Tag Archives: Eid

Mohammed Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini’s legacy

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Yasser Arafat’s legacy is death. Fatah is now completely connected with total betrayal in the eyes of the Palestinians. How could it be otherwise now that the US and Israel are all that props up this monstrous remnant of the Palestinian cause called Fatah?

Arafat looked for complete personal power and becoming the ‘president’ of an ethnic Palestinian enclave, and he got that. It was a crumb, and for that crumb he betrayed the idea of struggling for a multi-ethnic Israel-Palestine, where 2 peoples could live together without Apartheid or other forms of ethnic discrimination.

Now we have nothing more than a slow moving Christian Jewish Crusade against the Muslim World, with elements of multiple genocides popping up everywhere. The Evil Empire from Washington DC marches its legions forward still.

Two States Why?

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For the last several decades, the dominant ‘solution’ proposed to ‘Holy Land’ conflict has been the idea of having Two States. Far from that having brought about peace to the region, it has brought about increased hatred, injustice, and conflict. Why push for having Two States, when that just reinforces the idea that Apartheid is legitimate? See Israeli Apartheid is the Core of the Crisis There has never been a true Left in Israel

New Age posturing with the ‘pickaninnies’

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Those who grew up in the Old South, remember when racist politicians used to pose with ‘Negro’ children to supposedly show their concern for Black people. That was a crude technique to deflect criticism for being a racist.

White racists often called Black children ‘pickaninnies’, and loved to rub their heads with the different type of hair. They would then comment about how cute and funny Black children were as opposed to the uppity adult Blacks who never fully wanted to acknowledge their assigned places in Apartheid America.

Why the term ‘pickaninny’ for Black children? Try thinking about what ‘pick a ninny’ means. A ninny means a fool. Black children were considered kind of adorable jesters in the court of White racist America of that era, so Whites often tried to help out the supposedly ‘adorable pickaninnies’ with gifts of food and clothing. That made the racist feel good and generous, instead of feeling full of self loathing for being the miserable monsters that most racists really are.

So enter today’s world, and has the posturing with the ‘pickaninnies’ now disappeared? No, it has just morphed into technicolor instead. Instead of touching the ‘pickaninnies moppy heads’ old style, we have good hearted folk posing themselves next to emaciated, injured, and distraught ‘pickaninnies’. And this is done outside US borders, and not inside them as of Old. Case in point is Mia Farrow posing in Chad today on Yahoo News with her great concern for the welfare of the ‘pickaninny’.

Don’t get me wrong here. Much suffering is underway in Africa, as it has been ongoing for centuries. That’s not the point of the posturing though, no more than it was with the posturing of the past. Why is Darfur THE GENOCIDE, and not Congo or Iraq or Palestine? That is the point of the posturing, simply to deflect attention elsewhere from one’s own crimes.

It is not just actresses like Mia Farrow, doing the posturing with the ‘pickaninny’ neither. Here is from antiwar.com today which links to an article titled… Bush considering Darfur no-fly zone. The title says it all. But look who else is posturing to deflect attention away from their own constructed genocides! It is Israel itself. We have Israel, Bush, and Mia Farrow all posing with the ‘pickaninny’. That little ‘pickaninny’ is called Darfur and we are supposed to forget all context in the real world and cry along with the crocodile tears of the genocidal and racist maniacs running amok across the planet. I refer to the governmental leaders of Israel and the US.

They can’t be racists and genocidists at all, look at their concern for the ‘pickaninny’! ‘Save the Pickaninny!’ they seem to be all shouting at one time. Send the candy distributing troops (our boys) in to save the ‘pickaninnies’ of Darfur! Hands off the ‘pickaninnies’! In the link, it is noted that ‘The Holocaust museum has taken the lead on behalf of Darfur’. How nice. Not noted is why the Holocaust museum has not taken the lead on behalf of the Palestinians instead? And why is Bush not trying to impose a no-fly zone over Iraq at this time instead of Darfur?

Let’s face it, New Age posturing with the ‘pickaniny’ is just as nauseating as it was in the Old South of another era. In fact, it may be even more repulsive than before.

The new book club at the Colorado Springs Justice and Peace Center

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I did a quick google and came across probably a good 15 book clubs in the Colorado Springs area. That is a surprise to me, since I, like many, only think book clubs when I think Oprah Winfrey Show.

I always thought that at least this was one good thing Oprah actually was doing, trying to interest people in reading some again. Lord knows they need to read a little bit more in the US, as most everywhere else, too. So when the peace group PPJPC decided to start one, I thought it a good idea, though the selection of Jimmy Carter’s new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, seemed to me at first to be an unfortunate choice. I was mistaken.

I almost didn’t go since I didn’t want to waste my money on Jimmy Carter’s nonsense, but then I thought well why the hell not go and read some of the book in the bookstore instead of buying it? I am glad I did, because I thought our discussions of this book on the three different nights the club has been going were all quite interesting. What was great was the way Steve Saint, organizer of the club, allowed for everyone to participate so well. This was quite a contrast to how much of the affairs at the PPJPC ‘teach’ and preach at people more than allow everyone to give their input.

More than Jimmy Carter’s writings, the discussion was more about the Middle East itself and the current political situation in Israel/ Palestine. We need more opportunities where people can just talk to each other about current political issues in a relaxed manner, and this is what I think will make the PPJPC book club a lot different than the other myriad book clubs around town.

Next book up for discussion is not yet determined, but it will probably provoke a good political discussion, too. I would recommend on checking it out, though the next meeting might well be 2 weeks from now, on Monday’s more than likely. It’s a good opportunity to just be able to sit around and talk, without having to drink or hustle. All ages can attend, and that’s part of what made the Carter Apartheid book discussion so interesting.

Keep up the good work, PPJPC, and I hope that when we get a working dvd player, that the political film club can get itself going, too. Got an old unused one around the house? Then think about donating it and watching some movies at the Justice and Peace Center with others. What movie would you like to see? What book would you like to discuss? I voted for ‘Johnny Got His Gun’ next. It’s short and a classic.

That silence you hear is Al Gore, Slick Willie, and Jimmy Carter on Iraq

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Al is worried about Global Warming, Slick has not so recently been busy alongside George Senior with Tsunami relief, and Jimmy’s been re-writing the history he was part of and using bad words (no, not SCOTUM). All noble efforts without doubt, and all intended more to better public image manage the Democratic Party than to seriously deal with any real problems, like say… the Occupation and War Against Iraq. Hear, we have only deafening silence.

What’s with these guys? Cynics might say that it is merely that they support imperialism, rather than oppose it. What other reason could there be for being so nicely quiet for Bush and Cheney on the central issue of our time? It is so very difficult to posture that one opposes something, while supporting it at the same time. Better to keep mute, I guess? Too bad and so sad there is no Nobel Silence Prize to award Dear Al.

Imagine if these big liberal leaders had not been keeping silent all these years when they actually held office? Oops, they weren’t actually silent then, like now. Instead, they were pushing wars, I do believe. For Jimmy, those were the glory days when it was in to help Osama out. Heck, he was even pushing Apartheid back then. The forerunners of the Taliban were pushing for a sexual Apartheid in Afghanistan, and Jimmy and Osama did their part to hurry it along. Oh the fun times when Jimmy and Brzezinski were a team! So many have forgot…

And Slick and Al working together later on to protect the environment…NOT. Al practically invented computers and was always telling us what a great thing it was. And telling us about its toxicity to the environment.. well he forgot that small detail Really. Does anybody remember Al ever talking about environmental issues when he was VP? I’m getting old and maybe my memory has gone bad? Now he’s up for a Peace Prize no less. Who ever imagined that Norwegians were ever so damn wacky? Al and ‘peace’, what a bloody gore of a joke on us all.

