Company wolves in nonpartisan clothing

Would you believe it? Not My Tribe is “nonpartisan!” We favor neither Republican or Democrat, although current usage presumes you are of course one or the other, it’s just that you’ve agreed not to show bias. Nonpartisan is not “non-aligned.” It does not mean you are neither. Nonpartisan has become more like “nondenominational.” Which means not of a specific religious adherence, but certainly belonging to one of them. And like nondenominational, isn’t it a ruse?

Religious events billing themselves as nondenominational are casting a big net hoping to lure other believers, making the implication that they need to escape their more demarcated sect. They’re after the heathen too, but make no mistake, that doesn’t mean they adjust their platform one iota.

Nonpartisan political groups cast themselves as aligned to neither major party. Laws governing nonprofits forbid party allegiance, but regulations don’t address the socio-political aims of their missions. Just as the term “nonprofit” describes just that entity’s balance sheets. It doesn’t reflect the nonprofit’s goals, from which sponsoring organizations definitely plan to profit.

The insurance company think tanks weighing in against health care reform are all nonpartisan non-profits. You can be a fully-owned research division and because you are neither particularly Republican nor Democrat, you can label yourself not of the fray.

Fox News although shamelessly willing to pervert “fair” and “balanced,” does not have the temerity to call themselves nonpartisan. It would expose the ruse. Propagandist Bill O’Reilly instead hides behind the less inobjective “independent.”

And so Not My Tribe is more accurately independent, because we keep company with neither corporate party, the left or the right.

Obviously are Left, Left, Left, and fully partisan. More akin to namesake Partisans who resisted the Nazi onslaught. Just as the capitalist wolves are corporate partisans in nonpartisan clothing.

Another Made-in-USA fake elections day for an occupied country

heil obamaUS elites never seem to get tired of their fake election days. Today, it was nonstop coverage of their Afghan elections on National Imperialist Radio, (otherwise known as NPR). I call these elections fake because they are run by an imperialist occupying force that doesn’t even have the ability to speak the native tongue, let alone have any valid reason for occupying Afghanistan. The yakity yaks on NPR and other corporate channels don’t have even the slightest clue of what’s going on, yet in their doting coverage of these fake elections made for the US-made Hellistan it was nonstop pretense otherwise.

At least the BBC gave out the real news and that was that 300,000 foreigner controlled troops were everywhere, even as nobody showed up. The ballot boxes were full though (how did those ‘ballots’ get there?), and this was heard even on NPR! What American actually cares if the ballot boxes in Afghanistan were stuffed? It was a fake election anyway, wasn’t it? So no wonder Americans are deserting Commander in Chief Obama in mass! Some ‘changer’ he was… Before it is over, Americans may want to waterboard the twit! BOOM!

CSAction videos of Udall — Bennett visits

Despite giving multiple interviews to KRDO-NEWS13, KKTV5/30 and the GAZETTE, the reform voice of the Colorado Springs health care debate must have been quashed by the news directors, if ever they would have aired. Fortunately Mark Lewis of CSAction recorded the events.

Defying the police death squads

Good news out of Manipur, India. The “fake encounter” of 27-yr-old Chongkham Sanjit, unmasked as an extra-judicial assassination, has prompted massive rioting against the police of the region. Best photo: Indian schoolboys taunt the death squads with slingshots and marbles.
Indian boys firing at police

US journalists! Visit scenic Kurdistan!

Sulaimania Sulaimaniya Kurdistan Iraq Irak
US media correspondents, reporters, tv anchors and news directors, get yourselves to scenic Kurdistan asap, visit the mountains of Sulaimania, the waterfalls of Ahmed Awa are apparently recommended. Embeds, lead the way! It may be the only way all you war propagandists will reap what you so justly deserve.

I can’t imagine there’s a single corporate media journalist who wouldn’t be hard pressed to defend the pro-war filter he or she puts on the news for US domestic consumption. Corporate tools? They’re military industrial pitchmen. Advocating death and dismemberment without restraint. Let them plead ignorance. Bullshit. I’d love to see Bill Clinton make a case for all of them.

Antiwar voices are split on whether to charge MSM collaborators for war crimes, for selling the Anglo world on patently illegal wars. But how else are we to be rid of them? America remains locked in a Vulcan mind meld with these impudent, immoral careerists. Perhaps apprehension by the Iranians, and a trial by revolutionary council, is the only justice they might ever meet. Dispatch them to Kurdistan: Assignment Iran! Let the Persians teach Americans the only way to deal with poisonous snakes.

The media song now, to spin the recent errant three in the best light, is that Kurdistan was not an unthinkable destination for tourists such as they, and perfectly safe too. Unless you venture toward the Iran border, where US commandos have been raiding Iranian infrastructure, while the US Navy taunts the Iranian coast in full force. Alas, Kurdistan, quite happy with its undeclared sovereignty from Iraq, has proven to be a safe haven for Anglos.

I remember a most heartbreaking scene from the first month of the war, recorded by an independent American photographer as he worked his way through Kurdistan. Perhaps you recall it.

Do I mean the friendly fire, or accidental, I’m not sure which to put in quotes, bombing which killed coalition troops, but also took out a Kurd ally who may have turned out to rival a more favored ally? No, not that one.

Our photographer was making his second entry into Iraq as I recall, and documented a personal incident thus. He was traveling with a Kurd escort, when an Iraqi combatant broke through with a grenade, determined to blow himself up next to the American.

And I should clarify, I was not rooting against the photographer, but– here’s what happened.

The Iraqi was being held off by a Kurd fighter, but he had pulled the pin on the grenade, and leaned against his opponent, dooming both of them if the Kurd dared to shoot him. The scene unfolded in the progression of stills the photographer snapped as he hastened away. The Iraqi was chest to chest with the Kurd, pleading to be let to get the American. I interpreted his entreaties to say: Brother let me pass, I must reach the American, I have no quarrel with you, let me die with the infidel. The Kurd seemed for a moment to consider the words of his Iraqi brother. American deaths counts many hundred fold, we are brothers fighting the American aggressors, I have committed to die for this act, help me, please let me just reach him.

I could be wrong, he may have been cursing the filthy Kurd for blocking his way. But his locked eyes and sweated brow reflected an earnest human being.

I cannot be sure how long this went on, but the Kurd kept the desperate man at bay, and as soon as the Kurd had wrestled control of the grenade, he shot the would-be assassin point black. The Iraqi fell unceremoniously into the tall weeds. The last image showed his body collapsed in the ditch beside the road. The photographer and his Kurd entourage moved on.

There were honest, unembedded journalists in the early stages of the war. A record number were killed by the US military until none report independently anymore. Journalists working for foreign news agencies are detained in secret US prisons, under the same pretext that we protest of Iran or North Korea.

If we do not have the resolve to string up these blood-thirsty yellow journalists, promulgating lies to justify the continued slaughter of countless innocents, let the Iranians have at them.

