Whudya gonna do about it?

Todays news featured Israels' announcement that it had approved 900 new houses for a Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem. Shortly after the news focused on the white houses' response, which was reportedly "dismayed." White house spokesman Robert Gibbs complained the move makes peace talks with Palestinian leadership "more difficult." He did not discuss any action the US could leverage to persuade the Israeli government to comply with it's promise to halt all building in (and of) new settlements. In fact this has been going on for a while and it doesn't seem to be changing under Obama. The US could if it wanted, effectively negotiate it's terms by withholding or threatening to withhold financial and military aid.

The United States tax payers are the sugar daddy of the Israeli government and specifically their military. Within the first month of 2009 the US had already given Israel over 2.5 Billion in military aid alone, apparently to reward them for their human rights abuses in Gaza that were still continuing unabated. From the time of Israels' 1973 October war, over my entire life, the US has given Israel over 200 Billion dollars in financial and military aid. It's the only nation for which the US grants an exception to the requirement that it spend its' military budget with US weapons manufactures. So it now has a booming war industry of it's own, which has bloomed with the rich fertilizer of our tax dollars.

The US and UK have played the role of father, big brother, and teacher to the fledgling nation and the UK even gave them nuclear weapons to play with. Israel was the UKs' burden after WWII because they were the occupier of Palestine in their waning days of empire. Jews from all over Europe flocked back to Palestine as a refuge from war stricken areas, and as a symbolic pilgrimage to their peoples homeland. The UK was notorious however for it's treatment of these Jewish settlers and refugees and one high level British official was assassinated in a terrorist attack carried out by a group of Zionist Jews who were inspired by the I.R.A. They were called Lehi, but the British called them the Stern group after their leader at the time. Their ultimate goal was to drive out the British and they're political violence (terrorism) seemed to pay off.

Shortly after the US stepped in to what it saw as a strategic relationship it could not afford to pass up. Our democratic nation, that shrills at the notion of nation building, and prides itself on religeous freedom, decided to turn this dusty hillside into Americas holy war fortress. Americas favor of Jews over Muslims would be displayed to the people of the region on a central stage in terms the Muslim world would comprehend with crystal clarity. Meanwhile back home in the bubble of the states, Americans would be inundated with maligned Arab stereotypes and biased news coverage from plain white Christian news anchors. Over years of tit for tenfold tat the Palestinians always seem to be reported for their failing attempts at defending their territories, while Israel gets a pass on the whole sale destruction of a people.

Obama assured AIPAC (A.K.A. the Israel lobby) that Israeli security is sacrosanct, and Hilary Clinton echoed the political call of the day that "Israel has a right to defend herself." First off, every nation has a right to defend itself, isn't that an obvious bias? And sacrosanct? How can we claim to be a fair arbiter when we're telling Israel that our support is unconditional, and simultaneously telling the Palestinians who are dying and losing their lands that they're permanently in the wrong in any future issue that might arise. After members of AIPAC were arrested for giving National Security secrets to the Israeli government, the charges were mysteriously dropped, even after the man charged with giving them the information pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 13 years in prison. Why does a Nation with an embassy in Washington DC even need a lobby group? Why should another country have the right to persuade our legislative branch, they don't get to vote in our elections?

This issue has never seen the light of reason and even Obama is under the spell of AIPAC, mindlessly chanting the slogans and talking points in ways that make them sound like his ideas. The Goldstone report was that light of reason that slipped into the congress through a crack in it's crusty shell and they chased Goldstone out of town like a bloodthirsty mob. The house called the report "Irredeemably biased" which is a phrase that ironically describes Americas treatment of Israel over the decades. Of course Obamas' white house has to concede that building in and on settlements in the occupied territories violated international law and should cease, even Bush conceded that much. Here's the single issue the US has it's blinders off to see and they're all talk and it's clearly just empty words. Israel can do what ever it wants, with no limit to the size and scope of it's crimes against humanity and international law with absolute impunity. Whudya gonna do about it, huh?

Criminals, Imperialists, and Assassins

I have a reader! I can hardly believe that someone is actually reading my blog, I'm speaking out and finally my voice is being heard. But there's just one problem, my reader is a software firm called Visible Technologies contracted by the Central Intelligence Agency to monitor blogs, social networking sites, and book reviews. Why would the C.I.A. want to read my silly opinions? Aren't they out there protecting us from terrorists who hate our freedom? Like our freedom of speech for example, I may be terrified by the notion that the C.I.A. is monitoring everything I say but I'm still free to say it. In fact I'm already worried that I've said too much, so just forget I said anything, never mind.

I mean really, how could my little opinions and far left rants be a threat to a super power of epic proportions? Is it because the truth can outweigh a mountain of lies and propaganda? Because people who join together and discuss the issues of the day can at any moment turn the power of our technology against the state to unite and resist? Maybe it's the fact that I don't believe in the validity of nation states at all, and that I think they should be boycotted and ignored. And that US currency is the legal contract we embrace everyday that makes us all slaves of the state? Or is it that I believe there is no true democracy, and that Barak Obama is working just as much for the banks as was George W. Bush was when he "bailed them out" last year?

