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Robert Kaplan Writes In Defense Of Slavery
Neocon Robert Kaplan is writing In Defense of Empire. Empire is good, he believes, even for those who a ruled by it without having any representation. The lunacy of his arguments can be show best when one substitute the object of his essay:
Throughout history, governance and relative safety have most often been provided by slavery, Western or Eastern. Anarchy reigned in the interregnums. To wit, the British may have failed in Baghdad, Palestine, and elsewhere, but the larger history of the British slaveholdership is one of providing a vast armature of stability, fostered by sea and rail communications, where before there had been demonstrably less stability.
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But slavery is now seen by global elites as altogether evil, despite slaveholdership having offered the most benign form of order for thousands of years, keeping the anarchy of ethnic, tribal, and sectarian war bands to a reasonable minimum. Compared with slaveholdership, democracy is a new and uncertain phenomenon. Even the two most estimable democracies in modern history, the United States and Great Britain, were slaveholdership for long periods. “As both a dream and a fact the American slaveholdership was born before the United States,” writes the mid-20th-century historian of westward expansion Bernard DeVoto. Following their initial settlement, and before their incorporation as states, the western territories were nothing less than slaveholdership possessions of Washington, D.C. No surprise there: slaveholdership confers a loose and accepted form of sovereignty, occupying a middle ground between anarchy and full state control.
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Rome, Parthia, and Hapsburg Austria were great precisely because they gave significant parts of the world a modicum of slavery order that they would not otherwise have enjoyed. America must presently do likewise, particularly in East Asia, the geographic heartland of the world economy and the home of American treaty allies.
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That, I submit, would be a policy direction that internalizes both the drawbacks and the benefits of slaveholdership, not as it has been conventionally thought of, but as it has actually been practiced throughout history.
It is somewhat frightening that people believing such nonsense have influence in political circles.
The interest in slavery is not just neo-connish etc. but in a way, underground, an interest of Big Corporations (1).
Not, imho, in first place because of the ‘cheap labor’ but because of issues of control.
Right now we are living in a world that is organized in part by nation-states (as a kind of ultimate authority) and for another part, not well coordinated with the first, by Big Corporations, who increasingly control Banking and Finance, thus also say pol. contributions in the US, territory (2) and its uses, supra-territorial matters such as communications and benchmarks (internet, the control of space, rating agencies, for ex.), and other related matters like patent laws.
Slavery as an official doctrine is not in their interests, cheap labor is already available thru modern slavery. So they keep a low profile, and let their ‘elected’ representatives take the flack.
Such clashing interests are well illustrated in the case of Ukraine, where the confusion of the Western ‘nation-states’ has become pathetically ridiculous, as they cannot make public their lack of power and attendant subservience to Corporate interests. They are kind of ‘holding on’ to keep some hand in the game, and mobilizing their ‘electorate’ with propaganda, as that is where their livelihood come from.
One article about Corp. interests in Ukraine:
Consortium news, March 16, 2014
http://tinyurl.com/omfmbp5
1. Shell, BP, Total, plus many others in the energy field. Also the likes of Glencore Xstrata, Cargill, AXA, Monsanto, Nestlé, JP Morgan, etc. etc. all entwined in a kind of global network.
2. Straight out buying and leasing land; owning thru investments and ‘deals’, exploration rights, mineral rights, agriculture, transport hubs (pipelines, shipping, ports, the machines that implement the transport, etc.)
Posted by: Noirette | Mar 22 2014 15:37 utc | 116
Zionist supremacy indoctrination:
In 2003, Rabbi Saadya Grama of the Beth Medrash Govoha, the renowned Talmudic school of Lakewood, NJ, published a book in which he claimed that Gentiles were completely evil and that Jews constituted a separate, genetically superior species.
The book published under the Hebrew Title “Romemut Yisrael Ufarsahat Hagalut” quoted numerous classical Jewish sources to prove Jewish superiority over the rest of humankind.
The difference between Jews and gentiles, he argued, is not religious, historical, cultural, or political. It is rather racial, genetic, and scientifically unalterable. The one groups is at its very root and by natural constitution “totally evil” while the other is “totally good”
If gentiles (goyem) are inherently inferior to Jews, and if their very humanity is presumed to be denied, it is axiomatically inferred from this that these gentiles have inherently lesser rights than Jews do.
Indeed, some Talmudic references do refer to gentiles as “animals walking on two feet instead of four”.
Even today, some Rabbis, such as David Batsri, invoke the “bestiality” of non-Jews, claiming that the Creator created them with two legs instead of four in deference to Jews, because it is not appropriate that Jews be served with four-legged animals.
Rabbi Abraham Kook, the religious mentor of the settler movement, taught that “the difference between a Jewish soul and souls of non-Jews — all of them in all different levels — is greater and deeper than the difference between a human soul and the souls of cattle.” (Reuters Photo)
Remarks by the Israeli Minister of Interior Yaakov Neeman suggesting that the Jewish religious law (Halacha) should be adopted as the “law of the land” in the Jewish state has drawn strong reactions from both Jews and non-Jews.