OK, I admit that this is another thread about my obsessive disdain for the DP. But can you blame me really? Sorry to sound like su\ch a broken record. But this deafening silence hurts my ears.

The proposed Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Intolerance

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I don’t know which is worse, Holocaust denial, or Apartheid denial? There have been several Holocausts, and there have been several Apartheids, but the ones in the news so much today, are the Jewish Apartheid to ethnically separate Jewish settlers from Arab Palestinians, whose property and land have been stolen, and the cases of those who choose to pretend to not know that there was a Holocaust created by German Christians, who murdered off millions of Jews during World War Two.

The LA times has an interesting article about the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s proposal to build a museum on top of an ancient Muslim Cemetery. Incredibly these Zionists want to call it the Museum of Tolerance, too. Well really, what can we really expect from those that have become the centerpiece organization for what has been labeled as the ‘Holocaust Industry’?

When forms of cultural ethnic cleansing become labeled as ‘tolerance’ as the Simon Wiesenthal Center is trying to do with its efforts to build this museum, then we are in serious trouble as a society. Tolerance would mandate that another site be used, which one hopes will actually become the case. Certainly the idea of a museum of tolerance itself is not a bad idea. Muslims, Jews, and Christians working together to pull that off, would be much better than a unilateral effort by one Zionist group doing it much alone, except in alliance mainly with, the Jewish Apartheid State called Israel.

Made in the US- Iraq’s wave of refugees

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WalMart may be as Chinese as rice these days, but there is still one product that’s made still in the US of A. Our government still leads the world in making refugees out of people. Let’s look at Iraq alone, where 2,000,000 have fled outside the country’s, and 2,000,00 more are internal refugees at ‘home’. Iraq’s population was only about 27,000,000. One out of seven then, have been made refugees by the violence of the US invasion and occupation.

Before that, when the US gave Afghanistan the Taliban and Osama, 1/5 of the population there had already become refugees. I don’t know how they can even do a count there now? It is hopeless, after decades of US warmaking there, to even try. And US war making in South America has made about 1,000,000 Colombians internal refugees, though that number may be down at moment. And who can forget how US foreign policy has kept 4,500,000 Palestinian refugees in place, and who can forget the refugees of SE Asia? Those of Central America? So many everywhere…. US made.

From time to time there are contenders to our throne, especially form locales like the Congo and Sudan. But the US has always been a leader in Africa at refugee making, too. The US heyday was back when it was supporting the South African and Rhodesian Apartheid regimes, as they waged wars across half the continent. Millions became refugees due to that US African foreign policy, in just Angola and Mozambique alone. And the US vs Russia in the horn of Africa? Well who can count them?

One strategy of the US to stop the iraqis from fighting the theft of their oil underground? Shoot! Well why not just make ALL THE COUNTRY refugees? Totally depopulate it then! Maybe that’s what’s really behind Bush’s hidden strategy, The Surge? Like a tsunamai wave on shore, all to wash all out to sea! Brilliant! Made in America, the 21st Century refugee. How proud can we be, with the American production of this product of our Great Society? Go for Iran, too?

The other George

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After going over all the official Democratic Party web sites what comes to mind, is how much America needs the other George. I’m talking about the George of RESPECT, not the George of MURDER INC. on this side of the Atlantic. Contrast the best known member of RESPECT, George Galloway, with all the US politicians of the party I will call LACK OF RESPECT though they are better known as the Democratic Party.

If George Galloway’s site above is down, then see Galloway’s Israel’s Lebanon invasion interview at youtube, where he gives the Murdoch media a whipping.

About the only DP presidential contender site I could even begin to stomach, was that of Dennis Kucinich, though what’s he doing in the DP instead of bolting it, anyway? And you certainly won’t hear a peep out of him on his website about the need to get out of Afghanistan or Colombia, say. Still, he’s a saint compared to Hillary, Obama, or Edwards.

If you are sick of all the mealy mouthed, slimy rhetoric from all the officially announced DP presidential candidates, then check out the video section of George Galloway’s web site! You certainly won’t see the likes of Dennis Kucinich denouncing Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, like George does in the lead video there on his site. Or could one imagine Kucinich, or any of the Democrat Party politician slimeballs, standing up like George Galloway did to the US Senate, when a Senate Committee tried to make him out as tied to Saddam Hussein’s regime? This appearance before the Senate can be seen in 5 parts on the website.

Why was Galloway testifying there? Simply because he had opposed the Clinton sanctions against Iraq, that through 8 years murdered about a million Iraqis, mainly children. I am talking about the Democratic Party sponsored sanctions that paved the way to Bush’s invasion, and continued occupation of that country. He had been the most vocal critic for years of Blair and Bush in both the US and Britain, and has always been an outstanding opponent of Israeli Apartheid where all others had feared to speak out. For this, they were trying to besmirch him and his reputation for integrity.

Democrats, you vote for the PARTY OF DISRESPECT, disrespect for you, the liberal. We need an organization like RESPECT here in the US, and if George Galloway ever tries to set up an American branch of the Respect Unity Coalition, then I’d be the first to join. The other George…. We could use some of that spunk here in the US.

Watch parts 2-5 here.

Bump Clubs

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This one is good for when Others start chanting about how united the people were in World War 2, and everybody did his part for the War Effort, Bravely and Nobly, sacrificing all without complaint For The Duration.

In Detroit, where there were suddenly lots of jobs because of two factors: the men were getting drafted and the Military were buying up supplies, machines were the focus in MoTown at the hour.

People often wonder, (and this comes in to the thread of thought a little later) if things were so very bad in the South for blacks, why didn’t they just leave? The promised land up Nawth wasn’t as bad as the Southroners now was it?

The answer: no really available jobs. Escaping the Jim Crow south was not really an option, because what do you do when you get there? Starve?

But with the war, things changed on one front, there were suddenly not enough people to fill the jobs.
So an exodus of sorts, to the factories and foundries of the Promised Land.

Funny thing about a war, the government has to maintain xenophobia at a fever pitch, in order to keep the people hating the Enemy (wish I could write sound effects like crashing thunder, and a basso reverberation on the end of the Enemyeeeeee……) they had to be made to hate anybody different. Which isn’t so hard to do.

There is a distinct shade of Katrina in all of this.

The Government put up posters, everywhere, Why We Fight, Know The Enemy, Loose Lips Sink Ships, Lucky Strikes Green has Gone To War! (the last was kind of a stupid advertising exaggeration. The red dye they used in making the little target on the front of a pack of Lucky’s was strangely, a chemical which was used in making Olive Drab green paint. So the Army hogged the supply, Lucky Strikes parent corporation changed the color For The Duration, and the cigarette manufactures also hogged in with giving away in every box of C and K rations, a box of five cigarettes. Which they had lost their Far East and European market for anyway. Capitalism at it’s best)

There were posters the writers of which cynically called Know Your Gooks, telling the differences in facial structure and speech patterns between Chinese (good Gook) and dirty filthy sinister Japanese. MIND YOU the phrases in the past sentence WERE NOT MINE.

So, naturally, assisted much by the unnatural provocation of warmongering, there was resentment amongst the Good People of Detroit, directed against these people coming up with a strange accent, almost a different language, a radically different appearance, strange customs and who had a trained distrust of Whites.

And a lot of Southern Whites, who had shared the poverty of the south with the Blacks, just on the other side of the tracks. Sharing in a separate Apartheid kind of way.
And many had been told all their lives that the blacks were the reason for the poverty of the South.
Like so many now tell the story that Mexicans are the reason for the economy being so poor nowadays.

