Glen Ford -- "making it plain"

Please, follow the source link to the podcast and hear views rarely shared in the MSM.

Related:
Humanitarian Coverup: Why is Obama Silent Over the New Congo War?

"First they came...

“First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.”

Martin Niemoeller

While the MSM continues to twist the facts to suit the powerful, Israel continues it's murderous attacks on the people of Gaza (where in the hell is Cynthia McKinney when you need her??).  I'd initially planned to repost parts of the extremely on-point piece, "Elites Will Make Gazans of Us All" by Chris Hedges over at Truthdig, but when I visited Dark Daughta's site and saw this video of Hedges delivering his, "It is not a war. it is murder..." speech -- the words, accompanied by those haunting images of what Israel is arrogantly and without conscience, perpetrating against the Palestinian people -- in their own homeland -- shook my very soul.

So with a h/t to my Sister (cuz I can't hold this shit in any longer), here's her post in which the speech is embedded (Please, do check out this Sister's blog!):

~#~

"They are calling out, but greedy psychopaths cannot listen..."




(Follow the link to Hedges' Truthdig piece above -- the entire read is certainly well worth it!)

~#~

Israel has guilted the whole world for sitting back and watching what the Nazis were doing to the Jews, and I kinda get that (wish Black folk had that kind of power and influence regarding slavery and Jim Crow -- "nkali" as my young sister, Chimamanda Adichie describes it.  But then again, alabaster, we are not).  But getting gazillions of dollars from here there and everywhere, museums, special visa and education dispensations and most importantly -- stockpiles of military hardware of every stripe, to include -- "REAL" nuclear WMDs, as well as, missile defense systems to thwart most attacks??  As Hedges says, America is their number one supplier of all of the above.

The "real," exceptional Americans have been Punk'd y'all.  And given ALL THIS (sit back, relax and put your feet up) -- what fool thought that giving up all that shit was a good damned idea?! {smdh}  From the link:

Congress doesn’t seem to share the concern. "Part of the responsibility of Congress," says Bamford, "is not just to oversee the intelligence community but to look into the companies with which the intelligence community contracts. They’re just very sloppy about this." According to the Bush administration intelligence official who spoke with me, "Frustratingly, I did not get the sense that our government was stepping up to this and grasping the bull by the horns." Another former high level U.S. intelligence official told me, "The fact of the vulnerability of our telecom backbone is indisputable. How it came to pass, why nothing has been done, who has done what -- these are the incendiary questions." There is also the fundamental fact that the wiretap technologies implemented by Verint, Narus and other Israeli companies are fully in place and no alternative is on the horizon. "There is a technical path dependence problem," says the Bush administration official. "I have been told nobody else makes software like this for the big digital switches, so that is part of the problem. Other issues," he adds, "compound the problem" -- referring to the sensitivity of the U.S.-Israel relationship.

And that, of course, is the elephant in the room. "Whether it’s a Democratic or Republican administration, you don’t bad-mouth Israel if you want to get ahead," says former CIA counterterrorism officer Philip Giraldi. "Most of the people in the agency were very concerned about Israeli espionage and Israeli actions against U.S. interests. Everybody was aware of it. Everybody hated it. But they wouldn’t get promoted if they spoke out. Israel has a privileged position and that’s the way things are. It’s crazy. And everybody knows it’s crazy." (all emphasis mine)

Given the fact that Bibi's made his loathing of Chocolate Jesus quite clear, can somebody please tell me why I'm thinking that, "keeping your friends close, but your enemies closer" will one day have Israel turning our own weapons on us?  Is it just me, or is this utter madness?

We, who have hearts, minds, souls and an ounce of humanity, would do well to keep Niemoeller's words in the forefront of our consciousness because -- they are already coming!  The Jews, of all people, have become the modern-day Nazis that they so detested.

Better yet, in whatever way you can -- STAND.THE.HELL.UP!  Tell the Changeling and his Congress of not even useful idiots, "I do NOT have Israel's back!!  No more murdering in my name, nor with my tax dollars!"  Of course then -- you might have to duck and cover!

