministi. For awhile Chiara and I walked behind a van blasting Viet Nam era music and we all started singing along stuff like: the answer my friend is blowing in the wind. It was really all alot of fun.

Glasgow

From Perspective: