Cultural Affirmative Action And Golf

Whatever happened to that 14-year-old Asian golf phenom who aspired to play the PGA Tour? She made tens of millions of dollars based on hype, and he became the youngest player to ever make a tour cut. No, that’s not a typo.

He is Guan Tianlang, the Chinese golf sensation who just made the cut in the Masters — one of the world’s most prestigious and competitive golf tournaments — and now made the cut again in his very next appearance, the Zurich Classic of New Orleans. She is Michelle Wie, the erstwhile phenom who was hailed and then failed, never making a PGA cut despite talking bigger than Tianlang’s accomplishment. And their different treatment by the media speaks volumes about the left’s hold on society.

When the 6’1”, 14-year-old Wie hit the scene around 2004, she was lauded as an Amazon sports-womyn for the ages who would break sex barriers in golf and show the boys a thing or two. The media just loved the narrative, providing exposure that made her famous beyond golf’s fan base and leading to endorsement contracts of which most adult professional golfers can only dream. This, despite her having won only one women’s amateur tournament of note and nothing professionally even on the women’s tour; it was sort of like Barack Obama receiving the Nobel Peace Prize based only on being black and “there,” even though there was no there there. Heck, it was like Obama winning the presidency itself as a result of the media portraying him as a political phenom whose oratory and policy were always 300 yards down the middle. The difference is that popularity alone doesn’t translate into golf success — you actually have to perform.

In contrast, the 5’8”, 140-pound Tianlang has already shattered records. Becoming the youngest player to make a Masters cut was impressive enough, but following it up the next time out by becoming the youngest to ever make an official PGA Tour cut amounts to possibly the greatest accomplishment ever by a young teenage athlete. Yet Tianlang’s exposure is a 20-handicap to Wie’s scratch.

Some of the reasons for this are legitimate. Wie is an American, Tianlang is a foreigner, and it always adds another newsworthy dimension to a story when a girl is trying to compete in men’s sports. And Wie certainly fed the media delusion, making statements such as “My favorite player is Tiger Woods. I think I can beat Tiger when I’m 20. It’s a life goal” and “If I ever get bored with golf, I’m going to start over and play left-handed.” But as to that life goal, perhaps Wie believes in reincarnation and was talking about her next life (with a different chromosome configuration?), as she is now already 23 and hasn’t even dominated the women’s tour. She has never won a women’s major, has captured only two LPGA events in eight years as a professional, and finished 2012 at 62 in the rankings. And the hype is history as there has been precious little good news on the Wie front — except that she won’t have to worry about getting bored with golf.

But only one reason fully explains why Wie was so ridiculously over-hyped and overrated: cultural affirmative action. This is when, as I once defined it, “people in the market and media privilege others — sometimes unconsciously — based upon the latter’s identification with a ‘victim group.’” It isn’t just that the media had an interesting man-bites-dog story; it’s that, as is often the case, they were cheerleaders. They had a would-be Amazon they thought would neuter those patriarchal male dogs, and they so, so badly wanted it to happen. It’s the same phenomenon Rush Limbaugh alluded to (and doing so cost him his NFL commentary position) when opining that quarterback Donovan McNabb was over-hyped because the “media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well.”

And what of Tianlang being a “minority” himself? Irrelevant. Like whites, Asians are discriminated against via even actual affirmative action because they’re often high achievers. But being female as is Wie or black as is McNabb is a another matter; then the exact species of cultural affirmative action may be different — feminism in one case and black privilege in the other — but the result is identical: people receiving undeserved benefits.

This phenomenon just may make Hillary Clinton our next president, too. And after our current cultural-affirmative-action bogey man, that would be the political equivalent of hitting a ball into the woods, taking a penalty stroke, and then shanking the next one into the water. So, no, folks, America won’t be making the cut.

“Affirmative Action” Obama Not Being Held Responsible For Anything

It appears that “affirmative action” reached the White House in 2008 and continues in 2013.  Barack Obama, a freshman U.S. Senator from Illinois, with no expertise and no history of any accomplishment—scored an “affirmative action” victory that catapulted him into the highest job on this planet.  To be fair, he ran against another incompetent by the name of John McCain.

Obama reached the White House with a silvery tongue and no experience whatsoever for running the most advanced, complex and in-debt country on Earth.  At the time of his election victory in 2008, 36 million Americans subsisted on food stamps.  Another 14 million Americans stood in unemployment lines.  A full seven million suffered underemployment.   Two wars raged costing taxpayers $12 billion a month.  Illegal migration netted over 20 million border jumpers assisted housing, jobs, medical care for their babies, free schooling for their children and immunity from deportation.

The national debt in 2008 ran a mind-numbing $12 trillion.  State debts ran into the billions.  Consumer debt ran into the trillions.   Obama promised to reduce global climate destabilization.  At Obama’s inauguration, he promised jobs, reducing the debt, stopping the wars and restoring national pride.  He promised too many things to too many people with no idea or talent or experience for solving this nation’s predicaments.

All talk!

Several decades ago, our U.S. Congress created “affirmative action.”  A person without qualifications, without enough education or skills, would be given a job over more qualified persons—because of their color.  Millions of minority citizens grabbed jobs whether they qualified for those jobs or not.  Government forced employers into quotas.

When someone lacks qualifications, everyone else in the workplace must pick up the slack; do more work, while the unqualified person enjoys the same wages and benefits.  But no one can complain, gripe or show any distress for fear of being called names.

“I can’t do my job, if you don’t do yours. I also can’t do my job. Can you do mine, too?”  Jarod Kintz

Today, our “affirmative action” President Barack Obama failed in his first four years and he failed dramatically.

Our national debt skyrocketed from $12 trillion to $16 trillion—and it’s headed for $20 trillion within the next four years.  He lacks the personal dynamic and/or personal skills to stop it or hire someone who will stop it.

President John Adams said, “There are two ways to defeat a country: by the sword or by debt.”   Mr. Obama pushes us toward that deadly cliff faster and faster.

While he enjoyed an “affirmative action” Nobel Peace Prize for doing nothing to stop our two wars in the first few months of his holding office, he allowed both wars to continue for most of his first four years.  He finally pulled out of Iraq in his fourth year, but he continues waging war in a goat herder, third world country called Afghanistan.  Ironically, more of our young kids have committed suicide in the U.S. military than have been killed in combat in Afghanistan.   War scrambles a young man’s mind, but Obama never served, so he wouldn’t understand.

When Obama reached the White House, 36 million jobless Americans subsisted on food stamps.  Today, in 2013, that number accelerated to 47.7 million Americans eating off the backs of the rest of us who still work jobs.   At the same time, we still suffer 14 million unemployed Americans and seven million underemployed.

Obama lacked skills or ability to stop endless importation of manufactured goods from China and other countries to the tune of $700 billion annual trade deficits.  Wouldn’t anyone with half a brain figure it out, “If I stop importing $700 billion in manufactured goods from China annually, I could transfer those jobs to Americans and create manufactured goods over here. I could lift up America’s minorities, of which, I am one of them, and move them into jobs so they could enjoy a living wage, housing and provide food for their families.  Additionally, with 68 percent of African-American children living with single mothers and 99 percent of them subsisting on welfare—perhaps my astute actions could provide jobs for those children’s fathers and bring families together.”

But instead, no one talks about this president’s total lack of skills or ability to make good on his promises.  Like all “affirmative action” job holders, he’s in over his head.  He’s incompetent, but no one dares speak a word about it.

With our 47.7 million food stamp receivers along with 14 million unemployed Americans, this president not only continues to import 100,000 legal immigrants every friggin’ 30 days—he’s about to present a gift of total amnesty to 12-20 million border hoppers, fence jumpers and cheats—called illegal alien migrants.  They already depress wages and steal over 8 million jobs from our working poor, but now, an amnesty will encourage millions more to cross our porous borders.

For the life of me, we voted Obama back into office without questioning his utter failure as a president.  We also voted the likes of other incompetent leaders like Senators Feinstein, Hatch, McCain, Udall, Bennet, Schumer, Levin and other congress-critters back into their positions of incompetence.    None of them serve the interests of the American people, but instead, cater to other countries and illegal migrants along with their corrupt employers.

In the meantime, our infrastructure rots, our schools fail, our environment degrades, our air pollution accelerates, our water depletes, our quality of life deteriorates and our standard of living drops like a brick in water.

“Every clique is a refuge for incompetence. It fosters corruption and disloyalty, it begets cowardice, and consequently is a burden upon and a drawback to the progress of the country. Its instincts and actions are those of the pack.” Chiang-Kai-Shek

What Barack Obama Has Done To Our Country In 34 Months

After an embarrassing 34 months in office, how can Barack Obama even run for a second term? After starting off three years ago by bowing to other heads of state in submission, how can he lead the most powerful country in the world? He cannot run on his record because it suffers a dismal record.

These points rush around the Internet without a byline, so I felt it worth the time to quantify what they mean and how Obama fails the American people on multiple levels. As Clint Eastwood said, “When someone doesn’t do the job, we have to let them go.”

Obama promised to reduce the national debt, but instead, he added $5 trillion. Folks, we are beyond broke. We are headed for a crash with our debt. It won’t be pretty. It could very well destroy the foundation of our republic. As our second president, John Adams said, “There are two ways to defeat a country: by the sword or by debt.”

If any other of our presidents had proposed to double the debt again within 10 years, would you have approved?

If any other of our presidents joined the country of Mexico and sued a state in the United States to force that state to continue to allow illegal immigration, would you question his patriotism and wonder who’s side he was on? This really ticks me off because Arizona passed S.B. 1070 to protect itself from a million illegal aliens that bankrupted its schools, hospitals and prisons. Yet, Obama sued Arizona on the side of Mexico. All the while, Obama refused to secure our borders and enforce internal immigration laws. Preposterous that he thinks he can run again for president. He should run for janitor of an elementary school.

If any other of our presidents had pronounced the Marine Corps like Marine Corpse, would you think of him as a patriot? He never served and he wouldn’t know a platoon from a company.

If any other of our presidents had put 87,000 workers out of work by arbitrarily placing a moratorium on offshore oil drilling on companies that have one of the best safety records of any industry because one foreign company had an accident, would you have agreed?

If any other of our presidents had been the first President to need a Teleprompter installed to able

to get through a press conference, would you have laughed and said this is more proof of how inept he is on his own and is really controlled by smarter men behind the scenes? The fact remains that Obama never qualified for the presidency in the first place. He did not merit the emotional vote that gave him the White House any more than he earned the Nobel Peace Prize after a month in office. It’s all a charade.

If any other of our presidents had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to take his First Lady to a play in NYC, would you have approved? How could Obama spend ridiculous amounts of our tax dollars to squire his wife around NYC or Spain? It’s unconscionable.

If any other of our presidents had made a joke at the expense of the Special Olympics, would you have approved? Or how about all of us that have our “guns and religion?”

If any other of our presidents had given the Queen of England an iPod containing videos of his speeches, would you have thought it a proud moment for America? If any other of our presidents had bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia would you have approved?

If any other of our presidents had filled his cabinet and circle of advisers with people who cannot seem to keep current in their income taxes, would you have approved? That mistake showed Obama’s incompetence at the highest level. How many other mistakes did he make? Answer: plenty.

If any other of our presidents had stated that there were 57 states in the United States, wouldn’t you have had second thoughts about his capabilities? It shows his Muslim heritage and his Islamic bias because 57 refers to something about Islam.

If any other of our presidents had been so Spanish illiterate as to refer to “Cinco de Cuatro” in front of the Mexican ambassador when it was the 5th of May (Cinco de Mayo), and continued to flub it when he tried again, wouldn’t you have winced in embarrassment?

If any other of our presidents had burned 9,000 gallons of jet fuel to go plant a single tree on Earth Day, would you have concluded that he is totally out of touch?

If any other of our presidents had failed to send relief aid to flood victims throughout the Midwest with more people killed or made homeless than in New Orleans, would you want it made into a major ongoing political issue with claims of racism and incompetence?

If any other of our presidents had created the position of 32 Czars who report directly to him, bypassing the House and Senate on much of what is happening in America, would you have ever approved?

Finally, he usurped the U.S. Congress by defying the fact that the entire body defeated the Dream Act because the American people did not want it. They want immigration laws enforced and they want massive legal immigration stopped. Our country cannot keep importing the endless masses of the world onto our shores. It’s not sustainable. Obama doesn’t understand that fact.

Yes, Obama failed us on many levels and now, it’s time to let him go. Clint Eastwood will prove a very prophetic man.

Ignoble: European Union Wins 2012 Peace Prize

Nobel bailout?

The European Union has been announced the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 2012. Amidst Europe’s as-yet-unsolved crippling economic backdrop, a heated debate emerged over the validity of the prize.

The 27-nation organization was awarded the prizing for its historic role in “uniting the continent” and its contributions “to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe.’’

“The EU helped transform Europe from a continent of war to a continent of peace,” Thorbjoern Jagland, Council of Europe Secretary-General, said.

The EU will be awarded $1.2 million on December 10 by the Nobel Committee, a far cry from the bailout funds needed to drag some of its member states out of the economic quagmire.

The unanimous decision was made by a five-person panel chaired by Thorbjoern Jagland, a strong advocate of the EU in Norway.

Martin Schulz, president of the EU Parliament said he was “deeply touched and honored” by the prize. The last organization to be granted a Nobel Peace Prize was French charity Medecins Sans Frontieres 13 years ago.

Leader of Norway’s anti-EU membership organization Heming Olaussen described the awarding of the prize to the EU as “absurd” to local broadcaster NRK.

The news came 60 years after the creation of the EU’s predecessor organization, the European Coal and Steel Community, which helped rebuild a continent decimated by two World Wars.

