Obamamania ..

[Michael Alexander]

I thought that my high school principal was the 3rd antichrist.....   

[Dalene Steenkamp (Coetzee)]

You did not go close enough to the beach, Mike!  Remember last year when the waves went over that wall in the mine...  ?

[SandyB]

 @ Mike ..  Now  you remind me  of  calvin and hobbes ...  disturbed child  that you  are ...  In fact I  remind myself of calvin and Hobbes ...  pleasantly disturbed child that i am ...

[Bob Molloy]

Hey all,
         I thought we here in New Zealand were insular but I'm struck by the amount of navel-gazing on this thread.
Does anyone agree that as far as real earthshaking news is concerned we can't ignore the elephant in the room: Gaza?
This is the worst ethnic cleansing since the days of the Soviet Union yet how much balanced coverage do you see on telly or in your local press? The answer is none. Most of us are so woefully uninformed that we still use the word "terrorist" when talking about the Palestinians, not knowing we've been sucked into a massive propaganda exercise.
The following videos are powerful stuff, particularly the one headed: "Beautiful Lady".  Sorry I can't give you live links as all HTML on this site is scrubbed from text (very careful guy, Michael). However, you can cut and paste or save to a separate file and reformat.
A caution: don't bother opening them if you want to hold on to your opinions. At the very least these urls will shake them up a bit.
Regards,
Bob.



Sir Gerald Kaufmann
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMGuYjt6CP8&eurl=http://whatreallyhappened.com/

George Galloway
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIpvrOJQ0J0&feature=related

CNN Who broke the ceasefire
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KntmpoRXFX4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfFMZ7Y-s_c&eurl=http://whatreallyhappened.com/

Beautiful Lady
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rCBJjCiLGc&eurl=http://whatreallyhappened.com/node?page=3

[SandyB]

Navel Gazing  ??  quite an expression ..  Yes  Gaza  is  indeed an Elephant in a room ..   ethnic  cleansing  ..  eye for eye .. tooth for tooth .. ??  i'm  so  right and you so wrong ..  whose  land is this  land .. who has  ultimate brthright ??   propoganda from both sides ..  whose  side  do we take ??   What does America have to do with it ??  what can they  really  do about it  sems to be  the issue put forward here .. ??  all  questions  with no real answers ...  only  when the  people  directly  , and I mean  the people staying   and fighting in  that  much fought over  piece of the world  , the  people on the  ground ..  when they  remove  hatred  from their hearts , when they stop  dehumanising  the  enemy ... it seems   in so many  cases around the  world  that no amount of peace brokering  seems to help .. no matter how much peacekeeping  forces are put  in   .. when an  eye  for  eye  tooth for tooth mentality  exists and is  virtually  bred  into the  young generations  and thereby  perpetuated .. how does one  stop it ??  Sure there  is  theory  that  powerful business lobby  in america   covertly supports  Israel .. equally so that  islamic militants  are   behind the  scenes and planting  the poisonous seeds ... 
So theres hatred  ingrained  and theres people  with either economic or religious power taking advantage .. ??
Matters not  what  ...  they are both wrong .. both sides are wrong .. all in the  whole mess are wrong  ..   in simple terms  , they should not be fighting ....

[georg ruf jr.]

This isn't "Mad Bob" Sandy, or is it???

[SandyB]

Nope this Bob is sane and yes he reminded us of a   catch 22 situation   thats  currently difficult to resolve  unless all  concerned can put  self interest  on the shelf and  cleanse their hearts of hatred ..

[Bob Molloy]

Hi Sandy,
               Thanks for that post but have to disagree with your view that the Israeli/Palestinian clash is a complex situation that has been going on since forever.
It devolves down to one single issue: who owns the land?
That too is easy to decide. If you are a property owner you will have no difficulty with the concept that the land belongs to those whose names are on the title deeds.
The core dispute is simply this. Around 80% of the land upon which the State of Israel stands is owned by Palestinians. This claim is supported by U.N. Resolution 194 which is re-stated by them every year.
In 60 years, Israel has done nothing to address this claim - not one single solitary statement even acknowledging such a claim exists except the canard that the Palestinians "abandoned" their land.
Despite the fact that this lie is unsupported by evidence and is thoroughly debunked by Israel's own Historians, the contention itself is not acceptable. The right of return or compensation as noted in U.N. Resolution 194 and the Declaration of Human Rights remains valid whatever circumstances caused the exodus.
Nearly one million Palestinians were terrorized off their land and made refugees in late 1947 and 1948. Most were expelled from their villages before Israel was declared a State. These facts are not in dispute. To ascribe a religious motive to this conflict is either mischievous or simply uninformed.
One simple fact should disprove the "religious war" thesis. Up until the 1920s when the Zionist land-grab began, there were ten Palestinians for every single Jew living in the Holy Land. These Jews lived in security despite the overwhelming number of non-Jews surrounding them.
Gaza is a tiny sliver of land on the coast, smaller in area than Metropolitan Cape Town. It has a population of 1.5m people, most of them refugees. Firing artillery into this area is like shooting fish in a barrel.
The excuse for the "war" was that Hamas broke the ceasefire by firing rockets into Israel. Firstly, no rockets landed on Israel. They all struck occupied Palestinian land. Secondly, Hamas did not fire the rockets. They were fired by groups funded by the U.S. Thirdly, Israel broke the ceasefire from its inception by blockading all supplies, including water, at the borders. Finally, unable to provoke retaliation, IDF soldiers entered Gaza and killed six people.
The reality is that the present obcenity is simply another chapter in the long, weary atrocity of ethnic cleansing that has been ongoing since the arrival of Zionist settlers in Palestine in the late 1920s. If Israeli aggression can frighten the Palestinians out of Gaza then the "abandoned" land can be incorporated into the Zionist state and another fraction of Eretz (Greater) Israel can be realised.