Which culminated in Race Riots. When people speak of the Detroit Ghetto Riots they usually mean the ones in the sixties. These were like 20 years earlier.

One of the myths spread around was that Blacks were deliberately and in an organized manner provoking whites by bumping them. You know, like when you get on a bus or train or trolley, and actually physically contact another human. You get 50 people jammed onto a bus made for 30 and somebody is going to be touching.
There were even whispers that the Blacks had formed Bump Clubs, and were keeping score on how many whiteys they bumped.

Kind of like now when you ride the bus and a couple of Spanish people will be talking to each other IN SPANISH and somebody will glare at them and say “They’re talking about us, you know they are”.
If you try to speak logically to this, by saying “Oh, you speak spanish, then, What exactly are they saying?”

“well, I don’t have to learn Spanish, they need to learn English, they come up here and live free and refuse to learn the language”

And it was that type of thing, the creation of the rumor of Bump Clubs, which was a spark to ignite a smoking smoldering pit of hatred.

So much for the myth of Unity. Shot down by the Myth of The Bump Club.

So when somebody mourns for the Everybody Rally Round the Flag days of world war 2, look him straight in his beady little eyes and say “Bump Clubs”.

It might not serve to educate him, but it will keep you from losing your mind. Sometimes it helps to focus.

Conservative Jews and Catholics- fraternal hypocrites

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For centuries the Catholics persecuted the Jews, but today they have an unholy alliance which allows the majority tendency in today’s Jewish faith, the Zionist Jews, to blame Muslims for being anti-Jewish pogromists. What’s involved? Silence and pretense, in short. The Catholic hierarchy gets to continually pretend that it never had anything to do with the fascist and Nazi crimes of genocide, while the Jewish Zionists get to pretend that they are threatened by a supposed Muslim tendency towards committing just exactly that same crime. All the while keeping their traps closed about the Catholic mainstream..

Look how quiet the Jewish community was when an ex-Nazi took over the Pope position. Look how loud they get when somebody innocuous like Jimmy Carter comes along to write a book most Zionists feel quite uncomfortable with because of some truths voiced. A Catholic archbishop in Slovakia this week talked about how lovely it was when the Nazis ruled his region and not a peep is heard from the world Jewish community. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were hauled off to concentration camps from Slovakia in that time frame. All the Jewish establishment’s hysteria is reserved instead for one man in Iran whose country the Israeli government wants to bomb back to the Stone Age on behalf of the US. One would think that it was Persians that persecute the Jews in pogroms for centuries, and not the Catholics and other Christian sects.

The Zionist refrain of…They want to drive us into the sea… has now morphed into they want to use a nuclear bomb on us, so we have to use one on them FIRST. All a bunch of garbage used to support US colonialism and imperialism in the Middle East, now entirely backed up by the Jewish Apartheid regime. Screaming loudly that Jews are supposedly under a danger of a Muslim anti-Jewish attack from Iran, Catholics and Jews get to unite to steal Muslim oil while pontificating about justice and freedom. Israel and Bush’s conservative Catholic supporters, united to launch their newest aggression against another Muslim country. No time to talk about the Pedophilic Church of Rome hierarchy, and no time to talk about the Zionist Jewish crimes against humanity in the Unholy Land. Just the total silence of the united fraternal hypocrites, conservative Catholics and Jews.

The US government just got to have Saddam Hussein hanged in a disgusting charade. What would have been much more just, would have been to have the Iranians hold these show trials, and then have them hang Hussein, Bush, Rumsfield, and others of their ilk afterwards. After all, these were the allies that initiated an unprovoked war against their country via iraq, that used chemical weapons on Iranians, and killed hundreds of thousands of Iranian citizens. And most of Jewish Israel applauded all this, and then has sat back smugly claiming to now feel threatened by this victim of their US sponsor- Iran.

Jewish Zionists get to push for a secular regime in the US, while pushing for a Jewish Apartheid theocracy in Israel for themselves. That is the core of their other hypocrisies of hugging up to their Catholic and Protestant fundy sponsors here in America. They want one thing for themselves (secular freedoms in the US), and another thing for others (religious and racial persecution administered by themselves in Israel/ Palestine upon others).

The Catholics want the ability to preach on moral issues to others, while whitewashing their church’s immorality on issues like abortion, priestly pedophilia, the Rwanda genocide’s Catholic participation, and their enthusiastic role in the Nazi ranks and other pogroms against Jews throughout their entire history. Today, the Jewish Zionists and Catholic conservatives march together in hatred of today’s other, the Muslim. They have become today’s, fraternal, colonial, imperialist hypocrites. The Catholic Church no longer serves Spanish imperialism against the Native Americans and Jews, but have united in a New Crusade together against the Muslim world on behalf of American imperialism. Oil for Moses and Christ, not gold robbed from murdered ‘Indians’. Religion in service to the Empire.

damn I can’t think of a good title

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But I was just checking my yahoo mail. Nothing special, every day I get good stuff to ridicule, applaud, or just plain run through the streets singing “man, check out what those freak peckerheads did THIS time”
which one first which…hhmmmmm
Ok the first one is on the yahell news ticker about bush overhauls iraq team just before the Big Announcement.
now I am putting some of my own words on the title, because they sound better.
One may well ask oneself “Self, what do they mean “overhaul”? are they sending the team to get their brakes checked? Maybe fitting themselves for those prison uniforms that are loosely based on overalls? (one can only hope)

but of course there is the teaser, almost obligatory, that Mr Bonzo ooops I mean Bush is going to unveil his new plan for the New Direction in Iraq. Apparently the media whores have this idea that all of America, left right and in the middle, (and the guy in the rear, burned his driver’s license, but that’s another story) are actually awaiting and anticipating and also anxiously (sorry, got on a roll with the A) but we are sitting on the edge of our seats EXPECTING the trained Chimp to come up with a plan.

Ummmm….. in light of his recent “leadership” experience, I’m not quite convinced that he will. I mean, call me a doubter or a nay-sayer or whatever but I just can’t muster much confidence and optimism.

But if you don’t have any other game plan, fake it and maybe nobody will notice that you are packing your bags to split the country. That’s called “spin”. But apparently this story has been spun so long it should be called a dreidel.
For those not familiar with Judaism that is a sort of a top kids play with and also has mystical meanings.

Then the other is some stock market news, actually an online broker publishing what he hopes I will believe enough to buy into his crazy scheme. I guess I used keywords like capitalism and Stocks and Bonds and money grubbing greedheads enough to make some automated spam program think I was actually interested in sending my money down the hole.

But the header on it was Applications rise greeted as positive sign by investors….

ok. What investors? By applications of course they mean job applications. Which means large unemployment.
and thus less inflation. And more people willing to work for lower wages.

See, to these kids, anything is positive investment news. A flood in China? Buy stock in companies that make sandbags… Nuclear war imminent? buy companies that make survivalist crap to supply your worthless bunker…
Massive cases of people dropping dead of bird flu? Invest in coffin manufacturers. A rise in the Death Penalty? Buy companies that make ropes and gallows. Ok I’ll stop, before giving myself a complex.

The good news is that we can still see the signs. You are still able to read what I write, so neither of us is in jail…. yet.

Meet you at the barricades.

The real war on Christmas

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Baby Rudolf, Baby Bratz, no Baby Santa 
A rabbi in Seattle wanted to put a menorah in the municipal train station to accompany a display of Christmas trees. Was he thinking the trees were another faith’s religious symbols? Did he mean to ask to juxtapose a dreidel instead?

