Michael K. Smith's Blog, page 8

Palestinian Activist Just Says No To Lesser Evil Gaslighting

"I'm here to send a clear message to the Democratic Party and the Democratic candidates for office this fall that the people will no longer support unconditional aiding and abetting of genocide, and we stand for a complete arms embargo on Israel, sanctions, end of U.S. aid to Israel, and a permanent and immediate ceasefire."

Question: "What do you say to people who say, 'Well, you're gonna get Trump elected?'"

"That's a form of emotional blackmail. This is the rhetoric of abusers, right, that we say, 'Oh, well, you don't like one thing, well, what are you going to think of the other guy?' And I think that this is an unsustainable system and I'm actually looking out for the sustainability of our country in years to come. Because if we continue to tell ourselves that we're stuck between the healthier of Pepsi and Coke, we will only have the healthier between Pepsi and Coke. 

"But if we don't threaten a vote, if we don't say, 'no arms embargo, no vote, no sanctions, no vote,' we will never be able to leverage any real political accountability. And we've seen the effects of this only in just a few months, I mean, Governor Wals got up right after the Minnesota primaries on CNN and he said openly, that was the first time he said the situation in Gaza is intolerable. He hadn't said a word about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and what prompted him to do so was that one in five Minnesota Democrats voted uncommitted. Because of a one week, grassroots movement to get people to vote uncommitted. 

"Now think about how far we will go if we can leverage more civic momentum if it's not just a one week long movement in which voters across the board are rising up and saying, 'We will no longer vote for this just because it's better than the other guy - that is not going to be our standard anymore.' And when we tell ourselves that that is our standard we will only be stuck in this bind between two options and in years and years to come our children and grandchildren will be told that they have to vote Democrat they will have to vote for unconditional Zionism just because it's not as Zionist as the other guy. Slaughter, but better slaughter. Slaughter, but more effective slaughter."

Question: Does the Tim Wals selection as VP make you want to change your mind?

"This is short-sightedness, and actually this is blindness towards Wals's history of policies towards Israel and towards the Palestinian people and his Palestinian constituents. So I am from the state of Minnesota, actually, and I am a leader in the Minnesota community, and I was actually just part of a delegation of Minnesota Palestinian families that had a meeting canceled on the spot (with Wals), like literally two minutes before it was supposed to happen, as we were seated in the room, after ten months of Wals refusing to meet with Palestinian constituents. But, on the flip side, he right away rushed to synagogues and Stand With Israel rallies fight after October 7. So I'm living proof of how Wals treats his Palestinian constituents, and that is that he turns a blind eye to them. He doesn't treat them with respect at all. He treats them as subhuman. But also, if you look at it materially, Wals sits on the Minnesota State Board of Investments, which invests over $157 million  in Israeli companies, and that's just Israeli companies, $157 million of state pensions in Israeli companies. That doesn't include, by the way, weapons manufacturers like Lockheed Martin, like Boeing, like security companies like Elbit, etc. that are also complicit in violence against the people of Gaza. 

"So he is investing Minnesota money in the Military Industrial Complex. He is also funded (sic) a $1.3 million Minnesota state taxpayer subsidized grant, funded by Minnesota taxpayer money, a grant to construct a Lockheed Martin facility in St. Paul, Minnesota, and he called that good news from Minnesota. He has a history of being a friend to war, a friend of slaughter, of the Palestinian people, and we ought to not turn a blind eye to it."

-----Sana Wazwaz, American Muslims For Palestine, Minnesota 

Source:

Due Dissidence, "Ceasefire Activist Gives BRILLIANT Interview at DNC Protest," August 20, 2024