Related:
- Bloodlust in Israel: 'Flatten Gaza, send it back to Middle Ages, they need to die!'
-The US-Israeli Attack on Gaza

Close-ally murder -- guess we still don't have enough blood on our hands

UPDATE:  My learned Sister Carolyn shared these links with me in the comments, but once I watched, I had to add them here:





And let's not forget where Israel gets their shit (to include those nukes nobody but Mordechai Vanunu is willing to talk about)!  Gilad Shalit is home in Israel, safe and sound and Palestinians are still dying -- while the whole world watches.

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Yesterday, while most Americans were caught up in another episode of "All My Generals," -- this is what Israel was doing in Gaza:



My, my, my.  Sure can't blame Julian Assange, Bradley Manning or WikiLeaks on "exposing" this targeted murder of Ahmed Jabri, the head of Hamas' military wing in the Gaza Strip.  This video is courtesy of the IDF, themselves (pretty sure Qaddaffi, wherever he is, knows exactly what this is all about).

Natasha Lennard's, "The latest from Gaza?" offers an interesting blow-by-blow of the continuing, "David and Goliath" struggle going on (no need to point out who's Goliath is there?).

If it weren't such a tragic piece of reality, I'd have to say h/t to Bibi for boxing the Changeling into that "pragmatic strategy" for which all you armchair enthusiasts (who think you're really a part of this damned game) like to pat his ass on the back. Lest we forget Bibi did support Romney:

But it is tragic, and we, here, should all be ashamed of the blood on our hands (particularly the, "I've got Israel's back" guy):

Israeli aircraft have bombed tunnels on Gaza’s border with Egypt through which basic civilian goods and arms destined for militant groups pass into the tightly blockaded region.

White House adviser Ben Rhodes said Thursday afternoon that the U.S. has asked countries that have contact with Hamas to urge the group to stop its rocket attacks.

Then he says this!

"We’ve … urged those that have a degree of influence with Hamas such as Turkey, and Egypt and some of our European partners to use that influence to urge Hamas to de-escalate." Meanwhile, Rhodes made clear that no such de-escalation requests were made by the U.S. to Israel. “Ultimately it’s up to the Israeli government to make determinations about how they’re going to carry out their military objectives” he told press. (emphasis mine)

What kind of schizophrenia is that??!

Update (Nov. 15, 11.00 a.m. EST): The death toll continued to rise in Gaza on the second day of Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense — a full military assault which began yesterday with airstrikes that killed Hamas military leader Ahmad Jabari. Reuters, citing the Gaza health ministry, says the death toll in the blockaded region since the start of the Israeli operation has risen to 15, including eight civilians among them a pregnant woman with twins, an 11-month old boy and three infants. Meanwhile three Israelis have been killed since Wednesday by Palestinian rocket fire.

Please, do read all of Ms. Lennard's piece and then explain to me about "balance of power." And when you're done, watch, and think about this:

  

Related:
- Obama's kill list policy compels US support for Israeli attacks on Gaza
-Israel and Hamas Step Up Air Attacks in Gaza Clash
-Israel Escalates Gaza Attack With Assassination
-When Former CIA Chief David Petraeus Enraged the Israel Lobby

Bill Moyers, a rare and dying breed of journalist - on Gaza

Bombs and banks - and a complicit Congress

I was watching David Sanger on CNN talking about this, U.S. Rejected Aid for Israeli Raid on Iranian Nuclear Site and thought, "They want us to give them more weapons just to use on Iran. Right." Then I thought, "All out war on Iran - over Iraq?" What the hell??? Involved in WWIII because they don't trust Shrub to "handle" Iran before he leaves and no confidence in any return on all those AIPAC dollars they gave the Changeling once he gets in.

Then, I went to AROO and read this, "The Bag Lady's Lament", which led me to this:

"Life savings gone, 'Madoffed' best-selling writer back at work", which led me surprisingly to this:

"Madoff investors may get money back" Those fleeced by $50 billion fraud may be able to retrieve funds from Securities Investor Protection Corp in a few months, Congressional non-profit says. In which I found this: "SIPC is a non-profit agency set up by Congress to maintain a fund to help investors who had accounts at brokerage firms that failed."

Congress set this up? Did they set anything up for anybody else who lost their shirts in this Ponzi scheme of a bailout to the same banks that caused them to lose their shirts in the first place with all their mortgage schemes and not-representing-any-real-money-credit default swaps/derivatives games?

Gotta do something for all those AIPAC dollars spent I guess.

