The Routes of Philadelphi

Gaza's only contact with the outside world ...

Israeli intelligence reminds me of the con man who thinks that if he says something convincingly enough and often enough his listener will believe him. And surprisingly many people are conned by such people. The reporters, though they dutifully reported the story left themselves an out in recognizing that Israeli officials have a tendency not only to attempt to snow the world media, but apparently to snow themselves (if they believe what they’re saying).

The only hopeful interpretation of this malarkey is that perhaps Israel makes this claim in order to prepare its own people for a near-term ceasefire. If they can convince the nation that it is Hamas clamoring for a ceasefire and ready to say “Uncle,” then it is easier to climb down from the precarious branch onto which they themselves have crawled.

I have said this any number of times and will say it yet again. There IS no way Israel can defeat Hamas short of occupying every square inch of Gaza and remaining there in force to prevent Hamas from reasserting itself. Hamas knows that no matter how severe the losses it must endure, it can only win. Even losing is a win as long as it survives.

Hamas, as Hezbollah before it in 2006, has emerged as the lions of resistance to Israel. Islamists the world over are lining up to do whatever they can to help Hamas. Israel’s assault throws Hamas ever more firmly into Iran’s embrace.

Richard Silverstein | If Wishing Made It So


... and a necessary means of survival ...

Even if the Israeli army were to succeed in killing every Hamas fighter to the last man, even then Hamas would win. The Hamas fighters would be seen as the paragons of the Arab nation, the heroes of the Palestinian people, models for emulation by every youngster in the Arab world. The West Bank would fall into the hands of Hamas like a ripe fruit, Fatah would drown in a sea of contempt, the Arab regimes would be threatened with collapse.

If the war ends with Hamas still standing, bloodied but unvanquished, in face of the mighty Israeli military machine, it will look like a fantastic victory, a victory of mind over matter.

What will be seared into the consciousness of the world will be the image of Israel as a blood-stained monster, ready at any moment to commit war crimes and not prepared to abide by any moral restraints. This will have severe consequences for our long-term future, our standing in the world, our chance of achieving peace and quiet.

In the end, this war is a crime against ourselves too, a crime against the State of Israel.

Uri Avnery | Israel Is Losing This War


... under threat.

Richard Silverstein's enjoyed a deserved spot on my blogroll for many years now. However, I was surprised to find him dropping a comment at Tom Feeley's remarkable news resource, InformationClearingHouse. Surprised because, while many of the articles Tom posts are essential reading, many of the comments turn my stomach.

This is especially true when it comes to articles addressing Israel's barbaric sixty-year genocide of the country's Palestinian population. I've learned over time that many commenters, professing to be from the so-called 'progressive left', are intolerant beyond measure. An inordinate number are out-and-out anti-Semites and display an innate but intense dislike of Jewish people.

And, let me be clear about this. Judaism or being Jewish has nothing whatsoever to do with Zionism or being an Israeli citizen. It's a case of "All Zionists are Jews but not all Jews are Zionists." Nor, it needs to be said, are all Zionists intent on wiping out Muslims. The state of psychosis in which Israelis live means many are unduly influenced by the fanatics and zealots holding sway. In short, they know no better.

Generally, scanning comments tends to spoil articles — the content of which is way above and beyond the grasp of many of its bigoted or racist readers. Take, for example, Mike Whitney's expectedly incisive article Two Years of Starvation Followed by Fire-bombing and Paul Craig Roberts's America’s Shame. Both deserve reading. And it was in the latter article that I found Richard's comment. My surprise was ameliorated by his answering a comment spammer, something he is inordinately well-qualified to do.

Do yourself a favour and read a Guardian article, Hasbara spam alert, written by Richard and posted to InformationClearingHouse by Tom. As he points out in the article, "Propaganda 2.0 is here" and, combined with racism, xenophobia and bigotry, boy is it ugly.

Notes:

1) Serving the interests of the Hasbara (Propaganda 2.0), The Wall Street Journal gives voice to the vegetative war beast, Ariel Sharon, through his former spokesman and now president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Dore Gold. Gold, the type of person from whom you'd not buy — or even accept, a used car, dishes up The Gaza-Egypt Smuggling Tunnels Must Be Closed, yet another spurious argument for further land grabs and Palestinian asphyxiation. Needless to say, the WSJ does not mention the two ghastly years (2002-2004) Gold spent articulating the dark visions of The Butcher of Sabra and Shatila, nor his stint as foreign policy advisor for fraudster, war criminal, and soon-to-be prime minister Bibi Netanyahu.

2) Seth Freeman yesterday penned So what if Israel uses the internet?, slamming Richard Silverstein's denunciation of the Israeli Foreign Ministry's abuse of Israeli citizens to disseminate disinformation and outright lies. So impassioned is Freeman's piece I've little doubt he'd have backed Joseph Geobbels's right to propagandize over the Internet had it been available to him.

Today, he bemoans Israeli intransigence and intolerance.

Whether on the balmy streets of Jaffa, or in the upper echelons of Israeli officialdom, the message appears to be the same: if you raise so much as a murmur of dissent in a time of war, the strong arm of Israeli law will come crashing down and stifle your protests in a flash. Israel's boast that it is the "only democracy in the Middle East" rings more hollow now than ever before.

