Flounce thread II
Cont'd from here
No, Fidel was suspended because he attacked and insulted the person who, quite rightly, pointed out that Fidel's go-to boilerplate language was rooted in colonialist and racist thinking.
This allegation is so absurd that no one has ever admitted authoring such a ridiculous complaint against me. It reminds me of that Two Faces of Norm episode of Cheers when Norm pretends to be the voice of Anton Kreitzer, the fictitious dictatorial boss whom no one questions and everyone fears. Trust and obey, it's the only way.
The Spanish Inquisition 1478 - 1834
False accusations were common, and those denounced usually had no idea who had pointed the finger at them.
babble is not the Spanish inquisition, but it sometimes feels like it is.
What exactly is it about my criticism of the USA's corporate colonization of Canada since 1985 and the free trade deals that is rooted in "colonialist and racist thinking"? The inquisitors never say. Inquisitors are not compelled to justify anything. We have no idea which colonialist racists are responsible for making synonymous with racist thinking the tripartite axis of evil terms, 'Northern Puerto Rico', which by itself is merely a region of Puerto Rico and not typically associated with being "rooted in colonialist or racist thinking."
What am I thinking at this very moment? My accusers can't say for sure. But they can ad lib by imagining a context and wait for me to say something they imagine to be rooted in racist and colonialist thinking and fit the offense to an imagined context that is "rooted in colonialist and racist thinking."
And so what about equating criticism of another country exploited by American power, and namely Israel, with that of "racist thinking"? What do Catchfire and Rebecca have to say about another controversial reference to a country wrt 'Israeli apartheid'?:
antsunited wrote:
The attempt to equate criticism of Israel with anti-semitism is a pathetic attempt to reinforce the injustice of Israeli policy by attacking it foes.
While everything else you said was spot on, united, sadly, I don't think this attempt is "pathetic" at all. It's very, very dangerous--more dangerous for Jewish people and Israelis everywhere the more people believe it is true.
and in another thread, Rebecca rightly tells a poster that his "screed" is not welcome on babble:
I read the screed you referred to. It's your basic "Criticism of Israel equates antiSemitism.". Doesn't wash here, so ...
It is perfectly alright to criticize Israel in this case as it is not rooted in colonialist and racist thinking. Not according to both Catchfire and Rebecca as well as most babblers. This makes sense.
But it is, however, blatant hypocrisy to suggest that I am dabbling in "colonialist and racist thinking" when referring to US policies in Puerto Rico and Canada. South Africa's anti-apartheid heroes have said there are direct comparisons with Israel. Similarly Mel Hurtig says there are some comparisons to be made with corporate America's 14, 418 predatory takeovers of valuable Canadian corporations and crown assets since 1985. Hurtig says this amounts to U.S. corporate colonization of Canada, and that our economic sovereignty has been eroded. There is no recipe or formula for imperialism. We might not be targeting specific ethnic groups as per U.S.-backed Israeli apartheid. But our governments can surely be pursuaded to handover the goods to corporate colonizers. This is the actual context of my reference to an unincorporated, non-voting territory of the U.S. and certainly not rooted in racist thinking stated by either moderators or some unknown babbler who accuses me through their moderator proxy.
Just like none of our criticisms of the US-Israel dynamic are rooted in "colonialist and racist thinking", so are my criticisms of the US-Puerto Rico and even the US-Canada dynamic since CUSFTA-NAFTA not rooted in "colonialist and racist thinking." This is absurd, and babblers should rightly expect more of moderators.
Good points. Glad you're back!
Glad you're here, Fidel.
In my opinion, for what it's worth, Fidel and the mods (and everyone else concerned) should set aside this latest incident and reconcile. We are talking about allies. We have benefited from Fidel's input for many years and it should continue. The mods have explained that they need to respond to complaints and/or sensitivities about language that can be seen as alienating or oppressive. Surely we can find a way, without one party having to abandon their view in favour of the other, to unite for the simple purpose of coexisting on a discussion board?
I hope.
I am flexible and not a difficult person to get along with. I will even donate to rabble if inquisitors confess to babbletariats.
Glad to see you are here Fidel.
Hopefully you can restrain the insults and just contribute
Frick!!! And here I though flouncing meant you actually left....
And I just realized that might be taken as a poke at Fidel. Sorry F --- not at all. Mostly just laughing at myself for leaving and then trying to stay away because I said I was. Anyone remember the final Dianne scene in Cheers, where her arm comes back in the door and feels around for her sweater? Anyways, happy Summer babblers, nice to see the lot of you still hanging around.
Just had to respond to this. Maybe I shouldn't break my moratorium on avoiding non-electoral politics threads or occasionally/rarely a whimsical thread but I think you're wrong, at least about the solution.
This is the internet and people aren't required to play the demographic game like they are in real life. Therefore it's tiresome to expect them to do so even on an anti-imperialist, blah blah blah board. It's tiresome to play the role of "under privileged" demographic and expect everyone to hang on your word as the spokesperson for whatever group and it's tiresome to have the cliche person with privilege riding in on their white (ha!) horse to help the poor little under privileged person from any and all perceived attacks. I know I'm not proposing and I know that the people whom the under privileged title belong to need to take the lead, but still at a certain point the obsession with language on this board is tiresome. I think of the cliche white anti-racist activist with dreadlocks, or the male feminist warrior, or the straight gay rights activist and I think nice enough people, with good intentions, allies yes ...but just a bit tiresome. I'd use stronger language, but it would have (rather be perceived as having) some sort of "oppressive" connotation to it.
So no, I don't think the over reactions (i.e. "Northern Puerto-Rico" is some how racist or whatever) creates a safe space, I think it creates a sterile place where emotions run high whenever they are even allowed to do so. PS, since I'm a POC I'm clearly allowed to say this and I think it's oppressive if I can't. I'm only being semi-sarcastic about the last sentence by the way, as I obviously realize the irony and don't really think it matters either way (although I suppose it does in a sociological sense).
The Progressive Plantation: Racism inside White Radical Social Change Movements by Lorenzo Komboa Ervin
The Progressive Plantation
.....
Reading this, from Black Girl Dangerous, gave me an a-ha moment. I post this in good faith and with hope that such a moment will happen for others.
10 Things Us Queers (And the Rest of Y'all) Can Do Today to Grow a Little
How could it be anything other than riddled with racism, treachery, and all of that? This is a racialized society through and through, having been designed that way. The problem could do with more convincing and less smashing. Save the smashing for this wretched design, where material and sociological differences and privileges perpetuated along racial divides still gets us in a hurry to the same ecological and economic disasters being prepared for everyone in the end. Certainly these issues matter in the here and now just as history matters because the injuries remain unattended and unhealed. It seems we'll continue arguing over programmed words, phrases and thought until we're barrelling over the cliff. Meanwhile, the white radical left and the anti-racial left save their finest rhetoric for when they're standing on opposite sides of the barrier from one another. Each performs the functions laid out for them by the commodified society with respective measures of victimization and alienation. Careers and fortunes are invested too heavily in cataloguing and evaluating the disfunction so as to ensure the production of an endless supply of blame and guilt. We produce and consume it ourselves. Their work would be done except that we apparently require constant reminders through the media apparatus to stay on task.
If I may use Vansterdam Kid's thoughts as a starting point, I think the idea of what this place is and should be would be really simple if we were talking about one dynamic, one form of discrimination, one form of beastly behaviour, one political viewpoint. But we aren't.
I think it would also be simpler if everyone came here with the understanding that we were flawed gemstones coming to be polished to perfection and dedicated to The Work. But I'd guess that not everybody signed up for that.
It would be easy to put a brake on flouncing or perceived flaws in policy if we were talking about one problem. But we aren't. There have been people who have criticized and people who have left over completely opposite principles - that moderation is too strict, and that it is not strict enough. These politics or that politics,these people or those people.
Part of the solution or part of the problem? I can't think of any of us here or elsewhere who hasn't been both, often at the same time. And I know that when pressed the fallback position is that it is attitudes and actions we are criticizing, not people (hate the sin; love the sinner). But more often than not, the default position is that some people are our enemies by their very nature; no compromise, no dialogue, and no recognition of the fact that we are all stuck in the same boat.