The train station administrators backed down and removed the trees altogether, a concession I’d argue they needn’t have made, but certainly one that fueled the Christian backlash. A now knee-jerk indignation about a supposed war on Christmas!

I’ve got news for the Christians, there is a war on Christmas, you’re fighting it, amongst yourselves. You fundamentalists are wanting Christmas to mean something religious again, but the materialists among you, by my count, every last one of you minus Jesus, already ceded the holiday to commerce long ago.

“Happy Holidays” is neither religious nor irreligious. “Merry Christmas” does not belie a believer or non-believer. The international holiday as demarcated by what’s believed to have been Jesus of Nazareth’s birthday and New Year’s (for non-Chinese), is called Christmas. It represents a huge surge in retail sales, for some merchants up to 90% of their yearly gross. Retailers of every denomination celebrate Christmas.

Put a menorah next to a manger if you must, but neither of them belong at the North Pole with Santa, Rudolf and Ol’ Tannenbaum. Joyeux Noel, Gud Yule, and Boldog Karácsony everyone!

The Semite’s anti-Semite

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Would it be anti-Semitism to make note that the US entertainment industry is predominated by Jews? Studio heads, producers, financiers are disproportionately Jewish, fair to say? Television, newspapers, publishing houses, quite a number headed by Jews. We could throw in the fashion industry, department stores, talent agencies, advertising agencies, financial institutions, it seems so stereotypical, but it is oddly true. The head start which Jews got during Christianity’s Dark Ages when no one but a Jew could a lender be, has set people of Jewish lineage well ahead in the world of commerce. Businesses can have an air of waspness, as the Bourgeoisie always did, but behind them, financing them, were Jews. It is not defamatory to make this observation, is it? No disrespect intended toward Jews.

It’s like pointing out that due in no small part to the African-American heritage having involved the selective breeding of slaves, Black athletes now dominate every professional sport in their hood. Of late, even golf. This is not racist talk, it’s straight talk.

So let’s address the Jewish lock on the US communications industry. It looks waspish, all the talking heads, the fat men, are wasps, but the money men are Jews. On the TV, rarely is any fun made of Jews, or Israel. The Israeli lobby can dominate our congress but the media is not going to tell us about it. Our TVs can make fun of Evangelicals, lampoon all priests as pedophiles, browbeat black welfare mothers, but Jews are inviolate. Is it because Jews have editorial control? Who knows.

When something like the Mel Gibson outburst happens, I can’t help but wonder how complex this gets. Gibson’s drunken tantrum didn’t have to make the news, in fact the police tried to downplay it. Instead the media ran with it, making Mel Gibson a household joke. Why? He would seem to be a valuable media property, why tarnish it? Later when I saw the release of Apocalypto, with Mel Gibson’s name getting top billing, I had to wonder whether the anti-Semitic rant was tarnish at all. Maybe in some ways it made Gibson more popular. Maybe it enhanced the box office for Apocalypto.

Then I heard a pundit criticizing the excessive media coverage of Gibson’s tirade compared to the lesser media coverage of Hezb’Allah’s simultaneous rampage against Israel. That false comparison hit a note for me. The media hadn’t failed to report Israel’s travails facing rocket attacks, what they failed to cover was Israel’s assault on Lebanon and Israel’s pledge to bomb ten buildings in Beirut for every Hezb’Allah rocket that struck an Israeli. The media failed to report the Lebanese civilians being massacred out of all proportion to the Israeli soldiers killed. It failed to report the secret raids in Palestine under cover of the assault on Lebanon. The media continues to underreport the targeted assassinations of Lebanese and Palestinian politicians, duly elected, with whom Israel does not want to deal.

But in the midst of all the non-reporting on Lebanon, word was still filtering out about Israel’s atrocities. It was coming mostly over the internet, via international news sources, but the truth was reaching many Americans. By the time Mel Gibson made his drunken anti-Semitic rant, a good number of Americans were coming to see that an Israeli-driven blood-bath was being perpetrated in the Middle East and American Jews were providing cover, even defending it. In a sense, as Israeli atrocities escalated, someone was bound to decry it. And it came in the form of a drunken Mel Gibson. And the media seized on it.

Kinda like the emperor parading naked, his handlers looking nervously around hoping that no one breaks decorum. But a young boy is bound to speak up unless you can preempt it with a moment you can manage. Instead of a boy, a stooge, speaking what everyone dares think, but a stooge easily discredited. Archie Bunker drunk, instead of Michael Wallace stone sober. Thus the media can address the issue of the anti-Israel backlash as anti-Semitism and not the issue of Israeli genocide in Lebanon and Palestine.

Karl Rove did this with George Bush’s cocaine rap in college. Rove knew the police records would come up, so he leaked them to a reporter whom Rove knew could be discredited. St Martin’s Press published the facts in Favorite Son, Rove stepped out to reveal the JB Hatfield’s dubious past. Immediately St Martin’s Press voluntarily withdrew all copies and burned them. Bush’s arrest for cocaine possession, very likely drug dealing, and the community service he received at a time when possession of marijuana would land prison time, simply went away.

Oh, Favorite Son was republished, and the facts circulate online, but the media didn’t and doesn’t cover it. You’d think they’d like a great story. I’m always reminded of why most of TV shows are so dumb, because they make the commercials look brilliant. That is, after all, the business of televison

I am not suggesting that Mel Gibson is part of a media conspiracy. Not in the least. I am suggesting that how the media choses to shape a story, whether to tell it or not, how to tell it, is certainly conspiratorial. Conspiracy is a loaded term because it’s become a discredited term. A handful of media entities colluding to shape a story is not a conspiracy anymore than you deciding to organize a surprise birthday party for a coworker would be a conspiracy. In your case, there’s a clear common interest in keeping the party a secret and you do it. In the case of a media conglomerate owners who decide what news may or may not hurt their common friend Israel, it doesn’t take a conspiracy to agree on a common cause. Show only Israelis worrying about rocket attacks, don’t show the half million cluster bombs left in Lebanon to snare curiosity-killed toddlers.

And when there’s a undercurrent brewing up in America, bursting to decry the Israeli murderers and their apologist Jews at home, point the camera at one who’s famous, maybe mildly sympathetic, drunk of course so it’ll be forgivable and let him rant. Next in front of everyone slap his wrists to teach how unseemly it is to be brnaded anti-Semitic. Don’t worry, it won’t hurt Gibson much, remember the adage, no such thing as bad publicity. When Apocalypto comes around, Gibson’s name will still draw. And Apocalypto’s message will work even better on the dumb white supremacists who thought his rant was serious.

It’s not anti-Semitic to condemn Israel for its campaign of genocide and apartheid in Palestine and Lebanon. It’s not anti-Semitic to point at the Israeli influence over our government’s actions. It’s not anti-Semitic or defamatory to accuse American Jews of uncritical support of colonial Zionism. It is not a case for the Jewish Anti-Defamation League to ask the American Jews underwriting our media to stop lying to themselves and us.

Harry Reid underlines again that Democratic Party is not an opposition party

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Harry Reid, Democratic Party senator from Nevada and Senate Majority Leader, gave his approval in an interview this Sunday, to Bush’s plan to increase US troops in Iraq.

This comes just days after Nancy Pelosi appointed the utterly ignorant Silvestre Reyes to head up the House Intelligence Committee, where he promptly stated that he also supported a troop increase, and not withdrawal. The Democrats as a whole are utterly enthusiastic about continuing this war, even as they in the same breath blame Bush and the neocons for it. Can it be underlined any more, that the Democratic Party is not an oppositional party to the Republicans? Only their powerless rank and file voters are against the Iraq occupation to some degree or other. But so what? These people most often act as if paralyzed beyond being able to vote. Otherwise, they go about their business as if it didn’t much matter at all to them.