A Tale of Two Apartheids

In a recent discussion of Ta-Nehisi Coates's recent book on apartheid Israel Breaking Points commentator Krystal Ball's examples of the persistence of racial horror in the U.S. were pretty under-whelming. Trump falsely blaming Haitian immigrants for eating American pets? That stands out to her as compelling evidence of the persistence of Jim Crow in the United States?  Realistically, that has to be FAR down the list of priorities for black people in the U.S., who STILL don't have capital four hundred plus years after being wrested from their homelands and brought to the U.S. as slaves.  Forty acres and a mule for all former slaves? It never happened, and that failure has obvious repercussions down to the present day. Pretending it isn't so solves nothing. 
 On the other hand, it's easy to give up on Ta-Nehisi Coates, especially after he preposterously claimed that Barack Obama was the only legitimate heir of Malcolm X. Malcolm was a revolutionary, the greatest black revolutionary of the 20th Century, in fact; Obama was what Malcolm called a "House Negro," the Great Half-White Hope of corporate America. Advertising Age gave him an award for the slickness of his 2008 election campaign. When did Malcolm ever win acclaim from corporate America?  Never. (But if Coates is now correctly claiming that Israel is an apartheid state, bully for him! That's impossible for any sane person to deny.)  Ball's co-presenter Saagar Enjeti is incensed at Coates for (Saagar claims) painting the U.S. as as much of an apartheid state as Israel is, which thesis he cannot accept. That comparison can be entertained by reasonable people, though Enjeti vehemently denies it. While one would not want to dismiss the immense civilizing influence of the civil rights movement on American society, at the same time we remain deeply segregated fifty-six years after MLK was gunned down for correctly connecting racism in U.S. foreign policy with racism at home, an analysis that has never been allowed to remove the deep racial divisions that continue to scar American society. In other words, it's far from a simple matter to assess the gains and losses of that era, which James Baldwin called American's latest "slave rebellion."
 As educator Jonathan Kozol has pointed out repeatedly over many years photographs of students in American public schools today look remarkably similar to photos taken during the Jim Crow era. Nowhere do large numbers of white children go to school with their black counter-parts. So, while it is illegal to codify apartheid in U.S. law, it has proven equally impossible to eliminate it in practice. The custom of the country makes it persist. Why? Black-white relations were founded on sexual violence, and property relations faithfully reproduce economic segregation for the greater glory of light-skinned descendants. That is a force stronger than law.


  

 

Dick Cheney Endorses Kamala Harris - Why Do Plundering Mass Murderers Like Her?

Dick Cheney's career outline - Oil executive, member of the White House staff (1975-77), Wyoming representative (1979-89), Defense Secretary, (1989-1993), CEO of Halliburton Oil, (1995-1999)

Cheney in the U.S. Congress was the Strom Thurmond of the West, voting against: 

The Equal Rights Amendment

Funding for Head Start

A resolution calling for the release of Nelson Mandela from prison

Federal funding for abortion even in cases of rape and incest

Restrictions on plastic guns that could easily be slipped through airport security

Safe drinking water standards

Establishing the Department of Education

A waiting period for handgun purchases

The Panama Canal Treaty

Imposing sanctions on apartheid South Africa (but he only voted against it ten times)

Cheney was U.S. Defense Secretary in 1989 when the U.S. invaded Panama and restored the traditional white European elite to power. According to the Panamanian Human Rights Commission, the invasion killed between two and three thousand civilians in Panama. He was also Defense Secretary during the first Persian Gulf War (1991), when the U.S. killed 200,000 Iraqis (Pentagon estimate) to restore the Kuwaiti monarchy. 

While Cheney was still at the Pentagon, the Defense Department commissioned  a Halliburton subsidiary - Brown & Root - to do a classified study on whether it was advisable to contract out more military work to the private sector. To no one's surprise the answer was "yes," and over the next eight years Brown & Root and another company were awarded 2,700 federal contracts, while Cheney got to serve as CEO of Halliburton from 1995 to 1999, nearly doubling the value of the company's federal contracts while becoming fabulously rich himself. (Having had zero business experience did nothing to hold him back.) Charles Lewis of the Center for Public Integrity explained the incest-is-best relationship between government officials like Cheney and the private sector:

"They [military officials] have classified clearances; they go to classified meetings; they're with companies getting billions of dollars in classified contracts; and their disclosures about their activities are classified." 

In other words, the "free market" in action.