One thing about Richard Silverstein. You can be pretty sure his values tomorrow will be consistent with those he espouses today. Freeman? Go figure.

U.S. Set to Dump Israel

From Kommetjie to Hout Bay

In a desperate effort to portray humiliating defeat as something more palatable, The Jerusalem Post — and just about any media outlet processing the effluvial outflow of Global Ministries of Truth, tells us: "Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told his cabinet on Sunday that Israel was 'closing in' on its goals."

Let's recall the 'goals' of Operation Cast Lead — and lead has certainly been cast with gay abandon. Keeping to the Dagan template, the Israelis, breaking a six-month ceasefire, sent into Gaza the much-vaunted military force broken by Hezbollah in 2006. Its stated objective — to irrevocably change the security situation in the south and to ensure Hamas never again sends a fertilizer-fuelled rocket zigzagging towards a fear-crazed Zionist stronghold.

To this end, the IDF has slaughtered close on a thousand civilians — a disproportionately large percentage of which were children, and given an immense boost to Hamas's popularity in the West Bank.

Confined to 80 square miles, Hamas and the Gaza population have held out for 18 days against the war crimes of the world's fourth-largest and most sophisticated military force. And, at great and brave cost, the white trails of rockets still streak across the sky towards Ashkelon, Ashdod, Sederot, Beer Sheva, and other Israeli towns and cities.

What are these 'goals' of which Olmert speaks? They certainly cannot be those of Operation Cast Lead, for it has failed miserably and handed, almost by default (Hamas has kept its operatives out of harm's way or smuggled many out of Gaza), a stunning victory to Gaza's people.

Despite enormous loss of life, global indifference and lack of support, as well as pitifully little in the way of weaponry, they have seen off — and profited from — the illegitimate, U.S.-sponsored rogue state that seeks their obliteration.

Israel, increasingly reviled worldwide as a criminal state, cannot get much right. In two years, it has lost two one-sided wars against neighborhood resistance movements. Most Israelis should by now realise the end is nigh. The neo-Nazi thugs masquerading as their leaders have brought forward, by years rather than months, their inevitable demise.

Without detracting from the enormity of Hamas's victory, Israel can take a great deal of credit for its own downfall. In a fast-evolving and changing global economy, the Dagan Plan is an anachronism that, like the American adventure in Iraq, will fail.


In the balance ...

It should not surprise anybody — outside of a news-starved U.S., if an Obama administration, in pursuit of China and Japan's willingness to fund enormous budget deficits for the foreseeable future, takes advantage of Iran's longstanding overtures for diplomatic and economic relations. Courting Iran would require a change in policy towards Israel, but that should not prove too difficult — despite the flowery rhetoric of the Senate Chamber.

The Zionists have outlived their usefulness to the U.S. and stand to hinder its relations with its current and future creditors. In short, the dollar's strength lies not in the West, but in the East and, when push comes to shove — as it has done, Americans are more likely to favor their currency than a group of rabid Zionists stuck without oil in the Middle Eastern deserts.

Obama's Democrats know this and I suspect the first four years of this administration will see the dollar's rescue, not through confrontation, but through a quiet, increasingly close engagement with Islamic and Eastern market leaders. During its second term, the administration will swiftly force a settlement very much like South Africa's on Israel.

Though it acquires billions of Euros worth of weaponry from Europe, Israel is almost completely dependent on the U.S. for its survival. Yet, over sixty years, it has neglected to pay the price of American largesse and has abused its subsidised freedom to a degree that beggars belief.

President Barack Obama is set to present the bill for such egregious conduct.

For the most part, the United States owes its pariah status to the excesses of Tel Aviv. Arrogant beyond international acceptability, the Zionist criminals who've led Israelis up the garden path for sixty years now make American leaders grovel before allowing their election. Nor, we might add, have America's intelligence agencies forgiven Israel its propensity to abuse its sponsor's goodwill.

Yet Obama slipped through the AIPAC net and he's built a hard-nosed team of pragmatists capable of making and implementing hard decisions.

By dropping Israel and normalising trade relations with the Muslim and Eastern blocs, the United States — at little cost, will secure for itself a reinvigorated dollar, economic stimulation, and the continuation of what is — be it a good or bad thing, an American century. The alternative, as B.J. Vorster so frequently and eloquently used to assert, is too ghastly to contemplate. Also, weapons' technology transfers to China would no longer need an Israeli middleman.

While Israel's leaders relocate to the United States, the average Zionist will remain in Palestine and learn some humility. A century after the Balfour Declaration, Israel — as we have known it, will cease to exist.


Kleinplaas Dam from Grootkop

Do Israelis understand or foresee this? No. George W. Bush recently had to put a hold on Israel using nuclear weapons against Iran. Operation Cast Lead, as much as it is an election stunt, also seeks to finalise with a British company Israel's seizure of Gaza's substantial untapped offshore gas reserves. Israel is, in anticipation of a far wider conflict encompassing perhaps Lebanon, importing large amounts of materiel.

It is following decidedly short-term rather than medium-to-long-term policies and, for doing so, will pay the ultimate price.

If the Obama administration does not, or is unable to, effect a dramatic turnaround in foreign policy and rid itself of the millstone Israel has been for so long (how successfully the British offloaded the 'problem' on to Washington), history will record the incoming administration's failure as the collapse of yet another pillar of Western civilization.