“The European Union is in the middle of one of its worst crises, but perhaps it is precisely now the peace and stabilization project deserves a hand from the ’no’ country Norway?” Norwegian public broadcaster NRK said.

Norway, the Nobel Peace Prize’s host nation, refused membership in the EU in 1972 and again in 1994.

The Nobel Committee raised eyebrows and sparked widespread conjecture when it granted the prize to newly inaugurated US President Barack Obama in 2009. Despite having been in office for only two weeks, the committee saw fit to award him “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

Source: rt.com

Washington Plays Hardball With Russia On Syria

If words could kill, America and Russia might be at war. Hopefully it won’t come to that. Given America’s rage to fight, even the unthinkable is possible.

Russia and China represent Washington’s final frontier. Building up around their borders and encircling both countries with US bases makes anything ahead possible.

Prioritizing peace isn’t America’s long suit. Unchallenged global dominance assures war. One country after another is ravaged. Multiple direct and proxy wars remain ongoing. Flashpoints easily shift from one region to another or target several at the same time.

Currently, the Middle East is ground zero. Longstanding US plans want Syrian and Iranian governments replaced by pro-Western ones. Russia opposes US imperialism for good reason. Recent exchanges between both sides show strain.

On October 12, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland addressed Turkey’s anti-Russian/Syrian provocation. Fighter jets forced a Moscow inbound Syrian airliner to land in Ankara. “We have no doubt (about) serious military equipment” being shipped, she claimed. She lied.

In less than so many words, she accused Russia of aiding and abetting Washington’s enemy. AP said Obama officials “Friday accused Russia of pursuing a ‘morally bankrupt’ policy in Syria.”

Nuland added:

“Everybody else on the Security Council is doing what it can unilaterally to ensure that the Assad regime is not getting support from the outside.”

“No responsible country (should help) the Assad regime and particularly those with responsibilities for global peace and security as UN Security Council members.”

Washington, of course, planned and initiated conflict. Stopping it is as simple as withdrawing support, halting Turkey’s involvement, telling Saudi Arabia and Qatar to back off, informing other regional and Western states the same way, and calling off its dogs.

Russian nationals were on board the inbound flight. Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu lied or didn’t tell all, saying, “We received information that the plane’s cargo did not comply with rules of civil aviation.”

Syria justifiably accused Turkey of “air piracy.” Its Foreign Ministry said “the hostile Turkish behavior is additional evidence of the aggressive policy adopted by Erdogan’s government, taking into account the training and harbouring of gunmen and facilitating their infiltration through its borders and bombing Syrian territories.”

Syrian Air’s Airbus A-320 departed Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport. On entering Turkey’s airspace, Turkish Air Force F-16s forced it to land in Ankara. On board were 37 passengers. They included crew members and 17 Russian nationals with children.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry accused Turkey of endangering the lives of those on board. FM spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said “the Turkish authorities without explaining the reason and in violation of the bilateral Consular Convention did not allow diplomats to meet with the Russian citizens.”

They and others on board were forcibly held for nine hours without food or other assistance. They were abused. Crew members were accosted at gunpoint. Turkish authorities demanded they sign a statement saying an emergency landing was necessary. They refused.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been spoiling for a fight for months. He serves shamelessly as Washington’s lead regional belligerent. He’s little more than a convenient stooge. Obama may get the war he wants without direct US involvement.

Erdogan claimed Moscow was sending “equipment and ammunition” to Syria. Syria’s Foreign Ministry accused him of lying.

Russia was very irate. A formal protest was lodged. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, “We have no secret, and we have scrutinized the details. There were no weapons on board the plane and could not have been any.”

“There was a cargo on the plane that a legal Russian supplier was sending in a legal way to a legal customer.” The plane carried radar parts. International agreements permit them.

The pilot landed “because he knew he was not transporting anything illegal. We are waiting for an official reply why our diplomats were not allowed to meet with Russian passengers on board.”

So far, Ankara stonewalled. It displayed no weapons seized because there are none. Vladimir Putin indefinitely postponed a planned visit. Weeks earlier, he accused Washington of being back in bed with Al Qaeda. It’s no secret. Hillary Clinton admitted it months ago.

Russia’s Liberal Democratic Party called for decisive action. It wants Turkey’s Moscow ambassador expelled.

Other hostile exchanges followed. Tensions already are heightened. Russian Foreign Ministry deputy media and press director, Maria Zakharova, said:

“Based on news coming from Syria, terrorism has become the top among the means of the armed opposition. This raises a serious concern as it obviously signals the growing role of the radical extremists in the ranks of the ‘Syrian opposition.’”

Security Council condemnation statements should be followed by corresponding deeds, she stressed. It hasn’t happened so far.

At Washington’s behest, Turkey falsely accused Moscow of shipping weapons and/or weapons grade material. At the same time, Western and regional countries actively supply anti-Assad mercenaries with heavy weapons and munitions.

It’s been ongoing since early last year. Funding, training, and directing foreign fighters are involved. CIA and UK intelligence elements are active players. So are Western and regional special forces.

Washington, Britain and Turkey actively wage war on Syria without declaring it. On October, 13 Hurriyet Daily News said Erdogan accused international countries of encouraging Assad. He told participants at an Istanbul World Forum:

“So what is the source of this attitude? If we have to wait for what one or two of the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council will say, then the consequences for Syria will be very dangerous.”

“The UN, which was an onlooker to the massacres of hundreds of thousands of people in the Balkans 20 years ago, is having the same kind of blindness in Syria today. What kind of explanation can be made for the injustice and the inability that is being displayed here?”

His comments targeted Moscow and Beijing. On October 13, Hurriyet Daily News headlined “Syria row hits Assembly,” saying:

Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) submitted a motion to censure Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. It was rejected. On June 6, so was an earlier one. Erdogan’s government was accused of aiding and abetting anti-Assad mercenaries in Turkish territory.

Davutoglu threatened to sue CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu. CHP deputy Osman Koruturk said Turkey was coming to “the last exit before the bridge (on Syria). If we miss this exit, we will proceed through uncertainties in foreign policies.”

At the same time, Ankara bolstered its presence on Syria’s border. Armored vehicles, heavy weapons, and 250 tanks were deployed in Sanliurfa, Mardin and Gaziantep provinces.

NATO was asked to activate radar and other technical capabilities against Syria. Syrian air defenses and offensive positions are targeted.

Erdogan ordered military readiness. Maybe he knows something he’s not revealing. On Friday, in response to a Syrian helicopter attack on Azmar bordering Turkey, Ankara scrambled two fighter jets.

Each incident builds on earlier ones. At some point perhaps, a point of no return gets crossed. Ankara warned Damascus. Baseless accusations claimed Syria fired mortars on Turkish territory.

Anti-Assad militants were responsible. Assad wants tensions cooled and good relations restored. Washington wants its lead regional belligerent stoking conflict.

Turkish Chief of General Staff General Necdet Ozel warned about launching cross-border attacks “with greater force.” Conditions are dangerously close to full-scale war. Ankara awaits word from Washington.

It’s ready to attack on cue. NATO support may be involved. Fresh from receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, perhaps EU/North Atlantic Alliance countries want to say thank you. What better way than by waging war. It’s what NATO/EU nations do best.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached atlendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book is titled “How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion and Class War”

http://www.claritypress.com/Lendman.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

Canada: Selling Its Soul To America

Canada is more colony than sovereign state. Canadians perhaps wonder when it’ll grow up, act like an adult, and regain its rightful independence.

Homeland Security in the Land of the Free

The horror stories about the Transportation Security Administration are indisputable. In the post 911 environment, civil liberties routinely ignored or eliminated, become a mere memory in a country that once prided itself as the beacon of freedom for the entire world. The TSA is part of the Department of Homeland Security. FEMA, theFederal Emergency Management Agency is also an agency of DHS. The public relation spin for the purpose of such authorities is to protect citizens and guard the nation. The reality is that DHS bureaus have the same mission, keep the government safe from potential real or imaginary threats. Interpret threats to mean anyone who opposes the establishment regime, now known as, the military-industrial-financial-security complex.DHS is the third largest Cabinet department, after the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs. A Department of Homeland Security site acknowledges a FY 2012 Budget of $56,941,507,000, in the latest testimony of DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano before Congress,

“The Fiscal Year (FY) 2013 Budget for DHS is $58.6 billion in total budget authority, $48.7 billion in gross discretionary funding, and $39.5 billion in net discretionary funding. Net discretionary budget authority is 0.5 percent below the FY 2012 enacted level. An additional $5.5 billion for the Disaster Relief Fund (DRF) is provided under the disaster relief cap adjustment, pursuant to the Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA).”

Wikipedia cites a much higher amount, in fiscal year 2011 it, had allocated a budget of $98.8 billion and spent, net, $66.4 billion, with more than 200,000 employees.

Secretary Napolitano defines the assignments and tasks for the DHS.The Budget builds on the progress the Department has made in each of its mission areas while also providing essential support to national and economic security.

Mission 1: Preventing Terrorism and Enhancing Security – Protecting the United States from terrorism is the cornerstone of homeland security. DHS’s counterterrorism responsibilities focus on three goals: preventing terrorist attacks; preventing the unauthorized acquisition, importation, movement, or use of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear materials and capabilities within the United States; and reducing the vulnerability of critical infrastructure and key resources, essential leadership, and major events to terrorist attacks and other hazards.

Mission 2: Securing and Managing Our Borders – DHS secures the Nation’s air, land, and sea borders to prevent illegal activity while facilitating lawful travel and trade. The Department’s border security and management efforts focus on three interrelated goals: effectively securing U.S. air, land, and sea borders; safeguarding and streamlining lawful trade and travel; and disrupting and dismantling transnational criminal and terrorist organizations.

Mission 3: Enforcing and Administering Our Immigration Laws – DHS is focused on smart and effective enforcement of U.S. immigration laws while streamlining and facilitating the legal immigration process. The Department has fundamentally reformed immigration enforcement, focusing on identifying and removing criminal aliens who pose a threat to public safety and targeting employers who knowingly and repeatedly break the law.

Mission 4: Safeguarding and Securing Cyberspace – DHS is the Federal Government lead agency for securing civilian government computer systems and works with industry and State, local, tribal, and territorial governments to secure critical infrastructure and information systems. DHS analyzes and mitigates cyber threats and vulnerabilities; distributes threat warnings; and coordinates the response to cyber incidents to ensure that our computers, networks, and cyber systems remain safe.

Mission 5: Ensuring Resilience to Disasters – DHS provides the coordinated, comprehensive Federal response in the event of a terrorist attack, natural disaster, or other large-scale emergency while working with Federal, State, local, and private-sector partners to ensure a swift and effective recovery effort. The Department’s efforts to build a ready and resilient Nation include fostering a community-oriented approach, bolstering information sharing, improving the capability to plan, and providing grants and training to our homeland security and law enforcement partners.

The expansion of full spectrum dominance into domestic oversight and the integration of military practices and functions with local law enforcement are especially disturbing.

From a DHS site the security apparatus discloses.

“Today, fusion centers throughout the country serve as focal points at the state and local level for the receipt, analysis, gathering, and sharing of threat and vulnerability-related information.In addition, the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative helps to train state and local law enforcement to recognize behaviors and indicators related to terrorism, crime and other threats while standardizing how those observations are analyzed and disseminated.”

 

The Jesse Ventura video, THE TRUE FACTS ABOUT FEMA CAMPS is so compelling that it was pulled from cable viewing. Dispelling charges of conspiracy allegations with clear evidence of enslavement preparation is too upsetting for the average media induced zombie. The government dependency society is obedient to the dictates of police authority. Fake nationalists, actually are Tory subjects of a pernicious empire.Just the tip of an intrusive iceberg, the concept of an internal police state emerges as the primary real threat that faces the public. Countless examples of repression, documented in the alternative media, provide evidence that draconian measures to achieve phony internal security, is an integral component of central government subjugation.

Homeland Security chronicles false threats to justify and guarantee greater state control. This bureaucratic behemoth is in the business of recruiting dredges of perverse and pathological domination that would make the “Brownshirts” proud. Flying squadrons of drones for permanent surveillance does not make a country free. America, founded on dissent, now has a timid and docile population. Two examples from history clarify this point.

During the Viet Nam protest movement, flowers of peace inserted into the barrels of National Guard troops were cause for reflection. The internal strife that divided the country, based upon a bogus war, gave rise to the slogan, “Luv it or Leave it” . . . As the decades passed, even the most “gung ho” Rambo has come to the conclusion that the grunts were ferried in country for the purpose of ingratiating the military-industrial-complex. The net result of the conflict was the advancement of Communism. Not just in Southeast Asia, but more significantly, inside the gilded corridors of authoritarian centers of power in our own government.

Do you believe that the dimwitted TSA goons would be receptive to challenges of their S&M dominating practices? An anti internal internment camp protest needs to spread nationwide before the trains start to roll. Where is the outrage from the public? When will the spirit of the 60’s resurrect the moral imperative necessary to save this nation from the fascist elites, who are intent on perfecting our own holocaust?

Remember the courage of the lone Chinese dissenter standing in the path of rolling tanks in Tiananmen Square. Just short of two decades after the Kent Stateshootings, the world watched the Red Chinese disgraced and loss of face. Since those days, the United States proceeds in lock step to adopt the Marxist Capitalist version of the Chinese model that operates slave communities and rewards crony comrades.

The international merging of global corporatism into a board of directors designed to abolish any remnants of individual freedom is unassailable. The shredding of the Bill of Rights goes on with little anger. The ACLU of fifty years ago is a gutted shell of a vigorous advocate of liberty. Where are the conservatives and libertarians eager to defend Nobel Peace Prize nominee PFC Bradley Manning? The most silent amendment to the Constitution is the third, Conditions for quarters of soldiers.