When Halliburton got to rebuild Iraq's oil industry after Cheney and Company destroyed it in the Persian Gulf War, Cheney expressed no reservations about profiting off relations with Evil Incarnate Saddam Hussein (so we were led to believe). Nor did he have any objection to Halliburton working with the repressive government of Burma, or with Chevron and Shell in Nigeria, another country with a chilling human rights record. At the same time, leaders like Equatorial Guinea's Obiang Nguema Mbasogo and Congo President Denis Sassou-Nguesso were enriching themselves and their families with the revenues provided by Halliburton-built offshore oil platforms while brutally crushing their political opposition.

As soon as the U.S. took over Baghdad in 2003, a familiar team won out again as tens of billions of dollars worth of government contracts were awarded based on secret bidding arrangements. Hallburton subsidiary Brown & Root was selected to put out oil fires and handle other duties involving damage to Iraq's oil industry. Cheney's relation to the company was hardly coincidental.

Back in the mid-1990s Cheney had helped Halliburton avoid tax liability. During his term as CEO, Halliburton created dozens of dummy offices in offshore tax havens in the Cayman Islands. The number of Halliburton subsidiaries registered in tax havens went from 9 to 44 in the years Cheney was at the helm. Halliburton's federal taxes dropped from $302 million in 1998 to a negative $85 million, that is, the company got an $85 million rebate in 1999. At the same time, Halliburton received $2.3 billion in government contracts and $1.5 billion in government financing and loan guarantees. During his vice-presidential debate with Joe Lieberman in 2000, Cheney insisted that the government had had "absolutely nothing to do" with Halliburton's financial success. In other words, he claimed that $3.8 billion in government contracts, loans, and financial guarantees, had zero impact on Halliburton. Sure.

When he left Halliburton, Cheney received $13 million in severance pay and left behind millions of dollars in losses from bad investments, a spate of SEC investigations, and a pile of lawsuits. The value of Halliburton stock plunged.

When the GW Bush administration abandoned its campaign promise to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, Cheney justified the betrayal on the basis that carbon dioxide isn't a pollutant. Remember, Kamala Harris is deeply honored to have this lunatic's endorsement.

When Cheney was faced with a series of potentially ruinous asbestos-related lawsuits at Halliburton, the company decided it should lobby for a change of law rather than argue the cases in court. So Cheney and the company shelled out nearly half a million dollars to congressional candidates between 1997 and 2000, with $157,000 directed to 62 lawmakers who co-sponsored bills limiting the liability of asbestos manufacturers. Bribery loves a "free market."

At a fund-raising appearance in the summer of 2002 Cheney praised the White House's commitment to "more accountability for corporate officials." This from the man who charged the public $750,000 for work that actually cost Halliburton $125,000 when Cheney was CEO there.

When the state of California spun into financial disaster from a phony energy crisis arranged by Enron, Cheney's fingerprints were all over it. He had six meetings with Enron representatives, including two with CEO Ken Lay, the last one just six days before the company disclosed that it had vastly overstated its earnings. While Enron executives cashed out $1 billion in company stock just before the day of reckoning, their employees lost their pensions and their jobs - just in time for Christmas season.

Of course, all this pales in comparison to the vicious mass murder campaign Cheney and GW Bush unleashed on the people of Iraq in 2003, which killed hundreds of thousands of civilians five years after Dennis Halliday and Hans von Sponek had resigned their UN posts declaring Washington's pre-invasion Iraq policy "genocide."

So the questions are, why do plundering mass murderers like Kamala Harris, and why is she proud to represent them?

Sources:

Cheney's voting record: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politi...

www.abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/...

"Cheney at the Helm," the Progressive, September 2000.

Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy

Michael Parenti, Democracy For The Few

Arianna Huffington, Pigs At The Trough 

Michael Lind, Made In Texas

Charles Lewis, 60 Minutes, April 27, 2003.

