The big Lie - ROALD DAHL

Roald Dahl, of children's novel fame, particularly Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach. He also wrote some titillating adult novels.

As we all know the "big lie," a term coined by Hitler in his autobiography, roughly goes: The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it. As a corollary, it should also be noted that the bigger the lie, or the more monstrous the crime, the less likely people will want to know about it, or at least know the real truth.

My introduction to this concept came via Roald Dahl's children's novel Matilda. The story centers around a child genius who bears the book's title as her name. She's roughly first grade age, and it is her first year at school. Her school's name is "Crunchem Hall." The principal, or headmistress, is named "Miss Trunchbull." She is the textbook example of a gigantic holy terror (even parents and teachers are frightened of her) as exemplified by this illustration:

Miss Trunchbull has a pet peeve against ponytails ("pig tails" in merry old England). One day at recess, she targets a most unfortunate girl named Amanda Thripp:

And orders Amanda to "chop of her pigtails and throw them in the dustbin!" before the next day.

When poor Amanda nervously stammers back. "B..b...but... my mummy likes them." Miss Trunchbull barks back: "I don't give a tinker's toot to what your mummy thinks!"

At that point grabs the girl by the ponytails and picks her up, then begins to spin her whole body round and round in a circle, and like fan blades, the girl becomes a blur; needless to say, the girl is screaming bloody murder, and the entire playground of children is watching, spellbound. Then to conclude, Miss Trunchbull lets go of the girl on an upward trajectory and the girl shoots off like a rocket hundreds of feet, clear over the playground fence and into the open field beyond.

Watching the whole scene are Matilda and her friend Lavender. Here is the conversation that ensues:

"How can she get away with it?" Lavender said to Matilda. "Surely the children go home and tell
their mothers and fathers. I know my father would raise a terrific stink if I told him the
Headmistress had grabbed me by the hair and slung me over the playground fence."

"No, he wouldn't," Matilda said, "and I'll tell you why. He simply wouldn't believe you."

"Of course he would."

"He wouldn't," Matilda said. "And the reason is obvious. Your story would sound too ridiculous to
be believed. And that is the Trunchbull's great secret."

"What is?" Lavender asked.

Matilda said, "Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the
whole hog. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it's unbelievable. No parent is
going to believe this pigtail story, not in a million years. Mine wouldn't. They'd call me a liar."

"In that case", Lavender said, "Amanda's mother isn't going to cut her pigtails off."

"No, she isn't," Matilda said. "Amanda will do it herself. You see if she doesn't."

When I first woke up to 9/11 being an inside job, one of the very first things my mind thought of was the above scene and ensuing conversation. Just as most parents of first graders would find it extremely difficult to believe a principal could be so unimaginably cruel and insane, most "dyed in the wool" Americans (including myself at first, and too many still to this day) would "not in a million years" believe that their own leaders could be so unimaginably cruel and insane as to kill 3,000 people for money, oil, and power.

As a final postscript, it seems I'm not the only one who remembers this scene. What do you know, it is alluded to on Wikipedia's entry on "The Big Lie."

When a whole social structure depends on some injustice or other, then people will tend not to admit the injustice. I imagine slavery in the U.S. was like that, largely.

And now it is natural resources, and power grabs to keep them flowing. Or so I see it.

To maintain our lifestyle, this county had no choice but to invade both countries we are now at war in. Isn't it so? Iraq's oil; Afghanistan's pipeline route. Alternatives are too far off. The need is for right now.

Therefore, people sort of "must:" believe in the pretext for those wars. And it becomes more than uncomfortable for anyone to question the story-line behind those pretexts.

But I am not sure what to do with this reasoning. If it is correct, what is the honest and appropriate response?

Roald Dahl was an interesting character
He was a spy during the Second World War and a good friend of Ian Fleming.
He covertly worked for the mysterious Canadian William Stephenson - the man called Intrepid - in Washington and New York and helped write the secret history of Stephenson's organization.
IE - Dahl had access to most secret files that were never to be made public.
Who knows if what he knew sometimes made its way into his fiction.
(Conant - The Irregulars. Macdonald - The True Intrepid)

13 September 1916 – 23 November 1990) was a British novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter.

Born in Llandaff, Wales, to Norwegian parents, Dahl served in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War, in which he became a flying ace and intelligence agent. He rose to prominence in the 1940s with works for both children and adults, and became one of the world's bestselling authors. His short stories are known for their unexpected endings, and his children's books for their unsentimental, often very dark humour.

Some of his most popular books include The Twits, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Matilda, The Witches, and The BFG.
Roald Dahl was born in Llandaff, Cardiff, Wales in 1916, to Norwegian parents, Harald Dahl and Sofie Magdalene Dahl (née Hesselberg). Dahl's father had moved from Sarpsborg in Norway and settled in Cardiff in the 1880s, and his mother came over to marry his father in about 1910. Roald was named after the polar explorer Roald Amundsen, a national hero in Norway at the time. He spoke Norwegian at home with his parents and sisters, Astri, Alfhild, and Else. Dahl and his sisters were christened at the Norwegian Church, Cardiff, where their parents worshipped.

In 1920, when Roald was still only three years old, his seven-year-old sister, Astri, died from appendicitis. Weeks later, his father died of pneumonia at the age of 57. Dahl's mother, however, decided not to return to Norway to live with her relatives, but to remain in Wales since it had been her husband's wish to have their children educated in British schools as he felt they were the best in the world.

Dahl first attended The Cathedral School, Llandaff. At the age of eight, he and four of his friends were caned by the headmaster after putting a dead mouse in a jar of sweets at the local sweet shop, which was owned by a "mean and loathsome" old woman called Mrs Pratchett (wife of blacksmith David Pratchett). This was known amongst the five boys as the "Great Mouse Plot of 1924". This was Roald's own idea.

Thereafter, he was sent to several boarding schools in England, including Saint Peter's in Weston-super-Mare. His parents had wanted Roald to be educated at a British public school and at the time, due to a then regular boat link across the Bristol Channel, this proved to be the nearest. His time at Saint Peter's was an unpleasant experience for him. He was very homesick and wrote to his mother almost every day, but never revealed to her his unhappiness, being under the pressure of school censorship. Only after her death in 1967 did he find out that she had saved every single one of his letters, in small bundles held together with green tape. He later attended Repton School in Derbyshire, where, according to his autobiography Boy: Tales of Childhood, a friend named Michael was viciously caned by headmaster Geoffrey Fisher, the man who later became the Archbishop of Canterbury and crowned the Queen in 1953. (However, according to Dahl's biographer Jeremy Treglown, the caning took place in May 1933, a year after Fisher had left Repton. The headmaster concerned was in fact J.T. Christie, Fisher's successor.) This caused Dahl to "have doubts about religion and even about God".

Dahl was very tall, reaching 6'6" (1.98m) in adult life, and he was good at sports, being made captain of the school fives and squash teams, and also playing for the football team. This helped his popularity. He developed an interest in photography. During his years there, Cadbury, the chocolate company, would occasionally send boxes of new chocolates to the school to be tested by the pupils. Dahl himself apparently used to dream of inventing a new chocolate bar that would win the praise of Mr Cadbury himself, and this proved the inspiration for him to write his third book for children, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which was released in 1963 and he also included references to chocolate in other books for children.

Throughout his childhood and adolescent years, Dahl spent his summer holidays with his mother's family in their native Norway, mostly enjoying the fjords. His childhood and first job selling kerosene in Midsomer Norton and surrounding villages in Somerset are the subject of his autobiographical work, Boy: Tales of Childhood.

After finishing his schooling, he spent three weeks hiking through Newfoundland with a group called the Public Schools' Exploring Society (now known as BSES Expeditions). In July 1934, he joined the Shell Petroleum Company.

Following two years of training in the UK, he was transferred to Dar-es-Salaam, Tanganyika (now Tanzania). Along with the only two other Shell employees in the entire territory, he lived in luxury in the Shell House outside Dar-es-Salaam, with a cook and personal servants. While out on assignments supplying oil to customers across Tanganyika, he encountered black mambas and lions, amongst other wildlife

In August 1939, as World War II impended, plans were made to round up the hundreds of Germans in Dar-es-Salaam. Dahl was made an officer in the King's African Rifles, commanding a platoon of askaris, indigenous troops serving in the colonial army.

In November 1939, Dahl joined the Royal Air Force. After a 600-mile (970 km) car journey from Dar-es-Salaam to Nairobi, he was accepted for flight training with 20 other men, and was one of only three who survived the war, as the other 17 died in combat. With seven hours and 40 minutes experience in a De Havilland Tiger Moth, he flew alone; Dahl enjoyed watching the wildlife of Kenya during his flights. He continued on to advanced flying training in Iraq, at RAF Habbaniya, 50 miles (80 km) west of Baghdad. Following six months training on Hawker Harts, Dahl was made a Pilot Officer.

Dahl began writing in 1942, after he was transferred to Washington, D.C. as Assistant Air Attaché. His first published work, in the 1 August 1942 issue of The Saturday Evening Post was "Shot Down Over Libya", describing the crash of his Gloster Gladiator. C. S. Forester had asked Dahl to write down some RAF anecdotes so that he could shape them into a story. After Forester sat down to read what Dahl had given him, he decided to publish it exactly as it was. The original title of the article was "A Piece of Cake"—the title was changed to sound more dramatic, despite the fact that the he was not "shot down".