The Democrats are not just a non-oppositional party in regards to the Republican plan to continue the occupation of Iraq. Harry Reid is great case in point. His pretense of being something different than a Republican in donkey suit is rather ludicrous. An example is him stating strongly that the Democrats are going for an increase in the US minimum wage. How? He is going to try tying getting the increase to legislation giving members of the Congress yet another pay raise! Pay raises they don’t deserve and shouldn’t get.

Reid is a Mormon. That being said, can any even mildly liberal person actually think that he represents possible progressive change because he is a Democrat too? Any visit to his Senate website shows nothing but the most mealy mouthed rhetoric on other issues such as immigration, women’s rights, labor, environment, etc. Cases in point, he is opposed to radioactive waste being dumped in Nevada at Yucca Mountain, yet supports nuclear reactors. He wants to grab more of the boondoggle ‘Homeland Security’ funds for Nevada. He supports building a giant Border wall while talking of ‘reform’. He is for better medical care for people, yet can’t voice support for universal coverage. Wants to help women out, yet can’t support abortion rights for them. No opposition to the use of torture, etc. No defense of habeus corpus. He supports phoney ‘war on terror’ that actually makes us more endangered by it.

In short, he is a mealy mouthed, fork tongued Democratic Party hack, who is planning to do absolutely nothing to block the Republican assault on the American and Iraqi people. The Democratic Party is not an oppositional party, and Reid is what you get, Liberals, when you continue to cast your votes for these asses. Get out of the Democratic Party and demonstrate if you want change. You have to spend more time in opposing the corporate hacks that run this country, than by just going out and voting for one of them or the other.

The majority of Democratic Party politicians are not going to oppose this war in any meaningful way.

Mengistu found guilty of genocide

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Ethiopia’s ex-ruler and Leonid Brezhnev’s African superstar, Mengistu, was found guilty in absentia for genocide today. He fled Ethiopia for Zimbabwe after the capital, Addis Ababa, was taken by rebel forces in 1991. He has been tried in absentia by a regime that itself is now having real problems with keeping its repression from running totally out of control. Still, Mengistu was definitely a bloody tyrant despite his original revolutionary drive. Under his Dergue regime, somewhere beetween 1 and 2 million died during his time in power, either from famine, through war, or directly through assassinations ordered by Mengistu’s people. He deserves his conviction, though he alone was not responsible for all those who died.

The problem one has though in assigning responsibility for crimes such as genocide, is that often there is so much blame to share all around. All of Africa became an arena for proxy fights in the ‘Great’ Cold War between the US plus its allies Portugal, France, Spain, Belgium, Britain, and the White Apartheid regimes of Rhodesia and South Africa, all combined in struggle to keep the former Soviet Union from influencing the region in alliance with various indegenous rebel groups. This combined European-US interventionism caused the deaths of millions upon millions of Africans. And yet no genocide trial for the Whites.

Much has been made of Brezhnev’s miserable decision to have Russians fight it out on foreign soil in Afghanistan against the Islamic proxy troops of the US. This was actually a reasonable fight though, since what went on in that country certainly effected the Soviet Union, too. But why on earth Brezhnev continued to side and fund Mengistu in the Horn of Africa wars is hard for many to understand. He truly was a totally incompetent and corrupt leader, and his decisions he took in regard to the African tribal conflicts, certainly had a major effect on what ultimately led later on to Gorbachev’s own reaccionry and embecilic policies. That in turn led to the ultimate fall of the Soviet Union back into a group of many barbaric and often warring, Fourth World capitalist states.

That all being said, one positive effect of the disintegration of the Soviet Union, is that it pulled the rug out from under Mengistu’s foreign funding for war in the Horn of Africa. When he finally fell in 1991 from power, he was about as credible as Pol Pot had become in Kampuchea after beating back the US in SE Asia. Lesson learned once again? An intial revolutionary movement that comes to power with war being waged continuously by imperialist powers against it, can lead to a meltdown of the revolution and a total disintegration into slaughter and famine.

Alcatraz of the Rockies

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Supermax fortress in Florence ColoradoWho’s being kept at SUPERMAX in Florence Colorado? Here’s a Frommer’s guide to the celebrity enemies of the state, actually an abridged list:

Ted Kaczynski -the Unabomber

Terry Nichols -1995 Oklahoma City bombing conspirator

Eric Rudolph -abortion-clinic bomber

Ramzi Ahmed Yousef -1993 bombing of the World Trade Center

Wadih El-Hage -1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa

Omar Abdel-Rahman -blind sheik convicted of plot to blow up New York City landmarks

Richard Reid -“shoe bomber”

Zacarias Moussaoui -9/11 conspirator

Antonio Guerrero -alleged spy, Cuban Five

Not on the list: Manuel Noriega, Kenneth Lay or OJ Simpson.

US sinking into Somalia once again?

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Incredible as it may seem, the US appears to be moving back into destabilizing the Horn of Africa once again. It’s like there are not enough problems in the Congo, Sudan/ Chad, Rwanda/ Burundi regions of conflict already for Bush, so the US must provoke reopening conflict in the Horn of Africa/ Somalia zone, too! See AFP article- Eritrea accuses US of masking invasion of Somalia with peacekeeping plan

The last 2 US administrations have absolutely destroyed the credibility of the UN as being a body that functions independently of the Pentagon. Most of the world does not see either NATO or the ‘UN peacekeepers’ as anything other than pure extensions of US militarism, and for good reason, too. UN cooperation with the US bombing and dismemberment of Yugosalvia, UN cooperation in the US destruction of the countries of Iraq and Afghanistan, UN cooperation in accepting Israeli Apartheid and its terrorism of the Occupied Territories as norm, UN carrying out the continuation of the US invasion of Haiti, and UN acceptance and complicity of the US-Israeli destruction of Lebanon all have led to nobody still believing that this is a neutral world association anymore. Not that it ever seemed to be that so much, to the majority of the world outside Europe and the Anglophile countries.

It’s time to dump the UN and reestablish a new world body of nations totally outside the control of the US government. The current United Nations is a totally spent organization politically. Not even moving its adminstrative offices out of New York City could ever reestablish any of its credibility at this point. A better name for the UN in its current state would be the United Imperialist Nations (UIN). Except that even the word ‘united’ no longer can be considered to apply, as the imperialist countries continue to develop fissures in the post WW2 alliance amongst themselves.

As to the US via the UN in Somalia? What a disaster this appears to be in the making.

Gaza shows naked face of Israeli-US terrorism

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The US uses Israel in the Middle East to fight their racist imperialist wars in a manner similar to how it once used the White Apartheid regimes of Rhodesia and South Africa against the majority Black population. This film juxtaposes an Israeli clip of the IDF in action last week with a clip from the Gaza strip that shows the results of the IDF firepower. Together, we see what our US tax money donated to the Jewish Apartheid regime is actually buying.

An Inconvenient Truth; Al Gore in the Balance

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This last Friday I headed over to see a herd of well-fed liberals that rodeoed themselves into the Unitarian Church for a free showing of the film, ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. The corral was packed and after we were informed that a pastor was on the way from Denver to moralize to us later, the film began to roll. Another showing of ‘Al Gore, the Intellectual Politican’ was under way. Hey, it kinda of reminded me of the repeated US`showing of ‘Jimmy Carter, Born Again Liberal Christian’, too. Holy Mackeral. Why buy a used car from the other guys, when we got such a sincere team over at Slick’s Used Cars Emporium?