Whew! Didn't intend to go on at such length. The subject just ran away with me.
Thanks again for your post.
Best wishes,
Bob.

[SandyB]

Bob  ,, thanks for that informed article ..  and yes the history ..   sounds tragic indeed .. suppose a lot of us  look at  things farther afield  very  briefly / simplistically or with limited information  .. in  essence  there be enough going on here  on the tip of africa  to keep our attention  ( our  form of navel gazing  ?? )

[Bob Molloy]

Hi again Sandy,
                       Thanks for your good wishes. It occurred to me that in case a few of the readers of my previous post feel they should be dismiss it as antii-semitic drivel I need to add a few points.
In discussing Israel I'm careful to use the term "Zionist" on the basis that not all Jews are Zionists though Zionists claim to represent all Jews.
Up until a few years ago I, like most westerners, had a kneejerk tendency to think in pro-Zionist terms. The Zionist incursion of two years ago into Lebananon changed all that, Firstly it involved me in hot debate with a well-informed source on the question. He demolished my pro-Zionist ideas and sent me back to the drawing board to do some basic research.
The results were shattering. All my dearly held views were kicked to pieces. It took many months to figure out how to evaluate the material. Finally, on the grounds that I've always found Jews to be the most self-critical of people - I have rellies in Israel - I decided that I would use only Jewish and Israeli sources. That too was an eye-opener, particularly the B'Tselem website based in Tel Aviv. Take a look at it, you may get a surprise. On second thoughts don't - as I found to my cost, it will do your head in.
Regards,
Bob.

[Michael Alexander]

Secondly, Hamas did not fire the rockets. They were fired by groups funded by the U.S.

Bob, we are under the impression that Hamas did indeed fire rockets and that they were funded by Iran using Syria as a proxy......

How do you back up your statement?

[SandyB]

Mike I must admit  .. its all so confusing .. look at any situation  where there is a disagreement ??  there are  two sides to the story .. each side will  believe they are right  even divinely so ... depends who you  listen to at the time ..  I state that  in my book each sides  story has merit ..  however those merits do not justify  throwing bombs at each other ..   thats a product of ingrained hatred ..
I leave  you with   a comment on history .. how it can be written and   re written  .. SA  pre  1994  and now SA post 1994 ??  each  writing  and subsequent  re writing  has  vested interests  at heart ...  target  .. the young impressionable minds ..
I will  quote carefully  .. fertile grounds  in which to  plant  seeds of dislike , superiority , hatred etc ..

[Michael Alexander]

I get Bob's Point about the land being Arab land, but how far back does one have to go to draw the line, even before biblical times that corner of this planet was in strife, why should it change now....

[SandyB]

A  truth there Mike ... simply  stated ...   for me better to stand back and try be impartial  and not take up either cause's side ,, cos I state it again they both in the wrong   ..  and yes  will write the history and present  happenings  each to suit their own agenda ...

[Bob Molloy]

Hi Mike, Sandy et al,
                              Are you seriously interested in the sources of the Middle East conflict? That's a pertinent question and I'd be interested in hearing a yea or nay.
To enlarge: I had the same Judeo-Christian upbringing as most of you and the same ingrained beliefs about the Promised Land and the Chosen People and even have relatives in Israel. In fact my wife and I after a visit there just after the '73 war stayed with them on their delightful kibbutz - hard won from the desert they told us - and were were so taken with it all we even toyed with notions of selling up back in SA and settling there.
How then did I come to have such a change of head space?
It's too long a story but in my last post I'd thought to simply give a brief background, supply a few urls and let anyone interested pursue their own research. I still think that's the preferable way. However, if anyone puts up a hand for more info I'm happy to supply it. Be aware it could make your head hurt and hopefully be injurious to your prejudices.
Nothing in my posts should be seen as anti-semitic. There is a clear distinction between Zionists, those running Israel, and Jews. All Zionists claim to be Jews. Not all Jews wish to be associated with Zionism.
To answer the question of possible source bias, I use mainly Zionist, Jewish and British sources. 
As for the concept that it is none of our business and best left to those concerned to sort out perhaps I should point to history and say that idea left us with our pants down at the beginning of WWII, the Americans out on a limb at Pearl Harbour, again at 9/11 and all of us each time we travel by air (I can remember when there were no security checks at airports and no need to spend billions to keep us all in fear). In short, only the uniformed masses can be taken in by fascism. When you understand the causes, you know the remedy.
Regards,
Bob.
Hmmm, rereading that makes me sound like some boring old ranter or aging nutcase. Aging I'll put my hand up for; nutcase only when I can't find dark chocolate and, I'm told, boring on the subject of single malts but then she's prejudiced, she'd rather drink it than hear about it.