I think I grasp some of the arguments being made, my flawed perception notwithstanding. I don't think it is a problem in theory, but in practical application, given that none of this is simple black and white. To get back to one of the things Fidel cited, Cromwell wanted nothing other than happiness and heaven on earth, and was frustrated that not everyone had the same understanding of it as he did. We all know how that turned out.
Anyway Fidel, I hope you have reconsidered. I wouldn't try to out-mod the mods though, They have a delicate enough balancing act as it is.
VK, I totally understand this and respect it. It's definitely a risk. I obviously have a slightly different thought process about the whole thing, but I don't think this thread is the place for it. What I want to make clear is this: Fidel was not suspended for using a bad phrase. He was suspended for personal attacks and for overreacting.
Personally, I think "Northern Puerto Rico" is one of those casually racist terms like "Canuckistan": they compare Canada to some metaphorical stand-in for a real place, meant to be pejorative and relying on some ethnic or national stereotype to function. But Rebecca and I don't have the resources to read every word on this board to make this happen--nor do we wish to. Often, it is represented by many on this board more hostile to the brand of anti-oppression politics we use here that we do precisely this thing. We don't. We never have.
Opinions like the one you expressed above are super important if we take as one of the projects of this board how to formulate an anti-oppression ideology. But it's not what we saw in this instance. Fidel used a phrase many on this board have found offensive in the past, told him so, and told him why. Fidel could have rethought his position, explained why he thought the word was not offensive, but entertained the possibility that it was. Instead, Fidel decided he didn't care about any of that, and was so outraged that someone dare challenge him that he freaked out and called them out, insulted them, tried to shame them.
For me, one of the most critical things to making this space an AO space is that when someone says that they find something excluding, oppressive and offensive that a) it is taken seriously and b) that their ability to say that safely and without fear of insult is protected. It's why we have anonymous handles here (more or less) and why the moderation flagging function is also anonymous.
I think Fidel is a valluable member of this community too--I hope he comes back, and I rather expect him to. But no one will be permitted to insult or hector those who ask for some thoughtful anti-oppression analysis, whether it comes publicly on the board or through private communications. And no one is so important to babble that they are allowed to hold the place ransom until they get what they want. I applaud Unionist's request for compromise above, and I am always willing to hear dissenting opinions or entertain respectful discussion on these subjects, because I trust every babbler to be here in good faith. But that doesn't include allowing the kind of self-centred and destructive behaviour described in this paragraph.
That is patently false. There was never any reasonable explanation. More nonsense.
It's very hypocritical for white anti-racists to suggest that because the situation of U.S.-backed Israeli apartheid is so bad and genocidal that we will lower our arbitrary standards and make an exception in that case. But all other U.S.-based and U.S.-backed imperialism and colonialism is off limits for even the mildest of criticisms. It's absurd and hypocritical.
And according to Catchfire none of the U.S. Government or its clandestine services were involved in the 'Arab Spring.' They were. We lost a valuable contributor to babble, 500_Apples, due to that asinine inquisitional decision from on high to strangle anti-imperialist discussion as it was infolding in the "Middle East"(see imperialist John Foster Dulles' terminology still in use today). Catchfire, you closed down a number of thread discussions critical of U.S. imperialist maneuvering in the Middle East at the time. Catchfire, how can rabble claim to be anti-imperialist when genuine anti-imperialist points of view are censured like this in favour of your coincidence theories and obvious partisan moderating? You've demonstrated a number of times that you have no idea what you are talking about while proceeding to disrupt and shutdown discussions critical of the vicious empire.
Your over-inflated bourgeois white egos are worth much more than my promise to donate to rabble provided someone does explain this absurd and hypocritical stance on 'Northern Puerto Rico', a physical-geographical region of Puerto Rico and nothing more than that.