The Central Intelligence Agency is Americas' dark side, quite literally shameless and blameless. Their preferred image is the rather low profile "bean counter" persona, we're often assured they're harmless pencil pushers organizing files all day, everyday. But we know they carry out crimes against humanity all over the world through contractors, operatives, and "assets", making it rain cash for thugs, murderers, drug dealers, and corrupt politicians who do their bidding. And what is their agenda? We're told they are simply acting out the will of the president and watching out for the general security of the nation, but with zero transparency why should we believe anything they tell us? The basic design of the US constitution guaranteed to we the people our privacy (or opacity) and the governments transparency, we have been duped into a world in which we the people are totally transparent and the government is totally opaque.

Sure you can watch the pageant of elections and inaugurations but that's just an act, as long as our government has an inner sanctum cloaked in darkness it is not truly transparent. The Central Intelligence Agency has never been fully justified to my generation, exactly why did we adopt the Russian and Nazi model for secrecy? Perhaps it's because there is so much to hide from the people, and in that darkness anything goes for the most powerful people in the world. There is no great achievement, no past glory, and no red, white, and blue patriotic jingoism that would not be completely undone by a light cast into that darkness. It is not the C.I.A. that should be monitoring us, but we who should audit them once and for all, and clean up the mess they have made of this world. My grandmother taught me never to write anything I wouldn't put my name on, and by this standard the United States government should be ashamed of it's sociopathic hidden hand. I'm lookin' at you too D.I.A. and N.S.A!

Mr. Obama: Tear down this Wall Street!

Wall Streets history begins, not surprisingly with a wall. This wasn't like the walls in your house holding the ceiling safely above your head, it was one of thousands of colonial fortress structures separating people from people, resources, and territory. Like the great wall of China, the Berlin wall, and even the separation wall in occupied Palestine, this fortress wall was designed for domination and acquisition of territory. And like other walls it violated basic human rights and enabled enormous crimes of displacement and genocidal violence. In most cases the justification is security, as protection from savages. But the well documented treatment of "friendly" natives and the obvious motive of land theft more than justifies those indigenous people who would give their lives to resist invasion and occupation of their homelands.

When the wall was no more and the street became significant to the newly established nation, wealthy property owners gathered there to trade amongst themselves. Formalizing under a document called the Buttonwoon Agreement, they created an exclusive club designed to keep out unwanted traders and retain the wealth within their domains. What is now the New York Stock Exchange is a colonial era device for extracting wealth from those who actually work lands, mine resources, or produce commodities. It's sole purpose is to preserve the power structure of old money families and power elites, and it can never operate as anything but an obstacle to a democracy. Wall Street is the great wall of America, and the rest of the world is divided up and traded by its' power brokers.

The current financial crisis is not about bailing out Wall Street instead of Main Street, it's about the effects of Wall Street on those small businesses that used to thrive on Main Street. Wall Streets' corporate model has made it possible to eliminate thousands of jobs with the stroke of a pen, and shuffle them around the world shopping for the cheapest labor and worst human rights record. And they do this to squeeze more from the poor working class and turn it into their (anything but hard earned) profit. Capitalism can still exist without Wall Street sucking the capital from the have nots to the have everythings. In fact, it may not be able to continue with these bail out bank heists and government subsidy give aways for much longer as is. What's the point of giving all of our tax money to the ownership class and then not charging them their due taxes, could it be anymore obvious that we the people are being robbed through the clearing house of the IRS?

I know the current dominant view is that wealthy people trading property is the measure of a truly free society, but I would suggest that every billionaire represents a million people who can't afford their next meal. The success of the wealthy is the bleak and dismal failure of the poor, and of the people charged with providing an even playing field to each and every person. The rights of inhuman corporations have far too long trumped the rights of living breathing humans and animals everywhere. No one has demonstrated to the common man the true value of corporations, nor have they (or can they) justify the far reaching "rights" of corporations. What we affectionately refer to as "Wall Street" is a system of parasitic institutions that must be eliminated for true progress to occur in the field of democracy.

But the ownership class and the ruling class are always one in the same, and our current president is harboring many of the financial elites who continue to profit from their holdings. That well-to-do crowd that George Bush ironically referred to as his "base", has also paid in full for our current commander in chief, and it's sadly improbable that he will do anything that could upset his next round of fundraising in 2012. And of course it's not likely he'll do anything after that if he wins a second term. With any luck, and a lot of that year old hope, Obama can be a mildly effective ex-president like Jimmy Carter, someday, when he's very old. Or perhaps he has what it takes as president to stand up to Americas' owners, many of whom still hold land and wealth accumulated through the legacy of slavery. I might suggest it's his only "hope" to win a second term, but he should do it for the right reasons, because it's "right" and well within "reason."