“No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”

Today’s application of Amendment III has Homeland Security effectively quartering their domestic spy warriors in the form of technological devices that gather intelligence on ordinary citizens. The physical barrier of a locked door poses little protection when the DHS Stasi invades and violates your inherent autonomy.

 

The recent “prescribed law” called the NDAA, National Defense Authorization Act is an offense against every American. The good news is that there is at least one constitutional federal judge, Katherine Forrest, left on the bench. The video, NDAA declared unconstitutional; Indefinite detention of Americans blocked by the court, provides a sliver of relief.The Washington Times concludes,

“Section 1021 of the NDAA could have set a slippery precedent forindefinite detention of American citizens.

This ruling was a milestone in the protection of 900 years of legal precedent, but the fight for due process raises frightening questions about the future of American liberty and the intentions of our representatives.”

America desperately needs protection from the Homeland Security Gestapo. Their stated mission is the essence and embodiment of domestic government terrorism. Until Americans acquire the fortitude and will to resist and disobey unlawful edicts, the country will remain in danger of dictatorial despots. Without concerted commitment, the next dictate will include the internment in re-education facilities of Federal Judges that are insistent in upholding the Constitution.

The FEMA armored combat vehicles are ready for deployment. Remember Tiananmen Square before yet another Kent State becomes routine.

What You Need To Succeed Is Sincerity

And If You Can Fake Sincerity You’ve Got It Made…

“A few months ago I told the American people that I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that is true, but the facts and evidence tell me it is not.” — President Ronald Reagan, 1987.

On April 23, speaking at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, President Barack Obama told his assembled audience that as president “I’ve done my utmost … to prevent and end atrocities”.

Do the facts and evidence tell him that his words are not true?

Well, let’s see … There’s the multiple atrocities carried out in Iraq by American forces under President Obama. There’s the multiple atrocities carried out in Afghanistan by American forces under Obama. There’s the multiple atrocities carried out in Pakistan by American forces under Obama. There’s the multiple atrocities carried out in Libya by American/NATO forces under Obama. There are also the hundreds of American drone attacks against people and homes in Somalia and in Yemen (including against American citizens in the latter). Might the friends and families of these victims regard the murder of their loved ones and the loss of their homes as atrocities?

Ronald Reagan was pre-Alzheimer’s when he uttered the above. What excuse can be made for Barack Obama?

The president then continued in the same fashion by saying: “We possess many tools … and using these tools over the past three years, I believe — I know — that we have saved countless lives.” Obama pointed out that this includes Libya, where the United States, in conjunction with NATO, took part in seven months of almost daily bombing missions. We may never learn from the new pro-NATO Libyan government how many the bombs killed, or the extent of the damage to homes and infrastructure. But the President of the United States assured his Holocaust Museum audience that “today, the Libyan people are forging their own future, and the world can take pride in the innocent lives that we saved.” (As I described in last month’s report, Libya could now qualify as a failed state.)

Language is an invention that makes it possible for a person to deny what he is doing even as he does it.

Mr. Obama closed with these stirring words; “It can be tempting to throw up our hands and resign ourselves to man’s endless capacity for cruelty. It’s tempting sometimes to believe that there is nothing we can do.” But Barack Obama is not one of those doubters. He knows there is something he can do about man’s endless capacity for cruelty. He can add to it. Greatly. And yet, I am certain that, with exceedingly few exceptions, those in his Holocaust audience left with no doubt that this was a man wholly deserving of his Nobel Peace Prize.

And future American history books may well certify the president’s words as factual, his motivation sincere, for his talk indeed possessed the quality needed for schoolbooks.

The Israeli-American-Iranian-Holocaust-NobelPeacePrize Circus

It’s a textbook case of how the American media is at its worst when it comes to US foreign policy and particularly when an Officially Designated Enemy (ODE) is involved. I’ve discussed this case several times in this report in recent years. The ODE is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The accusation has been that he had threatened violence against Israel, based on his 2005 remark calling for “wiping Israel off the map”. Who can count the number of times this has been repeated in every kind of media, in every country of the world, without questioning the accuracy of what was reported? A Lexis-Nexis search of “All News (English)” for <Iran and Israel and “off the map”> for the past seven years produced the message: “This search has been interrupted because it will return more than 3000 results.”

As I’ve pointed out, Ahmadinejad’s “threat of violence” was a serious misinterpretation, one piece of evidence being that the following year he declared: “The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon, the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom.” 2 Obviously, he was not calling for any kind of violent attack upon Israel, for the dissolution of the Soviet Union took place remarkably peacefully. But the myth of course continued.

Now, finally, we have the following exchange from the radio-TV simulcast, Democracy Now!, of April 19:

A top Israeli official has acknowledged that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad never said that Iran seeks to “wipe Israel off the face of the map.” The falsely translated statement has been widely attributed to Ahmadinejad and used repeatedly by U.S. and Israeli government officials to back military action and sanctions against Iran. But speaking to Teymoor Nabili of the network Al Jazeera, Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor admitted Ahmadinejad had been misquoted.

Teymoor Nabili: “As we know, Ahmadinejad didn’t say that he plans to exterminate Israel, nor did he say that Iran policy is to exterminate Israel. Ahmadinejad’s position and Iran’s position always has been, and they’ve made this — they’ve said this as many times as Ahmadinejad has criticized Israel, he has said as many times that he has no plans to attack Israel. …”

Dan Meridor: “Well, I have to disagree, with all due respect. You speak of Ahmadinejad. I speak of Khamenei, Ahmadinejad, Rafsanjani, Shamkhani. I give the names of all these people. They all come, basically ideologically, religiously, with the statement that Israel is an unnatural creature, it will not survive. They didn’t say, ‘We’ll wipe it out,’ you’re right. But ‘It will not survive, it is a cancerous tumor that should be removed,’ was said just two weeks ago again.”

Teymoor Nabili: “Well, I’m glad you’ve acknowledged that they didn’t say they will wipe it out.”

So that’s that. Right? Of course not. Fox News, NPR, CNN, NBC, et al. will likely continue to claim that Ahmadinejad threatened violence against Israel, threatened to “wipe it off the map”.

And that’s only Ahmadinejad the Israeli Killer. There’s still Ahmadinejad the Holocaust Denier. So until a high Israeli official finally admits that that too is a lie, keep in mind that Ahmadinejad has never said simply, clearly, unambiguously, and unequivocally that he thinks that what we historically know as the Holocaust never happened. He has instead commented about the peculiarity and injustice of a Holocaust which took place in Europe resulting in a state for the Jews in the Middle East instead of in Europe. Why are the Palestinians paying a price for a German crime? he asks. And he has questioned the figure of six million Jews killed by Nazi Germany, as have many other people of various political stripes. In a speech at Columbia University on September 24, 2007, in reply to a question about the Holocaust, the Iranian president declared: “I’m not saying that it didn’t happen at all. This is not the judgment that I’m passing here.” 3

Let us now listen to Elie Wiesel, the simplistic, reactionary man who’s built a career around being a Holocaust survivor, introducing President Obama at the Holocaust Museum for the talk referred to above, some five days after the statement made by the Israeli Deputy Prime Minister:

“How is it that the Holocaust’s No. 1 denier, Ahmadinejad, is still a president? He who threatens to use nuclear weapons — to use nuclear weapons — to destroy the Jewish state. Have we not learned? We must. We must know that when evil has power, it is almost too late.”

“Nuclear weapons” is of course adding a new myth on the back of the old myth.

Wiesel, like Obama, is a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. As is Henry Kissinger and Menachim Begin. And several other such war-loving beauties. When will that monumental farce of a prize be put to sleep?

For the record, let it be noted that on March 4, speaking before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Obama said: “Let’s begin with a basic truth that you all understand: No Israeli government can tolerate a nuclear weapon in the hands of a regime that denies the Holocaust, threatens to wipe Israel off the map, and sponsors terrorist groups committed to Israel’s destruction.” 4

Postscript: Each time I strongly criticize Barack Obama a few of my readers ask to unsubscribe. I’m really sorry to lose them but it’s important that those on the left rid themselves of their attachment to the Democratic Party. I’m not certain how best to institute revolutionary change in the United States, but I do know that it will not happen through the Democratic Party, and the sooner those on the left cut their umbilical cord to the Democrats, the sooner we can start to get more serious about this thing called revolution.
Written on Earth Day, Sunday, April 22, 2012

Two simple suggestions as part of a plan to save the planet.

1. Population control: limit families to two children

All else being equal, a markedly reduced population count would have a markedly beneficial effect upon global warming, air pollution, and food and water availability; as well as finding a parking spot, getting a seat on the subway, getting on the flight you prefer, and much, much more. Some favor limiting families to one child. Still others, who spend a major part of each day digesting the awful news of the world, are calling for a limit of zero. (The Chinese government announced in 2008 that the country would have about 400 million more people if it wasn’t for its limit of one or two children per couple. 5

But, within the environmental movement, there is still significant opposition to this. Part of the reason is fear of ethnic criticism inasmuch as population programs have traditionally been aimed at — or seen to be aimed at — primarily the poor, the weak, and various “outsiders”. There is also the fear of the religious right and its medieval views on birth control.

2. Eliminate the greatest consumer of energy in the world: The United States military.

Here’s Michael Klare, professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College, Mass. in 2007:

Sixteen gallons of oil. That’s how much the average American soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan consumes on a daily basis — either directly, through the use of Humvees, tanks, trucks, and helicopters, or indirectly, by calling in air strikes. Multiply this figure by 162,000 soldiers in Iraq, 24,000 in Afghanistan, and 30,000 in the surrounding region (including sailors aboard U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf) and you arrive at approximately 3.5 million gallons of oil: the daily petroleum tab for U.S. combat operations in the Middle East war zone. Multiply that daily tab by 365 and you get 1.3 billion gallons: the estimated annual oil expenditure for U.S. combat operations in Southwest Asia. That’s greater than the total annual oil usage of Bangladesh, population 150 million — and yet it’s a gross underestimate of the Pentagon’s wartime consumption. 6

The United States military, for decades, with its legion of bases and its numerous wars has also produced and left behind a deadly toxic legacy. From the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam in the 1960s to the open-air burn pits on US bases in Iraq and Afghanistan in the 21st century, countless local people have been sickened and killed; and in between those two periods we could read things such as this from a lengthy article on the subject in the Los Angeles Times in 1990:

U.S. military installations have polluted the drinking water of the Pacific island of Guam, poured tons of toxic chemicals into Subic Bay in the Philippines, leaked carcinogens into the water source of a German spa, spewed tons of sulfurous coal smoke into the skies of Central Europe and pumped millions of gallons of raw sewage into the oceans. 7

The military has caused similar harm to the environment in the United States at a number of its installations. (Do a Google search for <”U.S. military bases” toxic>)

When I suggest eliminating the military I am usually rebuked for leaving “a defenseless America open to foreign military invasion”. And I usually reply:

“Tell me who would invade us? Which country?”

“What do you mean which country? It could be any country.”

“So then it should be easy to name one.”

“Okay, any of the 200 members of the United Nations!”

“No, I’d like you to name a specific country that you think would invade the United States. Name just one.”

“Okay, Paraguay. You happy now?”

“No, you have to tell me why Paraguay would invade the United States.”

“How would I know?”

Etc., etc., and if this charming dialogue continues, I ask the person to tell me how many troops the invading country would have to have to occupy a country of more than 300 million people.
Yankee karma

The questions concerning immigration into the United States from south of the border go on year after year, with the same issues argued back and forth: What’s the best way to block the flow into the country? How shall we punish those caught here illegally? Should we separate families, which happens when parents are deported but their American-born children remain? Should the police and various other institutions have the right to ask for proof of legal residence from anyone they suspect of being here illegally? Should we punish employers who hire illegal immigrants? Should we grant amnesty to at least some of the immigrants already here for years? … on and on, round and round it goes, for decades. Every once in a while someone opposed to immigration will make it a point to declare that the United States does not have any moral obligation to take in these Latino immigrants.

But the counter-argument to the last is almost never mentioned: Yes, the United States does have a moral obligation because so many of the immigrants are escaping situations in their homelands made hopeless by American interventions and policy. In Guatemala and Nicaragua Washington overthrew progressive governments which were sincerely committed to fighting poverty. In El Salvador the US played a major role in suppressing a movement striving to install such a government, and to a lesser extent played such a role in Honduras. And in Mexico, although Washington has not intervened militarily in Mexico since 1919, over the years the US has been providing training, arms, and surveillance technology to Mexico’s police and armed forces to better their ability to suppress their own people’s aspirations, as in Chiapas, and this has added to the influx of the impoverished to the United States. Moreover, Washington’s North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), has brought a flood of cheap, subsidized US agricultural products into Mexico and driven many Mexican farmers off the land.

The end result of all these policies has been an army of migrants heading north in search of a better life. It’s not that these people prefer to live in the United States. They’d much rather remain with their families and friends, be able to speak their native language at all times, and avoid the hardships imposed on them by American police and right-wingers.

Notes

1. Washington Post, March 5, 1987

2. Associated Press, December 12, 2006

3. President Ahmadinejad Delivers Remarks at Columbia University, Transcript, Washington Post, September 24, 2007

4. Remarks by the President at AIPAC Policy Conference, White House Office of the Press Secretary, March 4, 2012

5. Washington Post, March 3, 2008

6. The Pentagon v. Peak Oil, TomDispatch.com, June 14, 2007

7. Los Angeles Times, June 18, 1990

The Way of the Drone: Emblem for an Empire of Cowards

A few months back, I reposted here an article that I wrote 10 years ago, before the invasion of Iraq: a fictional scenario of how the Terror War would play out on the ground of the target nations — and in the minds of those sent to wage these campaigns. I was reminded of that piece by a story in the latest Rolling Stone.