Of course... nothing more than that. That must be why you seem to use it interchangeably with 'frozen Puerto Rico'. 'Cause what better word than 'frozen' to describe a physical-geographical region that has average lows of 17° during its coldest month.
http://rabble.ca/search/apachesolr_search/%22frozen+puerto+rico%22
And U.S.-backed Israeli apartheid is a situation occurring somewhat north of South Africa. So what? It doesn't stop white, bourgeois anti-imperialists with hyper-inflated egos from mangling the country name. Because in Catchfire's own words, equating criticism of Israel with racism is "...dangerous" so very dangerous to all living things or some such.
I think that as long as the focus of discussion is off of or deflected away from vicious empire central, the white, bourgeois anti-imperialists avec hyper-inflated egos worth more than my pledge to a rabble donation are satisfied. It's just a theory, though.
Not having to argue the basics of anti-racism over and over again is apparently required at babble. Another requirement should be not expecting babblers to comprehend anti-racist thought at the other end of the spectrum.
Maysie does an awsome job at making anti-racist thought comprehensible to the average individual. Individuals who might not otherwise have twigged onto their own internalising of racist thinking. When compared to the real pain inflicted on marginalised people by real incidents of thoughtless, if not overtly, racist remarks, picayune examples such as Northern Puerto Rico or Canuckistan pale by comparison.
I see "Northern Puerto Rico" in a political context simply as Fidel portrays it. (thats not to say it doesn't grate after repetition ad nausea).
Fidel, give it up. You are shovelling sand against the tide. The nature of this place is to simply keep on moving the goalposts and you will never 'win'. Its a chat forum, not a life-threatening crisis. Take a break, get some new material and come back in a better humour.
and 'class treachery' and 'opportunism' is as much an affliction of the 'anti-racial left' as of the 'white radical left' in the 'failure to launch' Canadian problem. Incidentally, as for this terminology thread discussion - it occurs that 'Brazil North' is a term still widely used in environmental circles and also that 'Israel of the North' might not be such a bad epithet for our own Canadian settler-state.
I think the discussion of "Northern Puerto Rico" as a rhetorical term is interesting.
Fidel is pointing out that "Isreali Aparthied" is an acceptable term on babble. This term is linking what is happening now in Israel with what was happening in South Africa (and is probably still being resolved today--I'm not looking to offend anyone with my poor knowledge of present day South Africa). It seems like as a rhetorical term, "israeli Aparthied" is useful. I have found it useful as a thought experiment for my own understanding of the conflict in Palestine-Israel.
I think Fidel is using the term "Northern Puerto Rico" in the same way. He's trying to describe an economic imperialism that people understand to be happening in Puerto Rico that they don't quite understand to be happening here. That's what he's trying to get across. I imagine Puerto Rico was chosen specifically because they are not an independent country and they are not a full state. While they are US citizens they do not get to elect representatives to Congress. With that detail aside, Fidel could have chosen "Northern Honduras" to describe a similar economic imperialism (perhaps more appropriately as a metaphor for Canada).
Like "Israeli Aparthied", for me, "Northerm Puerto Rico" has ben a useful rhetorical term that has informed my understanding of political issues (specifically of deep integration). No question.
I also find agreement with other babblers ho have said that the typical Canadian is a very willing participant in the Empire.
Catchfire is making a couple points about "Northern Puerto Rico". He is saying that 1) the term "Northern Puerto Rico" is rooted in racial stereotypes. I think this is true. The term "Northern Puerto Rico" works to some extent not because of the objective trade mechanism it describes, but because typically Canada as part of the white angloshere is held to be above Latin American "banana republics". Canada doesn't mind being the US's gas tank, but being called "Northern Puerto Rico" sounds like some kind of insult. It's this dynamic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTK1GDlfGg8
This is not the case with the term "Israeli Aparthied". "Israeli Aparthied" works because it implies a great injustice, with a specific mechanism of operation. It does not work on racial stereotypes.
The other thing that Cathfire is saying is that to make this an inclusive space, we need to listen to people when they express issues with certain terms. So since people have stated, several times, that they find the term "Northern Puerto Rico" problematic, then Fidel should stop using it.