But I have great faith in The Kenyan. He has yet to let me down.

Note: I believe the Russian battle cruiser Pyotr Velikiy is docking in Cape Town. I must go down and get a couple of shots of it tomorrow. It's returning home from a state visit to Venezuela.

God Kills William Zanzinger

"The shame of Zantzinger is that he never mended his ways."

William Zanzinger, who at twenty-four years | Owns a tobacco farm of six hundred acres | With rich wealthy parents who provide and protect him | And high office relations in the politics of Maryland, | Reacted to his deed with a shrug of his shoulders | And swear words and sneering, and his tongue it was snarling, | In a matter of minutes on bail was out walking. | But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears, | Take the rag away from your face. | Now ain't the time for your tears.

Zantzinger, 69, died Saturday and was buried yesterday, according to the Brinsfield-Echols Funeral Home in Charlotte Hall. No cause of death was reported.

The Southern Maryland aristocrat was convicted of manslaughter in the death of 51-year-old Hattie Carroll. His crime never escaped memory after Dylan recorded "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll," released in a 1964 album. Dylan changed the name to "Zanzinger" by dropping the T.

Dylan described "Zanzinger" hitting the woman while twirling his cane "around his diamond ring finger."

Zantzinger, dressed in tails and wearing a carnation in his lapel, had complained that Carroll, a barmaid at Baltimore's old Emerson Hotel, was slow in bringing a drink he had ordered at the Spinsters Ball, an invitation-only social event.

"Give me a bourbon," the 24-year-old was quoted as saying in court testimony as he approached the bar. He later upbraided Carroll and struck her with a 26-cent, lightweight carnival-style cane.

After she was struck, Carroll, the mother of 11 children, leaned against the bar and told her fellow workers: "This man has upset me so, I feel deathly ill." She died hours later at Mercy Medical Center.

Zantzinger was also charged with striking another waitress, Ethel Hill, who suffered arm injuries, and a bellman, George N. Gesell.

"Isn't it amazing that Zantzinger is going out as the nation's first African-American president is about to take office," David Bruce Poole, a Hagerstown lawyer whose father was the Washington County state's attorney who assisted Baltimore prosecutors, said yesterday.

"What happened then was a seminal moment in Maryland's civil rights history," said Poole, who has the white cane Zantzinger used in the attack. Poole said he is planning to donate the cane to a museum.

Baltimore Sun | Southern farmer who attacked barmaid in '63 dies



In 1991, The Maryland Independent disclosed that Mr. Zantzinger had been collecting rent from black families living in shanties that he no longer owned; Charles County, Md., had foreclosed on them for unpaid taxes. The shanties lacked running water, toilets or outhouses. Not only had Mr. Zantzinger collected rent for properties he did not own, he also went to court to demand past-due rent, and won.

He pleaded guilty to 50 misdemeanor counts of deceptive trade practices, paid $62,000 in penalties and, under an 18-month sentence, spent only nights in jail.

New York Times | W. D. Zantzinger, Subject of Dylan Song, Dies at 69

In the courtroom of honor, the judge pounded his gavel | To show that all's equal and that the courts are on the level | And that the strings in the books ain't pulled and persuaded | And that even the nobles get properly handled | Once that the cops have chased after and caught 'em | And that the ladder of law has no top and no bottom, | Stared at the person who killed for no reason | Who just happened to be feelin' that way without warnin'. | And he spoke through his cloak, most deep and distinguished, | And handed out strongly, for penalty and repentance, | William Zanzinger with a six-month sentence. | Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears, | Bury the rag deep in your face | For now's the time for your tears.

Bob Dylan | The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll

Many thanks, Frank and Jeff. And Jeff, yes, it seems change is coming. It just sometimes seems like it takes a long time, is all.

"Me, I was born in 1941. That was the year they bombed Pearl Harbor. I've been living in a world of darkness ever since. But it looks like things are going to change now."

Bob Dylan, University of Minnesota, election night November 4, 2008

Faces of Gaza

Gaza girl

Warning! The above link, and that below, leads to a reality you might not wish to face.



Unlike these chaps, enjoying a bit of sport in the late-afternoon sun.

Then again, as my Atlantean brother Bruce points out, there was, is and, I hope, always will be Joe.

There's no smug satisfaction in watching this spectacle, just utter amazement at mankind itself, and the magnitude of our capability for folly, death and cruelty. Obviously, man's blindness and capability for denial of our very humanity itself is every bit as awesome in scale as our potential for spiritual realization and comprehension of the innate beauty of the earth.

Joe Bageant | New Year's Day in an old, old world

Note: Some of the images behind the top photograph above may predate the current Israeli slaughter in Gaza. One does. I uploaded this image, also present here, on 17 April 2005 — my memory's obviously not that far gone. I believe it comes from the July 23, 2002 assassination in Gaza of Hamas's military chief, Sheikh Salah Shahada, by a missile fired from an F-16.

Nine children died in the massacre of 15 people.

But we should not pretend — because of this exception and because these French and Arabic pages might well state they contain images from earlier war crimes in Gaza, that Hamas indulges in a propaganda more devious than that of the Israeli spinmeisters. A need to embellish unimaginable horror can only stem from that horror not being heeded.

And it's not heeded. The horror is sponsored, facilitated, financed, and fueled by those to whom Hamas appeals, i.e. the West.