Turning the economic corner to what?

economic indicators
The US media is now full of optimistic assurances to ‘We, The People’, that ‘the economy is turning the corner’ and all will be well once again as if that was ever all that much the case! Certainly it has been better though, yet today the US does not, and cannot, operate in isolation from the world downturn of Big Business. So how’s it going elsewhere? Take a look at our friends the British, and you will see just how they are doing? …and it’s not so good.

From the conservative and hallowed British newspaper, the Telegraph, you can read that the British economic collapse rivals Great Depression, and that British output fell 5.6 % over the last year! That’s a -5.6% GDP, so why is the American press so full of bullshit about ‘turning the corner’? A short stock market rally is no turning of any corner, but a negative rate of GDP for the last year is definitely an ominous sign. It will simply take more than positive spin or pep talks to turn any corner yet ahead.

The desire to paint such a big happy face comes about when corporate leadership has no plans to alleviate any misery anywhere these days. If anything, they remain absolutely fixated on spreading more misery through more war, rather than improving the economic welfare of people through PEACE and a productive society run by a productive economy. Capitalism simply is not a productive economy, but rather is merely a route for and elite to get rich off the rest of us and through a looting of Nature. Changing that would be turning a corner but capitalist elites are not going to change The-ir System.

Cronkite and Mays, confidence men

HOW ABOUT, for a tribute to Walter Cronkite’s much lauded integrity, the media honor the news giant by EMULATING HIM? How cynical of corporate news peons, and of their audience nodding along, to revere Cronkite’s hindsight truth-telling, and lament alas, there will be no more like him. Big smiles and crocodile tears.

There is no integrity in news broadcast. I defy anyone to point to a single news story that is not framed and delivered by the interest group it serves. A single story.

Thankfully God sent broadcasters a mixed message this summer by striking down two disparate role models for television talking heads. He smote the last grand-paternal-voiced smooth-talker, together with the tin-pot-king of loud jabberers, teevee pitchman Billy Mays. The first voice was confidence giving, you couldn’t help but trust it, even as it cheer-led the Vietnam escalation, while the second’s amplified immodulation provoked an irritation satisfied only by buying the damn thing just to get the brush salesman out the door.

Urban Camping while waiting for a movie.

Like with Camp Casey/CS, remember the legal hassles? A War Memorial that’s a protest of war isn’t actually a Memorial, sez the City and the College. Thus it was a code violation, having people dwelling on a spot that was not zoned for Residential.
But then there’s the Movie Campers, at a mall, waiting to be first in line for the screening of the new Hairy Pot-Head movie “Half Blood Prince”.

The Mall Keystone Kops would ordinarily run off anybody who pitches a tent on Mall Property and just starts basically Living There.

So, Then, (thought I) Why would they allow people to do it for a movie?

The Hideous Thought then struck me… The “fans” camping there, what if they’re actually Agents Provocateurs, as it were, for the movie? Paid to camp at the theaters, and the Corporate News (television Broadcasting is typically owned by the same people who own Movie Production companies) dutifully reports it as “Nutty fans, camping out to see This Fantastical Wonderful Marvelous But We’re In No Way Advertising It For Free And Disguising It As ‘legitimate news’ Movie!!”

See, that would be deemed Legitimate by the Pigs. Camping to memorialize the Dead and protest the illegal war that got them killed, that’s Tabu, Big Wrong, Bad Evil, Supreme No-No!!

Camping to survive, same thing.

Camping to promote a Commercial Enterprise, even though the Theaters aren’t in any way zoned as Residential, that’s legit.

Maybe if Camp Casey had a couple of signs up that if somebody stayed overnight he would get a discount on a Toons Video order?

2p, 2p and Honduras… and Mexico… and Nicaragua… and…

I don’t know if I’ve published this here or not or how I packaged it. But for background, the “p” stands for “piastre” a South VietNamese coin that was worth a little less than a quarter of a U.S. penny. This was the “Great Free Market Opportunity” our government was sending people to fight and die to defend. The way I heard it on some occasions it’s used to condemn the VietNamese people.”How nasty and vile and filthy they are” for living in such poverty.

But it was the VietNamese version of a washroom attendant, a little old granny lady… “Wipe your ass for you, GI… 2p, 2p do extra good job 2p, 2p…”

Yes, we were there, so it seems, to give the people such a wonderful Free Market and the opportunity to wipe our asses for less than a half a cent per “use”.

And to despise them for being so desperately poor.

I wasn’t there, my sources were, so what if you say it’s false?

Talk to them, those who are still alive that is.

Now there’s a war going on in Honduras, backed exclusively by U.S. and Canadian corporations, to topple a “Dictator” who was going to nationalize the resources of Honduras and make the U.S. and Canadian corporations pay more than the 3-4 dollars a day for the labor of the People of Honduras.

The police and military have been battling in the streets for a week now, busting the heads of “elitists” who are trying to “enslave” everybody in Honduras. They did this in a Military coup ahead of an election that the “Dictator” probably would have won.

That there’s no CIVILIANS out busting the heads of these “elitists” and “Communist Radicals” tells a far different story than you might hear on, say, Fox News or in the Colorado Springs Gazette.

In Nicaragua the goon-squads were called “Contras” and backed by the same people who bring us Fox News and the Gazette. They bombed and shot up schools, orphanages, churches and hospitals, and “our” government called them Heroes and Freedom Fighters.

In Mexico, the PAN party has been running the show for a while now. They took over from the “socialist radicals” in the PRI party and for the same reason as Honduras, and Nicaragua, and South VietNamese, to give the people “Freedom” and the unfettered “Free Market” and all the benefits of Capitalism.

Doug Lamborn and Tancredo and Michelle Malkin tell us so, thus, it must be true.

They also tell us that the economy in Mexico after two and a half terms of a PAN controlled “Free” government, so filled with opportunity… is somehow oh.. how does one make this sound logical… fueling a massive wave of Illegal Immigration into the United States. By people seeking to feed their families.

Record Numbers in fact.

My my my my my… give them all the Benefits of a Reagan-inspired Libertarian Free Market and their country falls to shit and more of the people have to flee poverty and come here to find work.

Like the KTEL commercials used to say “Now how much would you pay? BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!”

They’re wanting to expand the same Corporate Free Market Rule all across the United States as well, promising us such wonderful Economic Freedom and Opportunity…

Wipe your ass GI, 2p, 2p…

Who killed Neda Agha-Soltan?

neda soltaniThe video footage is shocking. An attractive young woman watching the demonstrations in Tehran is struck by a sniper’s bullet and dies before several video cameras. The tragedy is projected unto Facebook and Youtube, with advocates hoping it will galvanize (American) public support for the brave reform movement in Iran. News accounts blame “Basij snipers” on the rooftops. Other protesters have been killed in confrontations with Iranian riot police, without the benefit of video witnesses, much like two million Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis et al. Poor 27-year-old bystander Neda Soltani stood at the quite improbable convergence of bullet and camera –correction– cameras. I don’t have to suggest the scene was staged; whether or not the triggerman was an American is immaterial.