 

 

 

 

 

In Bloodshed We Trust

"They wanted to use the prospect of future NATO membership to integrate Ukraine into NATO's military infrastructure, which they've done, on this show (Useful Idiots) we've covered the fact that it only recently got admitted that the CIA has built up bases inside Ukraine since the coup of 2014, so under the guise of giving Ukraine this membership far in the distance, that allows NATO to integrate Ukraine as a proxy without the obligation to defend it, if it gets into a war with Russia, which was the goal, to use Ukraine as bait to bleed Russia. And to bait Ukraine they dangled the prospect of future membership (in NATO). It's the perfect scam for people whose goal is to bleed Russia and possibly overthrow Vladimir Putin. That's what their goal was. And, of course, now it's having its predictable result, where Ukraine is being decimated and has lost one-fifth of its territory . . . . 

"Ukraine is being told it's too corrupt to join NATO, so this is what Ukraine gets for going along with this scam of future NATO membership, it's being told it's too corrupt. 'Sorry, we're going to use you; we're going to not negotiate with Russia, we're going to refuse to discuss the prospect of Ukraine's NATO membership, and then after the damage is done, after hundreds of thousands of people have died, we're going to turn around and tell Ukraine, sorry, you're too corrupt.' And by the way, who's telling Ukraine it's too corrupt? It's President Biden, whose son got a lucrative energy board seat in Ukraine shortly after his father, Joe Biden, helped overthrow the government there. So Joe Biden's now lecturing Ukraine about corruption after using Ukraine for his real goal of bleeding Russia and using it to the benefit of his son, who is now advising Joe Biden to stay in office, even though he can't function." 

------Aaron Mate, "Aaron and Daniel Mate Find Out If Biden Will Run," Useful Idiots, July 8, 2024

Netanyau Wins "Nazi of the Year" Award!

 First-Ever Jewish Recipient of Highly Coveted National Security Prize

by Michael K. Smith / June 4th, 2024

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made history today by winning the prestigious “Nazi of the Year” award, the first ever Jewish leader so honored. Recipients of the award must demonstrate outstanding achievement in wholesale barbarism to qualify. For 2024, Netanyahu won in a landslide vote.

Chairman of Slime Magazine‘s award committee Wilhelm Broder said Netanyahu’s burning babies alive on film after promising their families safe harbor was one among many instances of sub-human conduct that made Netanyahu the overwhelming favorite for Nazi of the Year. “When it comes to perverted cruelty, he has few peers and no superiors,” said the Chairman.

The award comes with unlimited free armaments for life to use as Netanyahu sees fit, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer. “Nothing is too good for Bibi,” said President Joe Biden, reacting to news of the award. “He’s a real Fighting Jew.” Fighting Jews are said to have arisen from the ashes of the Holocaust to end the plight of Victim Jews and insure that genocide would be consigned to the category of “never again.” At the time no one anticipated that genocide would become a field of Jewish achievement, but in the era of affirmative action racial, ethnic, religious, and national groups are breaking down barriers in all directions. It is Netanyahu’s singular achievement to have made “Jewish-Nazi” a meaningful term instead of an oxymoron.

Congratulations poured in to the Prime Minister’s office from around the world, although there was one dissenting vote from the family of the late Henry Kissinger, which thought the former U.S. Secretary of State’s conduct in the Vietnam War should have made him the first ever Jewish Nazi. “Anything that flies on anything that moves,” that was Dad’s motto, said one of the Kissinger children, recalling their father’s exterminationist bombing campaign that killed millions in Indochina. “What’s not genocidal enough about that?”

The Slime Committee has promised to review the matter.

Trans-Class Pride Day

Trans-Class PrideCelebration Planned

 

By Frank Scott

 

A spokesperson forTrans-Class-Pride said a massive parade and rally for the hundreds of millionsof working class and poor Americans who feel rich but are disrespectfully notallowed to be what they feel is planned for a weekend soon.

“ A day would be muchtoo short for all our members to be able to participate and we may need a weekrather than a weekend’ said cis-working class member George Melissa Mulatto whodelivers for amazon but feels like the people he delivers to - a member of theupper middle class.