"When we pass this resolution, the United States Senate will strengthen our historic bond with the state of Israel, by reaffirming Israel's inalienable right to defend against attacks from Gaza, as well as our support for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process,"

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid [D-NV] on the Senate's January 8, 2009 endorsement of the AIPAC-drafted resolution backing genocide in Gaza.

Little Eichmanns ...

Blood and Money

Click to enlarge ...

[T]he fiscal policy actions pursued thus far by the Bush administration, but even more so the policy proposals leaked by Obama’s proto-administration are afflicted by the Keynesian fallacy on steroids. They appear to exist outside time, with neither the long-run consequences of the actions like to be implemented over the next couple of years, nor the history that brought the US to its current predicament, the initial conditions, being given any serious attention. ...

The past eight years of imperial overstretch, hubris and domestic and international abuse of power on the part of the Bush administration has left the US materially weakened financially, economically, politically and morally. Even the most hard-nosed, Guantanamo-bay-indifferent potential foreign investor in the US must recognise that its financial system has collapsed. ...

There is no chance that a nation as reputationally scarred and maimed as the US is today could extract any true “alpha” from foreign investors for the next 25 years or so. So the US will have to start to pay a normal market price for the net resources it borrows from abroad. It will therefore have to start to generate primary surpluses, on average, for the indefinite future. ...

There will, before long (my best guess is between two and five years from now) be a global dumping of US dollar assets, including US government assets. Old habits die hard. The US dollar and US Treasury bills and bonds are still viewed as a safe haven by many. But learning takes place.

Willem Buiter | Can the US economy afford a Keynesian stimulus?

Willem Buiter's word is not to be taken lightly.

The fact is that recent economic numbers have been terrifying, not just in the United States but around the world. Manufacturing, in particular, is plunging everywhere. Banks aren’t lending; businesses and consumers aren’t spending. Let’s not mince words: This looks an awful lot like the beginning of a second Great Depression.

Paul Krugman | Fighting Off Depression

I wonder how long it'll take before the average economist and my bank manager wake up to reality. Here in South Africa we're so insular we appear incapable of seeing — let alone reading — the writing on the wall.


Click to enlarge ...

But that's by the by. I've yet to be seduced by Mammon and am pissed off by events far more meaningful than empty bank vaults and dance marathons. The genocide in Gaza is iconic. It displays, before the media and the world, on a stage 20 miles by four, man's inhumanity to man.

Jack Cluth, bless his crazed soul, decided to dip his social network into a hellbroth of white phosphorous and dismembered babies with Truth is ultimately in the eyes of those defining it. Happily, commenting on Facebook put me in Margaret and Audrey's company and open to Professor Avi Shlaim's pithy message in How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe.

America and the EU shamelessly joined Israel in ostracising and demonising the Hamas government and in trying to bring it down by withholding tax revenues and foreign aid. A surreal situation thus developed with a significant part of the international community imposing economic sanctions not against the occupier but against the occupied, not against the oppressor but against the oppressed. ...

This brief review of Israel's record over the past four decades makes it difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state with "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". A rogue state habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises terrorism — the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap fits and it must wear it. Israel's real aim is not peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbours but military domination.

Guardian | How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe

Read the rest. I could not, as they say, put it better myself. Nor could Sandra Sue. On discovering Jack's site to be an anti-Semitic Islamofascist terrorist cell, she opined, "And, Isreal (sic) is populated by African pygmies!" She gets a gold star for effort and a year's subscription to The Watchtower for defining her particular little truth.

The National Security Cabinet voted Wednesday in favor of continuing the IDF's military operation in the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, Jerusalem made it clear that Israel has not yet accepted the Egyptian-French ceasefire imitative.

The cabinet's decision implies that Israel believes that the objectives outlined for the Gaza operation have not yet been achieved. Therefore, in the coming days the IDF is expected to continue its ground offensive with the assistance of the Air Force and Navy. Israel's Gaza operation aims to deter Hamas from firing rockets on the country's south in the future.

ynetnews | Cabinet: Gaza op to continue

You didn't swallow this swill — the BBC and Voice of America, did you?

For updates from the real world and Gaza in particular, read The Voice of Palestine and watch al-Jazeera or, alternatively, Iran's PressTV.

So once again, Israel has opened the gates of hell to the Palestinians. Forty civilian refugees dead in a United Nations school, three more in another. Not bad for a night's work in Gaza by the army that believes in "purity of arms". But why should we be surprised?

Have we forgotten the 17,500 dead – almost all civilians, most of them children and women – in Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon; the 1,700 Palestinian civilian dead in the Sabra-Chatila massacre; the 1996 Qana massacre of 106 Lebanese civilian refugees, more than half of them children, at a UN base; the massacre of the Marwahin refugees who were ordered from their homes by the Israelis in 2006 then slaughtered by an Israeli helicopter crew; the 1,000 dead of that same 2006 bombardment and Lebanese invasion, almost all of them civilians?