My daughter was one of about 5 church-like kids dragged into the Unitarian Church that evening. And she lasted only 30 minutes, and then I had to go. She had to go that is, since I actually kind of wanted to stay. The film had a ‘Don’t Feed the Bears’ ambience to it, that made me feel like I was watching a Yogi Bear and Boo-Boo Bear rerun from my youth. Plus, it had that feel of those professional ‘Why You Need to Join Your Local Union’ stuff the AFL-CIO occasionally puts out. But my daughter was demanding that I rent her some obscure foreign film from over at Toons Video instead of staying and watching more of the freebee.

So how the Hell can I review a film when I watched only 30 minutes of it? Easily. I have been watching Al Gore for much longer than just the 90 minutes the film lasts. Here is Mr Environmental Guru as I have seen him over the years.

1) Supported Poppy Bush’s so-called Desert Strom that resulted in the deployment of Depleted Uranium radioctivity across the region. It also led to further environmental catastrophe as Hussein retaliated by incinerating the oil refineries of Kuwait.

2) As VP, he later went on to head up an Adminstration that deliberately targeted Yugoslavia’s civilian infrastructure through a US bombing campaign. As a result, the Danube was totally polluted with highly toxic waste. He also supported 8 years more of continued bombing of Iraq during that time, which certainly did not improve the ecology already destroyed by US warmaking he had supported even when a Republican had been directing the effort.

3) He supported the invasion of Afghanistan, which has left entire regions there decimated by so-called ‘bunker busting’ weaponry. Hardly a major ‘green’ effort on the part of Gore.

4) Gore has sat quiet as Israel bombed a civilian installation in Lebanon, which is a country invaded with total Bush support and complicity. Result?… a tidal wave of petro pollution that is the worst spill ever experienced in the Eastern Meidterranean. It will take decades to repair the damage, yet ‘Green’ Al Gore is silent.

5) Al Gore holds large number of shares in Occidental Oil, the company that polluted the Love Canal in New York State. It is also a company heavily invested in Colombia where Gore has helped have tons of isecticide dropped onto rural areas under the guise of waging a Clinton made ‘drug war’. The company sold off its holdings from the area after their drilling in U’wa tribal lands came up negative. Despite U’wa protests against this drilling, the Gore family held its shares in the company. Too bad the U’wa’s note to Gore was not part of the movie.

We could go on, but why should anyone believe Al Gore is doing anything other than image restructuring for himself, and the Democratic Party? If you are depending on him to be pro-environmental, then I got a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn. If you are depending on the Democratic Party to stop the Pentagon (which is the main danger to global environments), then you should have your head examined.

Joe Lieberman and Jesse James

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One of my favorite poems by Richard Brautigan ends thus

“My teachers could easily have ridden with Jesse James
for all the time they stole from me.”

 
I feel the same way about people who exert their authority to bore or obstruct.

Brautigan’s sentiment reflects I think not just the severity of the crime of boring a child, but also the crime of using a position of authority to subject a child to your boring ass, made worse by behaving self-righteously about it.

The association to Jesse James is not as merely to a thief, but to a capital criminal, having stolen youth, deserving to meet death by hanging, or any looming ignoble death, hastily arranged by unanimous consent.

Boring teachers are the least of it. I believe we could find universal condemnation of any bureaucrat who stands in the way of disclosure which would serve the public good, we’ve passed laws to punish not just bureaucrats who would impede justice.

Petty officials, loathsome hypocritical pedophiles -now we know it’s not just hyperbole, steely-eyed patronizing prigs. Such are men like Joe Lieberman. Today’s news is that Diebold does not deny the rumors of Lieberman’s likely win in November. Alarm bells are going off because Lieberman has been promised the chairmanship of two key subcommittees, both of which laymen Democrats had been thinking would be used to bring the Bush GOP to accounts. What would Harry Reid be doing in giving Lieberman those seats? Aren’t the Democrats running on the promise of setting matters straight? It’s said that Reid fears Lieberman would otherwise defect to the dark side. What part of Lieberman’s voting record offers us any representation otherwise?

Our Senator Salazar has been campaigning for Lieberbush, even though Lieberman was forced by his loss in the primaries to run as an independent. Party loyalty is one thing, but it’s not about political parties is it? Don’t tell grassroots party members they mustn’t discredit the party platform with extremism, yet at the same time reach to support an extreme right Democrat who’s finally thrown off his cloak in order to stay on the ticket. Lieberman needs to be kicked out of the party is what needs to happen.

When you just as easily eschew party affiliation to lobby for the opposition, because the candidate is an incumbent, you are lobbying for the status quo. No one is sent up to Washington on the opposition party ticket to fight for things as they are. What a mess. And the Democrats are riding what high horse? The high horse Bush rode in on?

A security buffer for Israel

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The Bush administration is content to postpone urging a ceasefire in Lebanon until Israel has completed clearing the brush. Israel will be requiring a security buffer between itself and Lebanon, and apparently it has the right to use Lebanese land to make it.

If a man was having trouble with his neighbors, refusing to make some kind of peace with them, and decided his only option was to clear a large area around his house to buffer himself, I doubt the rest of the community would abide his trying to make the no-man’s-land out of his neighbors’ property.

On top of all that, he’s expecting the community to supply the peace keepers. How juvenile a sense of entitlement is that?

Israel has been attempting the same security strategy with the Palestinians. They call it a security fence. It is in reality a colossal wall made to separate white Jews from the darker skinned Arabs. The Apartheid Wall is universally condemned by international judicial bodies and betrays precisely the irrationality of the Zionists’ land claim in the Middle East.

The Apartheid Wall demonstrates that Israel can only sustain itself as a walled colony, supported militarily by the nation from whence came the colonists. US.
 
Israelis are western settlers determined to occupy a foreign land until the last indigenous outcry is silenced.
 
Now they want more of Lebanon for their apartheid buffer zone. 		  See more of the Apartheid Wall

Israelites go home

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Baja JudeaAdmittedly this is a picture of Tel Aviv residents protesting their nation’s militant actions against Lebanon and gathering to offer a prayer for peace.
 
On another level, is it also a picture of fair-skinned westerners on a Middle Eastern beach who’ve overstayed their welcome?
 
Maybe it’s time to close Club Med Judea.

Americans descend upon Baja Mexico all the time, we don’t try to annex it. Or Costa Rica, or Belize. There’s nothing wrong with vacationing in the tropics, but is it fair to emigrate there, declare it your own, and ask the world to protect you from the anger of the people who you sent packing?

Let American and European Jews have their promised land, as promised vacation land. Visit and sunbathe all you want, then go home. This idea that white man should colonize Arabia is so 19th century. Colonization doesn’t work, and we have no right.

Nowhere was this more obvious than South Africa, where white colonizers held themselves as superior to the natives, imposing apartheid to force the indigenous populations to keep to their own neighborhoods.

Can there ever be peace in the Holy Land? Of course there can. Return Israel to its rightful owners. Let Jew, Muslim and Christian live together in a secular state. Will there always be sectarian violence? Perhaps, we’re seeing it elsewhere between Muslims. Sectarian problems will have to be worked out between neighbors. It’s clear the answer was not to give the whole ball of wax to one religion. Especially not the white one.

Ahmadinejad and Hamas not denying Holocaust

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Iranian president
No one is suggesting that the Holocaust didn’t happen, or that six million Jews weren’t killed by the Nazis. The mythology surrounding the Holocaust has to do with its aftermath: how the murder of six million Jews became justification for the creation of a Jewish state on land which belonged altogether to someone else.
 