The RS story, by Michael Hastings, depicts the drone mentality now consuming the US military-security apparatus, a process which makes the endless slaughter of the endless Terror War cheaper, easier, quieter. I didn’t anticipate the development in my proleptic piece; the first reported “kill” by American drones, in Yemen, had taken place just a few weeks before my article appeared in the Moscow Times.

(One of the victims of this historic first drawing of blood was an American citizen, by the way. Thus from the very beginning, the drone war — presented as noble shield to defend American citizens from harm — has been killing American citizens, along with the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of innocent men and women around the world being murdered without warning — and without any chance to defend themselves or take shelter — by cowards sitting in padded seats behind computer consoles thousands of miles away, following orders from the even greater cowards who strut around the Pentagon, CIA headquarters and the White House.)

But what brought my earlier piece to mind was a brief mention of the “military slang” now being used to designate the victims of the drones. Below are a few snippets from my 2002 post, a fictional email by an occupation soldier to a friend:

Yo, Ed! I’m looking out the window of Watchtower 19 in Force Zone Seven. They’re loading up the dead wagon. Three friendlies, two uncardeds, the usual collateral – and one bug. We zapped the market before the bug got his hard-on – another one of those Czech AK-47 knock-offs that our friendly neighborhood warlord keeps bringing in. He says he doesn’t know how the bugs get hold of them – they drop down from heaven, I guess …

… I’d just come off night patrol in Deep-City Zone, hardcore bugland, backing up some Special Ops doing a Guantanamo run on terrorperp suspects. Banging down doors, barrel in the face of some shrieking bug-woman in her black bag, children scuttling in the dark like rats, the perp calling down an airstrike from Allah on our heads. You know the drill. You know the jangle. Not even the new meds can keep you blanked out completely.

So there’s always the overstep somewhere. Woman’s cheekbone cracking from a backhand, some kid stomped or booted out of the way. Some perp putting his hand in one of those damned dresses they wear, going for who knows what – Koran? Mosquito bite? Scimitar? Czech special? – and you open up. More shrieking, more screaming – and then the splatter on the wall.

In the new Rolling Stone story, Hastings tells us how America’s brave drone warriors view their victims:

For a new generation of young guns, the experience of piloting a drone is not unlike the video games they grew up on. Unlike traditional pilots, who physically fly their payloads to a target, drone operators kill at the touch of a button, without ever leaving their base – a remove that only serves to further desensitize the taking of human life. (The military slang for a man killed by a drone strike is “bug splat,” since viewing the body through a grainy-green video image gives the sense of an insect being crushed.)

“Bugs” being “splattered.” This is what Barack Obama — who has expanded the drone death squads beyond the imaginings of George W. Bush — and all of his brave button pushers and joystick riders think of the defenseless human beings they are killing (including 174 children by last count).

This has been the attitude underlying the Terror War since its beginnings. When I wrote my piece with its “bug” imagery, I was only reflecting what was already obvious and pervasive, both in the military-security war machine and in much of the general public. Anyone designated by those in power as an “enemy” — for any reason, known or unknown, or for no reason at all — is considered a subhuman, an insect, whose destruction is meaningless, without moral content, like swatting a fly on the wall. (As, for example, in this 2008 piece about a figure much lauded by progressives at the time: “Crushing the Ants.”)

There is not only a tolerance for this official program of state murder; there is an absolute enthusiasm for it. Our rulers heartily enjoy ordering people to be killed. (And to be tortured, as we noted here last week.) It makes them feel good. It makes them feel “hard,” in every sense of the word. As Hastings notes:

From the moment Obama took office, according to Washington insiders, the new commander in chief evinced a “love” of drones. “The drone program is something the executive branch is paying a lot of attention to,” says Ken Gude, vice president of the Center for American Progress. “These weapons systems have become central to Obama.” In the early days of the administration, then-chief of staff Rahm Emanuel would routinely arrive at the White House and demand, “Who did we get today?”

Here are some examples of what Rahm and his then-boss, the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, were “getting” with their flying deaths squads:

But for every “high-value” target killed by drones, there’s a civilian or other innocent victim who has paid the price. The first major success of drones – the 2002 strike that took out the leader of Al Qaeda in Yemen – also resulted in the death of a U.S. citizen. More recently, a drone strike by U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2010 targeted the wrong individual – killing a well-known human rights advocate named Zabet Amanullah who actually supported the U.S.-backed government. The U.S. military, it turned out, had tracked the wrong cellphone for months, mistaking Amanullah for a senior Taliban leader. A year earlier, a drone strike killed Baitullah Mehsud, the head of the Pakistani Taliban, while he was visiting his father-in-law; his wife was vaporized along with him. But the U.S. had already tried four times to assassinate Mehsud with drones, killing dozens of civilians in the failed attempts. One of the missed strikes, according to a human rights group, killed 35 people, including nine civilians, with reports that flying shrapnel killed an eight-year-old boy while he was sleeping. Another blown strike, in June 2009, took out 45 civilians, according to credible press reports.

And of course there is this, the follow-up to the “extrajudicial killing” of U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki. After killing al-Awlaki — without ever charging him with a single crime — the Obama administration then murdered his 16-year-old son (as we noted here last year). Hastings writes:

In the days following the killing, Nasser and his wife received a call from Anwar’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who had run away from home a few weeks earlier to try to find his now-deceased father in Yemen. “He called us and gave us his condolences,” Nasser recalls. “We told him to come back, and he promised he would. We really pressed him, me and his grandmother.”

The teenage boy never made it home. Two weeks after that final conversation, his grandparents got another phone call from a relative. Abdulrahman had been killed in a drone strike in the southern part of Yemen, his family’s tribal homeland. The boy, who had no known role in Al Qaeda or any other terrorist operation, appears to have been another victim of Obama’s drone war: Abdulrahman had been accompanying a cousin when a drone obliterated him and seven others. The suspected target of the killing – a member of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula – is reportedly still alive; it’s unclear whether he was even there when the strike took place.

The news devastated the family. “My wife weeps every day and every morning for her grandson,” says Nasser, a former high-ranking member of the Yemenite government. “He was a nice, gentle boy who liked to swim a lot. This is a boy who did nothing against America or against anything else. A boy. He is a citizen of the United States, and there are no reasons to kill him except that he is Anwar’s son.”

The boy was probably killed in a “signature strike,” where bold and brave CIA analysts sit back in their chairs and observe people going about their business in a foreign country far away. If their activities look “suspicious” according to some arbitrary, secret criteria, then they can be slaughtered instantly by a drone missile — even if the attackers have no idea whatsoever who the targets are or what they are actually doing. Plotting terrorism, or praying? Organizing jihad, or holding a wedding? Building bombs, or having lunch? The attackers don’t know — and can’t know. They simply put down their Cheetohs and fire the missile. Who cares? It’s just “bug splatter.”

And the fact is, no one does care. As Hastings notes, this hideous program of murder and terror has been fully embraced by the political elite and by society at large. And our rulers are now bringing it back home with a vengeance, putting more and more Americans under the unsleeping eye of government drones watching their every move, looking for the “signature” of “suspicious” behaviour. Hastings notes:

In the end, it appears, the administration has little reason to worry about any backlash from its decision to kill an American citizen – one who had not even been charged with a crime. A recent poll shows that most Democrats overwhelmingly support the drone program, and Congress passed a law in February that calls for the Federal Aviation Administration to “accelerate the integration of unmanned aerial systems” in the skies over America. Drones, which are already used to fight wildfires out West and keep an eye on the Mexican border, may soon be used to spy on U.S. citizens at home: Police in Miami and Houston have reportedly tested them for domestic use, and their counterparts in New York are also eager to deploy them.

History affords few if any examples of a free people — in such a powerful country, under no existential threat, undergoing no invasion, no armed insurrection, no natural disaster or epidemic or societal collapse — giving up their own freedoms so meekly, so mutely. Most Americans like to boast of their love of freedom, their rock-ribbed independence and their fiercely-held moral principles: yet they are happy to see the government claim — and use — the power to murder innocent people whenever it pleases while imposing an ever-spreading police state regimen on their lives and liberties. Sheep doped with Rohypnol would put up a stronger fight than these doughty patriots.

Hasting’s story should be read in full. In its straightforward marshalling of facts and refusal to simply parrot the spin of the powerful (something we used to call “journalism,” kids; ask your grandparents about it, they might remember), it lays out the hideous reality of our times. I am tempted to call it an important story — but I know that it will sink with scarcely a ripple into the abyss of our toxic self-regard. A few will read it and be horrified; the rest will stay riveted on the oh-so-exciting and oh-so-important race to see who will get to perpetuate this vile and murderous system for the next four years.

Source: chris-floyd.com

Big Mistakes Paul Ehrlich Made On Human Overpopulation

While some of the great minds in history wrestled with humanity’s ability to feed itself, the general populace doesn’t understand nor does it possess a clue as to what we face in the 21^st century.  Humans race toward adding another three billion to the current seven billion to reach 10 billion in less than 40 years.  Malthus, Darwin, Ehrlich, Heinberg, Bartlett, Alpert and other giants understood/understand humans’ ability to overpopulate their ability to feed themselves.

Even the green revolution man stated it concisely.  Norman Borlaug, while accepting the Nobel peace prize in 1970, said: “The green revolution has won a temporary success in man’s war against hunger and deprivation; it has given man a breathing space. If fully implemented, the revolution can provide sufficient food for sustenance during the next three decades. But the frightening power of human reproduction must also be curbed; otherwise the success of the green revolution will be ephemeral only.”

Yet, I receive incredibly chastising letters from religious, emotional, clueless and scientifically out of touch individuals weekly about how humanity will find new energy through technology, etc.  Much of it is as mythical as the second coming of Jesus, Buddha, Krishna and other great teachers of the path that have been anointed as “gods” themselves instead of what they were—simple men of the spirit.

Dr. Paul Ehrlich suffered much criticism with his Population Bomb in 1968.  He made predictions that have manifested as 18 million humans starve to death annually. Nonetheless, his detractors love to fault him. But they can’t!   Borlaug nailed it and we must deal with it.

Weekly, I participate in a very special discussion with over 100 of the top minds in the country on environment and overpopulation.  My friend, David Paxson, director of www.worldpopulationbalance.org spoke recently and he enjoyed some feedback.

David, I listened to the radio interview. I thought you did an excellent job; however I think you have some rough spots that can be improved upon.  The critic is John Taves:

1) One example is where you pointed out the mistake that Paul Ehrlich made when he predicted dire consequences in a certain time frame. I totally agree with you that that was a mistake. Ehrlich should not have made predictions. My point is that you subsequently made the exact same mistake when you said that Ehrlich’s predictions are NOW coming true. There is no need to state that they are now coming true.

2) When she said “some people say that the planet will take care of the population numbers”, I thought your answer was weak. I prefer something along these lines.

Of course the planet will limit our numbers, but that is NOT a solution, that is the problem. If we continue to create babies faster than people die of old age, nature will be forced to stop the population growth by killing people faster, and at least fast enough to keep up with how fast we create new babies. But it is worse than that. We must consume oil, for example, in order to feed our current 7 billion. If we do not burn oil, we cannot produce food fast enough to feed ourselves. You can imagine the oil reserves are stock piles of food. As that stock pile of food runs out, our numbers must decrease because we have no ability to keep 7 billion alive without digging into that pile of food.

In addition, your answer was technically wrong when you said that the planet is not limiting the growth today. This is not terribly important for the audience you were speaking to in that interview, but it is a huge problem with experts. Nature IS limiting the growth and generally always has been limiting our numbers. Populations grow exponentially, and humans have been around for a long time, thus our numbers have always been throttled by nature. There are temporary exceptions to this.

For example, when humans discovered farming techniques, we raised the limit of what can be provided for and our numbers grew to the new limits. A more recent example is what has happened in North America for the past 500 years. European diseases decimated the native population numbers and for the next 500 years improved techniques for providing for our numbers have ensured that the limits of what can be provided for have expanded faster than the population has grown. The population numbers in NA have not yet caught up to what can be provided for (notice “provided for” is not the same as “can be sustained”, which means I totally agree that we are overpopulated).

However, Ethiopia and many other countries that are suffering a replacement rate above 2, are indeed experiencing the horror of nature limiting their numbers. The limit has not been a hard cap. The numbers are increasing, but the numbers are not increasing as fast as they would if the area was well below what could be provided for. In short, deaths are occurring today because of the fact that too many births are happening today. That last sentence is the key point. We have to recognize that births above a certain rate, cause deaths, and we have to recognize that we have always been above that rate. As part of the “overpopulation education” that you are advocating, I am trying to insert the fact that we must recognize that births cause deaths.

You seemed to acknowledge this later when you spoke about the horrible conditions in many poor countries, but then you seemed to disagree with it when you cited the fact that the recent huge population growth was caused by the decrease in the death rate. There is a subtle error when demographers tell us that for much of human history the birth rate and the death rate matched each other and thus our numbers did not grow.

This statement is true, but it suggests that this was good and that somehow the birth rate magically matched the death rate. It makes much more sense to say that whenever you see a stable population and an uncontrolled birth rate, the death rate was forced to rise to match the birth rate. It is true that nature also lowers the birth rate, but it does this by totally unpleasant means. The point I am making is that we humans did not throttle our birth rate, thus nature throttled our population numbers by raising the death rate. The subtle rephrasing that I just did is very important to get the message across that we have a moral responsibility to limit our births.

3) Your answer to the man that suggested that we should all become vegetarians was too long and inefficient. You should have said something like the following: Yes, we can all become vegetarians, and drive Priuses and use CFLs, but none of that will solve the problem if we continue to create babies faster than people die of old age. So consuming less per capita is not a solution. If we recognize that we must not create babies faster than old age, it should be possible to limit our birth rate even lower such that our numbers decrease. If we can do that, there’s no reason that our population numbers should level off at some number where we are just able to sustain ourselves as long as we eat no meat. Why not maintain that lower birth rate for more time such that our numbers drop well below that level, so that there is no problem eating meat?