“Step by step, we will bestow upon the citizens of Israel the laws of the Torah and we will turn Halacha into the binding law of the nation,” Neeman told Rabbis at a Jewish law convention in occupied Jerusalem in December 2009.
“We must bring back the heritage of our fathers to the nation of Israel,” he said. “The torah has the complete solution to all of the questions we are dealing with.”
Neeman’s statements were met applauds from participants who included high-ranking Rabbis, as well as representatives of religious parties.
However, for non-Jews, who now constitute nearly 50 percent of the total population in occupied Palestine, Neeman’s remarks are a serious cause for concern since Halacha, at least according to the Orthodox Jewish interpretation, does not recognize the full humanity of non-Jews.
Hence, non-Jews living under Halacha must accept to live under a perpetual state of inferiority, if not persecution.
Lesser in Every Aspect
According to Orthodox Judaism, a non-Jew (goy) is inferior to a Jew in every conceivable aspect. This inferiority is absolute, inherent, intrinsic, and not subject to any related or unrelated factors.
Rabbi Abraham Kook, the religious mentor of the settler movement, taught that “the difference between a Jewish soul and souls of non-Jews — all of them in all different levels — is greater and deeper than the difference between a human soul and the souls of cattle.”
The teachings of Kook are based on the Lurianic Cabala (Jewish mysticism), which teaches the absolute superiority of the Jewish soul and body over the non-Jewish soul and body. This means, according to one Rabbi who is member of the Chabadi Lubovitcher sect, that “every simple cell in a Jewish body entails divinity and is part of God.”
In 2003, Rabbi Saadya Grama of the Beth Medrash Govoha, the renowned Talmudic school of Lakewood, NJ, published a book in which he claimed that Gentiles were completely evil and that Jews constituted a separate, genetically superior species.
The book published under the Hebrew Title “Romemut Yisrael Ufarsahat Hagalut” quoted numerous classical Jewish sources to prove Jewish superiority over the rest of humankind.
The difference between Jews and gentiles, he argued, is not religious, historical, cultural, or political. It is rather racial, genetic, and scientifically unalterable. The one groups is at its very root and by natural constitution “totally evil” while the other is “totally good”
“Jewish successes in the world are completely contingent upon the failure of all other peoples. Only when the gentiles face total catastrophe, Jews do experience good fortune.”
“The Jews themselves brought about their own destruction during the Holocaust, since they arrogantly endeavored to overcome their very essence, dictated by divine law.”
While castigated by many Jewish figures, religious and secular, for its brazen racism, Grama’s thesis is not really in conflict with the Rabbis of Gush Emunim (the settler camp) and the rest of the National religious movement in Israel today.
He readily applies Torah passages against idolaters, other pagans to Christianity and Islam, and other monotheists who worship the God of Abraham, the very God proclaimed by the Torah.
He also ignores extensive Rabbinic deliberations during the medieval period, which concluded that both Islam and Christianity as “licit, monotheistic faiths.”
Hence, Muslims and Christians could not be lumped in one category with the idol-worshipers of earlier times.
Sub-human Slaves
If gentiles (goyem) are inherently inferior to Jews, and if their very humanity is presumed to be denied, it is axiomatically inferred from this that these gentiles have inherently lesser rights than Jews do.
Indeed, some Talmudic references do refer to gentiles as “animals walking on two feet instead of four”.
Even today, some Rabbis, such as David Batsri, invoke the “bestiality” of non-Jews, claiming that the Creator created them with two legs instead of four in deference to Jews, because it is not appropriate that Jews be served with four-legged animals.
It is true that this view is not shared by all Rabbis, especially the enlightened ones. However, it is also true that some prominent sages holding both Halachic and historical weight are among the main advocates of this pure racism.
For example, according to the code of Maimonides (Rambam): “A Jew who killed a non-Jew is exempt from human judgment, and has not violated the prohibition of murder.”
This code is implicitly practiced by Jewish settler judges when dealing with Jews convicted of killing Palestinians, which explains the extremely light punishments meted out to the perpetrators, especially in comparison to Arabs convicted of the same felony.
And here’s the perfect explanation for ummm…imperial supremacist hegemony:
“Jewish successes in the world are completely contingent upon the failure of all other peoples. Only when the gentiles face total catastrophe, Jews do experience good fortune.”
And yet more shocking supremacist garbage…
https://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/living-under-israels-jewish-law/
Oh and here’s our favorite Rabbi Ovadia:
“Non-Jews were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world-only to serve the People of Israel.”
In Israel, death has no dominion over them…With gentiles, it will be like any person-They need to die, but God will give them longevity. Why? Imagine that one’s donkey would die, they’d lose their money.
“This is his servant…That’s why he gets a long life, to work well for this Jew.”
