"Tails to kites" -- America, Israel and the megalomania of exceptionalism

When W.E.B. Dubois wrote, "Why I won't vote" in October 1956, I was three months old.  As I read it this week at 56 however, it seemed he'd just written it today! If you don't believe me,  just take the time to read it.

But this post is not about elections (well, not exactly).  It is primarily about Israel's undue influence on, and blatant disregard for, America (except as its battering ram, of course) - and how that influence can be fashioned, into yet another "necessary war" by the Changeling and his handlers, if we don't step up and say loudly,"Never Again!"

Substituting  "Conservatives" for "A.D.A.'s," Dubois hit the nail on its proverbial head with his "kites and tails" analogy in the essay.  It seemed a perfect, and continuing description of the relationship between America and Israel -- "... they seek to act as tails to kites.  But since the kites are self-propelled and radar-controlled, tails are quite superfluous and rather silly."  After watching this newly revealed video, posted by Brother nomad at ironymous this week, there should be no doubt in your mind exactly who the "kite" is:




So, in 2001, any West Bank land that Israel wanted to retain was to be declared, "military and security zones."  And in 2012, we have this, Israel orders demolition of 8 Palestinian villages for IDF training sites; and this, Israel may revive illegal Palestinian home-razing policy -- all while those "quite superfluous and rather silly" tails (America and those other, neocolonial "usual suspects") -- stand by and do nothing.

Adding insult to injury, Bibi brags at the 1:04 click, "I know what America is.  America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won't get in the way."

And nothing proves him more right, about how "very easily" America is to move, than this recent laugh-a-palooza at the DNC (Please, do look at the couple's faces at the 1:09, 2:43 and 3:15 - 3:25 clicks!):



Well Mr. Zogby, you can say, "I don't know" all you want, but according to this piece in the San Francisco Chronicle -- he most certainly did:  Obama Changes Platform to Back Jerusalem as Israeli Capital:

"The president yesterday “said put it back in,” said Robert Wexler, a former Florida Democratic congressman who is president of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace.

The change was sought because “the president wanted certainty regarding his steadfast commitment to Israel,” said Wexler, who was part of the discussions among the White House and Democratic lawmakers."

Hm-m-m, seems Bibi really does know "what America is."

"People who treat other people as less than human, must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned."

James Baldwin

With both, Israel and America -- Denying the Israeli Past, while continuing to ignore its present, I can't help but believe that, like America (given its ever-increasing spate of retaliatory incidents from without, as well as home-grown carnage from within), Israel should certainly consider Mr. Baldwin's prescient and wholly logical, admonition.

Fear can either be a great motivator -- or stop you dead in your tracks. And beneath all of Israel's drum-beating and chest-thumping for war with Iran -- I smell fear.

But it's not the, "We're just trying to live peacefully here in our (stolen) homeland, but the Muslim world just hates us and wants to wipe us out" kind of fear, necessarily (though it is that, in a revisionist history kind of way); it seems more like the "poisoned bread" kind of fear, about which Baldwin warned, that says, "Oh shit! Our continuing, foot-on-neck, ethnic cleansing-fueled, occupation will soon bite us in the ass if we don't hurry up and wipe them out" kind of fear -- particularly for the Zionists.

Haaretz writer, Amira Hass, addresses the latter pretty clearly in her, pot-meet-kettle, "Israel must understand it cannot be like America" piece (Yeah, I always like it when somebody other than me, calls "real Americans" out on their hardly, "exceptional" bullshit):

The labyrinth of interchanges and roads on the way to Jerusalem tells of planners, ministers, mayors and contractors who "think America." We have gotten used to dimensions that dwarf anything that is not asphalt - people and trees, for example. We have gotten used to "transportation solutions" that gobble up nature. Moreover it's as if, without meaning to, these so-called solutions are tearing apart the existing social fabric.