You sort of comprehended this when you made it clear that by going vegetarian, and Prius, and CFLs, we simply enable a larger population. But you were not terribly crisp in making the point that ultimately the birth rate is the only possible solution.

The Oregon study you quoted is a fine example of a muddy point. Ultimately that study makes no sense. You stated that the study concludes that the birth of another child is 20 times more costly than other options. That study is attempting to tell us the cost of adding another human to the world. To do that they have to make an assumption about the birth rate, which is the exact thing that the study’s information will affect. I am going to use a better definition of “birth rate” to explain this. Ask each adult right before they die how many children they created. Each person will be counted twice. Once by the mother and once by the father. This number is what I call “the average number of children”.

If the study assumes that the average number of children is above 2, the additional birth is meaningless. The population is attempting to grow to infinity, thus the cost of the additional human is infinite. It is not 20x. If the average number of children is below 2, then the additional birth is also meaningless, it won’t change the fact that the population will go to zero. In short, you cannot put a finite cost to the existence of another human. If that human’s descendants average more than 2, then the cost is infinite.

You talked about how we all need to have an overpopulation education and I totally agree. Part of that education will be new definitions. For example, the definition of birth rate that demographers use is pathetic. Births per 1000 is the demographer’s unit of measure. It does not matter what “births per X” you use. The “per x” shifts the concept to the wrong units. The concept we must get to is found in the definition I created. The definition of “average number of children” allows us to “go up stream” as you put it. The “upstream source” of all of this is how many children we average. If we average more than two, we cause our numbers to attempt to grow to infinity. Thus we have a moral obligation to NOT average more than two.

In the end, Dr. Paul Ehrlich is dead on the money and so is Malthus, Bartlett, Heinberg, Catton, Darwin and more.

Response to George Mitchell Regarding Why It Is Apartheid

“This is much worse than apartheid. Israeli measures, the brutality, make apartheid look like a picnic.”

In the third ATLANTIC EXCHANGE series, Senator George Mitchell, former U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East, is featured in the segment of Is Peace Possible?, a multimedia presentation and special report on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In the opening comments, Robert Wexler who retired from congress to become president of The S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, claims, “no one agrees less than 80%” with Senator Mitchell.

I won’t quibble over percentages, but as only an “honest and objective view” is the way forward, I offer why Senator Mitchell gets it wrong about apartheid.

When the “A” word comes up at around the 50-minute mark, Mr. Mitchell expresses his disapproval of using “complicated words” and “inflammatory words and phrases that create aggravation and hostility”.

Not facing the true facts on the ground creates aggravation and increases hostility and although Apartheid is complex, the word itself is not.

According to a 2007 UN report,, Haaretz columnist Danny Rubinstein said, “Israel today was an apartheid State with four different Palestinian groups: those in Gaza, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Israeli Palestinians, each of which had a different status…even if the wall followed strictly the line of the pre-1967 border, it would still not be justified. The two peoples needed cooperation rather than walls because they must be neighbors.” [1]

“An apartheid society is much more than just a ‘settler colony’. It involves specific forms of oppression that actively strip the original inhabitants of any rights at all, whereas civilian members of the invader caste are given all kinds of sumptuous privileges.” [2]

On May 14, 1948, The Declaration of the establishment of Israel affirmed that, “The State of Israel will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel: it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion it will guarantee freedom of religion [and] conscience and will be faithful to the Charter of the United Nations.”

However, reality intrudes, for “The truth, which is known to all; through its army, the government of Israel practices a brutal form of Apartheid in the territory it occupies. Its army has turned every Palestinian village and town into a fenced-in, or blocked-in, detention camp.”- Israeli Minister of Education, Shulamit Aloni quoted in the popular Israeli newspaper, Yediot Acharonot on December 20, 2006,

How could a state founded on “equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants” come to be such a state of hypocrisy?

A Little History:

On July 5, 1950, Israel enacted the Law of Return by which Jews anywhere in the world, have a “right” to immigrate to Israel on the grounds that they are returning to their own state, even if they have never been there before. [3]

On July 14, 1952: The enactment of the Citizenship/Jewish Nationality Law, results in Israel becoming the only state in the world to grant a particular national-religious group—the Jews—the right to settle in it and gain automatic citizenship. In 1953, South Africa’s Prime Minister Daniel Malan becomes the first foreign head of government to visit Israel and returns home with the message that Israel can be a source of inspiration for white South Africans. [IBID]

In 1962, South African Prime Minister Verwoerd declares that Jews “took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs had lived there for a thousand years. In that I agree with them, Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state.” [IBID]

On August 1, 1967, Israel enacted the Agricultural Settlement Law, which bans Israeli citizens of non-Jewish nationality- Palestinian Arabs- from working on Jewish National Fund lands, well over 80% of the land in Israel. Knesset member Uri Avnery stated: “This law is going to expel Arab cultivators from the land that was formerly theirs and was handed over to the Jews.” [IBID]

On April 4, 1969, General Moshe Dayan is quoted in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz telling students at Israel’s Technion Institute that “Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You don’t even know the names of these Arab villages, and I don’t blame you, because these geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either… There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.”[IBID]

On April 28, 1971: C. L. Sulzberger, writing in The New York Times, quoted South African Prime Minister John Vorster as saying that Israel is faced with an apartheid problem, namely how to handle its Arab inhabitants. Sulzberger wrote: “Both South Africa and Israel are in a sense intruder states. They were built by pioneers originating abroad and settling in partially inhabited areas.” [IBID]

On September 13, 1978, in Washington, D.C. The Camp David Accords are signed by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and witnessed by President Jimmy Carter. The Accords reaffirm U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338, which prohibit acquisition of land by force, call for Israel’s withdrawal of military and civilian forces from the West Bank and Gaza, and prescribe “full autonomy” for the inhabitants of the territories. Begin orally promises Carter to freeze all settlement activity during the subsequent peace talks. Once back in Israel, however, the Israeli prime minister continues to confiscate, settle, and fortify the occupied territories. [IBID]

On September 13, 1985, Rep. George Crockett (D-MI), after visiting the Israeli-occupied West Bank, compares the living conditions there with those of South African blacks and concludes that the West Bank is an instance of apartheid that no one in the U.S. is talking about. [IBID]

In July 2000, President Bill Clinton convenes the Camp David II Peace Summit between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat. Clinton—not Barak—offers Arafat the withdrawal of some 40,000 Jewish settlers, leaving more than 180,000 in 209 settlements, all of which are interconnected by roads that cover approximately 10% of the occupied land. Effectively, this divides the West Bank into at least two non-contiguous areas and multiple fragments. Palestinians would have no control over the borders around them, the air space above them, or the water reserves under them. Barak calls it a generous offer. Arafat refuses to sign. [IBID]

August 31, 2001: Durban, South Africa. Up to 50,000 South Africans march in support of the Palestinian people. In their “Declaration by South Africans on Apartheid and the Struggle for Palestine” they proclaim: “We, South Africans who lived for decades under rulers with a colonial mentality, see Israeli occupation as a strange survival of colonialism in the 21st century. Only in Israel do we hear of ‘settlements’ and ‘settlers.’ Only in Israel do soldiers and armed civilian groups take over hilltops, demolish homes, uproot trees and destroy crops, shell schools, churches and mosques, plunder water reserves, and block access to an indigenous population’s freedom of movement and right to earn a living. These human rights violations were unacceptable in apartheid South Africa and are an affront to us in apartheid Israel.” [IBID]

October 23, 2001: Ronnie Kasrils, a Jew and a minister in the South African government, co-authors a petition “Not in My Name,” signed by some 200 members of South Africa’s Jewish community, reads: “It becomes difficult, from a South African perspective, not to draw parallels with the oppression expressed by Palestinians under the hand of Israel and the oppression experienced in South Africa under apartheid rule.” [IBID]

Three years later, Kasrils will go to the Occupied Territories and conclude: ”This is much worse than apartheid. Israeli measures, the brutality, make apartheid look like a picnic. We never had jets attacking our townships. We never had sieges that lasted month after month. We never had tanks destroying houses. We had armored vehicles and police using small arms to shoot people but not on this scale.” [IBID]

April 29, 2002: Boston, MA. South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu says he is “very deeply distressed” by what he observed in his recent visit to the Holy Land, adding, “It reminded me so much of what happened in South Africa.” The Nobel peace laureate said he saw “the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about. Referring to Americans, he adds, “People are scared in this country to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful—very powerful. Well, so what? The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists.” [IBID]

In November 2005, this reporter attended the Gainesville, Florida, Anarchist’s Against the Wall Power Point Lecture by Jonathon Pollak, an intense young Israeli and organizer for Anarchist’s Against the Wall/AAtW, which is a collaborative NONVIOLENT resistance and civil disobedience group of Palestinians, Israelis and Internationals who are dedicated to bringing the separation/apartheid wall down and ending the occupation of Palestine.

Pollak said, “Although Israel marketed the Wall as a security barrier, logic suggests such a barrier would be as short and straight as possible. Instead, it snakes deep inside the West Bank, resulting in a route that is twice as long as the Green Line, the internationally recognized border. Israel chose the Wall’s path in order to dispossess Palestinians of the maximum land and water, to preserve as many Israeli settlements as possible, and to unilaterally determine a border.

“In order to build the Wall Israel is uprooting tens of thousands of ancient olive trees that for many Palestinians are also the last resource to provide food for their children. The Palestinian aspiration for an independent state is also threatened by the Wall, as it isolates villages from their mother cities and divides the West Bank into disconnected cantons [bantusans/ghettos]. The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem conservatively estimates that 500,000 Palestinians are negatively impacted by the Wall.

“We believe that, as with Apartheid South Africa, Americans have a vital role to play in ending Israeli occupation - by divesting from companies that support Israeli occupation, boycotting Israeli products, coming to Palestine as witnesses, or standing with Palestinians in nonviolent resistance.” [4]

In June 2005, a young American who had moved to Israel because of the incentives of Aliyah told me:

“Aliyah means ‘going up,’ and this deal was hard to pass by. I get fifteen hundred shekels or about thirty-six hundred dollars a year in increments to help with my expenses. I can apply for unemployment benefits after seven months, as long as I look for a job.

“I just completed Ulpan, which was five hundred hours of Hebrew language immersion studies that took five months, five hours a day, for five weeks. I get subsidized rent and just moved out of the Absorption Center Projects. All the new immigrants get room, utilities, and three meals a day for the first five months in Israel. We also receive free medical care and all the doctors here are dedicated. We can go to the university with 100 percent of the tuition paid by the government. College is much cheaper here; it’s about three thousand to four thousand dollars a year. Until I am thirty years old, I can receive up to three years of education for my master’s degree.” [5]

Apartheid can be summed up as a structured process of gross human rights violations perpetrated against a conquered ethnic majority by a state and society mainly controlled by an invading ethnic minority and its descendants, mainly immigrants, that have been deemed part of the ethnic elite.

The following nine categories make up the necessary, sufficient, and defining characteristics of apartheid regimes:

1. Violence: Apartheid is a state of war initiated by a de facto invading ethnic minority, which at least in the short term originates from a non-neighboring locality. In all main instances of apartheid most if not all members of the invading group originate from a different continent. The invading ethnic minority and its self-defined descendants then continue to dominate the indigenous majority by means of their military superiority and by their continuous threats and uses of violence.

2. Repopulation: Apartheid is also a continuation of depopulation and population transfer. One example is seen in the obliteration of the indigenous Bedouins that Israel denies free movement to graze their herds and are silently transferring the Bedouins to new locales, such as atop of garbage dumps.

3. Citizenship: The indigenous people are often denied citizenship in their own country by the apartheid state authorities, which are ironically and irrationally, run and staffed by the recent arrivals to the country.

4. Land: Apartheid entails land confiscation, land redistribution and forced removals, almost without exception to the benefit of the invading ethnic minority. Usually, members of the ethnic majority are forced on to barren and unfertile soils, where they must also try to survive under impoverished and overcrowded conditions.

5. Work: Apartheid displays systematic exploitation of the indigenous class in the production process and different pay or taxation for the same work.

6. Access: There is ethnically differentiated access to employment, food, water, health care, emergency services, clean air, and other needs, including the need for leisure activities, in each case ensuring superior access for the favored ethnic community.

7. Education: There are also different kinds of education offered and forced upon the different ethnic groups.

8. Language: A basic apartheid characteristic is the fact that only very few of the invaders and their descendants ever learn the language(s) of the indigenous victims.

9. Thought: Finally, apartheid contains ideologies or ‘necessary illusions’ in order to convince the privileged minorities that they are inherently superior and the indigenous majorities that they are inherently inferior. Much of apartheid thought is shaped by typical war propaganda. The enemy is dehumanized by both sides’ ideologies, words and other symbols are used to incite or provoke people to violence, but mostly so by the invaders and their descendants. [6]

During my 2005 visit to Hebron, there were 450 Israeli settlers and 3,000 Israeli Forces who patrolled the streets with their weapons at the ready and refused us access through one of the many checkpoints.

My guide was Jerry Levin, who had been a secular Jew and CNN’s Mid East Bureau Chief in the 1980′s when he was kidnapped in Lebanon and held for nearly a year by the Hezbollah. During his captivity, on a Christmas Eve, Jerry had a mystical experience of Jesus and miraculously escaped a short time later. [Jerry shares that story in “Reflections on My First Noel” by HOPE Publishing House].