During the war, Forester worked for the British Information Service and was writing propaganda for the Allied cause, mainly for American consumption. This work introduced Dahl to espionage and the activities of the Canadian spymaster William Stephenson, known by the codename "Intrepid". During the war, Dahl supplied intelligence from Washington to Stephenson and his organisation, which was known as British Security Coordination. Dahl was sent back to Britain, for supposed misconduct by British Embassy officials: "I got booted out by the big boys," he said. Stephenson sent him back to Washington—with a promotion. After the war, Dahl wrote some of the history of the secret organisation and he and Stephenson remained friends for decades after the war.[10]

He ended the war as a Wing Commander. His record of five aerial victories, qualifying him as a flying ace, has been confirmed by post-war research and cross-referenced in Axis records, although it is most likely that he scored more than that during 20 April 1941 where 22 German aircraft were downed.[11]

He was also revealed in the 1980s to have been a clandestine agent for MI-6, the British Foreign Intelligence Service, serving in the United States to help promote Britain's interests and message in the United States and combat the "America First" movement, working with other well known men including Ian Fleming and David Ogilvy.[12]

Roald Dahl died in November 1990 at the age of 74 of a rare blood disease, myelodysplastic anaemia (sometimes called "pre-leukemia"), in Oxford,[17] and was buried in the cemetery at the parish church of Saint Peter and Paul. According to his granddaughter, the family gave him a "sort of Viking funeral". He was buried with his snooker cues, some very good burgundy, chocolates, HB pencils and a power saw.



Matilda is a novel by Roald Dahl and illustrated by Quentin Blake. It was first published in London in 1988 by Jonathan Cape. It was adapted into a film in 1996.

The parents of five-year-old Matilda Wormwood have no interest in their daughter. Although she exhibits strong signs of being a child prodigy, they pressure her to watch television instead of her preferred activity of reading. At one point, she asks her father for a book. Her father merely points out that they already have a television and tells her that asking for a book will make her spoiled. Matilda, undaunted, goes to the library and, under the watchful eyes of the librarian, Mrs. Phelps, reads every single children's book in the library. After asking for something to read next and stating her opinions of the books she previously read, Mrs. Phelps gets a classic for Matilda to read: Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. Within six months, Matilda reads a great many books, including works of Rudyard Kipling, Jane Austen, and George Orwell. Her parents put up with her reading for a while, but when Mr. Wormwood presents an arithmetic problem to his son, who has difficulty answering it, Matilda correctly answers it. She is accused of cheating, and then decides to get back at her father. She puts super-glue into his hat and then sits back and allows everything else to be taken care of. No one even thinks about the fact that she may have been involved. Later, Mr. Wormwood is already in a grouchy mood and can't stand the sight of Matilda reading. He yells at her and then tears up the book she is reading. Using her friend's parrot, Matilda gets back at her father by making her entire family think that there's a ghost in the house. She later switches her father's hair tonic with peroxide, changing his hair color. After witnessing Matilda's great intellect in the classroom, her benevolent teacher, Jennifer "Jenny" Honey, appeals to have Matilda moved up, but the cold and bitter headmistress, Miss Trunchbull, refuses. Miss Honey is alarmed by how unpleasant Matilda's parents are when she turns up at their house to suggest that Matilda should prepare for university.

Throughout the book, Miss Trunchbull's treatment of her students is nothing short of child abuse; she seems to believe that intimidation is the best method of teaching. She says her idea of a perfect school would be "one in which there were no children at all." Trunchbull stops short of beating the children with her riding crop, but only because it is now illegal; she often voices regret that she is no longer able to punish the children in this fashion. She often acts sadistically to her pupils, ploughing straight through children so that they "bounce off her left and right", making regular visits to classes to show the teachers a few tips on discipline, throwing students out of windows and locking wrongdoers in a torturous contraption known only as "the Chokey." Matilda is once threatened by "the Trunchbull" with this punishment, but she is saved by Miss Honey. Trunchbull also tries to exploit students' weaknesses, like forcing an obese child who stole her cake to eat a large, multi-layered chocolate confection in one sitting. To make matters worse for Matilda, Miss Trunchbull has bought a second hand car that barely works from Matilda's father's car company and takes out her rage at Matilda's father on Matilda, while claiming that he was "right" to warn her about the bad conduct of his daughter.

Meanwhile, Matilda discovers she has psychokinetic powers, a secret which she confides only to Miss Honey. She learns this inadvertently when her best friend, Lavender, puts a newt in Miss Trunchbull's water. When the Trunchbull blames Matilda for it, Matilda becomes so angry at the injustice that she tips the glass over with her mind. Miss Honey is very surprised about Matilda's powers and she takes Matilda to her home.

They arrive at her cottage, where Matilda discovers that Miss Honey lives in poverty. Matilda asks why, and Jenny, her first name, explains how when she was 2 years old her mum died and her dad, Magnus, was a doctor who needed someone to look after everything at home, so he invited his sister-in-law (who is in fact Agatha Trunchbull) to come and live with him. Not surprisingly, she treated her niece very poorly when not in the presence of Magnus. Jenny was 5 years old when her dad died, and although the police declared the death a suicide, it is implied that Trunchbull killed him. Jenny had become her aunt's slave and did all the household work: cooking, cleaning, ironing. When Jenny was an adult, she wanted to go to university but her aunt forbade it; however, there was a teachers' training college in the local area and she went under the condition that she would keep up with her duties. When she found a job, the aunt demanded that she pay all her salary to her except for an allowance of £1 pound a week as payment for food, shoes & clothes, and Jenny, so terrified of her aunt, that she agreed. She found the tiny cottage and rented it from a farmer for 10p a week, and when she moved out of her aunt's house, she finally got her freedom.

With this information, Matilda formulates a plan as to how she can get rid of the Trunchbull for good.

When Miss Trunchbull imposes herself on Miss Honey's class and even threatens her, Matilda uses her powers to pose as the spirit of Magnus, scrawling on the blackboard, as if by an invisible hand, a promise of grisly revenge unless Trunchbull relinquishes his daughter's house and inheritance money. Terrified by this seemingly supernatural apparition, Trunchbull collapses and is carried out of the classroom by the other teachers.

The day following the chalkboard incident, Miss Trunchbull disappears, abandoning her brother-in-law's house. Magnus' will is found proving that Miss Honey is the rightful heiress to his property. Miss Honey then moves back into her father's house, and with the Trunchbull gone, Matilda is moved into the top form where she loses all of her powers. Miss Honey believes that Matilda's brain now has to work hard instead of accumulating spare "brainpower" the powers would need: this, the two of them agree, is a good thing, as Matilda would not care to "go through life as a miracle worker".

Meanwhile, the police are alerted to Matilda's father, who has been selling stolen cars. He decides to move the whole family to Spain (Guam in the movie version), but Matilda asks them to let her remain with Miss Honey. They agree, as it is less of a bother, and drive away forever.

HOW ISRAEL BECAME A NATION

According to history as written by the winner, Zionism, Israel was given its birth certificate and thus legitimacy by the UN Partition Resolution of 29 November 1947. This is propaganda nonsense.

* In the first place the UN without the consent of the majority of the people of Palestine did not have the right to decide to partition Palestine or assign any part of its territory to a minority of alien immigrants in order for them to establish a state of their own.
* Despite that, by the narrowest of margins, and only after a rigged vote, the UN General Assembly did pass a resolution to partition Palestine and create two states, one Arab, one Jewish, with Jerusalem not part of either. But the General Assembly resolution was only a proposal . meaning that it could have no effect, would not become policy, unless approved by the Security Council.
* The truth is that the General Assembly.s partition proposal never went to the Security Council for consideration. Why not? Because the U.S. knew that, if approved, it could only be implemented by force given the extent of Arab and other Muslim opposition to it; and President Truman was not prepared to use force to partition Palestine.
* So the partition plan was vitiated (became invalid) and the question of what the hell to do about Palestine . after Britain had made a mess of it and walked away, effectively surrendering to Zionist terrorism . was taken back to the General Assembly for more discussion. The option favoured and proposed by the U.S. was temporary UN Trusteeship. It was while the General Assembly was debating what do that Israel unilaterally declared itself to be in existence . actually in defiance of the will of the organised international community, including the Truman administration.

why, really, does it matter so much to Zionism that Palestinians recognise this right?

Israel.s Right or Not to Exist

The Facts and Truth

by Alan Hart / October 15th, 2009

On Monday 12 October, Prime Minister Netanyahu opened the Knesset.s winter session by blasting the Goldstone Report that accuses Israel of committing war crimes and vowing that he would never allow Israelis be tried for them. But that was not his main message. It was an appeal, delivered I thought with a measure of desperation, to the .Palestinian leadership., presumably the leadership of .President. Abbas and his Fatah cronies, leaders who are regarded by very many if not most Palestinians as American-and-Israeli stooges at best and traitors at worst.

Netanyahu again called on this leadership to agree to recognise Israel as a Jewish state, saying this was, and remains, the key to peace. And he went on and on and on about it.

.For 62 years the Palestinians have been saying .No. to the Jewish state. I am once again calling upon our Palestinian neighbours . say .Yes. to the Jewish state. Without recognition of the Israel as the state of the Jews we shall not be able to attain peace. Such recognition is a step which requires courage and the Palestinian leadership should tell its people the truth . that without this recognition there can be no peace. There is no alternative to Palestinian leaders showing courage by recognising the Jewish state. This has been and remains the true key to peace..

As Ha.aretz noted in its report, Netanyahu.s demand for Palestinian acceptance of Israel as a Jewish state is for him .a way on ensuring recognition of Israel.s right to exist as opposed to merely recognising Israel. (my emphasis). This, as Ha.aretz added, is the recognition which Netanyahu and many other Israelis see as the real core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In the name of pragmatism, willingness to .merely to recognise. Israel . meaning to accept and live in peace with an Israel inside its pre-June .67 borders . has long been the formal Palestinian and all-Arab position. Why does it stop short of recognising Israel.s .right to exist???