Robert Fisk | Why do they hate the West so much, we will ask

The Gaza Ghetto Uprising

Nazi troops round up Polish Jews during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in May 1943. [Photographer Unknown]

When Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni was asked point blank by al-Jazeera's anchorman if Israel had an arrangement with Arab regimes to commit the Gaza massacres [map], she refused to answer and finally denied such an arrangement existed but could not help but affirm that there are those in the Arab world who "think" as Israel does and that Hamas is their enemy as it is the enemy of Israel. This is, incidentally, the same Tzipi Livni, who only a few weeks ago informed Palestinian citizens of Israel that she has slated them for denationalization and deportation to the Palestinian Bantustans once Israel and the international community grants these West Bank prisons the status of an independent Palestinian state enclosed within the apartheid wall. After her war on Palestinians in Gaza started last week, Livni declared that her war against the Palestinian people is not only about security but also about Israel's "values" which non-collaborator Palestinians (unlike the PCA) do not share. Livni is of course right. Unlike Livni and the Israeli leadership, whose ethnic-cleansing ideals and plans are to make Israel a purely Jewish state that is Palästinenser-rein, most Palestinians believe that they should remain present on their lands even and especially if this sullies the purity of a Jewish Israel.

Livni has also asserted that Israel's values are shared by the "free world" and by unfree Arab regimes that are allies of the "free world." We can add, that her values are also shared by Saudi-funded neoliberal Arab intellectuals and by the leadership of the Palestinian Collaborationist Authority ensconced in the Green Zone of Ramallah. The civilized values of Israel are not unlike those espoused by the US in its ongoing wars against Arabs and Muslims, and are very much like European colonial values during the high age of colonialism and beyond. Livni and the Israeli leadership speak of human rights, democracy, peace, and justice as universal while applying them only to Jews and denying them especially to Palestinians. This is hardly an Israeli ruse. Let us remember the undying words of Frantz Fanon in this regard: "Leave this Europe where they never tire of talking of man, yet murder men everywhere they find them, at the corner of every one of their own streets, in all the corners of the globe."

[...]

Szmul Zygielbojm was the leader of the Jewish socialist party, the Bund, in Poland and was part of the resistance against the Nazi invasion in 1939. He would later become a hostage held by the Nazis but would later be released and made a member of the Jewish council or judenrat, the Nazi equivalent of the Israeli-created Palestinian Collaborationist Authority, and which was charged with building a Jewish ghetto in Warsaw. Zygielbojm opposed the Nazi order and fled to Belgium, France, the US, and in 1942 ended up in London where he joined the Polish government in exile. On 12 May 1943, after he received word that the resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto was finally crushed and many of its fighters killed, Zygielbojm turned on the gas in his London flat and committed suicide in protest against the indifference and inaction of the Allies to the plight of the Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe. He also felt that he had no right to live after his comrades were killed resisting the Nazis. In his suicide letter, Zygielbojm insisted that while the Nazis were responsible for the murder of the Polish Jews, the Allies, through their inaction, were also guilty ...

more ...

Joseph Massad | The Gaza Ghetto Uprising

Breaking news from Al-Jazeera via Twitter

Wipe Israel off the Map

"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last ..."

While publicly declaring strong support for Israel, the Bush administration is increasingly nervous about the 4-day-old campaign in the Gaza Strip and is urging its ally to settle on a timetable and exit strategy, say foreign diplomats and Middle East experts close to the discussions.

The Los Angeles Times offers insight into reaction to Israel's latest series of war crimes. Washington is increasingly using a new diplomatic sop to excuse Zionist atrocities. Beyond the global propensity to decry "violence on both sides and seek a swift end to violence", the Yanks have developed — as if to claim some illusory authority, the request for "a timetable".

As the LA Times points out, this hopelessly transparent phrase was used extensively during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon two years ago. And we all know what happened there. Israel had its ass kicked, won't go back, and has now made bloody sure its "enemy" comprises starving people who cannot strike back.

First off, the United States wields no authority over Israel. Israel, through AIPAC, wields authority over the United States and uses it to fund its murderous rampages. Hence the USian administration's need to maintain two fictions; a) it has nothing to do with the Israeli war machine and, b) it's able to assert some nebulous power over the murderous Zionazi butchers.

It's bullshit. The world has changed. This is the Twenty-first Century and even trailer trash no longer swallow the swill shovelled out by the Ministry of Truth. Can the U.S. administration not get it?

Nobody believes it anymore. And by that I mean nobody.

Globally, we elect governments because we don't know what else to do. But, despite our impotence, we know that once we put politicians in office, all they do is lie.

It's become a full time occupation. "We condemn the actions of both sides and seek a swift end to this terrible violence."

Ho ho.


"... Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

"You're not hearing that same confidence you did in 2006 that the Israeli military can impose a new strategic reality and should go full force," said one Arab diplomat in Washington. "There's a real contrast between their words then and now."

Maybe some policy wonk has tipped off powerful people in powerful places — during a brief flash of lucidity, that things are not as they were. Perhaps the Arab diplomat quoted above did so in less tactful language. When the oppressed, blockaded, and starved citizens of Gaza were hit by a wave of F-16s, Apaches, big tanks, and even bigger guns, he was probably called into some lame-ass authoritative office decked out with flags and polish for a dressing down or "briefing".

I imagine his response to such a briefing might have been: "Go fuck yourselves. Who do you think you are? You no longer matter, you fucktards. Get used to it."

He'd be right. The article cites concerns that Israel's image might be further tarnished by prolonged "action". Go figure. Some retard — paid a salary, actually thinks Israel has a reputation worthy of maintenance. I guess, by electing these brutal fuckers, we are somewhat to blame for their delusions.