I am more or less okay with this. I think it is a great rhetorical term for conveying an idea. But I think the criticism about racial stereotyping inherent in its use is true. So I think it is probably not the right term for Fidel to use, if he wants to convey a particular idea, and discuss the problems with our trade policiy, rather than getting involved with endless meta threads like this.
Unfortunately, I cannot think of any term that Fidel could use that would effectively critcize the trade policies he wants to highlight, that would not include the inherent racial stereotypes.
In case it is not clear I feel Fidel is using these terms in good faith, and is trying to describe trade relationships, rather than use these stereotypes to make his point. But they are still there.
The one glitch in all of this, in terms of consistency, is that some people will say that "Israeli Aparthied" is a non-inclusive term. It certainly does make people uncomfortable and there are babblers who would prefer, for their own good faith participation, that it is not used. We do not respect that.
When it comes to Israeli Aparthied, I do not want to hear these arguments. The Zionists seem to argue that the term "Israeli Apartheid" shoud not be used because it's offensive. But frankly I have not heard any of these Zionists try to argue that it's a poor term because it's inaccurate.
Anyway, the difference with "Israeli Aparthied" is that it's not an oppressive term. It doesn't get its power from playing on the idea that some people are inferior. So the offense that some feel when hearing/reading that term isn't quite the same. It makes them feel uncomfortable about actions that are occurring, but it doesn't take away their personhood.
Thanks wage zombie. I think that Puerto Rican and U.S. bourgeois elites migth be offended by it in the same way that Israeli and U.S. elites would be offended by the term Israeli apartheid. And I have only ever used NPR in the actual context that Mel Hurtig uses it. Hurtig uses Puerto Rico as an example because it is not an independent country, and U.S. Government has worked to undermine Puerto Rican independence groups in the recent past - read political and clandestine interference to extremes. The result is corporate American colonialism and military occupation of the island.
Hurtig says, more to the point, that FTA and NAFTA proponents in Canada used to suggest(off the record, of course) that Canada might benefit economically by becoming a sort of 51st state. OTOH, Puerto Rico is known to be a long-time candidate for actual 51st statehood while US policies continue to maintain impoverishment of the island while Puerto Ricans flee their homeland to America to be absorbed by the dominant country's American speaking population. Hurtig also argues, and successfully so in my opinion, that US corporate takeovers of Canada are in fact endangering Canadian culture and identity through increasing US dominance of media, book publishing, magazines etc. No other rich country is as dominated by US interests economically and culturally as what Canada is and especially so since the 1980s and 90s trade deals and other neoliberal policies enacted at the federal level by our very U.S.-friendly politicos.
Instead of becoming a prosperous 51s state as a handful few proponents of Puerto Rican statehood have proposed, and as proponents of Canadian statehood through CUSFTA-NAFTA have proposed in the recent past, Hurtig says Canada is, instead, becoming a kind of degraded unincorporated non-voting colony of the U.S., like a Northern Puerto Rico except the hollowing-out of Canada has occurred on a much larger scale than that of relatively tiny Puerto Rico. This is the context.
This is the context in which the perfectly valid geographical term 'Northern Puerto Rico' is used and nothing else. OTOH, Israeli Apartheid is a much more derogatory reference to a country based on its imperial-colonial relationship with vicious empire central, Warshington in the USSA.
This is the actual context and not what Catchfire claims it is, which to date is only explained by some weak reference to "colonialist and racist thinking" pawned off on him by some unknown babbler without the temerity or personal integrity to claim ownership of that ridiculous allegation against me. It is so ridiculous an allegation that not even by anonymous babble handle has any poster come forward and identified themselves as the author of that accusation. None. And there has been no real explanation for it by Catchfire or any other white, bourgeois anti-imperialist who criticizes some U.S.-backed imperialism while denying it in other instances closer to home.
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fromhere on the descriptive phrase "White Anti-Imperialists with Egos the Size of a Planet Worth Far More than my promise of a rabble donation" is reduced to just WBAIWETSOPWFMRD for readability.
Fidel the bottom line is that "Northern Puerto Rico" works better than "Northern Honduras" because Puerto Rico has a more explicitly spanish sounding name. That's why you're getting more oomph out of the term.