The truth of the time was that the Zionist state, which came into being mainly as a consequence of pre-planned ethnic cleansing, had no right to exist and, more to the point, could have no right to exist UNLESS . Unless it was recognised and legitimized by those who were dispossessed of their land and their rights during the creation of the Zionist state. In international law only the Palestinians could give Israel the legitimacy it craved.

And that legitimacy was the only thing the Zionists could not and cannot take from the Palestinians by force.

No wonder Prime Minister Netanyahu is more than a little concerned on this account.

Israel.s leaders have always known the truth summarised above. It.s time for the rest of the world to know it.

[2~
Alan Hart has been engaged with events in the Middle East and globally as a researcher, author, and a correspondent for ITN and the BBC.

in short:

only the Palestinians can legitimize Israel. In their heart of hearts, the Jews know what they did to get a state . and recognition from all the states of the world counts for nothing without validation from its victims.

As the author says, the General Assembly recommendation was just that, it did not have the force of international law. The US did not want it to come to the Security Council because that would mean a definitive . and legal . stand by the US. The Palestinians were, of course, within their rights to reject the GA recommendation, and in so doing, it became a moot point. The US understanding this, then put its support behind a UN trusteeship. But by then, the Jews had begun their full scale ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

The vast majority of the world recognizes that Kosovo is overwhelmingly inhabited by Albanian-speaking ethnics, it was only part of Serbia because Serbia had a hegemony of force over it. In this endeavor . achieving statehood . it needs no UN approval.

The dismemberment of Palestine by the UN was an effort against the majority population of Palestine . the Arabs. At this point in time, the equivalent world position should be to recognize Palestine as a state. Almost all countries in the world would certainly do so, but Israel threatens destruction if the Palestinians declare statehood.

#

Willliam James Martin said on October 15th, 2009 at 2:25pm #

Israel claims rights under international law, like the right or self defense, only with no constraints whatsoever, just as if it were a normal state minding its own business except unjustly attacked by .terrorists., i.e. meaning opponents of Israel willing to use violence..

However, Israel is not a normal state, and it is certainly never just minding its own business.

Israel is not a normal state because is constantly conducting a low level warfare with the Palestinians in an effort to destroy the Palestinians as a people and to assume possession of their ancestral land. Thus the continual Judefication of East Jerusalem in which Palestinian families are evicted from their homes and which everyday sees the ongoing construction of Jewish settlements designed to ring the outskirts of Jerusalem, thus blocking it off from the Arab population of the West Bank. Every day and every minute, Israel is confiscating Palestinian land in the West Bank and plundering Palestinian water and other resources, while Israeli settlers are poisoning Palestinian wells, setting their fields and farmland alight, and cutting down their ancient olive trees, all with the wink of the Israeli government.

All of this while Israel is crying that it is the victim.

William James Martin

Obama Nobel Peace Chomsky Interview

Noam Chomsky: A beautiful mind

.Outspoken intellectual Noam Chomsky spoke to Jon Snow ahead of his Amnesty International lecture as part of the Ulster Bank Belfast Festival at Queen.s. In a wide-ranging interview, he discussed Northern Ireland, terrorism, Israel and the Middle East, Afghanistan, Iraq, South America, nuclear weapons, climate change, healthcare reform and human rights

The Amnesty International Lecture returns to the Ulster Bank Belfast Festival at Queen.s on October 30 with one of the world.s sharpest commentators on international affairs and the struggle for human rights and dignity.

A philosopher, linguist, author and political activist, Noam Chomsky was named the world.s leading public intellectual in 2005 in an international poll.

In the 1950s he developed the theory of .generative grammar., which revolutionised the field of linguistics. He has since become one of the foremost critics of US foreign policy, writing numerous groundbreaking books including the best-selling Manufacturing Consent, Hegemony or Survival and Failed States.

Hope and Prospects is the theme of Noam Chomsky.s Amnesty International annual lecture at the Belfast Festival at Queen.s on October 30. The lecture will be followed by a question-and-answer session chaired by William Crawley.

Here are edited extracts from his recent interview with Channel 4.s Jon Snow:

Tackling Terrorism

The lesson is that terrorism has causes ? unless the causes are addressed; you.re not facing the problem. Now a lot of it is criminal activity, and criminal activity should be punished in the legal system fairly and honestly. But unless you address the grievances, you are more or less in the position of a doctor who.s injecting a patient with poison and then asking what.s the best way to deal with the symptoms.

That doesn.t make any sense . first stop administering the poison. There were real grievances in Northern Ireland and Britain had a substantial responsibility for them. When Britain finally stopped responding to terror with more violence, and responded to terror by addressing the grievances, there was substantial amelioration.

The response to September 11

After 9/11 there was overwhelming sympathy for the United States, including inside the jihadi movement. There were fatwas coming out?condemning Osama bin Laden. How did the US respond? By alienating the people who were sympathising. By invading Afghanistan and Iraq and energising the support for terror.

That.s injecting the patient with poison. Now they.re surprised there.s an increase in terror. The response to 9/11 . as historian Michael Howard pointed out almost straight away . should have been: it.s criminal, let.s try to identify the culprits, bring them to justice and give them fair trials.

The Bush administration refused. It.s possible that they might have been able to extradite al-Qaida and bin Laden. In fact the Taliban made ambiguous offers of extradition if the US provided evidence, which of course any country would do. The Bush administration rejected that attempt, and [said] we.re going to bomb you because you.re not handing him over to us. Well that.s a major crime that welded the jihadi movement back together; the invasion of Iraq completed the task of reconstructing a massive worldwide terrorist movement.

Non-violent resistance in Iraq

As late as November 2007 the official US position as stated by Bush was that any Status of Forces Agreement would have to permit an indefinite US military presence, including of course huge military bases all over, and a privileged role for US investors.

A couple of months later, Bush was compelled to back down on all of that and, at least on paper, accept withdrawal. Well, these are tremendous victories for non-violent resistance. The US could kill insurgents, but they couldn.t deal with hundreds of thousands of people demonstrating in the streets.

The US approach to Iran

If someone was watching this from Mars, they.d collapse in ridicule. The United States is telling Iran to stop its aggressive militarism? I mean we occupy two countries on their border, US spending on arms is approximately equal to the rest of the world combined, we.re threatening them with attack and violation of the UN Charter and on and on. Iran hasn.t invaded anyone for, probably, centuries, except for two Arab islands that the Shah conquered with the support of the United States.

Israel.s security problems

Israel.s invasion of Gaza in January hadn.t the slightest pretext. They claim they had to defend themselves against rockets and that.s accepted by human rights groups and fairly generally, but it.s perfect nonsense. You don.t have a right to use force in self-defence unless you.ve exhausted peaceful means. They could have accepted a ceasefire for the first time ever.

When they partially accepted one for a few months in 2008 there were no Hamas rockets. They do not have a security problem, except for what they are creating, so as long as they choose expansion over security, they.re going to have a security problem.

Barack Obama.s burden of expectations

If Barack Obama fails to live up to expectations, there are two possibilities. Kennedy also generated enormous enthusiasm, and he quickly disappointed the expectations. He had a good propaganda apparatus, but if you look at what he did, he was maybe one of the most dangerous presidents of the 20th century.

But the energy that was generated then turned into something quite constructive: the activism of the 1960s. Kennedy certainly did not support the civil rights movement, but it was inspired by the rhetoric and it went on and ultimately he had to sign on to it. That.s one possibility.

The other possibility is cynicism. The constructive choice is going to have to be based on a realistic understanding of what is happening, not the illusions based on marketing.

The US democratic deficit

The irrelevance of popular opinion in the US is quite dramatic. Take the leading domestic issue right now, which is healthcare; it.s a catastrophe. The debate that.s going on is in fact surreal in many ways, not just Sarah Palin and the death panels, but there was a front-page story in the New York Times, reporting that the Obama administration had made a secret deal with the pharmaceutical industry in which it promised not to allow the government to use its purchasing power to negotiate drug prices, as is done in every other country and as, for example, the Pentagon can do for buying paper clips.

But it.s legally barred in the United States and that.s the major reason why drug prices are twice as high as in most of the world. About 85% of the population think we should negotiate drug prices . but they.re not even mentioned, in fact I don.t think you can even find a report of the polls.

Progress in South America

It.s commonly said that one of the faults of the Bush administration was that they didn.t pay attention to Latin America. That.s probably one of the greatest boons to Latin America. If the United States would stop paying attention to them, the way it does pay attention to them, they would at least have a little window for maybe moving forward.

The US supports democracy if and only if it conforms to strategic and economic interests. In fact, what.s been happening in South America is quite impressive.

For the first time in hundreds of years, South America is beginning at least to face some of its huge problems. In fact, in many ways, it.s the most exciting region of the world.

The lack of action on climate change

The climate catastrophe will mostly harm the poorer countries. It.ll be pretty awful for everyone . Boston may go under water for example . but the rich countries have ways of dealing with it. The poor countries don.t.

The rich countries have to make a choice: are we going to choose a future in which our grandchildren can survive, or are we going to choose short-term profit for the corporate sector? So far, overwhelmingly, it.s the latter.

The state of human rights

I.ve always been more or less an optimist, which means starting from a very low level of expectation. I think if you look at the trajectory over a longer period, including the recent period, there is a general improvement [in human rights], not only in the Third World but even in the rich countries.

Take say the last US election. The Democratic Party fielded two candidates, a woman and an African-American, inconceivable 30 years ago, even 20 years ago. Intellectuals don.t like to talk about it, but it.s the result of the activism of the 1960s.

Noam Chomsky.s new book, Hope and Prospects, will be published by HamishHamilton on October 29

======= FINANCIAL TIMES =============

Gideon Rachman, the FT.s chief foreign affairs columnist, spurs debate with his blogs on topics such as US foreign policy, the European Union and the Middle East

Read the following blog-entry by Gideon Rachman!

