2006/08/17
Got to love it (II)
What is Left? What is Right? Does it Matter?
Taki Theodoracopulos (Um aristocrata de origem grega - cujo pai lutou na resistência grega ao nazismo, escreve na The Spectator, acusado de unpatriotic conservative pelo neocon David Frum pela oposição ao "Iraque").
"In June 1967, I was married to my first wife and living in Paris, playing tennis and polo. When the Six-Day War began, Israel asked for volunteers of any nationality and religion. It took me about one minute to decide. I presented myself to the Israeli consulate and was sent by bus to a gathering place near Clichy, where I spent an extremely uncomfortable night among young French Jews who occasionally would scream out “Israel Vivra!” Needless to say, we were all sent home the next day, Israel’s blitz attack having destroyed the Egyptian air force on day one, the Syrian army and the Arab Legion on days two and three. Then came the Egyptian army’s turn. After one week it was all over.
The reason I volunteered was that like many of my friends, I was pro-Israel. Two things made me change my mind: Yehudi Menuhin and the sinking of the USS Liberty and its immediate cover-up by the LBJ administration.
In London, Menuhin, a Jew, declared that he would go to Palestine and give a concert in aid of the displaced Palestinians. When I met him at a friend’s house, he told me things that were hard to believe: about the terror tactics of the Stern Gang and of Irgun, both initially formed to force the British out but who had turned to killing innocent Arabs in order to gain territory. Coming from a devout Jew and the greatest violinist of his time, the point sank in. I eventually made my way down to Palestine and saw the squalid camps the refugees were living in and heard about Deir Yassin, a village that lived in peace with its Jewish neighbors until the massacre by Irgun. As a result, 600,000 Arabs fled the Palestinian territories the UN had set aside for a Jewish state, ensuring a Jewish majority in the new state.
So someone who was ready to fight for Israel’s survival eventually turned pro-Palestinian, while terrorists like Menachem Begin, a future prime minister, were turned into heroes by the propagandists in Israel and in America.
Labels simply don’t work. The old cliché of today’s terrorist becoming tomorrow’s freedom fighter, however, does.
The same applies to world politics.
(...) All governments are monopolies of organized force, inherently unjustifiable. And once accepted, they are bound to get out of control sooner or later.
No, there is no longer a Right or a Left.
Bush’s mammoth expansion of government power and spending makes LBJ look like Robert Taft, the last true conservative—and peace lover, I might add.
Labels are for fools"
Taki Theodoracopulos (Um aristocrata de origem grega - cujo pai lutou na resistência grega ao nazismo, escreve na The Spectator, acusado de unpatriotic conservative pelo neocon David Frum pela oposição ao "Iraque").
"In June 1967, I was married to my first wife and living in Paris, playing tennis and polo. When the Six-Day War began, Israel asked for volunteers of any nationality and religion. It took me about one minute to decide. I presented myself to the Israeli consulate and was sent by bus to a gathering place near Clichy, where I spent an extremely uncomfortable night among young French Jews who occasionally would scream out “Israel Vivra!” Needless to say, we were all sent home the next day, Israel’s blitz attack having destroyed the Egyptian air force on day one, the Syrian army and the Arab Legion on days two and three. Then came the Egyptian army’s turn. After one week it was all over.
The reason I volunteered was that like many of my friends, I was pro-Israel. Two things made me change my mind: Yehudi Menuhin and the sinking of the USS Liberty and its immediate cover-up by the LBJ administration.
In London, Menuhin, a Jew, declared that he would go to Palestine and give a concert in aid of the displaced Palestinians. When I met him at a friend’s house, he told me things that were hard to believe: about the terror tactics of the Stern Gang and of Irgun, both initially formed to force the British out but who had turned to killing innocent Arabs in order to gain territory. Coming from a devout Jew and the greatest violinist of his time, the point sank in. I eventually made my way down to Palestine and saw the squalid camps the refugees were living in and heard about Deir Yassin, a village that lived in peace with its Jewish neighbors until the massacre by Irgun. As a result, 600,000 Arabs fled the Palestinian territories the UN had set aside for a Jewish state, ensuring a Jewish majority in the new state.
So someone who was ready to fight for Israel’s survival eventually turned pro-Palestinian, while terrorists like Menachem Begin, a future prime minister, were turned into heroes by the propagandists in Israel and in America.
Labels simply don’t work. The old cliché of today’s terrorist becoming tomorrow’s freedom fighter, however, does.
The same applies to world politics.
(...) All governments are monopolies of organized force, inherently unjustifiable. And once accepted, they are bound to get out of control sooner or later.
No, there is no longer a Right or a Left.
Bush’s mammoth expansion of government power and spending makes LBJ look like Robert Taft, the last true conservative—and peace lover, I might add.
Labels are for fools"
// posted by CN @ 3:57 PM 
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