When I met Jerry, he was a full time volunteer with CPT/Christian Peacemaker Teams and he told me, “Most of the soldiers don’t like the CPTs. Whenever they won’t let us through, we just go another way, and always, eventually, get where we want to go.” [7]

The village of Hebron had once been a thriving Palestinian neighborhood, but now the narrow, winding stone streets between the colonists and the indigenous people are only connected to the other by a deeply sagging netting that the squatters hurl huge rocks, shovels, electronic equipment, furniture, and all manner of debris upon with hope it will break and hit an unfortunate Palestinian upon the head.

Levin informed me, “It gets cleaned out about every year or so. Come back in a few months, and this netting will be much closer to your head. The settlers just throw whatever they want onto the netting; they do what ever they want and get away with it. The CPT’s run interference by nonviolent resistance; we get the children and woman to where they need to be going and back again. Sometimes, the settlers curse and stone us all; it keeps it interesting.” [8]

Hundreds of now empty formerly Palestinian homes had been spray-painted by the settlers with Stars of David and graffiti such as: ”GAS THE ARABS.”

When Minister of Intelligence in South African Government, Ronnie Kasrils returned to Palestine’s West Bank and Gaza Strip, he wrote how it was “like a surreal trip back into an apartheid state of emergency. It is chilling to pass through the myriad checkpoints — more than 500 in the West Bank. They are controlled by heavily armed soldiers, youthful but grim, tensely watching every movement, fingers on the trigger…A journey from one West Bank town to another that could take 20 minutes by car now takes seven hours for Palestinians, with manifold indignities at the hands of teenage soldiers…The monstrous apartheid wall cuts off East Jerusalem…Bethlehem too is totally enclosed by the wall, with two gated entry points. The Israelis have added insult to injury by plastering the entrances with giant scenic posters welcoming tourists to Christ’s birthplace.” [9]

On the cover of my second book, Meir Vanunu provided the photo of the enormous Orwellian sign Karlis referred to, which hung upon The Wall next to the checkpoint that leads from Jerusalem to her sister city, Bethlehem: ”PEACE BE WITH YOU” in English and Hebrew.

The Wall or as Israel prefers to spin it as a ‘security barrier’, “is designed to crush the human spirit as much as to enclose the Palestinians in ghettos. Like a reptile, it transforms its shape and cuts across agricultural lands as a steel-and-wire barrier, with watchtowers, ditches, patrol roads and alarm systems. It will be 700km long and, at a height of 8m to 9m in places, dwarfs the Berlin Wall. The purpose of the barrier becomes clearest in open country. Its route cuts huge swathes into the West Bank to incorporate into Israel the illegal Jewish settlements — some of which are huge towns — and annexes more and more Palestinian territory.” [10]

If The Wall is truly to keep out terrorists, why was it not built on Israeli land?

“It has become abundantly clear that the wall and checkpoints are principally aimed at advancing the safety, convenience and comfort of settlers.”- Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad. [Ibid]

“The West Bank, once 22% of historic Palestine, has shrunk to perhaps 10% to 12% of living space for its inhabitants, and is split into several fragments, including the fertile Jordan Valley, which is a security preserve for Jewish settlers and the Israeli Defence Force. Like the Gaza Strip, the West Bank is effectively a hermetically sealed prison…roads are barred to Palestinians and reserved for Jewish settlers. I try in vain to recall anything quite as obscene in apartheid South Africa.” [Ibid]

On December 20, 2006, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who received a Nobel Peace Prize for his relentless work confronting and challenging South Africa’s Apartheid regime spoke to The Guardian: “I’ve been deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land. I have seen the humiliation at the checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about…Israel will never get true security and safety through oppressing another people. A true peace can ultimately be built only on justice…If peace could come to South Africa, surely it can come to the Holy Land.”

George Mitchell, Robert Wexler and I do agree with Tutu that peace can come to the Holy Land; but only if it is a JUST peace which ensures equal human rights, liberty and self-determination for all the people of that troubled land.

Justice requires honoring International Law and upholding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

“On the day of the termination of the British mandate and on the strength of the United Nations General Assembly declare The State of Israel will be based on freedom, justice and peace asenvisaged by the prophets of Israel: it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion it will guarantee freedom of religion [and] conscience and will be faithful to the Charter of the United Nations.” - May 14, 1948. The Declaration of the establishment of Israel
“From Moses to Jeremiah and Isaiah, the Prophets taught…that the Jewish claim on the land of Israel was totally contingent on the moral and spiritual life of the Jews who lived there, and that the land would, as the Torah tells us, ‘vomit you out’ if people did not live according to the highest moral vision of Torah. Over and over again, the Torah repeated its most frequently stated mitzvah [command]:
“When you enter your land, do not oppress the stranger; the other, the one who is an outsider of your society, the powerless one and then not only ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself’ but also ‘you shall love the other.’” [11]

“What does God require? He has told you o’man! Be just, be merciful, and walk humbly with your Lord.” -Micah 6:8

As Americans we all need to understand every one of us who pay taxes is culpable.

“Financed with U.S. aid at a cost of $1.5 million per mile, the Israeli wall prevents residents from receiving health care and emergency medical services. In other areas, the barrier separates farmers from their olive groves which have been their families’ sole livelihood for generations.” [Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Page 43, Jan/Feb. 2007]

Learn more:

Is Peace Possible?

YES!

1.  http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3444320,00.html

2.  Apartheid Ancient, Past, and Present Systematic and Gross Human Rights Violations in Graeco-Roman Egypt, South Africa, and Israel/Palestine, By Anthony Löwstedt. Page 77.
3.  The Link, “About That Word Apartheid”, April-May 2007, Published by Americans for Middle East Understanding, Inc.
4. Eileen Fleming, Memoirs of a Nice Irish-American ‘Girl’s’ Life in Occupied Territory, pages 55-56

5. Apartheid Ancient, Past, and Present Systematic and Gross Human Rights Violations in Graeco-Roman Egypt, South Africa, and Israel/Palestine, By Anthony Löwstedt. Page 77.
6. KEEP HOPE ALIVE, by Eileen Fleming, page 99.
7. Paraphrased from pages 71-73, Apartheid Ancient, Past, and Present.
8.  KEEP HOPE ALIVE, page 105.
9. Ibid
10.  Mail & Guardian, Israel 2007: Worse than Apartheid, by Ronnie Kasrils.

11. Rabbi Lerner, TIKKUN Magazine, page 35, Sept./Oct. 2007

The Reality of America’s Aggression Against Iraq

War Without End, Amen…

In March 2003, the United States of America launched an entirely unprovoked act of military aggression against a nation which had not attacked it and posed no threat to it. This act led directly to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. It drove millions more from their homes, and plunged the entire conquered nation into suffering, fear, hatred and deprivation.

This is the reality of what actually happened in Iraq: aggression, slaughter, atrocity, ruin. It is the only reality; there is no other. And it was done deliberately, knowingly, willingly. Indeed, the bipartisan American power structure spent more than $1 trillion to make it happen. It is a record of unspeakable savagery, an abomination, an outpouring of the most profound and filthy moral evil.

Line up the bodies of the children, the thousands of children — the infants, the toddlers, the schoolkids — whose bodies were torn to pieces, burned alive or riddled with bullets during the American invasion and occupation of Iraq. Line them up in the desert sand, walk past them, mile after mile, all those twisted corpses, those scraps of torn flesh and seeping viscera, those blank faces, those staring eyes fixed forever on nothingness.

This is the reality of what happened in Iraq; there is no other reality.

These children — these thousands of children — are dead, and will always be dead, as a direct result of the unprovoked act of military aggression launched and sustained by the American power structure. Killing these children, creating and maintaining the conditions that led to the slaughter of these children, was precisely what the armed forces of the United States were doing in Iraq. Without the invasion, without the occupation, without the 1.5 million members of the American volunteer army who surrendered their moral agency to “just follow orders” and carry out their leaders’ agenda of aggression, those children would not have died — would not have been torn, eviscerated, shot, burned and destroyed.

This is the reality of what happened in Iraq; you cannot make it otherwise. It has already happened; it always will have happened. You cannot undo it.

But you can, of course, ignore it. This is the path chosen by the overwhelming majority of Americans, and by the entirety of the bipartisan elite. This involves a pathological degree of disassociation from reality. What is plainly there — the evil, the depravity, the guilt — cannot be accepted, and so it is converted into its opposite: goodness, triumph, righteousness. The moral structures of the psyche are eaten away by this malignant dynamic, as are the mind’s powers of perception and judgment. Thus depravity and evil come to seem more and more normal; it becomes more and more difficult to focus on what is really in front of you, to perceive, judge and care about the actual consequences of what you’ve done or what is being done in your name. Unmoored from reality, you become lost in a savage nihilism that cloaks its unsifted rage and fear and chaos in the most threadbare pieties. And thus you drift deeper and deeper into evil and meaninglessness, singing hosannas to yourself as you go.

And so Barack Obama, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, the self-proclaimed inheritor of the mantle of Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi, went to North Carolina this week to declare the act of aggression in Iraq “an extraordinary achievement.” He lauded the soldiers gathered before him for their “commitment to fulfil your mission”: the mission of carrying out an unprovoked war of aggression and imposing a society-destroying occupation that led directly to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. These activities — “everything that American troops have done in Iraq” — led to “this moment of success,” he proclaimed.

He spoke of suffering, he spoke of sacrifice, he spoke of loss and enduring pain — but only for the Americans involved in the unprovoked war of aggression, and their families. He did not say a single word — not one — about the thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of Iraqis killed by this “fulfilled mission,” this “extraordinary achievement,” this” success.” These human beings — these sons and daughters, fathers, mothers, kinfolk, lovers, friends — cannot be acknowledged. They cannot be perceived. It must be as if they had never existed. It must be as if they are not dead now.

The divorce from reality here is beyond description. It is only the all-pervasiveness of the disassociation that obscures its utter and obvious insanity. There is something intensely primitive and infantile in the reductive, navel-gazing, self-blinding monomania of the American psyche today. Think of the ancient Greeks, who constructed their psyches and their worldview around an epic poem, the Iliad, that depicted their enemies, the Trojans, with remarkable sympathy, understanding and insight — while depicting their own leaders as a band of shallow, squabbling, murderous fools. Here was a moral sophistication, a cold-eyed grasp of reality — and a level of empathy for one’s fellow human beings — far beyond the capacity of modern American society, and infinitely beyond the reach of the murderous fools who seek to lead it.

The Iraq War has not ended. Not for the dead, not for their survivors, not for the displaced, the maimed, the lost, the suffering, not for all of us who live in the degraded, destabilised, impoverished world it has spawned, and not for the future generations who will live with the ever-widening, ever-deepening consequences of this irrevocable evil.

Source: Empire Burlesque

Time’s Fareed Zakaria: An Intellectually Credentialed Innumerate (Illiterate)

Several months ago, Time editor Fareed Zakaria, a transplant who fled India, told Terri Gross of National Public Radio that America will add a healthy 138 million people via immigration in the next 39 years.  He neglected to mention that his own country at 1.2 billion and headed for 1.6 billion—suffers untold human misery, poverty, environmental destruction, carbon footprint, ecological footprint, filthy rivers, toxic drinking water and a litany of problems that are irreversible and unsolvable.  I know because I have traveled through India.  There is no “Indian Dream” for nine-tenths of its population.  The squalor, filth and misery of India takes a sane person’s breath away.  And, there is no hope of conditions improving, ever.

I wrote Terri Gross with facts, figures and graphs to show that we cannot sustain another 138 million at the level of water, energy and resource usage of an average American. I invited her to interview my work and that of 35 other top PH.D. experts in the field of environment and overpopulation.  She declined.

The fact remains:  NPR and the Main Stream Media avoid, evade and suppress any discussion on America’s human overpopulation.  Men like Zakaria, are known as “innumerates” or credentialed individuals that lack the ability to perform simple math.  Dr. Albert Bartlett, www.albartlett.com,  of the University of Colorado, defines “innumeracy” as the mathematical equivalent of illiteracy.

Recently, Zakaria spouted more innumeracy when he said, “US demographics are strikingly healthy. We’ll be the only rich country to increase its population over the next 30 years.”  We are following the miserable population path already tread by India and China as the third fastest growing nation on the planet.  But not by our own hand as American women have averaged 2.03 children since 1970.   As the world adds 1 billion every 12 years on its way to adding 3 billion in 40 years, we will see growing and unending starvation, wars for resources and a line of desperate world citizens knocking on our door to enter.  They are already busting down the door on the Mexican border.  But Zakaria welcomes unlimited growth!

To which one of the most brilliant men in history said, “Unlimited population growth cannot be sustained; you cannot sustain growth in the rates of consumption of resources. No species can overrun the carrying capacity of a finite land mass. This Law cannot be repealed and is not negotiable.” Dr. Albert Bartlett

I wrote Zakaria a similar letter with facts, graphs and figures.  He did not respond, because “innumerates” cannot respond to facts or in most cases, reality.  In fact, such persons gain tremendous audiences because few want to face the facts or the future with any realistic understanding of what will happen.  It’s the proverbial Cassandra Syndrome.

Once again, others like to shoot the messenger.  I am a messenger and a very exceptional one.

One reader from Michigan wrote, “And yet if you try to inform most people of any of those alarming statistics, you are almost guaranteed a “shoot the messenger” reception. Question the growing number of food stamp and/or welfare recipients and you’re called selfish, a bigot and “not willing to share.” Mention the high rate of illiteracy and it quickly becomes a racist thing. And if one dares suggest even a slowing of the influx of immigrants, well . . . you may just get reminded that somewhere in your family history your ancestors came from somewhere else, and that maybe you should just go live in that country!  I know that more than one person has said that to me (as if the conditions were the same in 1900 as they are today — not to mention that in those pre-welfare days someone coming to America either engaged in productive work or they didn’t survive!)   Keep up the good work. There are readers like myself, that are not afraid to pass this on, despite the listener almost always letting us know they’d rather not hear about it.”

