On that two-state "solution" thing?
It just occurred to me while reading some of the posts on the Gaza topic that I rarely see this point brought up as far as related history lessons:
On August 14-15, 1947, a two-state "solution" was enacted with the creation of the state of Pakistan followed by one of the largest and most rapid population transfers in history, with 17.9 million people leaving their homes. Of these, only 14.5 million arrived, suggesting that 3.4 million went "missing". More history here, including a link to Jinnah's Two Nation Theory.
How did that work out, does the world like what it got out of that deal? And how do the parties involved feel about the"other"? Do they still have terrorism problems? And do they still fight over little spits of very desirable land? How come one rarely sees discussion of this as related to Israel and Palestine? Is it an inappropriate comparison to think about? Is "solution" a useful tag word here, or does it raise unreasonable expectations? Just sayin'....what do I know?.....
An image keeps coming to my mind about the Current World events.
Where I lived, there was a very large dog in the neighborhood. If the dog appeared to be outside, we avoided the area, going an alternative route.
Despite signs and repeated warnings, with the dog barking, some felt compelled to antagonize the dog.
Although, the dog was on a leash, the antagonizer got to close; the dog bit the apparent threat.
The dog was doing what dogs do, protecting its owner’s space. It didn’t go chasing others; it stayed within its confines.
There must be some similar real life experiences that could be shared by those in that neighborhood.
January 5, 2009 3:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Strikes me that you could make your comment into a blog post titled "Reality Bites."
January 5, 2009 3:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
The antagonizer in this case isn't simply getting bit by the dog. It is getting severely mauled by the dog, beaten by the owner's baseball bat, and then pissed on by the owner's little kid.
January 5, 2009 3:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
However, in the dog's defense, he was preventing anyone from visiting, delivering groceries, or buying piece goods from the household. Maybe the teaser's thought they should be allowed to enter and leave their household like other people?
January 5, 2009 8:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
War doesn't determine who's right. War determines who's left.
January 6, 2009 8:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
"The One-State Solution"
By MUAMMAR QADDAFI,
New York Times op-ed, January 21, 2009:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/opinion/22qaddafi.html?ref=opinion
January 22, 2009 3:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
The One-State Solution
In my capacity as executive director of the United Semitic Peoples' Kemalist Front, I am writing *Dr. Kadaffi to enlist him as a member.
I believe he is qualified as semite. His kemalist credentials may need some vetting. But his heart is in the right place:
One Semite, One Vote! One State, No Yahwists!
or:
"We're here! We're United! We're Semitic Kemalists! Get over it!" (we are working on the chant...)
*you never offend people by calling them "doctor".(All the waiters at the track used to call my father that, and he was a lawyer, but he didn't mind)
January 22, 2009 3:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
yeah, snark is most definitely invited by this particular op-ed. For a split second I thought of making a new post in order to get some of that snark, as well as serious analytic input, even wrote up a few extra "to go with" words, but then I came to my senses. :-) Best left hiding where only "followers" can see my interest in the piece as a curio. And heck, he doesn't need me anyways, he's already #4 most emailed on the NYT list.
So thanks for quenching my thirst for some "sharing" on this....
Jano, I also must admit I found myself wishing he would have used his rare offer of a New York Times soapbox to say a word or two about the goings on much further south. For some reason, despite his tribe and his 'hood, er, how can I say it?---I think of him as uniquely qualified, experienced, to offer useful input in that situation, i.e.:
Graca berates SADC for Zim crisis
"Zimbabwe Is Dying" By BOB HERBERT
If you want to see hell on earth, go to Zimbabwe...
January 22, 2009 3:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
snark
I do not wish to be misunderstood re the Front, and the hoped for one state, The United Semitic *Peoples' Kemalist Republic.
I think the only way out of the mess in Palestine is to arm the seculars on both sides, and turn them loose on the **Yahwists.
*(note the use of the plural apostraphe-done advisedly.)
**One thing we know about the Yahwists--you simply cannot reason with them...
January 22, 2009 4:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
You know how sometimes one throws up one's hands and says I'm not going to read any more of this I-P stuff, it's the same story over and over, let's just send all of them to the moon?
How's this for a fantasy?
and realize that their ideology has wider appeal to other "people of the book" beyond their little circle of Islam, the Northwest Provinces and southern parts of Afghanistan could be that moon. The Federated states of death-worshipping "people-of-the-book" nihilist yahwehists?
Yeah, we'd have to have that world government to insure they couldn't have WMD (as many other weapons as they want, though) and egress for females who desired it (the whole reproduction thing.) But this would make everyone happy, including them, they get to leave earth ASAP.
January 22, 2009 4:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
oops bad code above, I did not preview well, my bad.
The linked 3rd paragraph is missing its beginning, it should have started with this:
If the Taliban weren't so stoopid and could just get their P.R. act together,
:-)
January 22, 2009 5:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you want to see hell on earth, go to Zimbabwe...
Zimbabwe is a constant reproach to all those who scoff at world government (it being evident that nothing but a world government with a monopoly on the legitimate use of force and a standing constabulary can meet the R2P)
Even were there an impowered and well-meaning state (or collection of states--call them a "coalition of the willing"...) we by now understand that armed intervention without the sanction of a world governing body is doomed to fail in its positive goals and likely to produce greater negative outcomes than already are in place.
vide, inter alia George's Excellent Iraqi Adventure
January 22, 2009 4:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
This issue is far from dead, as a matter of fact it is hot right now in Pakistan.