Think about just the improbability of your seeing this video. When was the last time the mainstream press has circulated a snuff film? The average person is embarrassed to watch a person die. It’s exploitive. Even when America was fixated on beheaded hostages, our television gatekeepers refused to broadcast the footage. Many horrific war killing moments have found their way unto Youtube, which antiwar activists could only hope would find wider distribution, if only to bring home the inhumanity of our soldiers’ deeds. It never happens.

The western press is running with this story because it demonizes the apparently naked inhumanity of Islam. Muslims stone women, hang gays, look: the bastards shoot their own people arbitrarily. Curiously our media doesn’t make hay with the hapless victims of US snipers.

neda salehi agha soltanThe Neda Soltani snuff footage hit internet shores prepackaged with a smiling mug, and a name that translated means “the voice.” Could a casting director have picked a better title character to represent Iran’s repressed? The western press is even poised to outdo the Muslims in indignant piety, already lauding Neda as a martyr, whom we are informed should launch a thousand Shiite funeral processions. Western pundits compare Neda to the first Shiite martyr, the grandson of Mohammed himself.

Of course, also showing excessive Islamic sensitivity, western reporters readily dismiss the vanishing of Neda’s body, to the Muslim tradition of hasty burials. For the record, in case you missed it, Neda dies onscreen from an apparent gunshot. We do not see the bullet strike, nor now can anyone habeas corpus.

If the scenario was acted entirely, given the success with which the girl’s face is being made into an icon, young Neda’s life is probably as utterly expendable now as already depicted. You think you’re mourning Neda now, imagine her fate if this is a hoax.

OR the gunman could just as well have been a US black-op hit-man who had his eye on the videographers approaching innocent Neda. The US military has long admitted that special forces are already operating in Iran. If the Iranian forces are shooting civilian protesters, what’s the harm of helping them out where there’s a camera ready?

When we’re not meant to see it, the soldiers shoot the cameramen too.

It could be the work of Moussavi henchmen, who are our henchmen.

The Green Revolution, or TwitterTM Revolution, rebranded a “Social Media Revolution,” is a fabrication of the US pro-democracy agents working to destabilize Iran. They are hard at work in Cuba, in Venezuela, in Bolivia, and everywhere regimes threaten US globalization by enslavement. Remember the Orange Revolution? Any movement that is color-coded is the work of organizers reading US how-to manuals or attending OTPOR training seminars.

Where are the international voices decrying election fraud in Iran? No one other than the US and its stooges is asserting that populist leader Ahmadinejad did not win by a landslide. Only Iran’s urban middle class has taken to the streets of Tehran. And to protest what? Their minority standing in Iran?

The reformists in Iran are protesting democracy, not the failure of democracy. They are protesting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s hard line against irreligious western economic and colonial policies which traditionally benefit the secular urban elite. “Pro-Democracy” is neoliberal for pro-capitalist plunder.

See: Shah’s Son Backs Iranian Protesters.

Like the “dissidents” of Cuba, the Green greenback-seekers are marching on the CIA’s dime, and being meted the fate of foreign provocateurs. I have no doubt the majority are idealists and are well-intended, but like the Kurds who rose against Saddam Hussein, the US has set them up for slaughter, the sooner to motivate western support for military aggression against their evil regime.

Our media pundits point out that the protest banners are written in English, a sign that the Iranians are desperate to appeal to American viewers. They dismiss Iranian accusations of the demonstrations being US-backed as pure paranoia, and ignore the most simple explanation behind the English slogans, and the websites and networks amplifying the message to English speakers: these materials are being crafted by USAID advisers. This is a propaganda campaign aimed at Western ears, to call for regime change in Iran.

Neda’s Theme is tried and true: Jessica Lynch, Roxana Saberi, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, Neda Salehi Agha Soltan. Onward Christian Soldiers.

Neda Agha Soltan iranian martyr victim of US sniperThe American public won’t believe another fiction about Kuwaiti babies dumped from incubators, or of Belgian children impaled on the bayonets of the evil Hun. So Madison Avenue has upped the amperage. Today’s television armchair adjudicators have to see innocent young women snuffed on film before our eyes. Provided to us by a press too otherwise prurient to show us the mass of death we deal everyday.

The Iranians in the streets, and poor pretty Neda, are being sacrificed by heartless US strategists. I doubt even an errant Iranian bullet can match the American military for cruelty.

To think some of them live in our town…

Murdering coward Minutemen. This is one of their latest outrages. The robbery and murder of an American Latino family. Actually they left one survivor, but the father and his NINE year old daughter were mowed down in their own homes.

Michelle Malkin and Tancredo must be so very proud….

Shawna Forde, leader of Minutemen American Defense, is one of three individuals arrested June 12 by sheriff’s detectives in Pima County, Arizona, for the murder of a Mexican American man and his nine-year-old daughter.

Based in Washington State, Forde’s group is one of several border militia groups nationwide that refer to themselves as “Minutemen,” including also the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, of which Forde is also a former leader. Profiles of Forde and her nativist activities are available from the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League.

According to authorities, Forde and her two accomplices, Jason Eugene Bush and Albert Robert Gaxiola, broke into the home of Raul Flores and his family in Arivaca AZ on May 30th, apparently in the commission of a robbery. The invaders reportedly shot all three members of the Flores family who were present at the time, killing the father and daughter and leaving the mother wounded. While Bush is the suspected gunman in the shootings, investigators say Forde was the mastermind of the operation (KOLD). Nine-year-old murder victim Brisenia Flores is pictured here from the local Green Valley News:

The fellow who posted this didn’t include the picture mentioned.

The news report was from Washington State where Ms Forde’s bloc of the Terrorist Cartel have their headquarters.

More:

Forde’s mother tells the Everett WA Herald that she was not surprised to hear of her daughter’s arrest since she had previously talked of staging home invasions: “She sat here and said that she was going to start a group where they went down and start taking things away from the Mexican mafia…,” Forde’s mother recalled, “…She was going to kick in their doors and take away the money and the drugs.” Forde’s mother also says that her daughter called her a few hours after the shootings May 30 and reported that she was taking refuge in a “safe house” in Arivaca: “I’m in hiding,” Forde told her mother, “You won’t believe what is going down here…. The mafia, they are kicking down doors and they are shooting people and they are looking for me.”

Yep, they feel that if somebody is Mexican AMERICAN they’re entitled to take away anything the person has. Including his life and that of his daughter.

Interesting that they were also looking for drugs.

A glorified Dope Run. By people who say they’re into “Law and Order”.

Tulane kicks Kimberly-Clark off campus!

From the Greenpeace Students’ Network: “Hi ya’ll! My name is Laney White, and I am spring 2009 graduate of Tulane University in New Orleans. I am writing to tell you the great news: Tulane just kicked Kimberly-Clark off campus!!!”