 

“We are sick, tired andfed up with being denied the American dream and forced to live the Americannightmare of the gig economy at best and street poverty at worst” said thepoorly dressed but academically rich even though only having been to college tomake deliveries and clean toilets spokesperson, whose pronouns arehomeless/houseless.

 

‘When we march togetherwe feel stronger and at peace without seeing therapists which we cant afford orusing drugs which we cant afford either.”

 

“I have a good friendwho is a woman with a penis and shim gets to use toilets of shims choosing,play on men’s sports teams and is respectfully treated as trans female. If shimcan have their feelings acknowledged why cant we? Just because some of us haveno bank accounts is no reason to deny us credit or because we are withoutwardrobes deny us money for rent. After all, Americans spend billions on ouranimals and even call them members of our families. Cant we give that muchrespect to the majority of us Americans who struggle to get by let alone thesubstantial minority of us who have no shelter and are forced to live underconditions many of us would not tolerate for our pets?

We may no more be middleclass than my friend with a penis is an actual female but we deserve at leastthe trans rights being enjoyed by so many citizens. How about trans classAmericans who are possessed of testicles, vaginas, both or neither butnonetheless are members of the human race who deserve at the very least what atiny minority of us have: equality of transism!”

 

Congress is consideringlegislation to ban any public display of trans-classism unless it can be shownthat all trans classists are not inspired by Chinese or Russian or Socialist orCommunist or Catholic or Jewish or Agnostic or Atheistic propaganda and allhave testacals, vaginas, both or neither and firmly believe in the Americanconstitution and the right of people to spend trillions of social dollars onwar, hundreds of billions on pets, while poverty, injustice and othermarketable commodities remain available to all Americans withoutdiscrimination.

 email: fpscott@gmail.com Frank Scott writes political commentary and satire which appears online at theblog Legalienate  http://legalienate.blogspot.com)  

 

 

 

 

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Cop City

Cop City

 

 

The alleged cost of thistraining center is put at 90 million dollars which may be the only thing to becritical of, if it weren’t that we spend hundreds of thousands times more moneyon incredibly bigger threats to all life on earth but especially in the usa. Forinstance, we spend more than two billion – TWO FRIGGIN BILLION! – every day onwhat is called a defense budget which is like a rapist defending himself fromhis victims.

 

And if this deal bettertrains police and firefighters to bring more safety to all of us the cost mighteven be worthwhile. But first the bigger deal, which is making the police thescapegoat for a corrupt, debased, bigoted immoral society that spends trillionsfor war, billions for pets, leaves hundreds of thousands without shelter andclaims world leadership while being the all-time greatest threat to humanity.

 

Many police are incompetentand need to be replaced, at the very least, but the overwhelming majorityperform on the public behalf and just because my neighborhood or yours sucks isnot reason to blame that on the police. They are not vigilantes but stateemployees and unless we transform that state to one that is truly democraticany flaws on them are because we have not yet been capable of changing themurderous state! Police do not create low-income high crime areas, thepolitical economics of capitalism do so and that is what needs to be dealtwith.

 

 Unless you are in the habit of calling Girl Scoutsor Black Lives Matter or Catholic Sisters of Charity if your car is stolen,your store robbed, your home burglarized, you hear a gunshot or scream in thenight or some other form of what makes American reality for so many (violence,weapons and the profits they create) you are among the majority. We just had aslight decline in the murder rate and that means close to 19 thousand  americans were murdered last year! As long asthat is material reality and not some comic book fable should we expect to havea police force composed of choir boys and girls to sing songs of mourning forthe bereaved and suffering? What can we expect from professionals hired toprotect us from those extremes while also dealing with tons of responsibilityfor more everyday needs like traffic – where we also kill 100 people on an averageday. All of that is next to nothing compared to what we do to people in foreigncountries whom we slaughter directly with our own forces or finance governmentsand militaries owned and operated by American capital and paid for with ourtaxes.

