"I can't stand him… he’s a liar!"

[tsadriana]

assholes here aswell.

[Stavros]

All I know of Netenyahu is what I've gleaned from the miniscule spun coverage we get here. I would imagine it's probably the same for anyone who isn't Israeli in here, regardless of how pompously some will deny that. Other than what appears to be promotion of Israeli expansion & a disdain for non-Jews, I really don't know what his politics or economics are. Hawkish & expansionist nationalism doesn't necessarily equate to fascist ideals. He could be Maoist for all I know. It's hard to think of anything more commie & little red bookish than a kibbutz. I just don't like the dude because he comes off as such an arrogant asshole.

Hippifried you are right to associate the Kibbutz with socialism, it was one of the key elemments in what was called 'Labour Zionism' that enabled Ben-Gurion to promote Israel as a socialist country -the first state to recognise Israel in 1948 was the USSR.

Ideologically, the kibbutz movement began as a sort of utopian community of equals, it espoused collective agriculture in the 19thc as part of the broader concept of 'renewal' which Zionists used to justify the economics of a 'Jewish state' -their belief that Palestine was under-developed and that they had the modern farming solutions to 'make the desert bloom' which the Arabs lacked, even if they had no intention of migrating to the desert; and in spite of the Arab role in the growth of the economy in Palestine in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The importance of the Kibbutzim was that they were primarily European Jews who voted for the Labour Party and kept it in power, and it was not until Menachem Begin's victory in the 1977 elections that Israel was perceived to have 'shifted to the right' -Begin all his life had been an anti-British, and an aggressive nationalist and more oriented to free markets and capitalism than to socialism which he detested. Many of his bedrock supporters were oriental Jews, and extreme nationalists who have tended to be settlers, mostly from the USA, the UK, South Africa and Australia. Netanyahu emerged from this hard core of nationalist politicians as a junior to Ariel Sharon, but unlike Begin, who signed a peace treaty with Egypt in 1979, Sharon and Netanyahu see no reason to compromise on the 'security' of Israel and Netanyahu's refusal to contemplate 'land for peace' is fundamental to the impasse into which he has drive Israeli politics.

In recent years the Kibbutz has gone into decline as a social experiment, its farms are now run mostly on a commercial, market principle rather than as a sort of moral economy; and yet many Jews remain fairly liberal on a wide range of economic and social issues; the growth of the aggressive and often violent settler communities has tended to undermine the idealistc kibbutz movement, and given Israel a harder edge than maybe it used to have. The settlers, like all fringe groups are fanatics who support Netanyahu only as long as he supports them.

As I have said before, nationalism has been the driving force in Israel, an implacable and frankly offensive belief that there is nothing to share with non-Jews -and as history has always shown, nationalism is a dead-end in politics, and doomed to fail, just as this 'Jewish state' employs cheap labour from China and Thailand to farm its commercial produce, and maids from Sri Lanka and the Philippines to wash its laundry. You could say they are living a contradiction.

[onmyknees]

The guy on the right, he doesn't need half a dozen penis compensation devices.

How can you be sure of that? We all know you know the unknown, and are the village sage, but this one warrants further explanation. lol


The point of the picture and the compassion, is Obama will light up a Newport, kick back, give it some thought, and punt as he has with nearly everything else. ( Hint...."we can't wait for jobs" ....unless it's the Keystone Pipeline, then we can wait until after the election)

[trish]

How can you be sure of that?

He's already shown us he not afraid to decisively and efficiently exercise his authority as Commander in Chief.



Oops! Almost forgot. People who are secure in their supreme knowledge and find the views of others laughable always insert a "LOL" or three into their posts.

ROTFLMAO LOL LOL

[onmyknees]

And what are penis compensation devices? Oh yea, individuals that don't like firearms use that term to describe male users of those weapons. It is meant to belittle individuals. Interestingly, you make that comment when making a choice between Netanyahu (in a photo posing with a firearm that is holstered) and Obama (no firearm).

Yes...Trish goes to that well for water with every mention of a four letter word (guns). Don't you get it?? Guys with little dicks need big guns to compensate. I think the first time I heard that referrence was Gloria Steinem back in 1970, and most recently by that troll Gloria Allred when referring to Herman Cain's "stimulous package"....It seems despite being feminists, they're pretty hung up on male junk ! lol

[trish]

1+1=2 is even older, and also true. The truth of a (non-self-referential) proposition is independent of it's age.

[Silcc69]

I thought extreme conservatism is called neoconservatism.

[notdrunk]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Half a day after your post maybe. And even then you felt it important somehow to point out that Obama has no firearm. Like I said, you were drawn in and are still drawn in by the symbol of virility those weapons represent. The person in the right hand photo, the President, is the person who btw ordered the raid that killed Bin Laden, ordered the mission that took out Anwar Al-awlaki, oversaw the fall of Ghaddafi and even put a fleet of Somali pirates in their place and for way less the cost in lives and money paid by the previous president.
Never denied any of that. Sure Netanyahu is a leader. That's an empirical fact. But where has his intransigence and corruption led Israel? To an apparent impasse. Extreme conservatism is anathema to progress__it's in the word "conservatism". Witness the impasse in the U.S. Congress which is due to the radical right's stigmatization of the word "compromise."

http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.c...-conversation/

Thanks for trying to read my mind. It looks like you failed though. I already explained it. Don't need to explain it again. I didn't question Obama's accomplishments. The conflict has been gone on for decades now. The situation used to be a lot worse. It is just another chapter of the story. Netanyahu thinks it is the best for Israel. You have to remember that Israel sees Jerusalem as it capital. So, of course, he is going to allow Israeli construction if his people demand it. However, he might lose the next election because of all the domestic issues he is facing.

[hippifried]

I thought extreme conservatism is called neoconservatism.

"Extreme" & "conservative" are antonyms.

I've been asking for a coherent definition of "neo-conservative" for years now, without success. What I do know is:
The linear labels don't work.
"Left wing" & "liberal" aren't the same thing.
"Liberal" & "progressive" aren't the same thing.
"Liberal" is an adjective.
"Progressive" is an adjective.
"Conservative" is an adjective.
"Conservative" is "conservative", whether it's neo, paleo, or any other time frame prefix.
"Conservative" & "right wing" aren't the same thing.
"Fascism" is corporate control of government.

Words count. If you're not clear, or you just sling labels around, then others look at what you say & just make up anything for what it means. Nowadays, if someone's slinging labels &/or interchanging terminology willy nilly, I assume they don't know what they're talking about. The alternative motive is that they think I'm too stupid to notice. That should piss me off, but life's too short to get upset over someone else's ignorance. Since the labels are a lie more often than not, I see no reason to buy into any of it. I see politics as a sphere. The only lines are the radii. There are an infinite number of radial lines because they each represent an issue or idea, instead of a blanket linear descriptive.

[Stavros]

You are right about the language Hippifried -some years ago I was asked by a graduate student of international relations -an Arab- what was the difference Liberal theory and Neo-Liberal theory, and Realist theory and Neo-Realist theory. I am afraid my cynical response to some badly written books (Waltz in particular) was that Neo-Liberalism is liberalism and Neo-Realism is realism re-constructed by academics who need to write books to show how intellectually vibrant their departments are. All it does is confuse students who have enough to contend with when they realise what they thought was the study of current affairs is a labyrinth of inchoate and barely readable pseudo-philosphical rubbish. But when he asked me to write all his essays and I declined he went away looking sorrowful. Not much neo there.