After working with the campus’s Facilities Services throughout the spring semester, my environmental group, Tulane Environmental Action League (TEAL), and I convinced the University to drop Kimberly-Clark, which uses wood clearcut from ancient forests to produce disposable products, in favor of a more sustainable company. Over the course of this summer, Tulane will be making the switch!

Despite obstacles like an apathetic student body, TEAL discovered that the concerted efforts of a small group of individuals could alter how a university chooses to do business. Over a series of meetings with Facilities Services, my student group presented viable alternatives to Kimberly-Clark and provided clear, well-researched arguments for making the switch. Persistence in communication with Facilities was crucial, as was coordinating with potential allies on campus. Tulane’s Office of Environmental Affairs, which is currently working to obtain LEED certification for some buildings on campus, was instrumental in helping make the final push for the switch because the new products will earn the buildings additional LEED points.

As a school located in New Orleans, the Tulane community has a greater stake in climate change and environmental stewardship than the average university. Placed on the frontlines of global warming, the impacts of the clearcutting practices supported by corporations like Kimberly-Clark have the potential to disproportionately affect the Crescent City. Kicking Kimberly-Clark off of Tulane’s campus is a small change that, when joined with the efforts of likeminded students across the country, has the potential to alter the market, change Kimberly-Clark’s practices, and have a huge impact!

I plan to continue my work as an environmental leader and look forward to working with many of you as we work to save the planet from climate catastrophe in the coming years. It is our actions, together, that will determine history and the fate of our planet.

For a green and peaceful future,
Laney White
Tulane University
Class of 2009

If others can kill, Israel wants permit too

Israeli idf propaganda newspaper adJune 6th is the 42nd anniversary of Israel’s seizure of Gaza. At right is a UK newspaper ad placed by the Anti-Defamation League, one of Israel’s myriad damage control engines, when UK students were calling to boycott Israel over its attacks in Gaza. 400,000 killed in Sudan, so Israel should get a pass on its 1,300 victims in Gaza? It sounds like the IDF expects allowances to be made for its periodic ethnic cleansing, permits maybe, like polluters trade carbon credits. The US Humane Society euthanizes 5.4 million dogs every year, no doubt it’s just a double standard to demonize Israel for bagging their 1,300 in Gaza.

Where there are fingers pointing at Sudan, there are Zionists diverting attention from their final Palestinian solution. No one’s crying GENOCIDE in Darfur, calling for military intervention against the Muslim regime but Israel, the US and George Clooney.

I just read an eyewitness recollection of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, published on this 20th anniversary, by a reporter who went on to fault China less for its human rights transgressions than for Chinese investments in Sudan and Iran. Sudan? IRAN? What was an evocative historical account began to smell of Zionist agitation… Of course the WSJ columnist turned out to be a “conservative” who also labels those who stand up for Palestinian rights as anti-Semites.

Cuba declines OAS offer of Trojan Horse

Over US objections, the Organization of American States (OAS, OEA) voted to invite Cuba back into the fold, from which it had been expelled in 1962 for hanging with Communists. Cuba’s reply? No thanks! Although Cuba’s acceptance by fellow nations was hailed a victory, Fidel Castro wrote: “It is naive to think that the good intentions of one president justifies the existence of a body that… supported… neoliberalism, drug trafficking, military bases and economic crises.”

In an essay published the day before Cuba’s official repudiation of the offer to recommit to the OAS, Fidel Castro recalled a lesson from the siege of Troy. Castro was reported widely as having called the OAS a “U.S. Trojan horse.” In reality, Castro blamed the OAS for having “opened the gates” to the Trojan horse of US post-colonial despotism.

The Trojan horse

RAFAEL Correa, president of Ecuador, currently visiting Honduras, stated the day before the OAS meeting: “I believe that the OAS has lost its raison d’être, maybe it never had a raison d’être.” The news, circulated by ANSA, adds that Correa, “prophesized ‘the demise’ of that organization given the many errors it has committed.”

He affirmed “that the countries of the American continent, given their geographic conditions, cannot all be put ‘in the same basket.’ And for that reason Ecuador proposed some months back the creation of the Organization of Latin American States.

“’It is not possible for the region’s problems to be discussed in Washington; let us construct something of our own, without countries alien to our culture, our values, and obviously including countries that were inexplicably separated from the inter-American system, and I am referring to the concrete case of Cuba… that was a tremendous shame and demonstrates the double standards that exist in international relations.’” On his arrival in Honduras, both President Zelaya and Correa stated that “The OAS must be reformed and reincorporate Cuba; if not, it will have to disappear.”

Another cable from the DPA news agency affirms:

“Cuba’s reintegration in the Organization of American States (OAS) has moved from being an issue per se of the organization’s General Assembly in Honduran San Pedro Sula, to once again being turned into an excuse for a struggle of interests that goes much further than the limits of the Caribbean island and could (once again) call hemispheric relations into question.

“The president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, made that very clear on describing the hemispheric meeting that begins this Tuesday in Honduras in quasi military terms.

“It will be,” he said, an ‘interesting battle’ in which if it is demonstrated that the OAS ‘continues being a ministry of the colonies’ that is not transformed in order ‘to subordinate itself to the will of the governments comprising it,’ it will be necessary to propose ‘leaving’ the organization and creating an alternative.”

“’Latin American countries are making Cuba the litmus test for the quality of the Obama administration’s approach to Latin America,” Julia E. Sweig, a Cuba scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations, told The Washington Post on the eve of the Honduran meeting.”

In resisting the aggressions of the most powerful empire ever to have existed, our people fought for the other sister peoples of this continent. The OAS was an accomplice of all the crimes committed against Cuba.

At one moment or another, the totality of the countries of Latin America were victims of interventions and political and economic aggression. There is not one single one that can deny that. It is naive to believe that the good intentions of a president of the United States can justify the existence of that institution that opened the gates to the Trojan horse that backed the Summits of the Americas, neoliberalism, drug trafficking, military bases and economic crises. Ignorance, underdevelopment, economic dependence, poverty, the forced return of those who emigrate in search of work, the brain drain, and even the sophisticated weapons of organized crime were the consequences of interventions and plundering proceeding from the North. Cuba, a little country, has demonstrated that it can resist the blockade and advance in many fields, and even cooperate with other countries.

Today’s speech by the president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, at the OAS General Assembly, contains principles that could go down in history. He said admirable things of his own country. I will confine myself to what he stated on Cuba.

“…In the Assembly of the Organization of American States that begins today in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, we must initiate the process of wise rectifications of old errors committed.

“We, the Latin Americans who were recently here, a couple of weeks or months ago, had a grand summit within the Rio Group in Salvador de Bahía, Brazil. There we made a commitment. The commitment, which was taken down in writing and unanimously by all of Latin America, is that in this San Pedro assembly, by majority vote or consensus, that old and worn error committed in 1962 of expelling the Cuban people from this organization would have to be amended.