The unfortunate thing about language in the 21st century is that it is not solely up to the speaker to determine context. Context is also interpreted. I know in which context you are using the term. I know that there is an analysis behind the use of the term. I think we would be in much agreement as to descriptions of the mechanisms by which the respective hollowing outs are taking place.
But here's the thing--you have discovered that the term "Northern Puerto Rico" is, for some reason, very effective. When you use the term "Northern Puerto Rico", you are putting boxing gloves around your analysis. And these boxing gloves serve a great purpose. They allow a certain demographic to understand your analysis much more quickly and completely.
But unfortunately, the oomph in the term comes from the racial stereotypes that are embedded in the term "Puerto Rico". And what happens when you use that oomph is that other people get hit with those boxing gloves as collateral damage.
I realize I have mixed up my analogy here, as boxing gloves serve to decrease a blow rather than increase a blow. My apologies. I guess I was going for the visual imagery of the big red boxing gloves which seem to symbolize physical blows.
So this is how language works...we can be provocative in a way that helps our arguments, but the same forces that makes some statements provocative can make their use problematic, in the ways that they exclude.
What do you think Homer is saying here? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTK1GDlfGg8 How does it work that he is able to say things without saying them?
Dogs pooping in houses is also intolerable in Mexico ergo Americans should be more incensed because they consider themselves superior to Mexicans.
Homer says things without saying them because his audience also buys in to the superiority and 'things' do not have to be verbalised.
Not at all. Hurtig explicity points to Puerto Rico because it is an unincorporated colony of the U.S. without representation in U.S. Government. It is totally dominated by U.S. corporate and military interests as a result. They have only really had to send in the FBI to arrest and harass independence movement and union leaders, and to assassinate leaders of Puerto Rican independence. The infamous School of the Americas/School of Assassins has no real need to train right wing death squad leaders or paramilitaries to subdue and oppress Puerto Ricans as the FBI has full access to Puerto Rico and its police departments cooperate with their colonizers to the fullest extent. Puerto Ricans are subdued by their brutal colonizers some time ago and population permitted to flee to American speaking slums on the mainland for a long time.
Not even Mexico has been so foolish as to allow this much absentee corporate landlord control its oil and energy resources. Canada used to have national energy reserve requrements. Not so since NAFTA, the stupidest trade agreement in world history and signed by Washington's corrupt stooges in Ottawa. And most of the foreign investment priming our over-valued fake petro dollar is for the benefit of foreign speculators and foreign-based energy companies.
Honduras is a former British colony where U.S. clandestine services unit and US Military have been more active in subduing popular people's rebellions against U.S.-backed tyranny. The U.S. directly violates the sovereignty of Honduras when intervening to extremes in what is a separate country referred to now as the Republic of Honduras and has nothing to do with the British naming of a former colony.
I'm afraid that your analysis could possibly be rooted in racist and colonialist thinking. And if this is how Catchfire chooses to view it, then it is unfortunate. It is unfortunate because I have never used it in that context.
Honduras, to my knowledge, has never been considered for 51st statehood, like Puerto Rico has. Similarly, pro CUSFTA and NAFTA advocates in Canada have, in the past, suggested that Canada might benefit from becoming a 51st state with all the economic benefits that were promised by advocates of FTA and NAFTA. INstead Canada has ceded majority foreign ownership and control of more than three dozen key economic sectors to US corporate interests since 1985. And like the unincorporated non-voting US territory of Puerto Rico, we still have no representation in US Government even though our national energy policy, and among a wide range of sovereign economic decision making, is dictated to us from corporate board rooms in America.
I care not how white bourgeois anti-racists might interpret it falsely or maliciously by ignoring the actual context from which they extract it before the shampooing and lathering, rinsing and repeating their fallacious argument "rooted in colonialist and racist thinking." If their minds are in the gutter, it doesn't mean we are, too.