This guy works for the FT?? He should be fired!
Does the FT tolerate such school-boy argumentation?
How many other articles in the FT are influenced by
Rachman?? I think I'll stop reading FT. I just cannot
stand the thought of being deceived by such a cheap
ideologe.

Chomsky banned in Guantanamo

October 14, 2009 1:05pm

An interesting little item here, on the banning of the works of Noam Chomsky from the prison library at Guantanamo Bay. One has to wonder about the mentality of the Pentagon lawyer, who was trying to obtain a copy of Chomsky for one of the detainees he is representing. Maybe his job at Guantanamo has led him to entertain all sorts of subversive thoughts?

Chomsky predictably interpets the ban on his work as further evidence that the US is slipping towards totalitarianism. But I see it another way. Obama has said that he is banning the use of torture on prisoners at Guantanamo. Subjecting them to the works of Noam Chomsky is clearly incompatible with the torture ban.

HIS READER'S COMMENTS are kind and seem embedded, too.

1.
1. >>Gideon-- It is good to sense some enthusiasm and new energy on your side. Chomsky is torture even for me. Sadly, I must move along now and get some work done!
Posted by: wcm | October 14 1:52pm
2.
2. I leaned a lot about reading effectively from Chomsky. He was once a rabbinical scholar who in turn learned from that ancient tradition how to asses texts based on evidence and fact and the close analysis of what is being said. It is the method on which he invites criticism of his own writing, by no means infallible. The way to effectively destroy Chomsky's arguments (and those of Norman Finkelstein) is to disprove his facts as misstated and misbegotten. Yet Chomsky's critics, as their only resort one imagines, limit themselves to personal attcks, emotional defenses and, as in the last sentence above, dismissive flippancy.
Posted by: Alfred di Genis | October 14 1:55pm
3.
3. "The last sentence above" refers to Gideon's.
Posted by: Alfred di Genis | October 14 2:00pm
4.
4. Chomsky a rabbinical scholar? Will have to check that one out. As far as I know hails from a secular background.

BTW, do Brits as well as Americans pronounce his name as in 'chopsticks'? Always sounds ridiculous to my ears. In fact, the ch should be pronounced as in German 'ich', except stronger: like the Kh in Khamene'i...
Posted by: RCS | October 14 6:51pm
5.
5. At one point in his youth, Chomsky decided to pursue studies that would have led to becoming a rabbi, but he eventually changed his mind. It is not difficult to find in Chomsky.s work the precision, depth, encompassing analysis and moral conviction that are characteristic of Judaic scholarship.
Posted by: Alfred di Genis | October 14 8:51pm
6.
6. Chomsky in the documentary Manufacturing Consent describes the Financial Times as "the only newspaper that tells the truth" and elsewhere -"because there's probably less chance of their constituency getting out of hand".

He also recommends reading Adam Smith rather than just worshipping him. Sound advice.
Posted by: cmyk | October 14 10:15pm
7.
7. I've found his social writting fascinating but his linguistic work way above my attention span

Censorship would be for him a normal occurence and a demonstration of his beliefs
Chomsky probably doesn't care, he 's been censored by bigger fry
during an interview he stated that on principle he would sign any petition put to him but found the politics interfering with his greatest interrest, language
Posted by: jeannick | October 14 10:16pm
8.
8. Apart from being mildly amusing, your final paragraph leads me to re-consider why I read this blog on a daily basis. Typically I do so because your writing comes across as that of an educated and, critically, 'thoughtful' journalist. By that I mean someone who is not fearful of ideas and is embracing of all modes of thought. You, like I, may not approve of many of the Hollywood-style aggrandizements that Chomsky is often so fond of. However, we are also talking about one of the most important contributors to linguistic theory in the 20th century. Second, we are talking about a scholar who has been quoted more than anyone anyone else over a period greater than three decades. Why the scorn?
Posted by: AnOpenMind | October 15 12:00am
9.
9. I agree with jeannick regarding the difficulty of reading Prof. Chomsky's work on linguistics and the value of his works on politics and foreign affairs. Mr. Rachman's sarcasm escapes me. That Prof. Chomsky's books might be banned in the Guantanamo prison is bizarre, but the whole enterprise of the prison on Guantanamo is quite bizarre from any perspective.

Interesting datum regarding Prof. Chomsky's linguistic work: in the Wikipedia blurb on Prof. Chomsky one of the luminaries of computer science, Donald Knuth, is cited as having brought one of Chomsky's early and highly influential books on language, Syntactic Structures, with him on his honeymoon in 1961.

The Wikipedia blurb also mentions that Chomsky's father was a noted Hebrew scholar, although apparently on the Hebrew language itself rather than on the Talmud, i.e. not a rabbinical scholar. Regarding the origin of the last name or its pronunciation, not clear. ....... is some sort of geographical region in Siberia, but beyond that I do not know whether it has a meaning. Where's Vadim?
Posted by: Wendell Murray | October 15 12:12am
10.
10. ****** mightier than the sword and this is further proof of it.

P (mimicking Panchan Chandra of Brussels' postings about water being wet!)
Posted by: P | October 15 3:07am
11.
11. Come on, Gideon. There could be much worse torture than reading Chomsky. How about having to watch Fox news? Chomsky is, very simply, one of the greatest living Americans, someone who is willing to tell the truth about the total corporate domination of this country that everybody knows but no one is willing to say publicly. He is an American hero.

No wonder that his books are banned in Guantánamo. In the early days of the Patriot Act and the rest of the hysteria caused by George W. Bush's "War on Terror", when his press secretary, Ari Fleischer, was warning Americans to watch what they do and watch what they say, there were probably a lot of people in the US who were afraid to read Chomsky's books.
Posted by: algasema | October 15 3:31am
12.
12. WOW! P E N, (followed by is with a space in between) was considered by your robot police as an offensive word! It must be mightier than I had suspected!
Posted by: P | October 15 6:44am
13.
13. Sorry to disagree with mine host, but dissing Noam Chomsky is a bridge too far.
The "torture" of reading Chomsky is the torture of reading the truth. Like the torture an ugly man experience when he shaves... staring into the mirror. Chomsky is the bane of the pharisees.

Chomsky, Chomsky, rah, rah, rah. Chomsky, Chomsky sis boom bah!

There, I feel much better now.
Posted by: David Seaton | October 15 7:07am
14.
14. We can safely assume that it was not Chomsky's linguistic work that was banned from Guantanamo. Would that it were.
Posted by: Alfred di Genis | October 15 7:55am
15.
15. I've come across Chomsky at the university, where semantics was at the time a hot issue and Chomsky featured prominently. He is not for nothing emeritus at MIT, and anyone who reaches any level whatever at MIT is almost guaranteed to be at the top of their field. Chomsky certainly is.

Let's not forget that the USA according to Chomsky is the greatest nation on earth. Despite all his criticism he believes that. Chomsky also believes in anarchism, which he defines as the absence of a central authority, in many ways his anarchist society is a concrete description of Marx' workers paradise.

He's not unlike Milton Friedman as well in the consequent application of libertarianism.

His criticism of contemporary society is to be viewed against that background, stuff is this bad because we haven't yet reached a true libertarian democracy. And I hope he is right, that around the corner we can discover a global libertarian society without centralized authorities. I think it's unlikely, but it would be nice.

His criticism is solely directed at the US. His knowledge of other areas on the planet is always expressed in contrast to US foreign policy; Russia's behaviour in Chechnya, China in Tibet and Xinjiang, Sri Lanka in the Tamil North, it is almost as if he believes Russia, China, Sri Lanka the Congolese and others simply act brutally and he uses the unexplained almost natural random brutality as a contrast to the motivated and directed brutality of the US for which he never fails to find a corporatist reason. At every juncture he tries to turn the debate towards how the US fouled it up or how the US would be responsible either in action or inaction. While his concern for suffering is most genuine his abuse of it in his moral indignation against his own nation seems insincere.

His criticism is understandable from his viewing the US as the greatest nation, perhaps he believes he can change the US to a degree that he cannot change Russia or China, which is why criticism of the latter is pointless. Perhaps like many progressive idealists he believes in the ultimate historically predetermined victory of libertarianism, so that it doesn't matter that he allows nonprogressives to use his rethoric in their battle against Chomsy's own values, because they cannot win.

But it is a long stretch, I am a progressive myself but I don't believe that global freedom and equality is historically inevitable. Hence however justified his criticism often is to me its often far too self defeating.

Like Niels Bohr he's a brilliant scientist but politically astoundingly naieve.
Posted by: Felix Drost | October 15 9:02am
16.
16. It is so easy to insult from a comfortable office in London. The very humane values underpinning the writings of Professor Chomsky would be worth their weight in platinum were they adopted by the inmates at Guantanamo.. as they would if done so by at least one of the wits at the FT.
Posted by: Shapiro | October 15 9:10am
17.
17. Chomsky's criticism of Israel's policies and actions are also explained, accurately or not, as that country's doing the bidding and serving the interests of a powerful America. To me, it is Chomsky's methodology that is most of value, but Felix's observations are astute.
Posted by: Alfred di Genis | October 15 9:35am
18.
18. Chomsky's vision of society bears some congruity with the structure of the kibbutz as it developed.
Posted by: Alfred di Genis | October 15 10:11am
19.
19. You should be ashamed of yourself for writing this.
Posted by: Gopal Balakrishnan | October 15 10:29am
20.
20. What I value most about Chomsky is his relentless documentation. Reading him is totally essential to have any idea of what has really been going on.
His underlying politics seems to be mostly to expose hypocrisy. And of course the USA is probably the most hypocritical nation in the history of our planet.