“We must not go from this assembly, my dear dignitaries, without repealing the decree of that 8th meeting which sanctioned an entire people for having proclaimed socialist ideas and principles, principles now practiced in all parts of the world, including the United States and Europe (Applause). Today, principles of seeking different development alternatives are evident precisely in the change that there has been in the United States with the election of President Barack Obama…

“We cannot go from this assembly without making amends for that error and that infamy because, on the basis of this Organization of American States resolution, in existence for more than four decades, an unjust and useless blockade has been maintained against this sister people of Cuba, precisely because none of its aims have been achieved, but what it has demonstrated is that here, a few kilometers from our country, on a little island, there is a people prepared to resist and to make sacrifices for their independence and sovereignty.

“… not doing so would make us accomplices of a 1962 resolution to expel a state from the Organization of American States simple because it has other ideas, other thoughts, and proclaims principles of a different democracy. And we are not going to be accomplices of that.

“…We cannot go from this assembly without repealing what was enacted in that epoch.

“An exceptional Honduran, called in our country – and one of our national heroes – José Cecilio del Valle, the sage Valle, stated on April 17, 1826, in his famous article ‘Sovereignty and non-intervention’ – we had just proclaimed our independence from the Spanish kingdom – “’The nations of the world are independent and sovereign. Whatever its territorial extension or number of inhabitants might have been, a nation must treat others with the same treatment that it desires to receive from these. A nation does not have the right to intervene in the internal affairs of another nation.’”

With those words of Cecilio del Valle and the mention of Mahatma Gandhi, Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, Morazán, Martí, Sandino and Bolívar, he concluded his speech.

A few minutes later, at the press conference after the opening of the Assembly, he responded to questions and reiterated principles. Then he gave the floor to Daniel Ortega, who was the author of one of the most profound and well-argued papers at the OAS Assembly. At Zelaya’s invitation, Fernando Lugo, president of Paraguay, and Rigoberto Menchú also spoke, expressing themselves in terms similar to Zelaya and Daniel.

The Assembly has been debating for hours. As I am concluding this Reflection, almost at nightfall, there is still no news of the decision. It is known that Zelaya’s speech was influential. Chávez is talking with [Venezuelan Foreign Minister] Maduro and urging him to firmly maintain that no resolution can be admitted that conditions the repeal of the unjust sanction against Cuba. Never has such rebellion been seen. Without any doubt, the battle is a hard one. Many countries are dependent on the index finger of one hand of the government of the United States pointing at the Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the InterAmerican Development Bank or in any other direction for punishing rebelliousness. Having waged it is already a feat in itself on the part of the most rebellious. June 2, 2009 will be recalled by future generations.

Cuba is not an enemy of peace, nor reluctant to interchange or cooperation among countries of distinct political systems, but has been and always will be intransigent in the defense of its principles.

Fidel Castro signature

Fidel Castro Ruz – June 2, 2009

Earth First! Destroy What Destroys You!

Destroy what destroys you
It’s your last chance to see the EARTH FIRST! ROADSHOW as it passes through Denver, on its way to the Round River Rendezvous. Tonight, 7PM at Capitol Hill’s Gypsy House Cafe, at 13th and Marion.

From High Country Earth First:

A multi-dimensional presentation with an introduction to and history of Earth First!, News from the front lines of the radical environmental movement, information on local campaigns and struggles, puppet shows, skill sharing, music, movies, and much more!

Come to the Tuesday night event to learn more about High Country Earth First!, Colorado’s very own Earth First! group, and all of the awesome campaigns we are kicking off!

US Marines embed officer in Daily Show

Rob Riggle Daily Show US Marine
NPR just outed Rob Riggle! Maybe you knew it already, I did not, but Comedian Rob Riggle of the Daily Show is a Marine Corps Reserves Officer! The news story this Memorial Day being that Riggle just got promoted. His duty in the Marines? Public Relations Officer! On the DAILY SHOW, handling public relations, and he earned a promotion WTF!

We think of reservists like dry-season firefighters: in theory, volunteering to assist in times of crisis. Certainly “putting out fires” defines the challenges of media relations too.

Since when has it been okay to spend defense funding on making palatable what the military does? Defense Department propaganda aimed at the home front public used to be forbidden, when Josef Goebbels was still a bad example. Now we accept paying soldiers to kill civilians, and we need soldiers stationed in LA to keep us in a laughing mood about it.

So which is Rob Riggle’s day job, and which is his reservist post? Riggle’s reserve duty is mentioned in his Daily Show bio, as if he is a soldier. Basically Riggle is a military propagandist embedded with the Comedy Network.

A Night to disHonor Israeli indoctrination

Coloradans For Peace protest outside City Auditorium
GOOD NEWS FOR COLORADO SPRINGS- Not enough endtime zealots turned out to make today’s event scary, although those who did approach us with arguments were disturbing enough. By the way, the “Jewish Market” turned out to be a dozen tables, 75% of them with books, basically free propaganda literature (much of it from StandWithUs) making the case that Israel can do no wrong.

Darfur, the Israeli lobby & US Democrats

hillary-clinton-meets-israelWhat does it mean for Africa when right wing end-of-the- world-is-near evangelical Christians join forces with the Robert F. Kennedy Center For Human Rights? What does it mean for African Americans when Bush, Obama, and nearly all last year’s presidential candidates from both parties encourage the continuation of an African civil war rather than a political settlement between the parties? What does it mean when 21st century PR firms employ FaceBook, slick viral marketing and millions of dollars to create a simple, satisfying, feel-good excuse for military intervention on the African continent? –from Is There a Save Darfur Industrial Complex?

But Save Darfur has gotten into hot water with aid groups helping the refugees of the conflict.

In February it began a high-profile advertising campaign that included full-page newspaper ads, television spots and billboards calling for more aggressive action in Darfur, including the imposition of a no-flight zone over the region.

Aid groups and even some activists say banning flights could do more harm than good, because it could stop aid flights. Many aid groups fly white airplanes and helicopters that may look similar to those used by the Sudanese government, putting their workers at risk in a no-flight zone.

Sam Worthington, the president and chief executive of InterAction, a coalition of aid groups, complained to Mr. Rubenstein by e-mail that Save Darfur’s advertising was confusing the public and damaging the relief effort.

“I am deeply concerned by the inability of Save Darfur to be informed by the realities on the ground and to understand the consequences of your proposed actions,” Mr. Worthington wrote.

He noted that contrary to assertions in its initial ads, Save Darfur did not represent any of the organizations working in Darfur, and he accused it of “misstating facts.” He said its endorsement of plans that included a no-flight zone and the use of multilateral forces “could easily result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of individuals.”