I share no sameness of thinking with what any of the WBAIWETSOPAWFMTMPTRD inquisition, Homer Simpson, or wage zombie allege. None of the inquisition or its court jesters can claim to know what I am thinking is anything other than what I have already stated countless times before. I refuse to confess to this crime, and these trumped-up charges against me of making comments "rooted in colonialist and racist thinking" are as ridiculous and absurd now as before.
If you think it is ridiculous and absurd then why do you take it seriously? If we worried about every name we get called in here all we would do is complain all day.
Somebody made a call; you disagree. If it's not something you think you have anything to learn from, then what's the big deal? Drop it. There's nothing for you to win here.
I have never worried about it because I know it is a stupid and ridiculous accusation. No one would dare accuse Order of Canada member Mel Hurtig of it for fear of bringing public attention to this no small matter of US corporate colonization of Canada, or even for legal reasons. My unnamed accuser-inquisitor has no fear of this because I don't use my real identity, either.
You will have to ask the WBAIWETSOPWFMRD inquisitors(all two of them as well as my naked accuser who is cloaked without so much as a babble handle), why they take themselves so seriously as to suspend me for daring to criticize the U.S.-Canada imperial-colonial relationship from time to time. They are vigilant and never miss an opportunity to bully, threaten and suspend me for using a normal geography term, 'Northern Puerto Rico'.
Fidel I didn't mean to upset you.
Fidel, can you see this term through the eyes of someone who finds it disconcerting, if not offensive? Someone who has not had the opportunity to speak up from fear of more abusive language? Someone who would rather escape their own thoughts than to verbalise them?
Its not about you or your politics, its about allowing others to be free of offense. I didn't see anything wrong with the term until I spent some time thinking about what others here had to say.
What about Israelis who might be offended by the term Israeli apartheid? I actually prefer the term U.S.-backed Israeli apartheid as opposed to those who choose to take the focus off of the fact that the USSA has exploited Israel as a military outpost for the vicious empire throught for the duration of a cold war and beyond.
We know there will be many Jewish people around the world who will be offended by it regardless of the actual situation in Israel and occupied territories. But this does't seem to matter to the very hypocritcal WBAIWETSOPWFMRD inquisition who encourage the appending of an entire suffix to the country named Israel. What about the wishes of millions of Jews who don't appreciate such mangling of the name of their homeland?
That's okay because neither has the WBAIWETSOPWFMRD inquisition thought about it much, either or at least not long enough to explain it to themselves much less me, the often accused and penalized. It seems to be an unwritten decree. Absolutely no one fears the hypocritical babble mini-inquisition in threads where the obviously offensive to some number of Jewish people terminology, 'Israeli apartheid', is passed around like a whiskey bottle on cowboy payday. Why are they not behind the door with offending Jewish people? It makes no sense unless they intend to say things which are rooted in "colonialist and racist thinking" themselves.
I can not for the life of me point to a geographical location on a map described as ' The Israeli apartheid state', but I can point to a Northern region which is a virtual colony of the USSA's. Is it Puerto Rico, or would I be talking about Canada in the exact context stated by me as well as Canadian Mel Hurtig, time and time again. Instead we get the inquisition claiming to know that I am thinking something completely different based on their own racist and colonial thoughts about Latin Americans.
Except that the situation in Canada is NOT analagous to Puerto Rico. Canada is an imperialist nation in its own right, a settler-colonial state founded on the theft of indigenous land. That much of the Canadian economy has been taken over by multinational corporations from the United States does not change the essential imperialist, colonial-settler character of the Canadian state.
To suggest that Canada has an equivalent colonial status to Puerto Rico, as Fidel routinely does, is quite offensive to the indigenous peoples who continue to suffer from the brutal policies of the imperialist, colonial-settler state called Canada.
There are desperately poor Amerindians on the island and those who fled to live in American-speaking urban slums who would be offended by your exclusion of them from discussion of US-colonialist and racist policies toward the virtual colony of Puerto Rico.
So when will you be posting in one of the many other threads about Israeli apartheid? Where is the U.S.-backed Israeli apartheid state on a map of the world, because I can't seem to find it anywhere? It must be a term rooted in colonialist and racist thinking if we are to follow the inquisitor's hopelessly broken logic.