As to his anarchism:Anarchism either of the left or of the right is almost by definition a non-starter.
If nothing else you can count on the Chinese to keep the central state alive and well.

The only anarchy that exists or ever has existed is today's multinational corporations as described in Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine", which is an amazing work for one so young and a total "must read" for anyone who is serious about understanding the workings of our world.

I think Naomi Klein has a more interesting analysis than Chomsky's and probably when she reaches Chomsky's age, she'll be more important than he is now.

Having said that Chomsky, even with his "dog wagging tail" analysis of the relations between Israel and the USA, is the foremost living public intellectual in the English language.
Posted by: David Seaton | October 15 10:30am
21.
21. The Shock Doctrine is well recommended. My understanding is that Naomi Klein (An American-Canadian married to the son of the former leader of Ontario's "socialist" New Democratic Party) is an admirer of Chomsky, and her work shows not a little of his influence. Chomsky's influence is obvious in the work of many younger writers. David Seaton and I are in agreement that most valuable in Chomsky's work is what I call "methodology" and he "documentation".

Could Gopal Barakrishnan please elaborate on his most enigmatic comment.
Posted by: Alfred di Genis | October 15 11:23am
22.
22. What I like about Naomi Klein is that she is not afraid to "connect the dots", in some ways she reminds me of a young Marx, whereas Chomsky uses much more of the rabbinical pilpul methodology that Alfred paints the: "How many genocides fit on the head of a pin?". thing

What Chomsky doesn't have is the next step... we understand the world... OK, how do we "change it"? That is where I think Klein may end up being more important.
Posted by: David Seaton | October 15 11:37am
23.
23. Oh NOOOO !
Posted by: jnyren | October 15 12:20pm
24.
24. P: The program that parses commentary likely uses something called regular expressions to determine what should or should not be printed. Regular expressions use incredibly concise patterns that can be difficult to get right, i.e. to accommodate all variations on what is supposed to be excluded.

I skimmed the Naomi Klein book and read a few parts in detail. Her hypothesis that methods of "shock" to any system are used to "correct" deficiencies - although well-intentioned - is not convincing. She blanket-condemns Milton Friedman for example as a progenitor of economic shock methods.

I am not sure whether that is accurate for one. There are other economists whose recommendations include gross shock to the economy and have had concrete implementations, such as in Russia a decade or more ago, Second, Prof. Friedman's economic theorizing is considered to be a valuable contribution to the canon of conventional economic theory. His recommendations in the political and policy realm were he had no more expertise than anyone else led to inhumane implementations of policy in the USA or elsewhere.

In any case Prof. Chomsky'w work is invariably scholarly to the extent that I am familiar with it. Ms. Klein's appears to be classic journalese. Nothing wrong with that, but the hypothesis in the Shock Doctrine simply does not fit the data.

I agree, good commentary from Happy Taskmaster. Does drost mean taskmaster in Dutch? I looked it up in a dictionary. No obvious cognate to me in either German or English, but there may be one in both or either languages.
Posted by: Wendell Murray | October 15 3:36pm
25.
25. Naomi Klein, of course, is a journalist.
Posted by: Alfred di Genis | October 15 6:00pm
26.
26. Karl Marx was also a journalist.
Posted by: David Seaton | October 15 9:54pm
27.
27. David,

good post..

reminds me of bugs bunny cartoons
Posted by: Reza | October 15 10:13pm
28.
28. number 13, i mean..
Posted by: Reza | October 15 10:14pm
29.
29. " Karl Marx was also a journalist "
So was Mussolini ,
There sems to be the habitual confusion on Anarchism ,
the most successful Anarchist comunities are made up of increadibly conservative members ,
like the Amish, with very strong personnal ethics and rather narrowly focussed on their own patch
and kin, in an agrarian setting pretty much in autarky

That's the only stable way to run a society without police, judges and laws ,
Posted by: jeannick | October 16 5:30am
30.
30. " Karl Marx was also a journalist " So was Mussolini ,
Mussolini wore funny clothes, so does Elton John. Karl Marx had a beard, so did Abraham Lincoln. Ice cream is cold, so is hooker's heart.

What I was saying is that for a political thinker-activist like Naomi Klein to be a journalist is natural. As an activist she is concerned with day to day reality. Reality is cuisine du marché
Check this for example:

Obama isn't helping. At least the world argued with Bush

For all the global love-in, the new president has led rich nations to neglect principled action and row back from climate deals

Of all the explanations for Barack Obama's Nobel peace prize, the one that rang truest came from Nicolas Sarkozy. "It sets the seal on America's return to the heart of all the world's peoples." In other words, this was Europe's way of saying to America, "We love you again", like those weird renewal-of-vows ceremonies couples have after a rough patch.

Now Europe and the US are officially reunited, it seems appropriate to consider whether this is necessarily a good thing. The Nobel committee, which awarded the prize for Obama's embrace of "multilateral diplomacy", is evidently convinced that US engagement on the world stage is a triumph for peace and justice. I'm not so sure. After nine months in office, Obama has a clear track record as a global player. Again and again, US negotiators have chosen not to strengthen international laws and protocols but to weaken them, often leading other rich countries in a race to the bottom.

Let's start where the stakes are highest: climate change. During the Bush years, European politicians distinguished themselves from the US by expressing their unshakable commitment to the Kyoto protocol. So while the US increased its carbon emissions by 20% from 1990 levels, European Union countries reduced theirs by 2%. Not stellar, but clearly a case where the EU's break-up with America carried tangible benefits for the planet.

Flash forward to the high-stakes climate negotiations that have just wrapped up in Bangkok. The talks were supposed to lead to a deal in Copenhagen this December that significantly strengthens Kyoto. Instead, the developed countries formed a bloc calling for Kyoto to be replaced. Where Kyoto set clear and binding targets for emission reductions, the US plan would have each country decide how much to cut, then submit its plans to international monitoring . with nothing but wishful thinking to ensure this all keeps the planet's temperature below catastrophic levels. And where Kyoto put the burden of responsibility squarely on the rich countries that created the climate crisis, the new plan treats all countries the same.

These kinds of weak proposals were not altogether surprising coming from the US; what was shocking was the sudden unity of the rich world around the plan . including many countries that had previously sung the praises of Kyoto. And there were more betrayals: the EU, which had indicated it would spend between $19bn and $35bn a year to help developing countries adapt to climate change, came to Bangkok with a much lower offer, one more in line with the US pledge of . nothing. Oxfam's Antonio Hill summed up the talks like this: "When the starting gun fired, it became a race to the bottom, with rich countries weakening existing commitments under the international framework."

This isn't the first time a much-celebrated return to the negotiating table has resulted in overturned tables, with hard-won international laws and conventions scattered on the floor. The US played a similar role at the United Nations conference on racism in April. After extracting all sorts of deletions from the negotiating text . no references to Israel or the Palestinians, nothing on slavery reparations . the Obama administration decided to boycott anyway, pointing to the fact that the new text reaffirmed the document adopted in 2001 in Durban.

It was a flimsy excuse, but there was some kind of logic to it, since the US had never signed the 2001 agreement. What made no sense was the wave of copycat withdrawals from the rich world. Within 48 hours of the US announcement, Italy, Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Poland had pulled out. Unlike the US, these governments had all signed the 2001 declaration, so they had no reason to object to a document that reaffirmed it.

It didn't matter. As with the climate change talks, lining up behind Obama . with his impeccable reputation . was an easy way to avoid burdensome obligations and look progressive at the same time: a service the US was never able to provide during the Bush years.

The US has had a similarly corrupting influence as a new member of the UN human rights council. Its first big test was Judge Richard Goldstone's courageous report on Israel's Gaza onslaught, which found that war crimes had been committed by both the Israeli army and Hamas. Rather than prove its commitment to international law, the US used its clout to smear the report as "deeply flawed" and to strong-arm the Palestinian Authority into withdrawing a supportive resolution. The PA, which faced a furious backlash at home for caving in to US pressure, may introduce a new version.

And then there are the G20 summits, Obama's highest profile multilateral engagements. At the April meeting in London, it seemed for a moment there might be some kind of co-ordinated attempt to rein in transnational financial speculators and tax dodgers. Sarkozy even pledged to walk out of the summit if it failed to produce serious regulatory commitments. But the Obama administration had no interest in genuine multilateralism, advocating instead that countries should come up with their own plans (or not) and hope for the best . much like its reckless climate-change plan. Sarkozy, needless to say, did not walk anywhere but to the photo session, to have his picture taken with Obama.

Of course, Obama has made some good moves on the world stage . like not siding with the Honduras coup government, or supporting a UN women's agency. But a clear pattern has emerged: in areas where other rich nations were teetering between principled action and negligence, US interventions have tilted them toward negligence. If this is the new era of multilateralism, it is no prize.

Naomi Klein is the award-winning author of the international bestseller, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies
The Guardian, Friday 16 October 2009

Slum Warfare - protect the HAVES against have-nots ISRAEL TEACHER

Israel's occupation of Gaza is the TEACHER scenario for the rich to protect themselves from the poor.

“Israel and the Pacification Industry: Control of Populations and Public Space”

Jimmy Johnson, Israeli citizen, International Representative for Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions

The world, even prior to the current economic crisis, has seen increasing economic divergence between wealthy and poor nations, and between the wealthy and poor inside nations. The increasing levels of poverty and inequality have coincided with the ongoing migration to cities worldwide. Military planners for power brokers have characterized the current and foreseen results of this as the “urbanization of insurgency.” The lecture and discussion will focus on Israel and the Occupation’s role in the young and growing market for “pacification” strategies, equipment and techniques that are already being used in Iraq, Afghanistan, the United States and beyond. It will also look at how spatial politics, the use of radical architectural theory in urban warfare in the Balata Refugee Camp to the zoning and planning of the settlements to house demolitions, literally define the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and chances for a sustainable peace.