"Open up and let the wind blow through..."

This wonderfully written example of humanity ran in counterpunch.com's Weekend Edition, January 2 - 4, 2009. It was so thoughtful, so honest, so true - I wrote the author for permission to reprint it here in it's entirety and she said yes. I'm glad. It's a decidedly different, first-hand account of what is happening in Gaza - one our media rarely, if ever portrays. Enjoy!

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Hearts Are Made to Be Broken Shiv'a in Gaza, December 2008 By DEB REICH

"My heart has been broken so many times, writes Alice Walker somewhere, that it feels like an open suitcase with the wind blowing through it" … But maybe, she muses, hearts are made to be broken, and what is required of us is simply a steadfast acknowledgment: Open up and let the wind blow through; that's what hearts are for.

If so, Gaza 2008 is good cardiac training.

I am an American-Israeli Jewish woman of 60 living now in an Arab town in Israel and working for Jewish-Palestinian-Arab-Israeli reconciliation. I have two friends in Gaza and I will tell you how we came to be acquainted.

The first step was simply refusing to be enemies. There are thousands of Palestinians and Jews like me, in the Middle East and worldwide, who refuse to be enemies. We rarely make the headlines in your local paper, but we are here. One day we will prevail - not over anyone, but with everyone together. We are creating a new reality together and the paradigm, sooner or later, will shift decisively. Meantime, people needlessly bleed and suffer and die and mourn; the scenarios are endless but the outcomes are identical: death, injury, pain. What distinguishes Gazan suffering at the moment is that the noncombatants have nowhere to run to. The borders are sealed. The bombs fall. The world watches.

* * *

In 2006, one of my several informally adopted children, business consultant and "business for peace" activist Sam Bahour of Al Bireh, Palestine, started an Arabic-English-Arabic translation service, AIM Word Factory. A key goal was to provide employment for underemployed Gazan translators. To have the honor of being one of the first customers and helping that great idea launch, I sent him, for translation into Arabic, an anti-war story I wrote many years ago called "Dudu in Heaven," about an Israeli woman who loses her brother in the 1967 Six-Day War. The translator in Gaza was a young professional named Maha M., and the shared literary mission led to some email exchanges, all conducted via Sam. "Maha says the story is too sad," Sam reported at one point. "She likes it very much, but she says you ought to write a happier one next time."

Not long ago, I discovered that Maha's nephew Mohammed, 14, is the boy whom Sam has been helping for some years now in a very personal struggle with a rare inherited immune disease, CGD. Sam donates and helps raise money from private donors for Mo's treatment and medication and has been successful in assisting Maha to get the necessary "permits" from Israel to enable her to accompany Mo for his treatment. Mo became a patient at the Edmond and Lily Safra Children's Hospital, Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, an excellent Israeli facility near Tel Aviv. ("Everyone on the medical staff will go straight to heaven someday," says Sam.) Mo and Maha recently spent two and a half months at the hospital and the nearby Bet Hayeled ("Children's House"), the hostel for young patients and their families on the hospital grounds; their "permits" do not permit them to leave the campus and their travel documents are deposited with the guard at the hospital entrance. This is the reality of Israel and Palestine, so far; the change we are struggling to midwife is not yet. In November, Mo underwent a bone marrow transplant at Tel Hashomer.

I only discovered that our Gaza-based translator of "Dudu in Heaven" was in Israel toward the end of their stay, early in December when Sam mentioned it by chance. I got organized fairly quickly and went to visit them, accompanied by Abdalla, the 22-year-old son of my landlord upstairs. I figured Mo would enjoy an Arabic-speaking visitor and Abdalla was happy to oblige. We invested in an enormous basket of chocolates - "the absolutely correct gift to bring to a Palestinian child in the hospital," according to Abdalla - chocolate being one of those things that evidently transcend cultures. Also for the young patient, Abdalla's mom Faryal contributed some never-worn boy's jeans and sweatshirts that her sister Shadya in New Jersey sent recently for Abdalla's kid brother, who is too big to wear them. For Maha, I raided my bookshelf and selected Garrison Keillor's anthology, "Good Poems for Hard Times," and a couple of other books I thought she might enjoy.

