Peace Now?

Photo at left is of one of the thousands of Palestinian homes destroyed as mass punishment against Palestinian villagers. See http://www.interfaithpeaceinitiative.com/ProfitingFromOccupation.htm for more info

Nicholas Kristof has written some thoughtful columns recently on the situation in Israel and the occupied territories. I applaud him. Its refreshing to see a mainstream columnist finally shedding some needed light on the sorry mess that is Israel and Palestine. I (of course) have what in some quarters might be considered an extreme point of view but it certainly is degrees of magnitude less extreme than an Israeli colonist (I cannot call them "settlers") clubbing 4 innocent Palestinians. Where apartheid policies strangle freedom of movement so that women cannot get to hospitals to have their children and in some cases the babies have died. Or a Palestinian youth bereft of hope resorting to killing his or her hated oppressor by becoming a suicide bomber. I posted the following to Mr. Kristof's column.

----------

Its clear the Israeli government does not want peace. Although there are many peace loving people in Israel, alas there as in the United States they seem to be in the minority. Israel has its military-industrial complex too and its closely tied to America's. Conflate the untold billions made from the war trade with fanatic, fundamentalist Jews holding rational people hostage in their own country with the superstition that "Eretz" Israel was promised to them by God and you have a recipe for endless conflict.

America's financial support and security guarantees enable the Israeli government to act with impunity, which it does. The Palestinians, rightly or wrongly fight back with everything they have - one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

Israel is not a democracy any more than the US would be if it forcefully expelled all non Christians and allowed only Christians to become citizens. America must recognize the travesty and tragedy of supporting these policies. Blindness and collaboration with some of the most egregious human rights violations on the planet has cost us our position as honest brokers, if we ever really had it, and we now, witness 9/11, have become a target of the Islamic fundamentalists. Everytime you go through the security at an airport just think; why? We aren't hated for our freedom we are hated because we oppress and support oppression.

One state? It's the *only* solution. One person, one vote, Israel must be secular, the Zionist dream must join the other failed ideologies of the 20th Century, communism and fascism, on the dust heap of history. Insisting on a Jewish majority is simply a racist ideology and will fall of its own accord because it is wrong. It cannot stand. Sorry, but thats the truth and if you think about it everything else is just an incremental step to the inevitable.

Damn Liberal Media!

Katie Couric: "Senator Barack Obama said recently that there might have been improved security [in Iraq] even without the surge” “What’s your response to that?”

Senator McCain: "I don’t know how you respond to something that is such a false depiction of what actually happened. Colonel McFarland was contacted by one of the major Czechoslovak sheiks on the Iraq/Afghanistan border. Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening. I mean, that’s just a matter of history.


Aawww - I just kid the Senator.





Think its funny? Click the title for the link above

Shades of Herbert Hoover

Another clueless Republican mess you've gotten us into Stanley!

From the LA Times 7/14/08 "As thousands of customers waited hours in the heat Monday to withdraw deposits from failed IndyMac Bank, investors dumped the stocks of many mortgage lenders, precipitating the steepest one-day decline in banking shares since 1989.

Southern California fixtures Downey Financial Corp. and FirstFed Financial Corp., specialists in the nontraditional mortgages that fueled the housing boom, were among the hardest hit, with their stock prices down 24% and 19% respectively. Shares of Washington Mutual Inc., the biggest savings and loan, fell nearly 35%."


Join a credit union - at least your money will be lent to people like yourself instead of some high flying deal making super capitalist.

RED CROSS REPORTS GITMO WAR CRIMES

Weapons of mass deception

This is too funny. Looks like both the American and Iranian "Ministry of Truth" screwed up. Now it seems these aren't' even the type of missiles they were initially reported to be. Raw Story has a bit that says they are "old equipment" and "didn't demonstrate any new capabilities and may not have included the long-range missile Iran claims among those launched, a US official said."


Trouble is this image was on the front page of every major newspaper as well as many "respectable" Internet sites and the ignoramuses that are the majority of the American electorate won't see the retraction or the follow up stories and when the sabres are again rattled by the chimp-in-chief they will harken back to this image and be afraid... very afraid.