Another aid group, Action Against Hunger, said in a statement last week that a forced intervention by United Nations troops without the approval of the Sudanese government “could have disastrous consequences that risk triggering a further escalation of violence while jeopardizing the provision of vital humanitarian assistance to millions of people.”

Aid groups also complain that Save Darfur, whose budget last year was $15 million, does not spend that money on aid for the long-suffering citizens of the region.

from the New York Times June 2, 2007 Darfur Advocacy Group Undergoes a Shake-Up

‘The “Save Darfur (Coalition) was created in 2005 by two groups concerned about genocide in the African country – the American Jewish World Service and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum…

‘The coalition has a staff of 30 with expertise in policy and public relations. Its budget was about $15 million in the most recent fiscal year…

from The Washington Post at http://www.overbrook.org/newsletter/06_07/pdfs/AJWS_Washington_Post.pdf

Hillary Clinton on Darfur as she calls for more Pentagon intervention and wars abroad. This is a woman that has no problem with genocide when committed by the US and/ or Israel.

Biden calls for military force in Darfur speaks for itself as he directly calls for a US military assault on Sudan See Joe Biden: Darfur as he calls for US troops to attack Sudan

With release of convicted Roxana Saberi, Iranian justice proves more fair than US

American TV reporter Roxana Saberi overstayed her welcome in Iran, despite the revocation of her press credentials, continuing to tape segments for pro-US-military propaganda outlets such as NPR and Fox News. She was detained, charged, convicted and sentenced earlier this year, which is more than the US has done for any of the detainees it has held for eight years, most of whom have turned out to be guilty of no crime, and all of whom the US also tortured. After much indignant hue and cry from the US, Iran has released Saberi to what may resemble the hero’s welcome given Jessica Lynch, another white girl rescued from uncivilized Islam. Will the US media bat an eyelash at the irony?

Virus H1N1 Pig Pork Ham Hog Swine Flu

Melissa Francis and Contessa BrewerMSNBC- Apparently “some importers don’t understand … you can’t catch Swine Flu from eating pork.” The perky MSNBC duo ridiculed China for banning pork from the US and Canada, but their guest expert interjected another priority: the correct term was “H1N1 virus,” not Swine Flu. Everyone agreed the distinction could quell international hysteria against the falsely accused.

Interesting that Health Officials should “STRESS THAT YOU CAN’T GET SWINE FLU FROM EATING PORK.” We need Health Officials to STRESS how to avoid Swine Flu, not where to avoid avoiding it. Leave it to the pork industry which brewed the swill, up from which Swine Flu had wafted, to clear their pork by-product for public consumption.

The Contessa Brewer & Melissa Francis Sweet Valley Twins act lets MSNBC set up contrived incredulity which consultants can confirm within the context of otherwise false assumptions. “Swine Flu has nothing to do with pigs, right? I mean, pigs don’t catch it, right?”

Neither Brewer nor Francis can be as dumb as they pretend. One graduated Magna Cum Laud, the other is a Harvard alumni. You might welcome an everywoman chattiness on a daytime news presentation, but playing to a lower denominator means that corporate spokesmen can relay their talking points without scrutiny.

On this program, the twin debs were perplexed by the apparent overreaction of Hong Kong officials, who quarantined a hotel, a vestage, it was determined, from their difficult experience with SARS. The MSNBC guest expert offered a further helpful obfuscation: medical researchers still don’t understand how SARS spread between hotel guests.

Thus, international scrutiny of hog production was greeted with an incurious derision. This has nothing to do with the pigs, right?

And you don’t get malaria from pools of standing water. Mosquitoes spread malaria and dengue fever among many tropical diseases. We can probably guess that Brewer, Francis and guest know that malaria control efforts center on mosquito breeding grounds.

But the guest kept up the ridicule of swine-focused measures. Egypt was trying to slaughter pigs which it considered vulnerable to the pandemic, how unfair. The expert wasn’t addressing the probable unfairness of the farmers targeted by the Egyptian government, the expert was speaking up for the poor hogs who would be slaughtered in vain. I may have mistaken a lament for lost pork chops, sooner than empathy for the misjudged pigs, but the latter seemed illogical. The poor hogs otherwise what future exactly, beside imminent slaughter?

Italy’s emperor gets hauled down

berlusconi.jpg Silvio Berlusconi reminds one of an Italian version of the fascist-leaning Fox News owner, Rupert Murdoch. Both own the press and in Berlusconi’s case, he even bought the top political position in his country though Murdoch likes to stay in the shadows and just buy the politicians. But now Italy’s emperor gets hauled down to the ground by his wife! She accuses him of being the sugar daddy for a 17 year old girl… Oh Slick Willy!

PROFILE of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi

“That’s enough, I cannot remain with a man who consorts with minors,” Ms (Veronica) Lario was quoted as saying in La Repubblica.

“I read in the papers about how he has been hanging around a minor – because he must have known her before she was 18 – and how she called him ‘Grandpa’ and about their meetings in Rome and Milan.

“This is no longer acceptable. How can I stay with such a man?” La Stampa quoted her as saying.

She also said Mr Berlusconi had failed to attend his own daughters’ 18th birthday celebrations.
————————————————————————————————————–
Well there! One can see that the Big Conservative Values Man of Italy has certainly fallen a bit short in the eyes of his current wife in the personal morality department. One wonders what Pope Rat thinks of all this? Will Silvio be forgiven in the eyes of the Church, if not his wife’s?

This Italian telenovela just keeps getting funnier and funnier. We want to say Poor Italy, but we really can’t, because they at least eat much better than we do in the US. Now where is Monica these days?

On a Nother News angle…

One of the Largest War Mongering corporations in Europe is having massive layoffs because the British are pulling out of Iraq.

Awwwwww….

Poor little “defense” Contractors who make all their money off KILLING BABIES.

Maybe they’ll have to get honest jobs or perhaps, you know, instead of investing Trillions of dollars and Euros in devising faster more efficient ways of Subjugating People or killing them when they resist…

Money supplied by the taxpayers of the nations in which they operate, virtually Tax Free themselves…

They could spend that money to, you know, BUILD a workable economy instead of Destroying the economy of the entire world.

Poetic Justice is when a War Contractor gets killed in an accident at one of his WarBucks Inc. “defense” plants.

Leischmaniasis.

An infestation of a parasite carried by a small genus of biting flies, Leischmania.

Most of them indigenous to Mesopotamia.

There was a BBC news show yestereven, about the British pulling out from their latest FAILED attempt to impose their “superior” culture and civilization on one of the oldest civilizations on Earth.

The Tommies were packing up all their gear to leave, they had tanks and trucks etc up on racks being power-washed and fine-cleaned to get rid of all the Iraqi sand… and especially the Leischmania flies and their eggs contained in that sand.

One of the Tommies said something that resonated, “We learned this a long time ago, UNLIKE THE YANKS WHO NEVER DID learn it”.

See, we were asked how exactly sand flies from Iraq could cause Leischmaniasis HERE, in Colorado Springs.