One reader told me that he is optimistic as to adding 100 million.  Sorry, optimism won’t cut it when we don’t have the water, energy, food and resources to sustain another 100 million on our ecologically devastated planet.

Therefore, once again, I offer some of the finest minds for you to ponder on what it means to keep wrecking the planet, this civilization and no critical thought as to the impact of human overpopulation.

SERIOUS REALITIES FACING OUR CIVILIZATION IN 21^ST CENTURY

“The raging monster upon the land is population growth. In its presence, sustainability is but a fragile theoretical construct.  To say, as many do, that the difficulties of nations are not due to people, but to poor ideology and land-use management is sophistic.”  Harvard scholar and biologist E.O. Wilson

“Most Western elites continue urging the wealthy West not to stem the migrant tide [that adds 80 million net gain annually to the planet], but to absorb our global brothers and sisters until their horrid ordeal has been endured and shared by all—ten billion humans packed onto an ecologically devastated planet.” Dr. Otis Graham, Unguarded Gates

Lester Brown, author of Plan B 4.0 Saving Civilization said, “The world has set in motion environmental trends that are threatening civilization itself.  We are crossing environmental thresholds and violating deadlines set by nature. Nature is the timekeeper, but we cannot see the clock.”

“Somehow, we have come to think the whole purpose of the economy is to grow, yet growth is not a goal or purpose. The pursuit of endless growth is suicidal.”  David Suzuki

“Growth for the sake of yet more growth is a bankrupt and eventually lethal idea. CASSE is the David fighting the Goliath of endless expansion, and we know how that one turned out.” ~ David Orr

The green revolution was instigated as a result of the efforts of Norman Borlaug, who, while accepting the Nobel peace prize in 1970, said: “The green revolution has won a temporary success in man’s war against hunger and deprivation; it has given man a breathing space. If fully implemented, the revolution can provide sufficient food for sustenance during the next three decades. But the frightening power of human reproduction must also be curbed; otherwise the success of the green revolution will be ephemeral only.”

“The cheap oil age created an artificial bubble of plentitude for a period not much longer than a human lifetime….so I hazard to assert that as oil ceases to be cheap and the world reserves move toward depletion, we will be left with an enormous population…that the ecology of the earth will not support. The journey back toward non-oil population homeostasis will not be pretty.  We will discover the hard way that population hyper growth was simply a side-effect of the oil age.  It was a condition, not a problem with a solution. That is what happened and we are stuck with it.”  James Howard Kunstler, The Long Emergency 

“We must alert and organize the world’s people to pressure world leaders to take specific steps to solve the two root causes of our environmental crises – exploding population growth and wasteful consumption of irreplaceable resources. Over-consumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today.”   Jacques-Yves Cousteau, Oceanographer

“Upwards of two hundred species.. mostly of the large, slow-breeding variety.. are becoming extinct here every day because more and more of the earth’s carrying capacity is systematically being converted into human carrying capacity. These species are being burnt out, starved out, and squeezed out of existence.. thanks to technologies that most people, I’m afraid, think of as technologies of peace. I hope it will not be too long before the technologies that support our population explosion begin to be perceived as no less hazardous to the future of life on this planet than the endless production of radioactive wastes.” Daniel Quinn - Nature - Life - People - World - Technology - Peace - Environmental

“We’ve poured our poisons into the world as though it were a bottomless pit.. and we go on gobbling them up. It’s hard to imagine how the world could survive another century of this abuse, but nobody’s really doing anything about it. It’s a problem our children will have to solve, or their children.”
Daniel Quinn - Nature - World - Insanity - Greed - Problems - Environmental - Responsibility

“As we go from this happy hydrocarbon bubble we have reached now to a renewable energy resource economy, which we do this century, will the “civil” part of civilization survive?  As we both know there is no way that alternative energy sources can supply the amount of per capita energy we enjoy now, much less for the 9 billion expected by 2050. And energy is what keeps this game going. We are involved in a Faustian bargain—selling our economic souls for the luxurious life of the moment, but sooner or later the price has to be paid.”  Walter Youngquist, energy  

“The U.S. will set a record in the rate of rise—and fall of an empire.  Between wide open borders and fall of the dollar and growing population against a declining resource base, the US will be defeated from within. Mobs will rule the streets in the nation that is now the third largest in the world and unable to support its population except by taking resources from other countries.”  Arnold Toynbee, historian

“A simple look at the upward path of global greenhouse emissions indicates we will continue to squeeze the trigger on the gun we have put to our own head.”  Eugene Linden, The Winds of Change: Climate, Weather and the Destruction of Civilization

“The ship is already starting to spin out of control.  We may soon lose all chance of grabbing the wheel. Humanity faces a genuinely new situation.  It is not an environmental crisis in the accepted sense. It is a crisis for the entire life-support system for our civilization and our species.”  Fred Pearce, The Last Generation: How Nature Will take Her Revenge for Climate Change

“At this point, it’s almost certainly too late to manage a transition to sustainability on a global or national scale, even if the political will to attempt it existed, which it clearly does not. Our civilization is in the early stages of the same curve of decline and fall as so many others have followed before it.  What likely lies in wait for us is a long, uneven decline into a new Dark Age  from which, centuries from now, the civilizations of the future will gradually emerge.”

“We are strong and adaptable animals and can certainly make a new life on the hotter Earth, but there will only be a fraction of inhabitable land left. Soon we face the appalling question of who m can we let aboard the lifeboats?  And who must we reject?  There will be great clamor from climate refugees seeking a safe haven in those few parts where the climate is tolerable and food available. We will need a new set of rules for limiting the population in climate oases.”  James Lovelock, The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A final Warning

“Imagine we live on a planet. Not our cozy, taken for granted planet, but a planet, a real one, with melting poles and dying forests and a heaving, corrosive sea, raked by winds, strafed by storms, scorched by heat. And inhospitable place.  It needs a new name, Eaarth.”  Bill McKibben, Eaarth: Making a life on a Tough new Planet

“If present growth trends in population, industrialization, pollution, food production and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth will be reached sometime in the next 100 years.”  The Club of Rome 1972

“The power of population is so superior to the power of earth to produce subsistence to humanity that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race.” Thomas Malthus 1798

“Can you think of any problem in any area of human endeavor on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases of population, locally, nationally, or globally.”  Dr. Albert Bartlett www.albartlett.org

“All causes are lost causes without limiting human population,” Dr. Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University

WMD, Congress, Presidents and “Morals”

Last week the United Nation’s nuclear watchdog released a report stating there was evidence that Iran was working to achieve nuclear weapons capabilities.

Currently there are five different House committees considering H.R. 1905, which seeks to impose sanctions on Iran in an attempt to disrupt Tehran’s nuclear program.

H.R. 1905 was introduced by one of Israel’s most ardent acolytes, Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) Chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee who also introduced a bill to cut off US funding to any UN organization that recognizes Palestinian statehood.

H.R.1905 will make sanctions more indiscriminate, make sending money to and from Iran more difficult and revoke the President’s humanitarian waiver for civilian aircraft parts and repairs for Iran. H.R. 1905 will also make war more likely by making it illegal for U.S. officials to engage their Iranian counterparts.

A supporter of indiscriminate sanctions, Representative Brad Sherman (D-CA), said, “Critics [of the sanctions] argued that these measures will hurt the Iranian people. Quite frankly, we need to do just that.”

President Obama’s Administration suggested it will seek indiscriminate sanctions against Iran’s central bank—which will punish ordinary people in Iran and spike gas prices worldwide.

Central bank sanctions were implemented in the 1990s against Iraq but they failed to change or displace Saddam Hussein’s regime but contributed to the humanitarian suffering of innocent Iraqis.

A co-sponsor of H.R. 1905 is Tea Party incumbent Richard Nugent, who I am running against for US Representative in 2012, from Florida’s 5th District.

Last May while I was in his D.C. office I gifted Congressmen Nugent with a copy of BEYOND NUCLEAR:Mordechai Vanunu’s FREEDOM of SPEECH Trial and My Life as a Muckraker: 2005-2010 .

Nugent apparently never read and he is like most US politicians who persist to ignore the elephants in the world:

Israel’s Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Whistleblower

On March 17, 2011, CNN’s Piers Morgan interviewed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and asked, “Do you have nuclear weapons?”

Netanyahu responded, “Well, we have a long-standing policy that we won’t be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East and that hasn’t changed. That’s our policy. Not to be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East. [1]

Also on March 17, 2011, Prof. Uzi Even, a former top official at Israel’s Dimona nuclear facility-which is similar in technology to the reactors in Japan- said:

“The reactors were built about the same time, 40-50 years ago. In principle, the planning of the reactors is similar. The soft underbelly is the cooling system, which must be operated with great force, even after the reactor is turned out. If there is a breakdown in the cooling system, it will cause the core to collapse. That’s what happened at the Japanese reactors.

“While we don’t have tsunamis or such strong earthquakes, the chances of a breakdown in the cooling system, either by chance or deliberately, are very great. Our reactor is 50 years old, far older than what is permitted to operate in other countries. Another factor here, which is absent in Japan, is the possibility of deliberate sabotage of the reactor’s cooling system. We have enough crazies who wouldn’t hesitate to do it if they could.” [2]

In 1946, in response to the nuclear ‘crazies’ American historian and philosopher Lewis Mumford opined: “You cannot talk like sane men around a peace table while the atomic bomb itself is ticking beneath it. Do not treat the atomic bomb as a weapon of offense; do not treat it as an instrument of the police. Treat the bomb for what it is: the visible insanity of a civilization that has ceased…to obey the laws of life.”

On CNN last Monday, Pierce Morgan interviewed President Shimon Peres who said that he “wouldn’t suggest to start immediately with a military operation” as the first option to thwart Iran’s race for a nuclear bomb adding that Tehran’s support of terror was as much a global concern as the economic crisis and that the international community should engage in a “moral” attack on Iran, not a military one.

Peres called Iran “a spoiled country, it’s morally corrupt” and that he “would rather prefer to see tighter economic sanctions, closer political pressure and what is lacking very much is an attack in the moral sense.” [3]

In 1963, Shimon Peres was Israel’s Deputy Minister of Defense and he met with President John Kennedy at the White House.

Kennedy told Peres, “You know that we follow very closely the discovery of any nuclear development in the region. This could create a very dangerous situation. For this reason we monitor your nuclear effort. What could you tell me about this?”

Peres replied, “I can tell you most clearly that we will not introduce nuclear weapons to the region, and certainly we will not be the first.”

By September of 1986, Peres was convulsing over Mordechai Vanunu, who had been employed as a lowly tech in Peres’ progeny; Israel’s clandestine underground nuclear weapons center in the Negev called the Dimona.

Peres ordered the Mossad, to “Bring the son of a bitch back here.”

Vanunu’s kidnapping included a clubbing, drugging and being flung upon an Israeli cargo boat and shipped back to Israel for a closed-door trial. After 18 years in prison, over 7 years under 24/7 surveillance, 78 days in solitary confinement in 2010 because he spoke to foreign media in 2004 and multiple appeals seeking the right to leave the state, Vanunu remains captive in Tel Aviv waiting for the freedom to fade into the world instead of continuing to make headlines.

Within days of the announcement of 2009’s Nobel Peace Prize, Vanunu declined the honor he had received at least sixteen times before in a letter to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee in Oslo:

“I am asking the committee to remove my name from the nominations…I cannot be part of a list of laureates that includes Simon Peres…Peres established and developed the atomic weapon program in Dimona in Israel…Peres was the man who ordered [my] kidnapping…he continues to oppose my freedom and release…WHAT I WANT IS FREEDOM AND ONLY FREEDOM….FREEDOM AND ONLY FREEDOM I NEED NOW.”

Elephants and Prague:

“Vanunu told the world that Israel had developed between one hundred and two hundred atomic bombs [in 1986!] and had gone on to develop neutron bombs and thermonuclear weapons. Enough to destroy the entire Middle East and nobody has done anything about it since.”-Peter Hounam, 2003 for the BBC.

Israel’s warheads stand ready to be fired from the Negev desert and despite America’s war on Iraq to destroy Saddam Hussein’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, the US Government continues to give their political, economic and moral support to a country that has amassed undisputed and still uninspected weapons of mass destruction in the leaking dinosaur that is the Dimona Nuclear Facility.

President Peres has rejected the notion that Israel would act alone against Iran’s nuclear program stating, “I don’t think we have to feel alone in that respect. Israel will first of all see what the world is doing. We don’t want to jump alone, we are part of the civilization of the family of international responsible countries and we expect that leaders that make a promise will fulfill it.” [Ibid]

On April 5, 2009, President Obama promised from Prague:

“We are here today because enough people ignored the voices who told them that the world could not change. We’re here today because of the courage of those who stood up and took risks to say that freedom is a right for all people, no matter what side of a wall they live on, and no matter what they look like. We are here today because the simple and principled pursuit of liberty and opportunity shamed those who relied on the power of tanks and arms to put down the will of a people.

“Some argue that the spread of these weapons cannot be stopped, cannot be checked – that we are destined to live in a world where more nations and more people possess the ultimate tools of destruction. Such fatalism is a deadly adversary, for if we believe that the spread of nuclear weapons is inevitable, then in some way we are admitting to ourselves that the use of nuclear weapons is inevitable.

“As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act…It will take patience and persistence. But now we, too, must ignore the voices who tell us that the world cannot change. We have to insist, ‘Yes, we can.’

“There is violence and injustice in our world that must be confronted. We must confront it by standing together as free nations, as free people. I know that a call to arms can stir the souls of men and women more than a call to lay them down. But that is why the voices for peace and progress must be raised together.