There is a lot of suspicion of (and frequent outright bashing of) the controversial secular liberal political party MQM (some call it a "cult" or a "Mafia" or "terrorists"),
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MQM
in the Pakistani blogosphere, it is seen by some as the tool of "foreign agents" trying to dissolve Pakistan:
See
BREAKING PAKISTAN MQM STYLE
February 6, 2009 by islamabadobserver
http://islamabadobserver.wordpress.com/2009/02/06/breaking-pakistan-mqm-style/
or
MQM Scheme for the Breakup of Pakistan
Posted by Teeth Maestro
February 3, 2009
http://teeth.com.pk/blog/2009/02/03/mqm-scheme-for-the-breakup-of-pakistan
for a general idea.
I've seen other blogs where commenters took over threads on the recent protests against the Taliban flogging of a young women in the Swat Valley, trying to derail the conversation along the lines of "the MQM are the real terrorists."
Obama's CIA and Holbrooke are sometimes being included in the conspiracy theories. India, of course, is the main enemy, and Pashtuns are considered just poor uneducated victims of manipulation by "foreign agents" bent on dissolving Pakistan through stimulating factional trouble. This is why you crazy stuff like inference of Indian intelligence agents being the ones stirring up all the Taliban/al Qaeda trouble in the Northwest provinces. There is also a lot of resentment of the "Punjabi establishment."
April 7, 2009 3:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
dissolve Pakistan
Ah yesss, the traditional homeland of the ancient Paki people.
What? It's an acronym?? For Punjab, Afghan, and Kashmiri.?
Right then, carry on dissolving.
April 7, 2009 5:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hey Rog, you're living up to your avatar by following the trail to my hidden out of the way thread.
So do you think the conspiracy theories have a grain of truth as well, is Obama in league with India and those "terrorist" MQM Pakistani-Brits on black ops agitating for a 3-state solution for Pakistan? (In Iraq, I see the new news is he's still pushing for one state.)
I admit this old feminist had been neglecting the particulars on the Pakistan story, fell into it again because I started out surfing around looking for a good women's rights group in Pakistan to donate to regarding this story: Pakistan’s Chief Justice Assails Attorney General Over Taliban Flogging. I was inspired to offer a few dollars assistance to the sistahs in that photo and their compatriots trying to get equal protection of the law while all this crap is going on, either that or for them to get free passage out of that one of the three new states which will be nicknamed "war on wimmin land." I doubt it's going to be easy for them, I suspect the Interior Ministry doesn't give a shit what Justice Chaudhry thinks they should be doing. (Just so anyone else manages to find this thread and gets the wrong impression, I don't see this as having anything to do with support--or not--for U.S. intervention in Aghanistan/Pakistan; it's about international women's rights for me.)
April 7, 2009 7:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
P.S. They really are making war on wimmin, making their way across the land--here, for example, in August in Balochistan: Buried alive in Pakistan. And the Feds aren't doing a frigging thing about it. I am finding the front page book club discussion here kinda hard to take in comparison, some youngin whiners whining about stuff I was over with in high school, while wimmins in certain areas of Pakistan can only imagine in their wildest dreams of being able to proudly bear the label slut if they so chose.
BTW, I lol'd at this:
April 7, 2009 7:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
"I am finding the front page book club discussion here kinda hard to take in comparison, some youngin whiners whining about stuff I was over with in high school,...."
Dit-to
April 8, 2009 4:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
to make their own choice in marriage
You know, I really thought that the acid-in-the-face thing was about the outer limits of horror, but oh no, you showed me the outer limits. (Precious blood of the sweet baby Jesus, this had damn well better be the outer limits...)
proudly bear the label slut
I am working on a theory of civilization the shorter version of which is:
"Beset by paternity anxiety syndrome resulting from hidden estrus and having run out of cousins men invented money so they could pay strangers to guard their women."
Put differently, the first fifty thousand years worth of law enforcement was all about keeping kitty kosher.
April 7, 2009 8:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am working on a theory of civilization the shorter version of which is...
Sounds pretty good to me, a better summary of my own thoughts on the matter than I have been able to manage.
April 7, 2009 8:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
that two-state "solution" thing
As long as we are revisiting this topic, would it be impolite of me to observe *the common element in the two "two state solution" solutions?
*That would be Albion as feckles hegemon.
April 7, 2009 8:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yup, the frigging infernal meddling that the good ole father of our own country warned about, as if they were even superior to the Greek gods and could foresee all blowback.
Matter of fact, it occurred to me that the repercussions still lives on in the current generation right now in a very specific way, but a very ironic one--in my surfing I saw a common implication that MQM is a plot related to British citizens of Pakistani heritage.
Oh, and on the whole state solutions thing, I made a mistake in a comment above. If the *MQM conspiracy* gets its way, it would not be proper to say a 3 states solution--looks like perhaps quite a few more--northern Afghanistan, Pashtunistan, Bangladesh, Punjabistan, Kashmir, Assam, India proper....what am I missing?
April 7, 2009 8:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
India proper
Now you're talkin'...I have always wondered how this polyglot confederation of people with nothing in common but a shared prior oppressor could stay together (Ask the Sikhs how they like it...)
April 8, 2009 3:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Pashtunistan has Swat nailed, and is moving quickly into Punjabistan:
April 14, 2009 12:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
And the U.S. is told to hand over the cash and butt out:
April 14, 2009 12:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
Weekend reports suggested Taliban had won over the Buner Valley, 70 miles from Islamabad:
April 14, 2009 1:02 AM | Reply | Permalink