MUST SEE:
Jimmy Johnson - The Matrix of Control

---

---

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRpoxs1noEE

keywords: inequality management
occupation
pacification industry

For more info:
http://www.icahd.org



The rich need to control the uprisings in the slums! Wealth defense!





the future urban character of warfare is trained in israels occupation areas

Israel provides valuable military combat expertise for combat in urban areas.

This is “Chicago”, the fake Arab town built by Israel in the middle of the Negev desert to train its military forces in urban warfare.

There is even a fake arab town in the Tze'elim Military Base in Negev where Israel trains special (murder) forces of germany and other global nothern rich states.

This is what is called the pacification industry!

The elements are surveillance techniques, intelligence gathering and all types of violence to suppress poor people.

Though artificial, our hometown's dessicated twin is “highly realistic.” Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, whose photographs of “Chicago” are collected in this book and are replicated here, wrote: “To create this alternative universe, Palestinian architecture has been carefully scrutinized. Roads and alleyways have been constructed to mimic the layout of towns like Ramallah and Nablus. In one corner the ground has been covered in sand, a reference to unpaved refugee camps like Jenin. Graffiti has been applied to the walls with obscure declarations in Arabic: 'I love you Ruby' and 'Red ash, hot as blood'. Burned-out vehicles line the streets.”


(Chicago, Tze'elim Military Base, Negev Desert, Israel. Photo by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin.)


(Chicago, Tze'elim Military Base, Negev Desert, Israel. Photo by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin.)

Perhaps more interesting than its spatial “authenticity” is the fact that the “history” of this ghost town “directly mirrors the history of the Palestinian conflict.”

The first and second Intifada, the Gaza withdrawl, an attempted assassination of Saddam Hussein, the Battle of Falluja; almost every one of Israel's major military tactics in the Middle East over the past three decades was performed in advance here.

This is where generations of Israeli soldiers rehearse over and over again like actors in a Hollywood studio set. Here, with props on hand or littered about, they perfect their stage presence, try out some new moves and hand gestures, and fine tune their dialogues in front of cardboard cutouts of generic terrorists. Here also, they practice their showstopper: walking through walls. And then it's time to step out in front of live television cameras, the whole world already a captive audience, to play out their well-choreographed routines.



One technique is dewalling. Israel's soldiers and corporations did it in Nablus.

They called it "alternative architecture" ! Instead of being exposed to gunfire soldiers make alternative passageways by blasting through walls.



(Chicago, Tze'elim Military Base, Negev Desert, Israel. Photo by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin.)

Meanwhile, “Chicago” is so named because its bullet-ridden fake walls apparently recall the punctured real walls of Al Capone's Chicago. While still acknowledging the dizzying complexity of Arab-Israeli relations, one wonders if a small yet meaningful step towards lasting peace could be taken if, on Israel's side, it stops vicariously engaging with the Palestinians in secret, replicant cities after first exorcising this mythological, gangster-infested Chicago from their collective memory and replace it with something real and true?

Not everyone was a mobster then, the same way not everyone offered something to our former governor for Obama's senate seat. The same way not all Palestinians are terrorists.


(Chicago, Tze'elim Military Base, Negev Desert, Israel. Photo by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin.)

In any case, should the ultranationalist Avigdor Lieberman and his party's racist ideology get their way in a ruling coalition with Benjamin Netanyahu, and all Israeli-Arabs get expelled from Israel, their homes and cities dismantled and resettled over, at least part of their history, albeit one written by others, has been recorded for future archaeologists to study.


Israel duplicity lies propaganda gaza war crimes

Read more: http://tangibleinfo.blogspot.com/2009/10/everything-is-ok-public-service-message.html#ixzz0TLr0WKJJ

For resistance fighters this was used before, for example in the paris commune and the battle of algiers.

The decapitation (killing of leaders) of political movements is another tactic.

During the falluja siege reporters commented on the similarity to Gaza.

Israel trains US special forces. False Flag terror and mind-control is USED EVERY DAY.





01 2007
\
Walking Through Walls

Eyal Weizman


The maneuver conducted by units of the Israeli military during the attack on the city of Nablus in April 2002 was described by its commander, Brigadier General Aviv Kochavi, as "inverse geometry," which he explained as the re-organization of the urban syntax by means of a series of micro-tactical actions. During the attack, soldiers moved within the city across hundred-meter-long "over-ground-tunnels" carved out through a dense and contiguous urban fabric. Although several thousand soldiers and hundreds of Palestinian guerrilla fighters were maneuvering simultaneously in the city, they were saturated within its fabric to the degree that most would not have been visible from an aerial perspective at any given moment. Furthermore, soldiers did not often use the streets, roads, alleys, or courtyards that constitute the syntax of the city, as well as the external doors, internal stairwells, and windows that constitute the order of buildings, but rather moved horizontally through party walls, and vertically through holes blasted in ceilings and floors. This form of movement is part of a tactics that the military refers to in metaphors it borrows from the world of aggregate animal formation as "swarming" and "infestation." Moving through domestic interiors this maneuver turns inside to outside and private domains to thoroughfares. Fighting took place within half-demolished living rooms, bedrooms and corridors of poorly built refugee homes, where the television may still be operating and a pot may still on the stove. Rather than submitting to the authority of conventional spatial boundaries, movement became constitutive of space, and space was constituted as an event. It was not the order of space that governed patterns of movement but movement that produced and practiced space around it. The three-dimensional movement through walls, ceilings, and floors across the urban bulk reinterpreted, short-circuited, and recomposed both architectural and urban syntax. The tactics of "walking-through-walls" involved a conception of the city as not just the site, but as the very medium of warfare -- a flexible, almost liquid matter that is forever contingent and in flux.

According to geographer Stephen Graham, since the end of the cold war a vast, international "intellectual field" that he called a "shadow world of military urban research institutes and training centers" has been established in order to rethink military operations in urban terrain.[1] This responds to the urbanization of insurgency. The expanding network of these "shadow worlds" includes schools, urban-research institutes and training centers, as well as mechanisms for the exchange of knowledge between different militaries such as conferences, workshops and joint training exercises. In their attempt to comprehend urban life, soldiers -- the urban practitioners of today -- take crash courses to master topics such as urban infrastructure, complex system analysis, structural stability, building techniques, and appeal as well to a variety of theories and methodologies developed within contemporary civilian academia. There is thus a new relationship emerging between a triangle of three interrelated components: armed conflicts, the built environment, and the theoretical language conceived to conceptualize them.

Following global trends throughout the last decade the IDF established several institutes and think-tanks in different levels of its command and asked them to re-conceptualize strategic, tactical and organizational responses to the brutal policing work that came to be known as "dirty" or "low intensity" wars. Notable amongst these are the Operational Theory Research Institute (OTRI) set up in 1996 and the "Alternative Team"[2] set up in 2003. These institutes were composed not only of military officers but of civilian academics and technological experts. Two of the main figures affiliated to these institutes -- Shimon Naveh, a retired Brigadier General, director of OTRI, and Aviv Kochavi, a serving officer -- are extensively interviewed in the following pages.


Inverse-urban-geometry

The tactics of "walking through walls" that the military employed in the urban attacks on the refugee camps were developed, not in response to theoretical influences, but as a way of penetrating the previously "un-penetrable" refugee camps. Aviv Kochavi, then commander of the Paratrooper Brigade, explained the principle that guided the attack of the refugee camp of Batala and the adjacent Kasbah (old city) of Nablus:

"This space that you look at, this room that you look at, is nothing but your interpretation of it. Now, you can stretch the boundaries of your interpretation, but not in an unlimited fashion, after all, it must be bound by physics, as it contains buildings and alleys. The question is: how do you interpret the alley? Do you interpret the alley as a place, like every architect and every town planner does, to walk through, or do you interpret the alley as a place forbidden to walk through? This depends only on interpretation. We interpreted the alley as a place forbidden to walk through, and the door as a place forbidden to pass through, and the window as a place forbidden to look through, because a weapon awaits us in the alley, and a booby trap awaits us behind the doors. This is because the enemy interprets space in a traditional, classical manner, and I do not want to obey this interpretation and fall into his traps. Not only do I not want to fall into his traps, I want to surprise him! This is the essence of war. I need to win. I need to emerge from an unexpected place. And this is what we tried to do."



"This is why that we opted for the methodology of walking through walls. […] Like a worm that eats its way forward, emerging at points and then disappearing. We were thus moving from the interior of homes to their exterior in a surprising manner and in places we were not expected, arriving from behind and hitting the enemy that awaited us behind a corner. […] I said to my troops, "Friends! This is not a matter of your choice! There is no other way of moving! If until now you were used to move along roads and sidewalks, forget it! From now on we all walk through walls!"[3]

If moving through walls is pitched by the military as its "humane" answer to the wanton destruction of traditional urban warfare, and as an "elegant" alternative to Jenin-style urban destruction, this is because the damage it causes is often concealed within the interiors of homes. The unexpected penetration of war into the private domain of the home has been experienced by civilians in Palestine, just like in Iraq, as the most profound form of trauma and humiliation. Since Palestinian guerrilla fighters were themselves maneuvering through walls and pre-planned openings, most fighting took place in private homes. Some buildings became like layered cakes, with Israeli soldiers both above and below a floor where Palestinians were trapped.