“Words must mean something [and] violence and injustice must be confronted by standing together as free nations, as free people…[and] Human destiny will be what we make of it.”

And morality calls for a free Vanunu, universal nuclear disarmament and a nuclear weapons-free world.

1. Piers Morgan and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – Full Transcript
2. Nuclear scientist warns on Dimona plant
3. Peres: World doesn’t need military assault on Iran nuclear program

When Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Make Sense

U.S. President Barack Obama will be a lame duck next year and the officials in his administration, especially his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are hilariously doing their best to make sure that they haven’t spared any effort to intervene in the internal affairs of other countries and sabotage the stability and security of those whom they call “enemies”, like Iran.

On October 27, Hillary Clinton gave an exclusive interview to the UK’s state-funded, state-run BBC Persian TV and in an attempt aimed at reaching out to the Iranian nation, made bombastic remarks which have certainly infuriated the Iranian nation and demonstrated that the hostile behavior and antagonistic stance of the U.S. government toward the Iranian nation is a manifestation of the idiom “the leopard can’t change its spots.”

At the beginning of the interview, Clinton referred to the sanctions imposed against Iran by the U.S. and its European allies and said that these sanctions are targeted at forcing the Iranian government into abandoning its nuclear program which she called is an effort to construct nuclear weapons and not for civilian purposes. Forgetting the detrimental impacts of economic sanctions against the ordinary people, Clinton talked of the United States as a friend of the Iranian people, and said that she wanted to reaffirm her country’s “very strong support for and friendship toward the people of Iran.” She further added that the behavior of the United States towards the Iranian government is different from its behavior toward the Iranian people, and by saying that, she clearly paraded her diplomatic naiveté and artlessness. How do you justify enmity with a government which is democratically elected by a group of people which you claim of being supportive of?

Secondly, maybe Mrs. Secretary has forgotten that the U.S. itself is the largest possessor of nuclear weapons in the world. How can such a police state which has so far killed millions of people around the world, from Nagasaki and Hiroshima to Baghdad and Kabul, boast of its concerns about the development of nuclear bombs by a country which is the most pacifist country in a boiling and tumultuous region such as Middle East and hasn’t ever invaded nor attacked any country in the past century?

A Reuters report quoting U.S.officials revealed in May 2010 that the U.S. has an arsenal of 5,113 nuclear warheads. It is the only country which has used nuclear weapons in warfare and the only nation that has conducted around 1,054 nuclear tests and developed many long-range weapon delivery systems. So, who is really entitled to be concerned? Shouldn’t the international community be anxious about the nuclear arsenal of the self-proclaimed superpower, the U.S.? Who may guarantee that the U.S. won’t use its nuclear weapons in the prospective wars which it will be waging in the future? If the criterion of imposing financial sanctions is the possession of nuclear weapons and pursuing the development of them, why shouldn’t the U.S. or its Middle East client state, Israel, which is the sole possessor of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, be the target of sanctions? A report by Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis showed that between 1940 and 1996, the U.S.spent at least $8.15 trillion in present day terms on nuclear weapons development. Which country can be pinpointed on the world map which has invested in nuclear program, even for peaceful purposes, so enormously?

But it was not only Clinton’s deceptive bluffs on Iran’s nuclear program that seemed perplexing and ridiculous. She lived beyond her means by claiming that the international community is angry at what Iran is today and wants a better future for its people!

“But I would ask you to put yourself in the position of the international community and those who seek a better future inside Iran. If you do not want to have a conflict, if you do not want to just give way to behavior that is very reckless, as we saw in this recent plot against the Saudi ambassador, potentially dangerous, sanctions is the tool that we have at our disposal to use,” she said.

Clinton went on to raise the issue of the alleged terror plot against the Saudi ambassador in Washington and attributed this plot to Iran. She, however, certainly remembers that they were agents of the CIA, MI6 and Mossad in Iran that assassinated four Iranian nuclear scientists immediately after their names were put on the UNSC sanctions list. Wasn’t the assassination of Dariush Rezaei, Massoud Alimohammadi or the foiled assassination plot against Fereydoon Abbasi a conspicuous sponsorship of terrorism by a government which calls itself the number one defender of democracy and peace? Wasn’t awarding the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to the President of such a country which murders and kills people with impunity some kind of degrading and humiliating this prestigious award?

But an interesting juncture in Clinton’s interview with the BBC was where a recorded video containing a question by one of the viewers of BBC was aired. The viewer asked Hillary Clinton about America’s perpetual adherence to double standards, its support for repressive regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, its backing of the dreadful coup d’etat against the democratic government of Iran’s then Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953 and its heinous shooting down of the Iran Air Flight 655 on July 3, 1988 which claimed the lives of 290 innocent passengers including 254 Iranians.Clinton was apparently taken aback by the question as her awkward response showed that the U.S.government has never found any way to account for its hypocritical policies and actions: “we have consistently spoken out about Bahrain and we have pushed the government to do more, and we support the independent investigation… We know that everything we have done in the course of our 235-plus year history is going to appeal to or be supported by everyone, and we take our history seriously. So, for example, we’ve expressed regret about what was done in 1953… And then we also have tried to point out that the tragedy of the shooting down of the airline is something that we deeply are sorry for, and we have said that repeatedly.”

Isn’t it ludicrous? Shooting down a civilian aircraft, killing all the 290 people aboard and then simply saying that we are sorry? Overthrowing a democratic government which reflected the communal will of a nation and then simply saying that we are sorry? Waging wars and imposing sanctions which hurt the daily life of the ordinary people and saying that we are sorry?

Of course Hilary Clinton’s interview with BBC Persian was a fiasco and a political debacle. She just showed her lack of political finesse and once again brought to mind that the wolf may lose his teeth, but never his nature. Clinton is the representative of a country which throughout history has repeatedly betrayed the Iranian nation. Perhaps expressing deepest apologies to the Iranian nation and changing their hostile attitude can be the first step which the American politicians should take in order to have the bitter memories of their mischievousness wiped off the minds of Iranian people.

Is Malthus Relevant In The 21st Century?

Is Thomas Malthus relevant today?  Are his predictions of mass human starvation caused by overpopulation true?

In 1798, Malthus said, “The power of population is so superior to the power of earth to produce subsistence to humanity that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race.”

According to the World Health Organization, 18 million human beings die of starvation around the planet annually.  That delineates down to 10 million children under 12 and 8 million adults dying of hunger year in and year out.  Last week, humanity reached 7 billion on its way toward 10 billion by mid century.  Those starvation numbers will accelerate as human numbers grow past the carrying capacity of the land.

The green revolution was instigated as a result of the efforts of Norman Borlaug, who, while accepting the Nobel peace prize in 1970, said: “The green revolution has won a temporary success in man’s war against hunger and deprivation; it has given man a breathing space. If fully implemented, the revolution can provide sufficient food for sustenance during the next three decades. But the frightening power of human reproduction must also be curbed; otherwise the success of the green revolution will be ephemeral only.”

My Australian friend, Mark O’Connor, author of Overloading Australia, gives his rendition of what humanity faces.  Please Mr. O’Connor, give readers an understanding of Malthus’ brilliant work:

“There has been a view, much put about by rightwing pro-business think-tanks, that Malthus was a gloomy pessimist from whose story we should learn not to listen to “pessimists,” said O’Connor. “This view is now looking very shaky as famine stalks more and more countries. Journalistic articles are beginning to appear that use as their opening “peg” the remark that Malthus may not have been such a false prophet as we all assume.

“In fact scholars and reputable encyclopedias never did so assume — that claim was wishful thinking by those with their own reasons for wanting to believe population growth is not a problem.
“Just lately there has been much interest in the researcher Alison Bashford’s study of Malthus. She emphasizes the importance of 10 chapters that have traditionally been omitted from reprints of his 1803 Essay on the Principle of Population, and claims the missing chapters show his thinking in a new light. See http://www.abc.net.au/rn/hindsight/stories/2011/3349279.htm 

“I’m not getting too excited about this argument, since the Essay, even in its traditionally abbreviated form, was (for its day) an impressive piece of work. And scholarly information is of limited value in dealing with the propagandists of the growth lobby. When they talk of Malthus, they are not interested in scholarly precision, and not fond of reading his works closely. They have two simple (and quite invalid) arguments that they use; and anyone debating with them needs equally brief refutations to these. I call their two arguments the two-card trick and the three-card trick.”

The two-card trick is a simple two-stage argument (or syllogism):

1.     Malthus is the greatest and most famous expert on the supposed dangers of population growth. He prophesied that population growth would lead to famines, which did not come true.

2.      Therefore all later warnings, no matter by how many eminent experts, that famines or other disasters due to population growth may happen, or will probably happen (or are already happening) will not come true and should be ignored.

“This is an obviously fallacious argument,” said O’Connor, “One might as well say, “Eminent seismologists have warned of tsunamis that did not occur; therefore no one should heed such warnings”.  The logical fallacy, reduced to a syllogism, is of the form:  “My horse is grey. Therefore all horses are grey.”

“Of course the cleverer growth lobbyists realize that if they present this argument as a syllogism, its logical flaw will be noted. Their skill is to disguise the logic, and make a great parade of talking about, say, the fruits of historical experience, what we can learn from the case of Malthus, etc.

“In replying to the two-card argument, I always point out the main logical error first. Then I go on to point out a second logical flaw: If in fact Malthus is simply a man who made a spectacular mistake, why are you buttering him up, representing him as pre-eminent in the field, and implying that he is more likely to be right than the modern experts you seek to discredit?  Have demographers and agricultural experts learnt nothing since his day? And have there been no improvements in our ability to gather data and to observe global patterns? Would you argue “The founders of modern medicine used to deny the heart pumped blood, so why should I believe my cardiologist?”

“We must alert and organize the world’s people to pressure world leaders to take specific steps to solve the two root causes of our environmental crises – exploding population growth and wasteful consumption of irreplaceable resources. Over-consumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today.”   Jacques-Yves Cousteau, Oceanographer

“Also, did Malthus in fact prophesy, or merely warn?” said O’Connor.  (In which case the first card is as false as the second). “And then, how specific were his predictions of human numbers exceeding food supply, and how often has what he warned about in fact occurred?  Would you refuse to believe eye-witness accounts of famines on the grounds that someone once predicted a famine or famines that didn’t occur?

“By the time I’ve run though these points, and then suggested the opposition should apologize for using this misleading argument, they tend to look “tolerably foolish”.  But note that it is important to start with the two good-as-gold logical points: that one prophet being wrong doesn’t mean all prophets are wrong, and that if Malthus was simply the false prophet they claim, he would not deserve the pre-eminence they have pretended to give him.

“But if you start instead with the last point, and defend Malthus by saying that he wasn’t necessarily prophesying and wasn’t necessarily wrong, it will sound like you are defending a weak point in your own position. They will then contest your defense of Malthus, and you will find yourself in the glue-pot, since the more you defend Malthus the more you will seem to be conceding their basic (and illogical) contention, that unless Malthus can be exonerated, no subsequent prophesy or even observation of famine should be believed. Target that absurdity first, and then mop up the minor dishonesties at leisure.

“Incidentally, the main reason Malthus’s expectation of continuing famines in the UK (as future population outstripped future food supply) did not come true, is that during and after the Napoleonic wars Britain and France emerged as pre-eminent colonial powers, and proceeded to bleed each other white of young men. They did this via a long series of land battles and sea battles, not to mention the practices of sending troops and bureaucrats to tropical colonies where they died like flies.

“Since in those days single women tended not to have babies, population growth was much reduced. As well, relations with the United States improved, so that even though the US was lost as a colony, it obligingly took off a substantial proportion of the UK’s population (including the Irish who were starving after the potato famine) as emigrants.  Further Britain happened to emerge as the dominant colonial power, and with complete control of the seas, and so could afford to import food from other countries — which to this day is the only thing that keeps its bloated population from starving.

“It was not improvements in C19th agriculture that kept up with population growth and prevented the Malthusian famines occurring; it was the combination of death in war, death from colonial diseases, and massive emigration to North America.  This unlikely combination of factors was not inevitable, and could not in Malthus’s day have been given a high probability of coming true. But don’t waste your breath explaining all this to those who don’t want to know.”

The three-card trick is a more elaborate version of the two-card. It goes like this:

1.    Thomas Malthus was the first or at least the greatest thinker to argue that population growth tends to outgrow food and resources. (Largely true).

2.     Malthus was a pessimistic false prophet who prophesied a famine the British never experienced. (Grossly unfair, as any good encyclopedia article on Malthus will show. If that was all he was, he would not be the most famous thinker on the subject, and the three-card trick would collapse at this point. In fact Malthus did not claim to know the future, and he did not so much predict a future famine as provide an intelligent account of existing famines — and of reasons they were likely to recur.)

3.     Therefore those warning of famine today are minor Malthuses, and even less worthy of respect. (Note that even if the second card was valid, the conclusion would still be clearly invalid.)

“In the debate-book on population that I am currently (late 2011) writing for Pantera Press, called Big Australia Yes/No?, my opponents are two “fellows” from the rightwing Centre for Independent Studies. Their beguilingly gentle version of the three-card trick begins: Thomas Malthus, an early 19^th century English philosopher, famously said that unchecked population growth would lead to worldwide famine and disaster. Two hundred years later, entrepreneur Dick Smith is running a similar line.”

“In a brief right of reply, my comment, which may or may not survive the editing and compression process, is that they may have been innocently misled into repeating this nonsense, but they should now distance themselves from it, and apologize. World hunger is not an issue to dismiss with such glibness.”

“The raging monster upon the land is population growth. In its presence, sustainability is but a fragile theoretical construct.  To say, as many do, that the difficulties of nations are not due to people, but to poor ideology and land-use management is sophistic.”  Harvard scholar and biologist E.O. Wilson

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