We drove to the hospital and found Maha and Mo and a parking space, and had a wonderful visit, everyone bonding instantly after the first hug. Maha is a writer-editor-translator type just like me, only a couple decades younger. She and Abdalla took a bunch of digital photographs and I prayed inwardly - even though some ghastly crisis in Gaza was already clearly imminent - that all four of us would be back together again one day soon for a reunion. Mo is a great kid: undersized, on account of the illness, but with a smile like a lighthouse and a passionate interest in airplanes. His dream to become an airline pilot someday is not the most realistic dream for a seriously ill Palestinian child from Gaza in 2008, but insofar as our dreams keep us going, maybe it's very functional. The boys talked soccer and other guy topics and there was a lot of laughter. The chocolates were a big hit.

Abdalla was rather subdued afterwards and I saw that the experience had deeply affected him. We talked mostly of inconsequential things during the drive home.

* * *

Around the time of that visit in early December, after a battery of tests, Mo's bone marrow transplant was declared a guarded success and he was discharged the week before Christmas to make room for the next young patient, despite the iffy situation in Gaza and the near-impossibility of obtaining "permits" to return to the hospital for the required twice-monthly follow-up treatment. There are never enough beds, apparently, for the sick children in this world.

Mo's prospects soon took a dramatic turn for the worse with the Israeli assault on Gaza launched last week - two days after Christmas, on December 27, 2008. Not even the indomitable Sam Bahour can get a child out of Gaza right now. The date for Mo's first post-op intravenous treatment at Tel Hashomer - December 30th - came and went. The treatments are - how shall I put it? - not optional. As I write this, cosy at my desk with a fresh cup of coffee and plenty of everything, Mo and Maha are sitting in Gaza in the dark, in the cold, with little fuel and no reliable supply of food and water, along with Mo's parents and six siblings. Right about now, the family are surely thinking of Mo's seventh sibling, Nora, who died four years ago of CGD at the age of 16, in a hospital in Egypt, before the doctors were able to diagnose her. Mo has a good chance to manage his illness, if only he can somehow get back to Tel Hashomer. I think of them sitting there, listening to the bombs whistle in flight and waiting for the planned Israeli ground assault, while tanks mass along the Gaza perimeter. In the lethal game of mindless violence and counter-violence playing out in Israel and Palestine lo these many years, Mo and his family are innocent bystanders. His innocence will not get Mo to his IV treatments, however.

Can you feel that wind blowing right through your heart?

* * *

While Abdalla and Mo were talking sports at the hostel that day in early December, Maha and I were chatting about the things women talk about. She told me about her shopping, at the minimarket on the hospital grounds, in preparation for their expected return to Gaza. "My sister-in-law told me to buy us a lot of candles," she remarked, "because, you know, there's no electricity most of the time now." We contemplated this bleak picture together in silence for a few moments.

"So I asked the clerk at the shop to sell me some candles that will last a long time," Maha continued. "And he showed me these fat, tall ones that are encased in a solid glass container…" I could feel the hair lifting on the back of my neck. "He said they would burn for a week, so I bought a whole bunch of them," concluded Maha, oblivious, as I sat there, dumbstruck. She was describing the traditional Jewish shiv'a candle - the candle of bereavement lit by Jewish families all over the world for the seven days of mourning on the death of a loved one.

As this ghastly December drew to its grim close, Maha still had enough fuel left to run a small generator for an hour every day or two, so she could get online and do some emails or charge her mobile phone. I got an email saying they are OK ("bombs falling nearby but not on us, so far") and I sent my love and prayers for the family. As of New Year's Eve, I knew they were still alive because I got an e-card from Maha yesterday. Her message said: Dear Deb, I wish you and your children a Happy New Year and a long, happy, healthy and successful life. May every day of the New Year glow with good cheer and happiness for you and your family… Love and best wishes, Maha.