Urban warfare increasingly depends on technologies developed for the purpose of "un-walling of the wall," to borrow a term from Gordon Matta-Clark. As a complement to military tactics that involve physically breaking and walking through walls, new methods have been devised to allow soldiers not only to see but also shoot and kill through solid walls. The Israeli company Camero developed a hand-held imaging device that combines thermal imaging with ultra-wideband radar, which much like a contemporary maternity-ward ultra-sound system has the ability to produce three-dimensional renderings of biological life concealed behind barriers.[4] Weapons using the NATO standard 5.56mm round are complemented with some using the 7.62mm one, which is capable of penetrating brick, wood, and adobe without much deflection of the bullet-head. Instruments of "literal transparency" are the main components in the search to produce a ghostlike (or computer-game like) military fantasy-world of boundless fluidity, in which the space of the city becomes as navigable as an ocean. By striving to see what is hidden behind walls and to move and propel ammunition through them, the military seems to have elevated contemporary technologies -- using the justification of (almost contemporary) theories -- to the level of metaphysics, seeking to move beyond the here and now of physical reality, collapsing time and space.


Academy of Street Fighting

Shimon Naveh, a retired brigadier general, was until May 2006 the co-director of the Operational Theory Research Institute. In an interview I conducted with him, Naveh explained the aims of the institute: "Jenin was a complete failure of the IDF, the damage that this destruction has caused the IDF is larger than what it caused the Palestinians [sic], it was commanded by extremely inexperienced officers who just panicked and stopped thinking." He suggested that the IDF should further develop the kind of approach employed in Nablus and Balata. He saw his work as "making IDF actions more efficient, smarter… and thus more humane." On the theoretical references the institute employs he said: "We read Christopher Alexander […] can you imagine? We read John Forester. […] We read Gregory Bateson, we read Clifford Geertz. Not just myself, but our soldiers, our generals are reflecting on these kinds of materials. We have established a school and developed a curriculum that trains ‘operational architects’."

In a lecture I attended, Naveh presented a diagram resembling a "square of opposition" that plots a set of logical relationships among certain propositions relating to military and guerrilla operations. Indications such as "Difference and Repetition -- The Dialectics of Structuring and Structure"; "‘Formless’ Rival Entities"; "Fractal Maneuver: Strike-Driven Raids"; "Velocity vs. Rhythms"; "Wahhabi War Machine"; "Post-Modern Anarchists"; "Nomadic Terrorists", and so on, employed the language of French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.

In the interview, I asked Naveh: "Why Deleuze and Guattari?" He replied that: "Several of the concepts in A Thousand Plateaus became instrumental for us […] allowing us to explain contemporary situations in a way that we could not have otherwise explained. It problematized our own paradigms. […] Most important was the distinction they have pointed out between the concepts of ‘smooth’ and ‘striated’ space […] [which accordingly reflect] the organizational concepts of the ‘war machine’ and the ‘state apparatus.’ […] In the IDF we now often use the term ‘to smooth out space’ when we want to refer to operation in a space as if it had no borders. We try to produce the operational space in such a manner that borders do not affect us. Palestinian areas could indeed be thought of as ‘striated,’ in the sense that they are enclosed by fences, walls, ditches, roadblocks and so on. […] We want to confront the ‘striated’ space of traditional, old-fashioned military practice [the way most military units presently operate] with smoothness that allows for movement through space that crosses any borders and barriers. Rather than contain and organize our forces according to existing borders, we want to move through them."

Naveh has recently completed the translation into Hebrew of some of the chapters in Bernard Tschumi’s Architecture and Disjunction. In addition to these theoretical positions, Naveh references such canonical elements of urban theory as the Situationist practices of dérive and détournement. These ideas were conceived as part of a general approach meant to challenge the built hierarchy of the capitalist city. They aimed to break down distinctions between private and public, inside and outside, use and function, to replace private space with a "borderless" public surface. Naveh made references to the work of Georges Bataille as well, who also spoke of a desire to attack architecture: his call to arms was meant to dismantle the rigid rationalism of a postwar order, to escape "the architectural straitjacket," and to liberate repressed human desires.

These ideas and tactics reflected a general lack of confidence in the capacity of state structures to protect or further democracy. The non-statist micro-politics of the time represented in many ways an attempt to constitute a mental and affective guerrilla at the intimate levels of the body, sexuality, and inter-subjectivity, an individual in whom the personal became subversively political. As such, these theoretical positions offered a strategy for withdrawing from the formal state apparatus into the private domain. While these tactics were conceived to transgress the established "bourgeois order" of the city, with the architectural element of the wall -- domestic, urban or geopolitical -- projected as an embodiment of social and political repression, in the hands of the Israeli military, tactics inspired by these thinkers were projected as the basis for an attack on an "enemy" city. Education in the humanities -- often believed to be the most powerful weapon against imperialism -- has here been appropriated as the powerful tool of colonial power itself.

All this is not outlined here in order to place blame on this theory, its makers or the purity of their intentions or promote an anti-theoretical approach, but in an attempt to turn our attention to the possibility that, as Herbert Marcus suggested, with the growing integration between the various aspects of society, "contradiction and criticism" could be equally subsumed and made operative as an instrumental tool by the hegemony of power -- in this case post-structuralist and even post-colonial theory by the colonial state.[5]


Swarming

According to Naveh, a central category in the IDF conception of the new urban operations is "swarming." It refers to a coordinated joint action undertaken by a network form of organization whose separate units operate semi-autonomously but in general synergy with all others. The RAND corporation theorists credited with the popularization of the military implications of the term, David Ronfeldt and John Arquilla, claim that swarming was historically employed in the warfare of nomadic tribes, and is currently undertaken by different organizations across the spectrum of social political conflict -- terrorists and guerrillas organization, mafia criminals as well as non-violent social activists.[6]




In our interview, Kochavi explained the way the IDF understands and employs the concept: "A state military whose enemy is scattered like a network of loosely-organized gangs […] must liberate itself from the old concept of straight lines, units in linear formation, regiments and battalions, […] and become itself much more diffuse and scattered, flexible and swarm-like… In fact, it must adjust itself to the stealthy capability of the enemy […] Swarming, to my understanding, is simultaneous arrival at a target of a large number of nodes -- if possible from 360 degrees […] which then dissever and re-disperse." According to Gal Hirsh, swarming creates "noisy humming," that makes it very difficult for the enemy to know where the military is and what is its direction of movement.[7]

The assumption of low-intensity conflict, as articulated by Arquilla and Ronfeldt, is that "it takes a network to combat a network."[8] An urban combat is thus not the action of a living force upon a lifeless mass, but the collision of two networks.[9] As they adapt, mimic and learn from each other, the military and the guerrilla enter a cycle of "co-evolution." Military capabilities evolve in relation to resistance, which itself evolves in relation to transformations in military practice. However, claims for total breakdown of vertical hierarchies in contemporary militaries are largely exaggerated. Beyond the rhetoric of "self-organization" and "flattening of hierarchy," military networks are still largely nested within traditional institutional hierarchies. Non-linear swarming is performed at the very tactical end of an inherently hierarchical system.[10] Spatial non-linearity is achieved because Israel still controls all linear supply lines -- the roads within the West Bank and those that connect it to its large bases within Israel proper, as well as the multiplicity of linear barriers constructed throughout it. Furthermore, "swarming" and "walking through walls" are successful when the enemy is relatively weak and disorganized, without an ability to coordinate resistance, and especially when the balance of technology, training and force is clearly on the side of the military.

The years spent successfully attacking the weak Palestinian organizations was no doubt one the reason for the incompetence that the same Israeli soldiers demonstrated when they faced in 2006 the stronger, better armed and well trained Hizbollah fighters in Lebanon. Indeed the two officers most implicated in the summer of 2006 events in Gaza and Lebanon are none other than two Israeli military graduates of OTRI, veterans of the Balata and Nablus attack in 2002, Aviv Kochavi (commander of the Gaza Division) and Gal Hirsh (commander of the northern Galilee Division 91). Kochavi, who commanded the summer 2006 attack on Gaza, stuck to his obfuscating language: "we intend to create a chaos in the Palestinian side, to jump from one place to the other, to leave the area and then return to it […] we will use all the advantages of ‘raid’ rather than ‘occupation.’"[11] In Lebanon Hirsh called for "raids instead of occupation," and ordered the battalions newly attached to his command and unused to the language he acquired at OTRI to "swarm" and "infest" an area. However his subordinate officers did not seem to understand what this was supposed to mean. Hirsh but was later criticized for arrogance, intellectualism and out-of touch-ness. Naveh, pondering the results, himself admitted in the popular media that "The war in Lebanon was a failure and I had a great part in it. What I have brought to the IDF has failed."[12]

The chaos was indeed on the Israeli side. Continuous fire and shelling by the increasingly frustrated IDF gradually cumulated villages and neighborhoods into sharp topographies of broken concrete and glass sprouting with twisted metal bars. Within this lunar landscape, the hills of rubble were honeycombed with cavities of buried rooms, which paradoxically offered more hiding places to the guerrillas. Hizbollah fighters, themselves effectively swarming through and between this rubble and detritus of wars, sometimes using an invisible system of tunnels, studied the maneuver of Israeli soldiers, and attacked them with anti-tank weapons precisely when they entered, organized and moved within Lebanese homes as they were used to from the cities and refugee camps of the West Bank.