If it were only a matter of ministers, planners and asphalt, so be it. But thinking America has become a character trait. Thinking America guides Jewish-Israeli society in its policy toward our very own red Indians. Why should we be less successful than the United States, Canada or Australia, which, as they came into being and gained world eminence, wiped out - to differing degrees - the societies and communities that lived there before?

Now, when the remnants of the first peoples in those countries dare to demand rights, a share in resources and compensation, they no longer endanger whites and their hegemony. And this could be just as true for us...

Though I agree with her that, the "remnants of the first peoples" in the countries she listed, now can, and do "demand rights, a share in resources and compensation," that certainly doesn't mean they're getting anywhere near what they're owed (Now I could be wrong, and  If I am, I'd appreciate someone from those other two countries she mentioned offering their current, real-world experience).

And while they kinda sorta co-exist with their oppressors often in, or very close to, poverty conditions and definitely not equally -- it's obvious their mere existence still seems to threaten the "hegemony" of the alabaster brethren among whom they live.  It's abundantly clear in the way they continue to mistreat them, even down to the refusal of said brethren and sistren to stop using the word "our" when talking about "Others" -- as if they're nothing but personal property (i.e. "our very own red Indians," or Ann Coulter's, "our Blacks," in referring to Herman Cain).

Those who insist "on being white and other lies," are all afraid because of what they've done to other human beings.  They're clearly afraid of the possible vengeance those deeds might one day provoke -- hence the need for all the guns; the police state apparatus; mass incarceration of those to which they've done all these horribly, inhumane things, occupation and yes, war.



In this piece from RT News, Bibi's fear is showing.  And despite Panetta's, Deputy Dawg posturing -- it's evident that this Israeli piece of "bread," which Americans have "cast on the waters," has definitely come "floating back to them poisoned" in the person of one, Benjamin Netanyahu.

(Interesting that Panetta met with Ehud Barak in Ashkelon, the city in which whistle-blowing, nuclear scientist, Mordechai Vanunu was imprisoned for 18 years, because he told the truth about Israel's secret proliferation of nuclear weapons in Dimona.  Kindly allow me this brief, non-revisionist history interlude in the service of that truth):




Back to the afore-mentioned, RT News piece:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said sanctions were not curbing Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. He waved off the visiting Pentagon chief’s advice to stick to a diplomatic resolution of the crisis.

At a Wednesday meeting with US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in Jerusalem, Netanyahu suggested that Israel’s patience with Iran was reaching the end of its tenure.

"Right now the Iranian regime believes that the international community does not have the will to stop its nuclear program," he noted. "This must change, and it must change quickly because time to resolve this issue peacefully is running out."

He stressed that while the sanctions were hurting Iran’s economy, they were failing to force it to abandon its nuclear program.

“Neither sanctions nor diplomacy has yet had any impact on Iran's nuclear weapons program,” Netanyahu said.

Seems the American, Dr. Frankenstein is being backed into a corner by its "monster" -- a corner from which, it will not emerge unscathed.

Sanctions

The Changeling, like his predecessors, is aggressively peddling sanctions as a "soft" approach to stop Iran's alleged, nuclear weapons program, even though Iran, a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, has the "inalienable right," under Article IV, "to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. . .” (something no one has yet been able to dispute they are doing).  Israel on the other hand, as a non-signatory, can pretty much do whatever the hell it wants.

Sanctions are just another bullying, rather than diplomatic attempt to make the Iranians "heel," while covering up the non-partisan greed of America and those "quite superfluous and rather silly" other tails in the Western world. Hold onto your heart, as John Pilger documents the continued fall-out from another of America's "soft" approaches -- sanctions in Iraq:



This is what "American exceptionalism" looks like.  And since, "America is a thing you can move very easily..." -- it seems there'll be plenty more of it. {smdh}

I think I'll end this with some sage words from Noam Chomsky with which I agree: "The US and Israel, Not Iran, Threaten Peace."


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