(Deb Reich is a writer and translator in Israel/Palestine, at debmail@alum.barnard.edu)

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict:

I could write a book about my feelings regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Gaza Strip. But Greg Mitchell's piece over at Editor & Publisher led me to this - from a December 30th column by Amira Hass in the Jerusalem daily, Haaretz - which says it so much better and so much more succinctly than I ever could:

"This is not the time to speak of proportional responses, not even of the polls that promise a greater share of Knesset seats to the mission's architects. This is, however, the time to speak of the voters' belief the operation will succeed, that the strikes are precise and the targets justified.
Take, for example, Imad Aqel Mosque in Jabalya refugee camp, bombed and strafed shortly before midnight on Sunday. These are the names of the glorious military victory we achieved there - Jawaher, age 4; Dina, age 8; Sahar, age 12; Ikram, age 14; and Tahrir, age 17, all sisters of the Ba'lousha family, all killed in a "precise" strike on the mosque. Another three sisters, a 2-year-old brother and their parents were injured. Twenty-four neighbors were wounded and five homes and three stores destroyed. This part of the military victory did not open our television or radio news broadcasts yesterday morning, nor did they appear on many Israeli news Web sites.

This is the time to speak about the detailed maps in the hands of IDF commanders, and about the Shin Bet advisers who know the exact distance between the mosque and nearby homes. This is the time to discuss the drone planes and the hot air balloons fitted with advanced cameras floating over the Strip day and night, filming everything. 

This is the time to rely on legal advisers studying the operation to find the right phrasing to justify "collateral damage." Time to praise Foreign Ministry spokespeople who in their polished language, with their elegant South African or charmant Parisien accents, say it is the fault of Hamas, which uses neighborhood mosques for its own purposes. 

Talk of double standards has always been moot. Maybe there was a huge weapons store in the mosque. Maybe Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades militants met there every night and from there planned to launch their upgraded fighter jets. 

Where does the IDF Chief of Staff sit when he draws up war plans? Not in the Sahara, or even in the Negev. What would happen if someone blew themselves up at the entrance to Tel Aviv's Cinematheque movie theater, and those who sent him said sorry, but he was headed for the Defense Ministry down the street? 

This is not the time to recall long-forgotten history lessons to say this is not the way to topple a government. Nor is it the time to make rational recommendations for balanced statesmanship. The time for such things has passed, along with the New Order we once arrogantly tried to establish in Lebanon, which only brought us Hezbollah. Along with the Orientalists' plans to reduce the popularity of the PLO, which only paved the way for the emergence of a militant Islamic nationalist movement. 

The time of such recommendations has passed, along with the grab of Palestinian lands and hyperactive construction of settlements in the Oslo era, which only laid the cornerstone for the second intifada and the fall of Fatah. 

The era of reason and judgment died long ago, even before the targeted assassinations of Fatah activists in the West Bank, which soon turned into shooting attacks on soldiers and the emergence of another few thousand young people taking up arms, not to mention the phenomenon of suicide bombers. 

It is never the right time to say "we told you so," because once it is possible to say those words, they are already invalid. We cannot revive the dead, nor repair the damage caused by arrogance and megalomania. 

This is the time to speak of our own satisfaction and enjoyment. Satisfaction from tanks once again raising and lowering their barrels in preparation for a ground attack, satisfaction from our leaders' threatening finger-waving at the enemy. That's how we like our leaders - calling up reservists, sending pilots to bomb our enemies and manifesting national unity, from Baruch Marzel to Tzipi Livni, Netanyahu to Barak to Lieberman."

According to Mitchell's column, Hass is:

... not only an Israeli but both of her parents are Holocaust camp survivors. Yet she has gone on to become the most prominent Israeli journalist to make it her mission to report as often as possible from Gaza and the West Bank – breaking bans and earning the wrath of both Israeli and Palestinian officials. She earned headlines in this regard just in the past month.
Hass was born in Jerusalem, and studied the history of Nazism at Hebrew University. She joined Haaretz in 1989 and began living nearly fulltime in Gaza or Ramallah starting in 1993. She earned the Press Freedom Hero award from the International Press Institute in 2000, among other international journalism prizes. She now lives in Ramallah. 

Earlier this year, now a regular Haaretz columnist, Hass traveled to Gaza by boat to demonstrate her opposition to the Israeli blockade. On December 1, she was ordered to leave by Hamas, and arrested by Israeli police on her return to Israel.

A woman after my own heart!!! She lived among the "other," coming out with the simple realization that, "Right is right," and "Wrong is just plain, wrong" despite the real, or perceived loyalities involved. Would that we all should take a such a stand.

Remember the President-select's promises to AIPAC in March of 2007 and again in the video below in May 2008?



He's in hock - up to his neck - to the American Jewish lobby on Gaza. His first 100 days will surely be interesting.