tcpip | Taxing Times, Timor Truth, Don't Debate Zionism, Red Friday and CCNA

This Thursday I'm honoured to be the speaker at the Prosper Australia annual dinner. If you're interested in a little rant on why there is one good tax and one good expenditure in this world please RSVP and come along. Tax is, of course, quite an issue at the moment with both the right-wing of the Labor Party and the left wing of the Liberal Party tinkering at the problem. Meanwhile New Zealanders show great stupidity by supporting tax cuts so large that it will require government debt.

Regular readers may remember that on numerous occassions I've called into question the rather dubious series of intelligence events surrounding Australia and East Timor which led to hundreds of people being killed and the dislocation of a quarter of a million human beings. At long last, the first level of admission. The Australian government has admitted that Lt-Col Lance Collins was right after all. Australia admits information to troops cut off during East Timor crisis.

Melbourne Ports MP Michael Danby is so annoyed that a fellow Jew may have a dissenting opinion on the Zionist state that he's called for Melbourne University to pull publication before the book even has a title let alone contents. Crikey of course couldn't miss out on an opportunity to publish this fact. One thing can be sure about the Zionist Right, they sure can't stand any debate, discussion or investigation of the religious state. Danby's behaviour can only be described as intellectual cowardice. But that happens when one has a religious approach to politics; sometimes one's "holy beliefs" get challenged.

Managed to get a Red Friday out last Friday week on community development and IT. A second one is due next Friday. I was hoping to have some CCNA semester 1 notes for

v3nu5, but that will have to wait until tomorrow night - I have my semester 1 theory exam on Wednesday night having completed the practical last week. All good.

Met

curufea from Canberra on Saturday, discussed game design over coffee. RuneQuest IV playtest group met on Sunday (seven players!), much fun even if the current playtest pack requires some serious tweaking. Labor for Refugees inspired Tampa remembrance rally was well attended in Melbourne; over 1,000 people. Other events interstate, but I have heard no news.

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My Mother-in-Law apparently went out with Danby once, many years ago. As far as she has described him, and insofar as he is like her, he is probably not what you would call an overly observant Jew. That he gets mileage from being Jewish is another thing, especially in our electorate. It's a bit like being Irish in Boston.

The Israel thing is not religious, as I understand the phenomenon. Yes, religion can get involved very easily, but that doesn't explain why so many Australian Jews of a certain age are so predominantly Right, even if non-observant.
It is more a cultural thing: these are people who have been raised their whole lives on stories of haShoah, whose families were decimated or annihilated in places like Dachau and Auschwitz, whose parents or parents' friends had tattoos on their wrists ... and who had spent their entire lives being told that Israel as a country was the only protection for Jews as a religion, as a race, and as individuals.

After that amount of lifelong and intense investment in the idea of Israel As Saviour, these people (including my MIL) simply refuse to hear any talk about the mistreatment of Palestinians, or endemic racism against Israeli Arabs, or that many of the formative wars could have been avoided if Israel had wanted, or...
Indeed, to keep the ideas of Israel As Saviour consistent with, eg., the killing of children by snipers, or taking out a city block from an Apache to kill one man, a large amount of rationalisation occurs. Thus the Gunship must have been the only way to achieve the mission, the sniper missed, or the child got caught in crossfire. The Palestinians as a group are subhuman and undeserving of pity -- they must be, to keep Israel's purity and its behaviour consistent.

It would be, I think, a bit like learning that your dearly loved grandfather is a mass-murdering rapist. It goes against so many foundational tenets that the brain simply shuts off any input. It would take a superhuman psyche to overcome that sort of upbringing.

The trick is not to let, eg., the Anti-Defamation League (aka the "How dare you criticise Israel at all, ever, you Anti-Semite!" League) exercise the sort of censorship powers which they want to.

Being an pro-Israel bigot does not necessarily mean being comparable to Sharon...

It seems to be the same sort of thinking that infects the US, to the point where some people over there believe that WMD were found, or that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11. The have developed an "immune system" response to any facts or opinions that contratict what they "know" and that forms the basis for their whole moral and ethical system.

In other words... They've had a psychic lobotomy..

Quite correct of course. To many it's more about supporting a pro-US colonial regime in Semitic lands , as much as it is pitched as "the Promised Land" to the anti-modernist religious types.

Just for the record, I consider myself a supporter of left-wing Zionism (like Hannah Arendt, or Noam Chomsky). In other words, I support the idea of homeland for religious Jews. I agree that should be in the historical Palestine. However, it is the idea that there should be an exclusive and discriminatory State for that purpose which I cannot allow to go without criticism.

I'd like to see that principle applied to all homelands.

I suspect that it's you and I versus powerful vested intrests :/

Well, it's good to see that the rational debate of contrary views is so firmly entrenched in Right-wing Israeli/Zionist culture.

My country, right or wrong...

Taxing Times, Timor Truth, Don't Debate Zionism, Red Friday and CCNA

Just lie on that couch over there, Dr Catsidhe is in session.

Re: Just lie on that couch over there, Dr Catsidhe is in session.

Re: Just lie on that couch over there, Dr Catsidhe is in session.

Re: Just lie on that couch over there, Dr Catsidhe is in session.

Re: Just lie on that couch over there, Dr Catsidhe is in session.

Re: Just lie on that couch over there, Dr Catsidhe is in session.

Re: Just lie on that couch over there, Dr Catsidhe is in session.

Re: Just lie on that couch over there, Dr Catsidhe is in session.