But it's now time some reality was introduced to their ongoing narrative.

Israel, a U.S. military base in the Middle East, produces nothing but carnage. It serves no good purpose, produces nothing of value, and exports only bloodshed. Its existence ensures the perpetuation of suffering.

Put simply, there is no good reason for its continued existence. Besides, I reckon most Americans are tired of paying for it and — of this I'm certain, most people elsewhere are more than gatvol hearing about it.

More, it is, was, and always will be a failed experiment in barbaric social engineering. The world wants a Palestine populated by Palestinians, be they Muslims or Jews. It doesn't matter to us. Just get rid of this "Israel" thing. It doesn't work. We don't want it or its silly flag.

If the Knesset won't dissolve itself, chuck 'em out. Use sanctions. Blockade the buggers. Dismantle their nukes and don't allow them to travel. Deport the bastards and tell them to go get their house in order.

We're tired of Israel. Wipe it off the map.

"... said the Americans, like the Israelis, wonder whether Hamas will emerge politically stronger, even if its military arsenal is badly depleted."

Los Angeles Times | Behind closed doors, U.S. seeks Israel exit strategy

I wonder who really "wonders". Hamas is the democratically elected government of the Palestinian people under occupation. Their stature grows with each refusal to acknowledge their real and legitimate authority. It doesn't matter whether you like them or not. They're there and they're not going to go away. Grow up and deal with it.

The Levee's Gonna Break

Lewis Gay Dam, Red Hill

Well, I worked on the levee, mama, both night and day | I worked on the levee, mama, both night and day | I got to the river and I threw my clothes away

How many ways can one spell Warsaw? I dunno, but I reckon the Israelis ree-ally feel bad about that one. Humiliated maybe. Ashamed, if you will. I mean, if you look at Gaza, the Knesset and IDF must share the Nazi view and, as such, continue to deny every memory of the Holocaust.

Israelis, by their actions, deny the Holocaust daily. They are all David Irvings now.


Brooklands

I paid my time and now I'm good as new, | I paid my time and now I'm as good as new. | They can't take me back unless I want them to

How is it that Israelis, who profess kinship and a shared religion with those who suffered during WWII, can look back and view their antecedents as inferior untermenschen good only for labor, medical experimentation, and extermination?

For is this not what the Zionists and all who support them have been acting out for sixty years in Gaza? It's not as though war crimes being perpetrated on a massive scale in Khan Younis, Rafah, and Gaza City are new to us.

"Hey, it's election time; let's fuck up some sand niggers." We're used to it. Hell, we accept it. In fact, let's be honest, we support it. Ask Barack Obama.

Worryingly, this time round it looks more serious.

It's as though the little Eichmanns in the Knesset are hellbent on implementing their Endlösung der Arabierfrage.

If it keep on raining, the levee's gonna break | If it keep on raining, the levee's gonna break | Some of these people gonna strip you of all they can take

Bob Dylan | The Levee's Gonna Break

I look forward to quoting Dylan's Death Is Not The End come payback time. It's been running around my mind these past few days: "When the cities are on fire with the burning flesh of men | Just remember that death is not the end | And you search in vain to find just one law abiding citizen | Just remember that death is not the end."

What goes around comes around. Trust me. They call it the Warsaw Syndrome.

We've got so used to the carnage of the Middle East that we don't care any more – providing we don't offend the Israelis. It's not clear how many of the Gaza dead are civilians, but the response of the Bush administration, not to mention the pusillanimous reaction of Gordon Brown, reaffirm for Arabs what they have known for decades: however they struggle against their antagonists, the West will take Israel's side.

Robert Fisk | Leaders lie, civilians die, and lessons of history are ignored

Blitzkrieg

Ground assault imminent

Iran has likened Israeli atrocities and its offensive against the defenseless people of Palestine to Hitler's crimes during World War II.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of an anti-Israeli demonstration held by Iranian parliamentarians on Sunday, senior lawmaker Allaeddin Boroujerdi said the Zionists were committing the same crimes that Adolph Hitler did during World War II.

"The Israeli's are killing the oppressed people of Palestine brutally," he said.

Israel launched heavy air strikes against 30 targets in Gaza, leaving more than one thousand people killed and wounded. The Israeli Defense Minister, Ehud Barak has warned that the operation "will go on and be intensified as long as necessary."

The Israeli strikes against Gaza continued for a second day on Sunday, bringing the number of those killed to 285. Israeli attacks against Gaza come amid reports of another ineffective Sunday UN Security Council resolution vetoed by Israel's staunch ally, the United States.

PressTV | Israel likened to Nazi Germany

At least one country remains unafraid of appropriately labeling the Zio-Nazis and their atrocities for what they are.

Again.

Peace and Grace ...

"Now, where are those bloody fish?"

There are two silences. One when no word is spoken. The other when perhaps a torrent of language is employed. This speech is speaking a language locked beneath it. That is its continual reference. The speech we hear is an indication of what we don't hear. It is a necessary avoidance, a violent, sly, anguished or mocking smokescreen which keeps the other in its place. When true silence falls, we are still left with echo but are nearer nakedness. One way of looking at speech is to say it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness.

[On silence as a theme and as a stage technique in Silence and Landscape.]

Harold Pinter 10.10.1930 — 24.12.2008

Feed the World ...