Lethal Theory

Non-linear and network terminology has its origins in military discourse since after the end of WWII and was instrumental in the conception in 1982 of the US military doctrine of AirLand Battle which emphasized inter-service cooperation and the targeting of the enemy at its systematic bottlenecks -- bridges, headquarters and supply lines -- in attempts to throw it off balance. It was conceived to check Soviet invasion in Central Europe and was first applied in the Gulf War of 1991. The advance of this strand leads to the Network Centric Doctrine in the context of the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) after the end of the Cold War. Network Centric Warfare conceptualizes the field of military operation as distributed network-systems, woven together by information technology across the entire operational spectrum. This type of transformation, promoted by neo-conservatives such as Donald Rumsfeld, faced strong opposition within the US armed forces. This opposition recently accelerated in the context of American military failures in Iraq. The IDF is similarly, since the early 1990s, undergoing institutional conflicts in the context of these transformations. In the context of these internal conflicts, a special language based on post-structuralist theory was used to articulate the critique of the existing system, to argue for transformations, and to call for further reorganizations. As Naveh explained: "We employ critical theory primarily in order to critique the military institution itself -- its fixed and heavy conceptual foundations […]."

One of the internal conflicts within the IDF, which was conceptual as much as it was hierarchical, was articulated in the context of the debate that followed the closing down of OTRI in the spring of 2006 and the controversial suspension of Naveh and his co-director Dov Tamari. This took place in the context of the change of staff that followed the replacement of Chief of Staff Moshe Ya’alon with his rival Dan Halutz.[13] After dismantling OTRI Halutz set up an alternative institute for "operational thinking" which was based on the model of a similar department Haluz previously set up within the Air Force. Naveh understood his dismissal as "a coup against OTRI and theory."

The military debate reflects upon political questions. Naveh, together with most of his former colleagues at OTRI, supported the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip as well as the Israeli withdrawal from South Lebanon prior to its actual undertaking in 2000. He is similarly is in favor of withdrawal from the West Bank. In fact, his political position is in line with what is referred to in Israel as the "Zionist left." His vote alternated between Labor and Meretz parties. Similarly, Kochavi enthusiastically accepted the command over the military operation for the evacuation and destruction of Gaza settlements, and regardless of the atrocities he was accused of in Gaza is similarly understood as a "leftist" officer. According to Naveh, Israel’s operational paradigm should seek to replace presence in occupied areas with the capacity to move through them, and produce in them what he called "effects," which are "military operations such as aerial attacks or commando raids… that affect the enemy psychologically and organizationally." The new tactics are meant to maintain security domination in the Palestinian areas evacuated, and their development was seen in fact as a precondition for withdrawal.



Withdrawal is understood within the IDF as depending on Israel’s capacity to cancel it in emergency situations it could itself define. This undoubtedly undoes much of the perceived symmetrical nature of borders, embodied by the iconography of West Bank Wall, and by all the recent diplomatic rhetoric that would like to regard whatever polity remains (fragmented and perforated as it may be) on the other side of this Wall as a Palestinian state. Following this logic Naveh claimed that "whatever line they [the politicians] could agree upon -- there they should put the fence [Wall]. This is okay with me . . .but as long as I can cross this fence. What we need is not to be there, but […] to act there. […] Withdrawal is not the end of the story." In this respect, the large "state wall" is conceptualized in similar terms to the house wall -- as a transparent and permeable medium that could allow the Israeli military to "smoothly" move through and across it.

A comparison between the attacks in 2002 on Jenin and Nablus would reveal the paradox that renders the overall effect of the leftist officers even more destructive. A hole in the wall may not be as devastating as the complete destruction of the home, but considering local and international opposition, if the occupation forces were not able to enter refugee camps without having to destroy them as they did in Jenin, they would most likely not attack refugee camps, and definitely not as often as they do now that they have found the tool to do so. Instead of entering a political process of negotiation with Hamas, military confidence is finding a solution for the government to avoid politics.


Walls/Laws

In siege warfare, the breaching of the outer wall signaled the destruction of the sovereignty of the city-state. Accordingly, the "art" of siege warfare historically engaged with the geometries of city walls and with the development of equally complex technologies for approaching and breaching them. Contemporary urban combat, on the other hand, is increasingly concerned with methods of transgressing the limitations embodied by the domestic wall. In this respect, it might be useful to think of the city’s (domestic) walls as one would think about the (civic) city wall -- as operative edges of the law and the condition of democratic urban life.



According to Hannah Arendt, the political realm of the Greek city was guaranteed by these two kinds of walls (or wall-like laws): the wall surrounding the city, which defined the zone of the political; and the walls separating private space from the public domain, ensuring the autonomy of the domestic realm. "The one harbored and enclosed political life as the other sheltered and protected the biological life process of the family."[14] The very order of the city relies thus on the fantasy of a wall as stable, solid, and fixed. Indeed, architectural discourse tends to otherwise see walls as architecture’s irreducible givens. The military practice of "walking through walls" -- on the scale of the house, the city or the "state" -- links the physical properties of construction with this syntax of architectural, social and political orders. New technologies developed to allow soldiers to see living organisms through walls, and to facilitate their ability to walk and fire weapons through them, thus address not only the materiality of the wall, but also its very concept. With the wall no longer physically or conceptually solid or legally impenetrable, the functional spatial syntax that it created -- the separation between inside and outside, private and public -- collapses. Without these walls, Arendt continues, "there might have been an agglomeration of houses, a town (asty), but not a city, a political community."[15] The distinction between a city, as a political domain, and a town (here, the antithesis to the city must be understood as the refugee camp) is based on the conceptual solidity of the elements that safeguard both public and private domains. Agamben’s well-known observation follows the trace left by Arendt: in the camps, "city and house became indistinguishable."[16] The breaching of the physical, visual, and conceptual border / wall exposes new domains to political power, offering thus a physical diagram to the concept of the "state of exception."

When Kochavi claims that "space is only an interpretation," and that his movement through and across the built fabric of the city reinterprets architectural elements (walls, windows, and doors); when Naveh claims that he would accept any border as long as he could walk through it, they use a transgressive theoretical approach to suggest that war and fighting is no longer about the destruction of space, but rather about its "reorganization." If a wall is only the signifier of a "wall," marking scales of political orders, un-walling also becomes a form of rewriting -- a constant process of undoing -- fueled by theory. If moving through walls becomes the method for "reinterpreting space," and if the nature of space is "relative" to this form of interpretation, could this "reinterpretation" kill?

If the answer is "yes," then the "inverse geometry" that turns the city "inside out," shuffling its private and public spaces, and that turns the idea of a "Palestinian State" outside in, would bring about consequences for military operations that go beyond physical and social destruction and force us to reflect upon the "conceptual destruction" of political categories that they imply.

[1] On such a military conference organized in 2002 by the Faculty of Geography at Haifa University see: Stephen Graham, "Remember Falluja: Demonizing Place, Constructing Atrocity," Society and Space, 2005, Vol. 23. pp. 1-10; and Stephen Graham, "Cities and the ‘War on Terror’," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Vol. 30.2 June 2006, pp. 255 -- 276

[2] Yedidia Ya’ari and Haim Assa, Diffused Warfare, War in the 21st Century, Tel Aviv: Miskal -- Yediot Aharonot Books and Chemed Books, 2005 [Hebrew] pp. 9-13, 146.

[3] Eyal Weizman and Nadav Harel, interview with Aviv Kochavi, 24 September 2004, at an Israeli military base near Tel Aviv [Hebrew]; video documentation by Nadav Harel and Zohar Kaniel.

[4] Zuri Dar and Oded Hermoni, "Israeli Start-Up Develops Technology to See Through Walls," Ha’aretz, 1 July 2004; Amir Golan, "The Components of the Ability to Fight in Urban Areas," Ma’arachot 384 (July 2002): 97; also see Ross Stapleton-Gray, "Mobile mapping: Looking through Walls for On-site Reconnaissance," the Journal for Net Centric Warafre C4ISR, 11 September 2006.

[5] "With the growing integration of industrial society, these categories are losing their critical connotation, and tend to become descriptive, deceptive, or operational terms. […] Confronted with the total character of the achievements of advanced industrial society, critical theory is left without the rationale for transcending this society. The vacuum empties the theoretical structure itself, because the categories of a critical social theory were developed during the period in which the need for refusal and subversion was embodied in the action of effective social forces." Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society, Boston Mass., Beacon Press, 1991

[6] David Ronfeldt, John Arquilla, Graham Fuller and Melissa Fuller, The Zapatista "Social Netwar" in Mexico, Santa Monica, Ca.: RAND, 1998.

[7] Gal Hirsch, On Dinosaurs and Hornets: A Critical View on Operational Moulds in Asymmetric Conflicts, RUSI Journal (August 2003), p .63

[8] Arquilla and Ronfeldt, Networks and Netwars, p.15

[9] "War […] is not the action of a living force upon a lifeless mass but always the collision of two living forces." Carl von Clausewitz, On War, p. 77

[10] On this, see Ryan Bishop, "‘The Vertical Order Has Come to an End’: The Insignia of the Military C3I and Urbanism in Global Networks," in Ryan Bishop, John Phillips, and Wei-Wei Yeo, eds., Beyond Description: Space Historicity Singapore, Architext Series, London & New York: Routledge, 2004.

[11] Hannan Greenberg, "The Commander of the Gaza Division: The Palestinians are in shock," Ynet 7 July 2006 http://www.ynet.co.il/.

[12] Amir Rapaport, "Dan Halutz is a Bluff, interview with Shimon Naveh," Ma’ariv, Yom Kippur Supplement, 1 October 2006.

[13] Halutz did not directly confront the theoretical concepts produced at OTRI. The General Staff’s Operational Concept for the IDF is still rooted in OTRI’s theoretical doctrine of systemic operational design. See: Caroline Glick, "Halutz’s Stalinist moment: Why were Dovik Tamari and Shimon Naveh Fired?," Jerusalem Post, 17 June 2006 and Rapaport, "Dan Halutz is a Bluff". Currently Naveh is employed by US Marine Corps Development Command as senior mentor to their operational experiment "Expeditionary Warrior."

[14] Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998, pp. 63-64.

[15] Arendt, The Human Condition, pp. 63-64.

[16] Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 188.