 

We are devoting hundreds ofbillions of dollars to murdering Russians, Palestinians and more, whilesurrounding Russia and China with our military and navy while screaming about Russianand Chinese threats to us all. Hello? Please, get with reality. Most Americansare served by the police and while too many are abused that happens across theboard.  As a small example there areteachers who shouldn’t teach and medical workers who should not attend toillness but the overwhelming majority of teachers and health care workers, likethe police, are dedicated and highly competent public servants made to looklike lower forms of life by an economic system that rewards theft, murder,violence and contempt for humanity while worshipping weapons and animals.

 

We need to stop dumping onminorities as being guilty for the atrocity of our society and culture whichunder minority control thinks far far more of profits and murder than of manyof our people, and that is not because of the police any more than our foreignpolicy of mass murder is all because of evil soldiers. Please face reality andsoon and build a better relation between the public and the police rather thanbecome enemy camps as too many seem to support. All Americans will be betterserved by police who are treated with respect by those who employ them and aslong as we tolerate a rich minority who are always served by all facets of thestate instead of all of us it is our responsibility to bring about radicalchange. Meantime, better trained police and firefighters will be beneficial tous all at least temporarily.

 

 

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The End of Israel or The End of Apartheid?

"George, I think we need to stop talking about a military solution to this problem (Israel-Palestine). As you pointed out, the conditions aren't there for the cessation of military operations. Hamas cannot physically defeat Israel. Hamas can make Israel's life a living hell, and when partnered with Hizbollah's continued activities on the Lebanese border, the Houthis' continued interdiction of Israeli shipping, and the support of other members of axis resistance, Israel has become a nation where the quality of life is no longer worth living. And this is how Israel will be defeated. Israel will be a nation that de-populates itself. Israel will become a nation that nobody wants to be affiliated with, both in terms of potential foreign partners, and Israelis themselves. People who moved to Israel believing that they were moving into the Land of Milk and Honey, to the easy lifestyle, pleasant beaches on Tel Aviv, now know that forever, as long as the Zionist entity exists, it will be a nation in perpetual conflict. It will never know peace. 

"Israel is the worst possible criminal in the world, who has dressed himself up and gone to the party believing that because he wears good clothes and he hangs around with powerful people, that people will affiliate with Israel. But because of Israel's reaction to the Hamas attack of October 7th, the mask is off, and the world is recognizing Israel for the horrific entity that it is. This genocidal nation, not just genocidal leadership, but a nation whose entire existence is premised on the necessity, indeed from their perspective. . . . it's a positive thing from their [perspective], the genocide of the Palestinian people. And one by one by one the people that surrounded Israel, that Israel thought were their friends and allies, are being stripped away. And today Israel stands virtually alone. And it will continue to stand alone, until it no longer exists. And its demise will not be because Hizbollah, Hamas, Iran, or others physically defeated Israel. Its demise will be because the world recognizes Israel as a state that no longer has legitimacy, a state that can no longer exist. And then the Israeli citizens themselves will seek to flee that state. This will take time, but this is the inevitable outcome of this conflict in the Middle East. Israel will cease to exist and the Palestinian state will emerge in its stead."

 -----Scott Ritter, "the prerogative of violence," Mother of All Talk Shows (with George Galloway), May 24, 2024 

 

"I do think that the Zionist project in Israel and Palestine, as we see today, doesn't have long to live, to exist. I think we are seeing processes, important processes, that are leading to the collapse of the Zionist project. Hopefully, the Palestinian national movement and anyone else involved in Israel and Palestine would be able to replace this apartheid state, this oppressive regime, with a democratic one for everyone who lives between the river and the sea for all the Palestinians who were expelled from there since 1948 until today. I believe that this historical process has begun. Unfortunately, it will take time, and the next year or two are very precarious and are very dangerous. But in the long run, I am really hopeful that there will be a different kind of life for both Jews and Arabs between the river and the sea under a democratic, free Palestine."

-----Ilan Pappe, Democracy Now, May 21, 2024

 

The End of Israel?

