No Russian

Some of you may recognize that as the title of a controversial level of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, in which a group of Russian ultra-nationalist terrorists shoot up unarmed civilians in an airport terminal while pretending to be Americans in a bid to start a war. I thought about calling this post “No Terrorism” but decided that the meta-reference was a bit too obscure.

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A lot of people talk about stopping terror attacks no matter how rare they may be, preventing terrorists from having access to things with which they could hurt innocent people, and whatnot. What we do not have the stomach to talk about is preventing people from thinking terrorism is a good idea. In short, we don’t look at what causes terrorism.

Consider a place where there has been a catastrophe. It doesn’t matter right now what caused the catastrophe, only that the people are in dire conditions which continue to deteriorate for a whole year. Only 3% of factories still function, which means that unemployment is over 40%. A large portion of the residents have no electricity and no running water. The sewage plant doesn’t work. People have resorted to building homes — such as they are — with mud. International donors  from all over the world have pledged thousands of millions of dollars to help rebuild the region, and sent such diverse supplies as building materials, medicines, textbooks for destroyed schools, and even food for the people who live there.

However, due to political problems, very little of this aid is reaching the people who need it. Nor is the problem related to bribes, kickbacks, or some other form of corruption as is common in so many parts of the world; unfortunately there is every indication that the intent is to prevent the region from rebuilding, by “imposing Kafkaesque rules that bar entry to vital reconstruction materials and items as bizarre as glass, most schoolbooks, honey and family-sized tubs of margarine.”

The troubled region I describe is Gaza. And the oppressive regime preventing a rebuilding effort is the United States’ staunch ally, Israel. It should be obvious to anybody with a functioning brain cell that, in the words of a UN official, “Palestinians are becoming more desperate and more extreme.” I challenge anyone to avoid becoming more desperate and extreme under such circumstances. Such things are the root cause of terrorism; when there is no non-violent way to change things, violent ways invariably arise. Just ask the Iranians about that.

There are those who will disagree with me, including all those who feel Israel can do no wrong, and those who consider the Bible infallible. If the Israelis are trying to finish the genocide laid out in Deuteronomy 20, let them be honest about it.

In Closing: Reproductive rights are human rights (and not incidentally, the most effective way to fight poverty world wide); two programs that teach kids to read and read well; obligatory health insurance reform items; a word about why your city is scaling back services; corporate control of food; “Centrist” Democrats eying retirement?; a practical joke for the FPS player in your life; JurassikPork gets even more cynical (and we love him for it); the role of innumeracy in our banking and foreclosure crises; the decade in food, and the decade in buzzwords.