Questions [mostly political...]

Questions [mostly political...]....

		Isn't it [long past...] time America stood up and opposed Zionist extremists' obsession to realize their biblical prophesies (and/or secular territorial ambitions...) in Palestine without regard to the consequences for the Palestinians[*], for their own fellow moderate Israelis, or for anything or anybody else, including possibly causing another world war by exacerbating Islamic fundamentalism?

		All ideological fanatics (aka: *true believers), despite whatever differences in their nominal credos, are alike in their determination to realize their dogmatic fantasy world on earth by any and all means they can avail themselves of.[fn.41] In their zeal to make reality conform to their ideological ideal, they will do anything and everything, including even annihilating themselves (which is the other way their Crusade, Jihad, purification of sin and return to the True Law or whatever they call it, can come to an end). They can even be "secular": "Aut Caesar aut nihil" ("Either [what they want] or nothing"). Should we not therefore call all of them by the "flip side" of whatever they call themselves: nihilists*?

		In the 03Apr02 New York Times (p.A19), Thomas Friedman wrote in an Op-Ed piece, "The Hard Truth": "A terrible disaster is... now being unleashed by the Israeli-Palestinian war in the West Bank.... Israel's goal must be a withdrawal from the... occupied territories... captured in the 1967 war; otherwise it will never know a day's peace, and it will undermine every legitimate U.S. effort to fight terrorism around the globe.... [T]he central dilemma in this conflict... is that while Israel must get out of the West Bank and Gaza, the Palestinians cannot, at this moment, be trusted to run those territories on their own, without making them a base of future operations against Israel. That means some outside power has to come in to secure the borders.... American Jewish leaders, fundamentalist Christians and neoconservatives who together have helped make it impossible for anyone in the U.S. administration to talk seriously about halting Israeli settlement-building without being accused of being anti-Israel [have]... helped prolong a colonial Israeli occupation [See picture below] that now threatens the entire Zionist enterprise. So there you have it. Either leaders of good will get together and acknowledge that Israel can't stay in the territories but can't just pick up and leave, without a U.S.-NATO force helping Palestinians oversee their state, or Osama [bin Laden] wins -- and the war of civilizations will be coming to a theater near you."

		Note: Not all Orthodox Jews support Zionism (Also, click here for: Jews United Against Zionism official website).

		Isn't it [long past...] time to phase out gas-guzzler consumer motor vehicles, power pleasure boats, recreational snowmobiles, etc. to enhance national security (to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and save our own petroleum reserves for more important things than people driving around, etc.)?

		We need to change zoning laws to encourage building so that people will have less reason to use automobiles or even public transportation: so that people can walk to most of the places they need to go. It may take decades to really reshape the American landscape this way and dramatically reduce the amount of energy expended on transportation, but it took decades to get to the energy-hungry sprawl we have today. Of course, work-at-home "telecommuting" via the Internet may yield a big improvement that can be realized relatively quickly!

		It should be obvious that if we did not need Arab oil, then if Islamic fundamentalists don't want us meddling in their culture, we wouldn't have any pressing reason not to oblige them (at least as long as they would abstain from meddling in our culture...). Recent news stories assert the Saudi government makes payoffs to terrorist organizations to stay in power. One article, "The High, Hidden Cost of Saudi Arabian Oil" (NYT Week in Review, 21Oct01, p.WK.3) ends with former President Clinton's assistant secretary of energy, Dan Reicher, asking "whether Washington can find the political will to act before an oil crisis explodes. 'Will patriotism mean more than raising the flag? Will it mean raising fuel economy?'"

		Isn't it [long past...] time we acknowledged that, when people commit terrorist acts, it's because they feel they have a serious grievance, and that simply trying to prevent the people from committing any more terrorist acts without addressing the root causes of their grievances is repression pure and simple? Whatever we may think of the people who commit these violent acts, as Sigmund Freud showed, what is repressed often returns in irrational forms. We need to sincerely get a two-sided point across: "We want to help solve the problems you are suffering from, but we can't help you while you are attacking us."

		A big problem about terrorism is that by the time people start committing terrorist acts, addressing their original grievances may no longer satisfy them. Like once a person has been burned, it's no longer good enough to put out the fire, because now one also has to treat the victim's burns.

		We in America (Japan, France, etc.) can even look at this "selfishly": If there is any reason which might motivate those who have not to let us keep what we have, surely it would be if we put what we have at the service of helping them have it too. One might not like it, but if one needed heart surgery, and the surgeon driving to the operating theater in a BMW put him in a better condition to operate on you than if he had to walk 5 miles barefoot, would you take the BMW away from him? Also: It is a fact of life, even if not of "economics", that there are many interesting intellectual challenges for highly educated persons to solve, helping improve the living conditions of the poor -- indeed, some of these problems may be more intrinsically satisfying to work on than yet another potato chip shape or preventing farmers sowing a certain variety of seeds unless they pay a royalty to the chemical company you work for, etc.

E-mail me your questions and/or thoughts.

Read	Washington Post Editorial Opinion essay, 12Sep01: "When Innocents Are the Enemy".

Read	admonitory interview between the chief "911" terrorist (Mohamed Atta), and a U.S. Dept of Agriculture official, May 2000!

How should we fight terrorism?

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Leisure is the basis of culture

Read Garrett Hardin's classic essay: The Tragedy of the Commons.
See also my page on Freud's Civilization and its Discontents.
Think about the role of myth in culture.

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20 March 2006 (2006-03-20 ISO 8601)
v02.11

[ New Israeli housing on Palestinean land (July, 2002) ]

Israel has added a new and, in my estimation, shameful meaning to the image of "a shining city on a hill": architecturally beautiful but ethically questionable settlements commanding the heights over areas where Palestineans live.

"The government is subsidizing the purchase of homes [because]... a neighboring development has repeatedly come under fire.... Residents... have had to bulletproof their apartments, and a cement wall now blocks their... vista. A likeness of the view has been painted on the wall." (James Bennett, "Gains and Losses in Israeli Project", NYT, 11Aug02, pp.A1,12)



	Note: America's "Heartland" is a peaceful place in need of settlers....