09-27-2020, 10:28 AM
(09-27-2020, 03:08 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(09-27-2020, 12:31 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: I always thought that Hezbollah was a nasty bunch of people... I just can't imagine any organization other than national armed forces storing huge amounts of bomb-making materials (those are usually also ordnance) and then under rigid discipline about custody. Sure, I know, I know... Israel is the Little Satan in contrast to the Great Satan, the United States of America.
(an aside: should Donald Trump be re-elected or find some devious way to extend his term, the USA might be the literal Great Satan. But I also see Trump going down to defeat anyway). Three Great Powers under dictatorial rule (Russia, China, and the US) would be material for a Crisis worse than the last one.
...Does Lebanon have the means of outlawing an organization that has done something so egregious as to store high explosives in a populated area?
The problem is the partition under colonial rule into a 'nation' containing several old tribal groups. In attempting to keep the borders unchanged, you have to give each group a piece of the pie, with no loyalty to the nation as a whole. I keep wondering if reverting to France taking over again could be a temporary solution, but to let go you have to let the locals take over again. If the borders have nothing to do with the tribes in a tribal thinking area, the situation would remain problematic.
The colonial world proved indefensible in World War II, but there is nothing new about that. Colonial empires have always proved vulnerable to the next empire-builder that sees easy pickings in places in which inchoate 'liberation movements' might be fifth-columns. People treated badly by people from far away are easy to conquer, and such people are glad to turn over the small cadre of overlords who have exploited and abused them. China has a heritage of expanding and contracting. The British Raj largely gutted the Mughal Empire, and the Caliphate made its greatest advances in what were the colonial extensions of the Sassanid and Byzantine Empires. To be sure, colonial enterprises often devolve into taking over small countries with weak or compromised leadership, turning once-independent states into client states or satellites and then fully incorporating them... if possible. But that also creates expanses easy to conquer by the next empire-builder.
Colonial empires of course established their spheres of influence, and except for the subdivision of "French West Africa" and "French Equatorial Empire" the current political map of Africa looks much like that of colonial Africa. Decisions made by foreign ministers of France, Great Britain, Portugal, Belgium, Spain, Germany, and Italy over a century appear in most borders. Local rulers now control constructions of non-Africans who did not see people so much as they saw resources.
Quote:Xenophobia wise, you have all sorts of tribes not trusting and disliking everybody else. War is a racket wise, the elites and leaders are each trying to grab their own without concern for the people. Idealistic wise? The West and Israel have mucked up any chance of an ideal taking a place other than in accentuating xenophobia.
The West has had a powerful innovation in liberal democracy, which is far better at smoothing ethnic divisions and mitigating class strife than about anything else. Liberal democracies at their best let people do as much possible for themselves and demand less than do despotic and dictatorial societies. Taxation had better connect closely to some public service and not simply be a means of enriching the Leadership. High taxes as in Scandinavian countries come back as economic opportunity as well as economic safety.
We now have questions about how liberal the structural democracies are in the USA and Israel. I look at the Bill of Rights in the Constitution as a political equivalent of the Decalogue, a series mostly of 'Thou shalt not's... as in 'Thou shalt not interfere with religion, speech, and the press"...
Donald Trump is by far the most despotic leader that America has had at the national level, which is to distinguish him from the ludicrous Imperial Wizards and Fuehrers that we have known. Part of establishing tyranny is the effort to divide people who might have everything to lose so that such people can be destroyed piecemeal. Trump tries that, but he fails.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