"Let them know it's Christmas time again."

Band Aid | Do They Know It's Christmas? November 29, 1984

• Gary Younge | Greed has pushed political credibility and financial trust into freefall

Truth and Politics

The Remains of the Day: Rhodes Memorial

The global financial system was teetering on the edge of collapse when President Bush and his economics team huddled in the Roosevelt Room of the White House for a briefing that, in the words of one participant, "scared the hell out of everybody."

It was Sept. 18. Lehman Brothers had just gone belly-up, overwhelmed by toxic mortgages. Bank of America had swallowed Merrill Lynch in a hastily arranged sale. Two days earlier, Mr. Bush had agreed to pump $85 billion into the failing insurance giant American International Group.

The president listened as Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, laid out the latest terrifying news: The credit markets, gripped by panic, had frozen overnight, and banks were refusing to lend money.

Then his Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., told him that to stave off disaster, he would have to sign off on the biggest government bailout in history.

Mr. Bush, according to several people in the room, paused for a single, stunned moment to take it all in.

"How," he wondered aloud, "did we get here?"

Eight years after arriving in Washington vowing to spread the dream of homeownership, Mr. Bush is leaving office, as he himself said recently, "faced with the prospect of a global meltdown" with roots in the housing sector he so ardently championed.

The New York Times | White House Philosophy Stoked Mortgage Bonfire

Such writing I cannot resist. It suggests the apocalyptic, promising all manner of catastrophe and calamity — perhaps even Armageddon. There's great injustice here. Good. It feeds my sense of moral indignation.¹

Who is this Hannah Arendt? What is she speaking about?² Bring her to me.

Needless to say, the White House did not appreciate the Times's well-researched, sympathetic overview of George W. Bush's ineptitude, published as part of a series of articles entitled The Reckoning.

Their discomfort probably had something to do with the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight's December 2003 Report of the Special Examination of Freddie Mac, the subsequent January 2004 Subcommittee on Capital Markets hearing, and the later shooting of the messenger, OFHEO chief Amando Falcon.

Bloomberg now tells us:

"A 13 percent drop in the median resale price was the most since records began in 1968 and was likely the largest since the 1930s, the National Association of Realtors said." ... "The figures were worse than economists had forecast and signal that the battered housing market that led the economy into a recession may be taking another lurch down."

Mind you, back in 2003 Americans were otherwise occupied and had little time to indulge rational or factual truths. I wrote at the time:

"Robert Jensen and Sam Husseini were out of the blocks at CounterPunch before anybody, running a scorching piece of satire, New Bush Tape Raises Fears of Attacks, within hours of Dubya's return. They've since been followed by a more serious look at America's freewheeling Jamie Oliver by Dave Lindorff. In Bush's Baghdad Pitstop, he revisits war zones trodden by former U.S. presidents, notably Johnson and Nixon in Vietnam, and raises the possibility:

"...this latest presidential war-zone junket will someday be seen as a precursor not of victory, but of increased bloodshed, a wider war, and quite possibly, of another humiliating defeat for American forces."

Military defeat was an unpopular truth four years ago. Today, it is accepted with equanimity. U.S. forces have been humiliated and their commander-in-chief has been dutifully pelted with shoes. On the same day, I compared Bush to Mugabe:

Now that Western media monopolies have successfully airbrushed Bush's crimes (his rape of the U.S. economy and illegal invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq), he is free to consolidate his beachhead on the Middle-Eastern mainland and his hold on the U.S. political system. As Democrats squabble over who should oppose the GOP death's head late next year, his political axmen are ridding the corridors of political power of all opposition, ensconcing themselves in the belly of a beast displaying a rapacious appetite for excess, deception and deceit.

Mugabe, promising retirement and a retreat from mainstream politics, is steaming ahead with plans to expel white farmers from Zimbabwe, crush his opposition and entrench Zanu-PF's position for decades to come. When the smoke and mirrors are removed, politics becomes a simple exercise in clawing one's way to the top and staying there.

Bush and Bob have much in common.

Little, bar the battlefield of choice, has changed — as Amando Falcon warned, and today's mainstream messengers are decidedly more blunt. Miguel Fernandez Ordonez, Governor of the Bank of Spain warned Sunday of total economic meltdown.

"This is the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression" he said.

We're hearing that a lot. I call my fascination with it "the visceral realisation of an emerging factual truth" to which most persist in turning a blind eye and, to ensure their continued ignorance, a deaf ear. The Associated Press tells us it's business as usual on Wall Street.

"Banks that are getting taxpayer bailouts awarded their top executives nearly $1.6 billion in salaries, bonuses, and other benefits last year, an Associated Press analysis reveals." ... "Benefits included cash bonuses, stock options, personal use of company jets and chauffeurs, home security, country club memberships and professional money management, the AP review of federal securities documents found."

This in the face of a recent 57-page report on business insolvencies worldwide released by Paris-based Euler Hermes, the world's largest credit insurer. After a 47 percent increase in U.S. bankruptcies during 2008 — including, worryingly, many household names, the report looks forward to 2009 and concludes:

"Credit to households and businesses has hardened, presaging a growing number of bankruptcies among US companies, with an increase of 50%, potentially to some 60,000 cases, a level last seen in 1993."