"George, I think we need to stop talking about a military solution to this problem (Israel-Palestine). As you pointed out, the conditions aren't there for the cessation of military operations. Hamas cannot physically defeat Israel. Hamas can make Israel's life a living hell, and when partnered with Hizbollah's continued activities on the Lebanese border, the Houthis' continued interdiction of Israeli shipping, and the support of other members of axis resistance, Israel has become a nation where the quality of life is no longer worth living. And this is how Israel will be defeated. Israel will be a nation that de-populates itself. Israel will become a nation that nobody wants to be affiliated with, both in terms of potential foreign partners, and Israelis themselves. People who moved to Israel believing that they were moving into the Land of Milk and Honey, to the easy lifestyle, pleasant beaches on Tel Aviv, now know that forever, as long as the Zionist entity exists, it will be a nation in perpetual conflict. It will never know peace. 

"Israel is the worst possible criminal in the world, who has dressed himself up and gone to the party believing that because he wears good clothes and he hangs around with powerful people, that people will affiliate with Israel. But because of Israel's reaction to the Hamas attack of October 7th, the mask is off, and the world is recognizing Israel for the horrific entity that it is. This genocidal nation, not just genocidal leadership, but a nation whose entire existence is premised on the necessity, indeed from their perspective. . . . it's a positive thing from their [perspective], the genocide of the Palestinian people. And one by one by one the people that surrounded Israel, that Israel thought were their friends and allies, are being stripped away. And today Israel stands virtually alone. And it will continue to stand alone, until it no longer exists. And its demise will not be because Hizbollah, Hamas, Iran, or others physically defeated Israel. Its demise will be because the world recognizes Israel as a state that no longer has legitimacy, a state that can no longer exist. And then the Israeli citizens themselves will seek to flee that state. This will take time, but this is the inevitable outcome of this conflict in the Middle East. Israel will cease to exist and the Palestinian state will emerge in its stead."

 

-----Scott Ritter, "the prerogative of violence," Mother of All Talk Shows (with George Galloway), May 24, 2024 

The Kids Are Right - Palestine Must Be Free

The panic signals are out again about our wayward youth linking up with dubious causes out of ignorance, naivete, and alignment with malevolent foreign forces. Whenever young Americans or really any Americans start to publicly notice that U.S. policy contradicts its alleged commitment to freedom and justice for all, they are roundly smeared in the corporate media, which is owned lock, stock, and barrel by massive centers of private wealth with a long history of sidelining the voice of the people or distorting its message beyond recognition. In fact, the forces of organized panic are now so concerned about popular opposition to Israel's mass slaughter in the Gaza Strip that they have attempted to codify and ban "anti-Semitic" speech, causing some embarrassment to Israel's Christian Zionist base, which joyfully awaits the End Times when they anticipate the vast majority of Jews will be justly consigned to the Fires of Hell for all eternity. With all due respect for the extermination campaign in Gaza, such Christians say, it could lead to a ban on the Bible, that is, the Bronze Age real estate guide used to justify Jewish supremacy in Palestine in the first place. Just where would that leave the Religion of Brotherly Love?

Not that more reasonable strategies readily suggest themselves. After all, just what are committed Zionists to do these days? If they aren't allowed to massacre helpless civilians, harass, torture, and jail opponents, and destroy the careers of courageous American students peacefully protesting their grotesquely self-righteous butchery, how exactly are they to rescue their cause? They can't defeat Hamas, still less Hizbollah, and an all-out war with Iran would destroy Israel completely, along with much else. They can't monopolize the explanation of events when everyone's live stream constantly highlights Israel's hypocrisy and delusion. They can't negotiate in good faith (witness Israel rejecting its own proposals vis-a-vis the hostages when Hamas accepts them), as that implies Palestinians aren't savage terrorists deserving only subjugation, expulsion, and murder. In short, their only card is force, and force alone lacks legitimacy. Their plight is aptly summed up in the image of Aaron Bushnell burning to death outside the gate of the Israeli Embassy in Washington in protest of the Gaza slaughter while a clueless Secret Service officer points a gun at him.

"I don't need a gun," says another man, attempting to extinguish the blaze.

But guns (and bombs) are all Israel has.