That is the mythology about the Holocaust which natives of the Middle East would like the rest of us to contemplate.

Western media seems intent on perpetuating a distortion of the Muslim position. So intent are they to avoid questioning the legitimacy of Zionism that anyone who does is painted as a “Holocaust denier.”

No one is denying the Holocaust! And no one is calling for killing any more Jews! “Wiping Israel off the map” is a truncated translation of what the Muslim voices have expressed. It does not mean “off the face of the earth” or “eradicate” or “exterminate.”

Right to exist
Hamas is often described as not believing in Israel’s right to exist. It sounds so unreasonable. Everyone has a right to exist. But Israel is not a person, it’s an entity. Try this on for size. Does Jewish occupied Palestine have a right to exist? Did French occupied Algeria have a “right to exist?”

Algeria had a right to exist, and the French there had every right to exist, as a minority. And as we’ve seen with all former colonies, the majority population has an inclination to rise against its upper class oppressors. The west has of course the inclination to try to prop up those embattled regimes.

Israel was a nation created in 1949, carved out of the land of the Palestinians to make a home for European Jews. Israel is regarded by many as a last example of colonialism. White settlers laying claim to the lands of another people.

Now the Israelis are erecting a wall to separate themselves from the darker skinned Arabs. It’s an apartheid wall, and we’ve seen apartheid before. The Boers of Dutch ancestry no longer rule South Africa because the world wouldn’t stand for it.

Israelis have as much right to exist as anyone, as the Boers for example, but they don’t have a divine right to exist on the backs of their native brothers.

Apartheir wall   Israelis call it a “fence.” To construct it required demolishing entire Palestinian neighborhoods, often separating Palestinian farmers from their fields and orchards.
  		 

Off the map
When the Iranian president says he would like to wipe Israel off the map, he’s not saying he wishes to kill anyone. He didn’t say he wants to see Israel wiped off the face of the earth, he’s saying he’d like to see Israel off the map OF THE MIDDLE EAST!

Ahmadinejad even suggested that Israel relocate itself to Europe. If Europeans feel so bad about the Holocaust which they inflicted upon the Jews, why shouldn’t it fall to Europe to offer up some of its real estate for a Jewish homeland?

Ahmadinejad, like many Muslims, doesn’t see that it was Europe or America’s place to bequeath Ancient Judea to the present day Jews, a land which for the last two thousand years has belonged to non-Jews and went by the name of Palestine.

We all came from Africa. Does that give us a right to resettle it without regard to who’s already living there? Should someone resurrect Babylon, Alexander’s Greater Macedonia, or the Holy Roman Empire?

Hamas, and the PLO before it, speak of driving this foreign intruder from Palestinian land. The Muslims scattered the Israelites into Europe two thousand years ago. Now interlopers have brought them back and Hamas has pledged to drive them out again.

Imagine if America chose to return its Puritans whence they came, to England, where they weren’t terribly popular the first time. Perhaps the English would vow to expel the kill-joys once again to the New World.

As unreasonable as it was to redraw international borders to recreate a Promised Land, so too might it be unreasonable to undo the land grab of 1949. Perhaps the most pragmatic course of action would be to insist the Israelis and the Palestinians cohabit the promised land. They can govern themselves democratically and the chips will fall where they may. This age of enlightened democracy should have little patience for dogmatic racism and religious prejudice, from either side.

The world should be able to look upon these religious squabbles with impartiality. Although it seems Israelis are plenty worried that the secular west may not always grant Jewish fundamentalism more deference than its Islamic rivals. Therein lies the importance in not denying the Holocaust.

Holocaust myth
What peoples, among victims of genocide, have ever been granted their own ancient Promised Land as a redress for the genocide? None. Is this because the Holocaust was such a unique genocide? Indeed, to be labeled a Holocaust denier you merely have to be denying the uniqueness of the Holocaust.

When Iran president Ahmadinejad says that he wants to examine the myth of the Holocaust, he is threatening to challenge the prevailing Zionist interpretation.

Ward Churchill got in trouble with the Zionists because he wanted to compare the genocide of Native Americans to the Holocaust. He makes the case mainly because the policy of extermination conducted against the original inhabitants of the Americas is still denied, and as a result extensions of the policies persist.

I think the argument to prove Churchill’s point leads in an altogether different direction. This is because the Jewish extermination was not an act of imperialism against an weaker people.

The genocide against the Native Americans was like the systematic extermination of indigenous peoples everywhere: Australia’s aborigines, Indonesia’s Ache and Timorese. It is also the age-old mechanics of one people conquering another, like the genocide by the Turkish of the Armenians, and the recent actions of the Sudanese Arabs against their blacks.

The genocide against the Jews was class warfare upward. It belonged in a category like the Soviet and Chinese against their bourgeois and intellectuals, like the Khmer Rouge genocide of the urban Cambodians most of whom were ethnic Chinese, like the Hutu slaughtering of the Tutsies, like the traditional and recurring pogroms against Jews. It’s hard to say that even the Spanish Inquisition wasn’t after the usury profits of the Jews.

Thus antisemitism is less unique than its name implies, and resembles very much Marx’s class warfare where the proletariat is trying to come out from under its oppressors, or perceived oppressors.

The Holocaust is touted as religious genocide, hence the rationale for redress which honors their biggest religious wish: return to their Promised Land.

The Zionist count on the west’s continued support of that religious goal. They need an independent Israel with a homogeneous Jewish religion. They know that if they were to be integrated with the region’s present-day peoples, as a Jewish minority among Palestinians, they stand a good chance of being voted off the island.

So here are America and modern Europe, standing in support of a dogmatic religious group. It does not play well with others, and it insists in fact that it be segregated from everyone else, even as it usurps the land of others, and occupies adjacent lands under the pretext of its national security.

I have no doubt that victims of the Holocaust would themselves be shocked and shamed at the crimes that Israel is committing in their name against the peoples of Palestine.

Why America and Europe should side in religious solidarity with Jewish fundamentalists without sympathy for the Islamic fundamentalists is the consequence of believing a myth.

To my relatives

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I have to write you. The country is divided, and families are divided over very profound issues. Do we let these divisions stand?

I say we owe it to each other and the world to try to understand the other. This is no time to agree to disagree. Not while iraqi civilians are dying, while the environment is being ravaged, while economic policies are causing death and suffering to billions, including bringing deprivation to millions at home.

You may have heard of a half million protesers in NYC the day before the RNC. You may have heard it was “tens of thousands.” (Technically true: FIFTY tens of thousands.) Why this fact was misrepresented to you is for you to figure out. But conversely, why would anyone want to exaggerate it?

Do you doubt the 500,000 figure? And do you think those protesters were out there on some kind of ego trip? Some kind of adventure to mix it up with the cops? Do you doubt that those social conscious political groups, labor unions, health care activists, civil rights advocates, students and seniors, were out there on the streets for delusional reasons?

Think back about what we know know about Vietnam. Think about those who protested the war. From the very beginning didn’t they prove to be right? Wouldn’t we all have wished to have been on their side?

Have you seen any protesters who’ve turned out to be wrong? Lynch mobs perhaps, or the KKK or other moral supremists I suppose. But mass protests led by students and social reformers, have been about progressive causes now fully embraced by their opponents.

Think of the causes: for the abolition of slavery, for women’s right to vote, for the rights of workers, for civil rights, and against things like colonialism, like apartheid, like the tanks in Tieneman Square, like the Berlin Wall. When students and intellectuals protest, it’s usually against really bad things.