“Where, oh where” we were asked, “could those sand flies have come from?”

My sanity and that of Miss Johnnie were questioned at times…

That it would be somehow impossible to get the flies and therefore the parasites they carry from Iraq to the middle of the United States.

How about it, GI Joe types, when you came back, how thoroughly did you have to clean the gear?

Some of you were probably very good at it, but then, are ALL your comrades so diligent?

Is EVERY commander from that gigantic Mongolian Cluster Fuck as dedicated as perhaps your own officers?

You know as well as I do that some or perhaps most of them are the type who can’t find his ass with both hands.

The Army is still denying that they screwed up in this instance.

Or that Leischmaniasis even exists in Colorado.

Until last year they were officially denying that Gulf War Syndrome could have anything to do with the Depleted Uranium shells.

There’s still denials of PTSD and Helmet-head.

There’s still denials of Agent Orange.

You guys are being screwed by the Army even long after you leave, you really ought to get angry then get even.

Or at least get loud and get started demanding justice.

Don’t let them do a Bonus March Massacre on YOU.

UCSB Prof William Robinson pro-Semite

Putting down the Warsaw Ghetto uprising
Wouldn’t you think it bad form for Israeli militants to behave like Nazis, while immunizing themselves with the self-righteous indignation that any criticism of their actions can simply be dismissed as “anti-Semitic?” Photographs and confessions emerging from the IDF’s atrocities in Gaza just beg comparison the German Einsatzgruppen in Poland. Earlier this year UC Santa Barbara professor William Robinson forwarded an email photo essay to a UCSB listserv, the already much-circulated side by side comparison to the WWII atrocities. Two students complained, plagiarizing stock IDF lingo. Now the Anti-Defamation League wants Robinson to recant. With IDF propagandists pouring on the bullshit, let’s revisit the documents.

As has already been noted, Professor Robinson is a harsh critic of US foreign policy, and already a likely target for the goon squad enforcers of Western Capitalism. Not many of America’s actions are defensible, so Robinson has to be attacked by desperate means. Lucky for the lackey-jackals, Robinson chose to criticize Israel’s atrocities against the Palestinians of Gaza. Bingo!

The Israeli propaganda machine has armed aspiring Israel-defenders with a blanket rebuttal: just yell “ANTI-SEMITISM!” And what a load of crap that is. Much turns on the definition of “anti-Semitism.” It packs the punch of meaning someone who hates Jews, but the advocates of Zionism have expanded the definition into 3-D! Zionist apologist Nathan Sharansky has coined the 3D definition of ant-Semitism: demonization of Israel, double standards, and delegitimization. You don’t have to look closely to note that those points outline all the rebuttals of criticisms of Israel and any question of the legitimacy of the Zionist usurpation of Palestine.

The criticisms posed by those concerned for the fate of Gaza are the same expressed by a large portion of the Israeli Jewish population as well. But the US Israeli lobby, militantly Zionist, has the complicity of the US war-mongering corporate media, thus the IDF Megaphone protestations get traction. These are the same cheap shots leveled against Ward Churchill. By flooding the internet to create the sensation that the indignation was shared, the IDF spammers have been successful in slandering these dissenting academics.

Since we’re seeing this technique being slopped unto our comment forums, let’s examine the statement for which Robinson is being attacked. First we’ll present Robinson’s email. The next post will feature the ensuing letters of complaint, two from UCSB students, and third from the ADL.

Original Email
Here is Professor Robinson’s original email, including his attachment of the Judith Stone article. This accompanied the aforementioned photo essay he forwarded.

Subject: [socforum] parallel images of Nazis and Israelis
From: “William I. Robinson” …
Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2009 21:00:05

If Martin Luther King were alive on this day of January 19, 2009, there is no doubt that he would be condemning the Israeli aggression against Gaza along with U.S. military and political support for Israeli war crimes, or that he would be standing shoulder to shoulder with the Palestinians. I am forwarding some horrific, parallel images of Nazi atrocities against the Jews and Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians. Perhaps the most frightening are not those providing a graphic depiction of the carnage but that which shows Israeli children writing “with love” on a bomb that will tear apart Palestinian children.

Gaza is Israel’s Warsaw – a vast concentration camp that confined and blockaded Palestinians, subjecting them to the slow death of malnutrition, disease and despair, nearly two years before their subjection to the quick death of Israeli bombs. We are witness to a slow-motion process of genocide (Websters: “the systematic killing of, or a program of action intended to destroy, a whole national or ethnic group”), a process whose objective is not so much to physically eliminate each and every Palestinian than to eliminate the Palestinians as a people in any meaningful sense of the notion of people-hood.

The Israeli army is the fifth most potent military machine in the world and one that is backed by a propaganda machine that rivals and may well surpass that of the U.S., a machine that dares to make the ludicrous and obnoxious claim that opposition to the policies and practices of the Israeli state is anti-Semitism. It should be no surprise that a state founded on the negation of a people was one of the principal backers of the apartheid South African state not to mention of the Latin American military dictatorships until those regimes collapsed under mass protest, and today arms, trains, and advises military and paramilitary forces in Colombia, one of the world’s worst human rights violators.

Below is an article written by a U.S. Jew and sent to a Jewish newspaper. The editor of the paper was fired for publishing it.

Quest for Justice

By Judith Stone

I am a Jew. I was a participant in the Rally for the Right of Return to Palestine. It was the right thing to do.

I’ve heard about the European holocaust against the Jews since I was a small child. I’ve visited the memorials in Washington, DC and Jerusalem dedicated to Jewish lives lost and I’ve cried at the recognition to what level of atrocity mankind is capable of sinking.

Where are the Jews of conscience? No righteous malice can be held against the survivors of Hitler’s holocaust. These fragments of humanity were in no position to make choices beyond that of personal survival. We must not forget that being a survivor or a co-religionist of the victims of the European Holocaust does not grant dispensation from abiding by the rules of humanity.

“Never again” as a motto, rings hollow when it means “never again to us alone.” My generation was raised being led to believe that the biblical land was a vast desert inhabited by a handful of impoverished Palestinians living with their camels and eking out a living in the sand. The arrival of the Jews was touted as a tremendous benefit to these desert dwellers. Golda Mier even assured us that there “is no Palestinian problem.”

We know now this picture wasn’t as it was painted. Palestine was a land filled with people who called it home. There were thriving towns and villages, schools and hospitals. There were Jews, Christians and Muslims. In fact, prior to the occupation, Jews represented a mere 7 percent of the population and owned 3 percent of the land.

Taking the blinders off for a moment, I see a second atrocity perpetuated by the very people who should be exquisitely sensitive to the suffering of others. These people knew what it felt like to be ordered out of your home at gun point and forced to march into the night to unknown destinations or face execution on the spot. The people who displaced the Palestinians knew first hand what it means to watch your home in flames, to surrender everything dear to your heart at a moment’s notice. Bulldozers leveled hundreds of villages, along with the remains of the village inhabitants, the old and the young. This was nothing new to the world.