The news is bad. 2009 promises to bring worse. Is there a way out of this? Yes. Last month, I posted a detailed comment on a recently published book, Ellen Brown's The Web of Debt. Here it is again and, should we not effect meaningful systemic change globally, we'll (again) be unable to resort to "But we didn't know."³

¹ Phillip Hansen Hannah Arendt — Politics, History and Citizenship Stanford University Press 1993 pp90—116
² Alexander García Düttmann Making Poverty Visible — Three Theses Parrhessia Issue 4 2007 pp1—10
³ Stanley Hauerwas Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Truth and Politics The Center of Theological Inquiry Reflections Vol 6 2002

"Secretary Paulson, out in the real economy, the unbridled pursuit of greed that you and your friends on Wall Street have celebrated as a national religion has taken a terrible toll on ordinary Americans. Jobs with stagnant real wages have now given way to massive lay-offs, home foreclosures and real suffering."

Leo Gerard (USW) | Letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson October 28, 2008

The shifting of the political "site of struggle" from the bloodied sands of Mesopotamia to Wall Street was accompanied by a growing realization that the global economic crisis is far graver and more complex than many of us care to admit — but the solution far simpler.

However, economic illiteracy obscures both the problem and its solution.

If you read one book over the next year, choose The Web of Debt. Should you find yourself changing one or two misperceptions, you'll find Ellen Brown's skilfully researched reportage from the front lines of the global economy changing your view of economics radically and unequivocally.

The nut of it? We've fallen lock, stock, and barrel for one of the simplest, oldest, most dangerous, and frequently-practiced con tricks of all time.

Put simply, a private elite is charged with issuing money — created out of nothing — to the public and private sectors, for which it charges interest (not issued). The result is a dog-eat-dog world in which income disparity, scarcity, and the absolute concentration of wealth are inevitable. Bailouts of the uber-wealthy banking fraternity are not new and a derivatives collapse, worth several hundred trillion dollars and against which there is no insurance, looms.

In short, if you think the past few months have been rough ... When it comes to money, regulating a private sector given carte blanche to legally create its own wealth at the expense of others ain't gonna cut the mustard.

The scam is as blunt as it is craven. Rigging, fixing, and manipulation are entrenched, pandemic, pervasive and legal — infecting every part of the system. Share and gold prices will never again behave rationally.

Not for nothing is the current contrived charade posing as an economy derided as a Ponzi scheme. Yet, because we fail to question or do anything about it, it's hidden in plain sight. We are living in a cocoon of self-delusion and that's something for which we cannot blame the banks, the government, the economists, or the stockbrokers.

They have not deceived us. We have built our castles in the air and, a long time ago, decided to take up permanent residence. They're merely collecting the rent. We have conned ourselves and sought refuge in denial.

It's time to wake up and move beyond calls for Roosevelt-style New Deals to systemic change. Will Obama go the distance? It's not his call. It's up to the American people and central bankers worldwide to salvage a fundamentally sound infrastructure from the terminal folly of fiscal fools.

The author of Forbidden Medicine, Brown's remarkable work — unashamedly draws on the likes of Von Mises, Hayek, Rothbard, and LaRouche†, runs to 500 pages but, covering every rejoinder she might encounter to proposed solutions, it is current, immediately relevant, and reads as easily as a novel.

There is a way out of this mess — and it does not include cooperatives and credit unions, which do not address the interest problem; but it demands economic literacy (which this book provides in great measure), a willingness to take on the most powerful vested interests in the world, and the fortitude needed to endure changing to an equitable, sustainable system.

The good news? As it stands, and epitomized by the private Federal Reserve, much of the dysfunction tacked to the present system has been around less than a century — the 1913 Federal Reserve Act formed a tipping point. It forms a mere blip on the history of economics. Its solution, wholly American and capitalist — refining age-old European economic practices, was the norm in saner times.

Better still, it worked (you can blame the Brits and the gargoyles of Wall Street — watering away the wealth of taxpayers, for its disastrous demise).

It's time to spread the wealth.

† On making a couple of references to the controversial Lyndon LaRouche (an undoubtedly brilliant but morally repugnant man), Brown comments:

"On LaRouche, I'm neither a supporter nor a detractor; I'm just a researcher, reporting what I read that seems interesting and worth repeating, and his researchers have some of the most interesting material available on the subject, as you acknowledge."

To her credit, Brown's rigorous and all-inclusive research shows neither fear nor favor. She eschews embellishment and partiality. Our practice of economics, underpinning our daily reality, is far stranger and infinitely more terrifying than any fiction.

Note: If anyone can point to comprehensive reviews by recognized economists criticizing or highlighting technical or substantive shortfalls in The Web of Debt, please send me the links. I doubt there will be many. It'd take a sage or a fool to argue the veracity of the fundamentals espoused by this most necessary antidote to the malignant tumor destroying our global economy.

"And perhaps the most important, there's been — the Fed in 1989 created what is called the Plunge Protection Team, which is the Federal Reserve, big major banks, representatives of the New York Stock Exchange and the other exchanges, and there — they have been meeting informally so far, and they have kind of an informal agreement among major banks to come in and start to buy stock if there appears to be a problem."

Clinton economic advisor George Stephanopoulos [September 17, 2001]

No matter the size of the lie, a factual truth will always surmount it. Somehow, though, I've a feeling we'll have to go through a full-blown Depression before we come to accept it.