These days all over the world the protests are against totalitarian oppression by way of war and trade, against corporate malfeasance, against environmental devastation.

(To be continued.)

The Old Colorado City fire of ‘02

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December 5, 2002, a personal account, see Waycott Opera House for media photographs.

7 AM
Early on Tuesday morning in sleepy Old Colorado City, a Channel 13 news crew met with Sue Seabolt in her Hand Carved Candles Shop to do a TV spot about candle safety. After they wrapped up, everyone went to breakfast together.

Fire Inspectors report that a candle was left burning.

9 AM
Bruce Reid, passer-by, was driving to work along Colorado Avenue at about nine and saw dark smoke coming from a vent on the sidewalk in front of the candle shop. He wondered what kind of toxic material they might be burning, did they think no one would notice the smoke before business hours? He pulled over to investigate (and maybe call the EPA.)

As he parked, the window of the adjacent Glass Blowers Shop blew out. Now it was apparent this was a fire and he began alerting people in nearby businesses to call 911.

WAYCOTT BASEMENT
Meanwhile managers at Meadow Muffins had already called 911. They saw smoke coming into their basement from an underground vent the bar shares with the shops next door.

That vent has always been thought to be part of the infamous tunnel system under Colorado Avenue. It dates back to the turn of the century when respectable residents didn’t want to be seen crossing the street to visit the taverns and brothels on the disreputable south side of the street.

2ND FLOOR
Two floors above, Rusty and Steve of PRODUCERS GROUP were being overwelmed by the smoke coming into their video production office. Their main entrance is on the east side of the Waycot Building, above the Glass Blowers Shop, with stairs that descend through the now burning building. They tested the door handle, it was hot. When they opened the door they were pushed back by a surge of heat. The stairway was on fire. They figured out they would have to go out through the back.

On their way out the two ascended to my door at the third floor. They knocked and shouted, hoping I would hear them. Eventually they gave up and wanted to check outside to see what was happening. On the street they ran into Bruce Reid, they told him, yes there was a third person still in the building. Bruce climbed the stairs to try again.

3RD FLOOR
I was asleep, nearly. I’d gone to bed at 6am though I meant to be nursing a flu. Things needed doing and anyway I intended to convalesce until noon.

At 9am I had an unplanned call from a friend. I answered him vaguely, determined to resume my sleep. As I lay into my pillow I heard a very faint sound: banging noises, coming from far away.

“What IS that?” I wondered. Banging, buzzing. A continuous barrage. Was someone BANGING on my door? I listened until it could not have been anything else. I threw on a robe and went to answer. What did they WANT? I made my way to the door, noticing several curious smoky odors.

I opened the door to see a stranger heading back down the stairs. He tripped back as he spun to address me. I noticed quite a bit of smoke in the stairwell.

He shouted to me “Man, you’ve got to get out, the building next door is on fire!”

Probably I said “What?”

He repeated, quite excited “There’s a fire next door, you’ve got to get out!”

“Alright, alright. Calm down” I told him. Who was this stranger in my stairwell, on my side of a supposedly locked street level door?

“No problem” I assured him, “I’ll come down. Don’t worry. I’m the only one up here. ” He ran down as I closed the door.

As I walked around my place looking for something to wear, the smoke became much more pronounced. It was seeping up through the floor. I looked through the east windows but didn’t see anything. I put on the nearest clothes and grabbed a jacket and my camera to go investigate. If there was any kind of a fire wouldn’t I have heard fire trucks already? I descended the stairs, the smoke was getting bad. Hmm.

ON THE STREET
When I got to the street I saw Rusty and Steve standing on the corner next to a fire truck. When I reached them I saw there were four trucks already, maybe more. A crowd had assembled. Across the street I saw the stranger who had helped me.

It looked like a small fire inside the Glass Blowers Shop, smoke, no flames, and the firemen didn’t apear too excited. I took a couple of pictures and then my battery died. I hadn’t brought a spare.

I hadn’t grabbed my phone, my wallet or anything. Suddenly flames emerged from the roof of the small shops. The flames rose high against the east wall of the Waycott Building. Now I could tell the firemen weren’t going to let me back up. As the morning went on it became clear that there were going to be a lot of pictures of this fire.

ANXIETY
The initial inactivity of a number of the firemen, which I dismissed as their knowing-what-they-are-doing, turned out to be closer related to a lack of water. The nearby fire hydrant was found dry. “Why aren’t they spraying water?” my father asked. What began with a candle became a three alarm fire.

Worse than the feeling that not enough was being done, was when the firemen started running around, that’s when you’d begin to worry that the fire was about to pull ahead.

THE FIRE
The worrisome aspect for the Waycott Building was that the second floor entrance was acting much like an oven hood for the fire. We’d find later that the upper floors would serve as a smoke stack for this blaze.

We could see smoke escaping from second story windows left open on the west side of the building. I congratulated myself that the third floor windows were all closed, perhaps reducing the effect of a draft. Later I would lament that as a result all the smoke had nowhere to go. It thickened into every corner and soot simply piled unto itself.

We watched a team of firemen ascend to the second floor to keep the fire out. They had to cross the floor in total darkness. There was a rumor they’d gotten lost. They kept the fire from coming into the building. The water from their hoses accumulated in the Meadow Muffins basement.

I’d like to write more, about the third floor window frame catching fire, how the firemen had to knock it out and then had to probe into the ceiling to assure the fire hadn’t lept there. For now I better jump to the aftermath.

STEWARDSHIP
First a note about the fish.

When you’ve been in a fire, after the fire is out, you get to ask a firefighter to go fetch anything from inside which you might need until you are granted access yourself. Phone, checkbook, a change of clothes, keys. I had to draw a map of the floor plan and try to remember where each item might have last been mislaid. An interesting challenge.

Someone remembered the fish. Two angel fish and a tough little silver guy who’s survived bigger challenges. The tank water would have absorbed a lot of smoke.

The personal-items-retriever came back with everything, including the fish. They looked like they were having trouble but the fireman said the male angel had faught him off. A good sign or a last exertion that might prove fatal. Gianmichele and my father ran the bucket up the street to the aquarium store. But the poor fish didn’t recover.

A friend of mine once described the responsibility of owning a rare book or antique. In the end we are only its steward. A rare possession is ours to keep safe until we pass it on to another. A book is yours to read, to cherish, or resell at a profit if that’s what you’re doing. It’s not yours to destroy.

Looking upon the fire I didn’t feel like I’d been very responsible.

AFTERMATH
Thank you for the emails and calls of support. Yes, the servers were down, due to what Gianmichele labeled our pyrotechnical difficulties, thus emails were bouncing and the websites were not accessible.

I’m fine. I’m sure I would have been just fine, but I’m thankful that I was rousted by Bruce Reid at my door instead of facing firemen in gas masks coming through smoke toward my bed. That might have been too exciting.

The guys on the second floor didn’t fare very well. Their offices were damaged by the heat and smoke. Meadow Muffins will be closed for several weeks to repair the water and smoke damge. The First National Bank building which houses the Michael Garman businesses are facing similar repairs. And of course the building between us which housed four little craft stores is gone.

Comparatively the third floor suffered little damage. There is soot everywhere, whatever was face up is ruined, but the books in the curtained area seem to be unscathed, it appears they were screened from the smoke. Everything’s fine, relatively, just smelly.

How smelly is hard to say, after a while you can’t tell any difference. We’re laundering everything three times, but everywhere I visit I smell like I came back from sitting on the wrong side of a campfire.

Reprinted from Waycott Opera House.