Poland is a vast graveyard of the Jews of Europe. Israel is the final resting place of the massacred Palestinian people. A short distance from the memorial to the Jewish children lost to the holocaust in Europe there is a leveled parking lot. Under this parking lot is what’s left of a once flourishing village and the bodies of men, women and children whose only crime was taking up needed space and not leaving graciously. This particular burial marker reads: “Public Parking”.

I’ve talked with Palestinians. I have yet to meet a Palestinian who hasn’t lost a member of their family to the Israeli Shoah, nor a Palestinian who cannot name a relative or friend languishing under inhumane conditions in an Israeli prison. Time and time again, Israel is cited for human rights violations to no avail. On a recent trip to Israel, I visited the refugee camps inhabited by a people who have waited 52 years in these ‘temporary’ camps to go home. Every Palestinian grandparent can tell you the name of their village, their street, and where the olive trees were planted. Their grandchildren may never have been home, but they can tell you where their great-grandfather lies buried and where the village well stood. The press has fostered the portrait of the Palestinian terrorist. But, the victims who rose up against human indignity in the Warsaw Ghetto are called heroes. Those who lost their lives are called martyrs. The Palestinian who tosses a rock in desperation is a terrorist.

Two years ago I drove through Palestine and watched intricate sprinkler systems watering lush green lawns of Zionist settlers in their new condominium complexes, surrounded by armed guards and barbed wire in the midst of a Palestinian community where there was not adequate water to drink and the surrounding fields were sandy and dry. University professor Moshe Zimmerman reported in the Jerusalem Post (April 30, 1995), “The Jewish children of Hebron are just like Hitler’s youth.”

We Jews are suing for restitution, lost wages, compensation for homes, land, slave labor and back wages in Europe. Am I a traitor of a Jew for supporting the right of return of the Palestinian refugees to their birthplace and compensation for what was taken that cannot be returned?

The Jewish dead cannot be brought back to life and neither can the Palestinian massacred be resurrected. David Ben Gurion said, “Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves…politically, we are the aggressors and they defend themselves…The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country…”

Palestine is a land that has been occupied and emptied of its people. It’s cultural and physical landmarks have been obliterated and replaced by tidy Hebrew signs. The history of a people was the first thing eradicated by the occupiers. The history of the indigenous people has been all but eradicated as though they never existed. And all this has been hailed by the world as a miraculous act of G-d. We must recognize that Israel’s existence is not even a question of legality so much as it is an illegal fait accompli realized through the use of force while supported by the Western powers. The UN missions directed at Israel in attempting to correct its violations of have thus far been futile.

In Hertzl’s “The Jewish State,” the father of Zionism said, “…We must investigate and take possession of the new Jewish country by means of every modern expedient.” I guess I agree with Ehud Barak (3 June 1998) when he said, “If I were a Palestinian, I’d also join a terror group.” I’d go a step further perhaps. Rather than throwing little stones in desperation, I’d hurtle a boulder.

Hopefully, somewhere deep inside, every Jew of conscience knows that this was no war; that this was not G-d’s restitution of the holy land to it’s rightful owners. We know that a human atrocity was and continues to be perpetuated against an innocent people who couldn’t come up with the arms and money to defend themselves against the western powers bent upon their demise as a people.

We cannot continue to say, “But what were we to do?” Zionism is not synonymous with Judaism. I wholly support the rally of the right of return of the Palestinian people.

Swine Flu alarm raised to nincompoop

There it is, health crisis confirmed. Today the WHO raised the pandemic alert level to five. Confirmed cases of Swine Flu H1N1 have now spread to ten countries and our health is in the hands of idiots. Conniving idiots. This morning President Obama announced the dreaded first US fatality, but declined to reveal specifics out of a concern for patient confidentiality. Through the day we learned that the US death wasn’t exactly representative of an accelerated infection rate. In reality the Swine Flu victim was a Mexican 23-month-old who’d been brought to the US for treatment. However, when CDC director Dr. Richard Besser was interviewed for the evening news, the alarm theme turned once again on the virus’s escalation with the death of the American child in Texas.

Though so far the US victims have suffered only mild cases, the CDC concludes on 4/29/2009:

“The more recent illnesses and the reported death suggest that a pattern of more severe illness associated with this virus may be emerging in the U.S.”

I find it loathsome that Right Wing Nuts are pointing the finger at Mexican immigrants, and I’m in favor of our hospitals attempting to help whoever they can. But I don’t think it’s fair to pretend that someone afflicted in Mexico, who comes to the US, should be counted as an example of the Swine Flu having spread within the US.

Wasn’t Barack Obama supposed to herald the expunging of at least the facade of duplicity from our policy makers? We do not want to close the US-Mexico border, we say, because it’s already too late, implying concern for relations with Mexican nationals. But hasn’t the border permanently closed to them already? It’s fortified by Minutemen vigilantes in fact? No, leaving the border open has everything to do with the products which US corporations are now producing in Mexico, both agricultural and industrial.

I have to admit I’m not surprised at the lies, there are innumerable reasons to obfuscate the truth, from protecting the pork industry, to boosting shareholder investment in pharmaceutical stock. But I didn’t expect the charade to be so incompetent.

Dr. Besser went on to repeat the instructions with which we are meant to arm ourselves against the pandemic. Are you comforted any by the “duck and cover” advice they have to offer? What to do in the even of a pandemic: 1) wash your hands often, 2) cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze, 3) stay home if you feel sick –I’ll interrupt to point out the obvious, this is not advice for staying well, it’s advice for not contaminating others with what you have– and 4) stay away from sick people. Is that how the health experts make themselves useful?

And what sick people might those be?

The other farcical component to this Keystone Docs epidemic is what’s passing for a description of the “flu.” Black Plague victims didn’t know what they were up against, and apparently neither do we. To my mind it would help immeasurably to know what exactly is the ailment. Oh, you know, flu-like symptoms, basically like the common cold, or a headache or sore throat, or mono or strep or a nondescript uneasy feeling, with a fever. When it comes to defining the flu, it’s as if medical science is in the Dark Age.

I omitted the last instruction: 5) If you think you might be ill, see your doctor.

Now, how many of us have doctors we can see, or are prompted to visit a doctor about a headache or a sore throat? I’m convinced that if this epidemic sweeps through before we can even guard our sneezes, it will be because few have access to medical help. Infections will go largely unreported because there’s no one to make a record of your ailment before the issue is settled about what insurance coverage you have. In El Paso County, budget cutbacks have left only a skeleton crew at the county health department. No one’s left to do the work of surveying the public health in these parts.

That is to say, the only agencies with manpower left, and the only health care generally available to the American public, are the morgues. That’s where and when this pandemic will be charted, if it materializes.

Thanks to Tamiflu, we may just avert the phantom menace entirely.