“why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap; and we will sit like an effendi and eat.”
“That is why gentiles were created.”
And settler Rabbi Abraham Kook (great last name!):
“The difference between a Jewish soul and souls of non-Jews — all of them in all different levels — is greater and deeper than the difference between a human soul and the souls of cattle.”
Oh and here’s Ovadia picking his own brain:
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/11/god-isnt-finished-with-me-yet.html
Teach your children well; to load Kalashnikovs write on bombs that kill and main Palestinian children and kick and spit on their poor grandmothers while you pull off their hijab.
This is what the new generation of Zionists are learning.
Posted by: kalithea | Mar 22 2014 17:08 utc | 136
So much confusion and little light.
The confusion began when b did one of his usual deliberate substitutions to provoke a bit of thought by substituting slavery for empire.
The normal confusion, generally engendered by the more pedantic of us whenever b does a semantic substitution, was hugely increased when b himself confused two asshole neocons of similar name with each other.
Normally b’s substitutions generate thought because the concept summoned by the original wording is considerably different to the concepts generated by its replacement.
This is not the way it is with empire and slavery – two concepts I have always believed to be pretty much indistinguishable from one another.
That is the heart of the issue here, but but adding the confusion from the juxtaposition of similar terms is the confusion many people have about slavery.
For me slavery is enforced labour where a human, regarded as the property of another, is forced to live in a way that is beneficial to his/her ‘masters’ wants, with no regard for his/her own needs.
Amerikan slavery just like the slavery instituted by the original english colonisers, also featured no payments or wages be given the slaves.
That isn’t always the case slaves who are paid are still slaves and may be worse off because of that. The Greek slaves who worked as doctors, secretaries, and retail assistants in imperial Rome frequently were paid for their work, but they were still slaves – their lives were not their own. They were humans who belonged to someone else.
Berkeley is correct at #118 where he points out that slavery without pay ultimately destroys capitalism.
This is why amerika had a civil war. The southern elites wanted to continue as always importing african slaves and paying them nothing, while providing the bare minimum for survival as food & shelter.
The factory and retail giant owning Northen elites couldn’t give a flying fuck about ‘the rights of man’ they wanted to get richer that is why they went to war.
The northern elites preferred the form of slavery that had been evolving in europe since the industrial revolution, where slaves, imported from europe and more culturally acclimated to factory work than africans, whose culture and sense of self had been deliberately destroyed, leaving the recipients of that horror in a vacuum.
The ‘new slaves’ would be responsible for their own upkeep receiving minimum payment to keep themselves in food and shelter, just enough to (a) keep them highly motivated at work and (b) for the elites to profit by taking it back.
Both forms are slavery – the vast majority of humans born into poverty in so-called ‘developed’ nations such as amerika, england, or israel, have as little say in their own destiny as does a domestic slave in Saudi Arabia.
The biggest difference is that the rules are unwritten & unstated allowing the western elites great flexibility in fucking everyone else over.
They don’t need to be written because once the responsibility for feeding yourself and your family is put onto your shoulders in the opprressive and domineering manner which neo-liberal unsocieties put on individuals, the majority follow the same well worn path to personal impoverishment and elite enrichment.
Those who veer off the path – climb outta the rut – can be picked off one by one as needs must. Occasionally one may achieve independence in the form of what seems to be economic self determination, but with few exceptions that is because their divergence suits (& enriches), the slave owners.
This egregious exploitation of ordinary, normal, unsociopathic, humans by the sociopathic elites has been around a lot longer that the organised political movement created to enable followers of Judaism to colonise the Jordan Valley.
If permitted to, ruthless domination of the decent by the greedy will continue long after the zionists have been driven out of the area and the land returned to its original indigenous owners.
Palestinians are the descendants of the people who stayed on, minding their farms and orchards when the despotic monarchists who had comprised Jerusalem’s ruling elite fled from their Roman replacements.
It isn’t merely incorrect to put the cart before the horse by blaming amerikan imperialism on the corrupt israeli regime, it is fucking dangerous and destructive – firstly because it causes too much time and energy be spent upon a mob of petty crims (yes they are psychopaths, but in comparison to the crimes of amerika, israeli leaders are petty crims), but most importantly because blaming ‘the jews’ for the world’s ills is so destructive to resistance against the asshole elites.
If the elites are to be beaten it will be when all the ‘normal’ humans have stuck together in common cause against those who consciously butcher any/all of us for profit.
Once we have learned not to be distracted by deliberately nurtured divisive arguments about race, gender, nationality etc – then we will rid ourselves of the leeches and then, that time, provided we have managed to do so without making any scapegoats, maybe then we will be able to asshole-proof our communities ensuring no new sociopaths slink in again under cover of saving us from oldies, ‘those kids’, morbidly obese, anorexics, gypsies, kaffirs, niggers or jews.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Mar 23 2014 4:39 utc | 158
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