"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."


Related:
- The Truth About Obama and Israel
- Sukant on Latest Zionist Massacre in Gaza, and Relation to 'Arab Spring'
- The liberal way to run the world - "improve" or we'll kill you
- Iran Call for Nuclear Abolition by 2025 is Unreported by New York Times
- On the verge of an Israeli Spring?
- The Elephant in the map room

"Jews," the Changeling and nuclear weaponry

I've really been trying not to write about this circus we call "politics" in this country.  But given the Changeling's recent, begging "...when the chips are down, I have Israel’s back" speech to AIPAC, I thought I'd jump back in for a minute, turning back to the Master Teacher, Dr. John Henrik Clarke to share some history about the "Jews" and their less-than-reciprocal behavior toward Black folk first (as you listen to the following, you'll see the reason for the quotation marks):









"Nothin' beats a lie like the truth" is what my grandmother always said.  And given all that went before (and continues to this day), the Changeling's unwavering fealty to the state of Israel should be, at the very least, questionable to discerning Black folk, and at most - a gross miscarriage of justice to anyone with eyes to see (though, if you heard the speech, or read the transcript linked above - you'll have to admit, he's a helluva strategic beggar!).

Secondly, I'd like to share the following, just to give some context for America's and Israel's absolute hypocrisy regarding Iran and their right, as a sovereign nation, to develop nuclear weapons either as a deterrent to, or to protect themselves from, Israel in particular, if they so choose (let me just note though, after the U.S. devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I am in no way a proponent of nuclear weapons):  "An Illegal Interview with Mordechai Vanunu," a former Israeli nuclear technician who, in 1986, blew the whistle on Israel's nuclear weapons development program in Dimona, garnering him 18 years in Ashkelon Prison (more than 11 1/2 of which he spent in solitary confinement.  Bradley Manning has nothing on Dr. Vanunu - yet!):







And the Changeling was the one who got a Nobel "Peace" Prize??!! (:serious eyeroll:)

Check out why the above interview was illegal at this site, which thoroughly covers Dr. Vanunu's whistle-blowing experience - and the consequences:  The U.S. Campaign to Free Mordechai Vanunu.

While I've never had anything for the Changeling, I've always thought he was pretty intelligent.  But, given Dr. Clarke's excellent historical rendering of the "Jews" and Israel, Dr. Vanunu's view of Shimon Peres, and Prime Minister Netanyahu's banging of the war drums, I find this portion of the Changeling's "Can I have more, Sir?" speech quite indicative that either, he isn't as intelligent as I thought (particularly regarding who he is, as a society-identified Black man), or he's as disingenuous as they come:

Shimon was born a world away from here, in a shtetl in what was then Poland, a few years after the end of the first world war. But his heart was always in Israel, the historic homeland of the Jewish people. And when he was just a boy he made his journey across land and sea - toward home.

In his life, he has fought for Israel’s independence, and he has fought for peace and security. As a member of the Haganah and a member of the Knesset, as a minister of defense and foreign affairs, as a prime minister and as president - Shimon helped build the nation that thrives today: the Jewish state of Israel. But beyond these extraordinary achievements, he has also been a powerful moral voice that reminds us that right makes might - not the other way around.

Shimon once described the story of the Jewish people by saying it proved that, “slings, arrows and gas chambers can annihilate man, but cannot destroy human values, dignity, and freedom.” And he has lived those values. He has taught us to ask more of ourselves and to empathize more with our fellow human beings. I am grateful for his life’s work and his moral example. And I’m proud to announce that later this spring, I will invite Shimon Peres to the White House to present him with America’s highest civilian honor - the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

In many ways, this award is a symbol of the broader ties that bind our nations. The United States and Israel share interests, but we also share those human values that Shimon spoke about: a commitment to human dignity. A belief that freedom is a right that is given to all of God’s children. An experience that shows us that democracy is the one and only form of government that can truly respond to the aspirations of citizens.

America’s Founding Fathers understood this truth, just as Israel’s founding generation did. President Truman put it well, describing his decision to formally recognize Israel only minutes after it declared independence. He said, “I had faith in Israel before it was established. I believe it has a glorious future before it - as not just another sovereign nation, but as an embodiment of the great ideals of our civilization.”

For over six decades, the American people have kept that faith. Yes, we are bound to Israel because of the interests that we share - in security for our communities, prosperity for our people, the new frontiers of science that can light the world. But ultimately it is our common ideals that provide the true foundation for our relationship. That is why America’s commitment to Israel has endured under Democratic and Republican presidents, and congressional leaders of both parties. In the United States, our support for Israel is bipartisan, and that is how it should stay. (emphasis mine)

We've got so much work to do family - in alliance with, or without, any-damned-body else!

Interesting update: Is Bibi the Bully wagging the American dog? - Pepe Escobar