Bribing the poor

It is tacitly understood that most of the civil rights laws that were passed in the 1960s and 1970s were nothing more than bribery. All the legislation that eventually led to affirmative action mandates and expanded welfare benefits was designed primarily to keep the natives quiet, to mollify them, in the hopes that the prevailing rioting and other mayhem on the part of blacks would cease. The initial laws, amplified with promised goodies, offered incentives to the mobs to think twice before continuing to burn down neighborhoods. Many of those neighborhoods, by the way, were the very ones that members of the mobs lived in.

And so bribery on a massive scale was instituted under the camouflage of "justice" and "equality." Feckless whites, of course, would have agreed to any accommodation to end the disturbances and the threatened future chaos. Such whites might possibly have offered up their first born, as well as second born sons, in order to keep the peace. Keeping the peace, by any means necessary, was the order of the day. The thought that there were better means other than craven acquiescence never fluttered into their terrified souls.

All of this agitation and the consequent material rewards to blacks brought joy and delight to affluent middle class black elites who were, to use television journalist Tony Brown's stinging description of them, the "overseers of the bounty." As far as the race was concerned, declared Brown, the only role played by the black middle class is as "managers of resources allocated by government and corporate programs." Why risk your own resources by pooling capital to develop your own communities,
as so many blacks had done in the past, as well as every other ethnic group, when you can coerce substantial bonuses from a fearful government? Members of this well-off class, of course, always go to the front of the line with their pockets open, ready to become the "administrators" of the latest windfall, whenever the system deigns to dispense yet more gifts to the "downtrodden" poor.

A great many citizens may be familiar with this past history, but few know about the latest forms of bribery, as reported by Heather Mac Donald in Bribery Strikes Out:
It isn’t lack of opportunity that keeps poor people poor. Mac Donald describes that which she calls "a dangerously misguided antipoverty program."

Begun in New York City in 2007, under the auspices of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, this unusual initiative, Opportunity NYC-Family Rewards, bestows cash awards primarily on single mothers and their children, in order to induce them to, well, behave better. The project is modeled on a program in Mexico designed to target agricultural peasants, in spite of the fact that, according to Mac Donald, "multigenerational urban poverty in America is far different from Third World rural poverty." Although difficult for the welfare industry to accept, she argues, "the lives of America’s underclass are characterized by a degree of disorganization that is rarely grasped or acknowledged." Following are excerpts:
• • •
The much-heralded initiative that inspired Bloomberg’s program was based on the theory that Mexican campesinos were so trapped in the daily struggle for survival that they couldn’t undertake behaviors that would help them escape poverty over the long term. Facing grinding economic pressures, parents pull their children out of school to help with the harvest; mothers don’t take their children to the doctor because they can’t wrest time away from work in the fields or at home. Oportunidades, as the Mexican initiative was called, tried to change the perceived zero-sum relationship between self-improvement and present income by paying Mexican farm families for taking actions in their long-term self-interest, such as school work and medical visits.

Bloomberg’s version of Oportunidades officially pretended that New York’s underclass faced similar tragic choices. The poor failed to “plan for the future” because they were “so focused on surviving,” the mayor explained when inaugurating the program. They were engaged in a “struggle” for the very basics of existence, he said. Opportunity NYC–Family Rewards would alleviate the immediate pressure for survival that allegedly prevented the inner-city poor from investing in their future by paying them for self-improving behavior, thus offsetting the purported opportunity cost of future-oriented actions.

Of course, it’s ludicrous to suppose that what keeps America’s inner-city residents poor across generations is a struggle for subsistence in an economy of limited opportunities. The main drivers of poverty in America are family breakdown (in 2004, single-parent households nationally were six times as likely to be poor as married families). ... The antisocial behaviors that contribute to multigenerational poverty also have nothing to do with suffocating economic pressures: very few inner-city students cut classes or drop out of school to help their parents work; they do so because their peer culture is toxic and because their parents exercise little control over their lives.

Nor does American poverty bear any resemblance to Third World poverty. New York City is awash in welfare programs that confer on the poor benefits that would be unthinkable in rural Mexico or Africa, such as free high-tech medical care, monthly welfare checks, and free or subsidized housing. Family Rewards is an add-on to an already generous safety net; the Mexican version is the safety net. New York’s poor also enjoy a clean, reliable water supply, a public health system that controls environmentally borne infectious disease, a sound transportation infrastructure, and the rule of law. ...

Nevertheless, lurking beneath the Family Rewards rhetoric about “our impoverished campesinos” was an implicit acknowledgment of a truth rarely spoken in antipoverty circles: it’s the behavior of the inner-city poor that perpetuates poverty, not just “structural inequalities,” rapacious capitalism, or racism. That covert acknowledgment was enough to earn the initiative the opprobrium of many in the traditional poverty industry.

But the program’s proposed cure is potentially worse than the disease: paying families for activities that are part of the normal repertoire of what it means to be a responsible parent or student. ... Elementary- and middle-school students who make progress on annual academic tests net their parents $300 and $350, respectively. High school students get $600 each year that they accumulate 11 course credits (the bare minimum to stay on track to graduate) and another $600 for each New York State Regents exam that they pass.

Parents are paid $25 for attending a parent-teacher conference or discussing their child’s test results with a teacher; they receive $50 for getting their child a library card. Taking advantage of taxpayer-subsidized Medicaid services, such as free medical checkups, brings a $200 annual windfall; simply maintaining free Medicaid insurance earns the recipient $20 a month. Working full-time earns an additional $150 a month beyond the existing salary. Seeking education and training while working at least ten hours a week could net a parent $3,000 over three years.

The hubris behind this menu of bribes is breathtaking. Working on the premise that American society didn’t sufficiently reward self-discipline, effort, and achievement, the Family Rewards architects decided that they needed to correct the inadequate signals that the economy and the culture sent to the poor. ... The problem is that the poor don’t respond to incentives that are already abundantly present. Nevertheless, convinced of their own superior capacities to engineer sound social signals, the program’s planners arbitrarily made up a schedule of payments that would induce a welfare mother, for example, to make sure that her child went to school every day. Is monthly school attendance worth $25 or $100? Is a single Regents exam worth $600 or $1,200? ...

Once the expectation of payment for morally and socially responsible actions became widespread, there would be no dislodging it. Poor children would make an effort in school not because their parents had instilled in them the importance of education but because of the expectation of immediate cash. Once word got out that some students in a school were getting paid for their study habits, trying to withhold payments from every child in that school or indeed from every school in the system would be nearly impossible. ...

Those who worried about the long-term consequences of the conditional cash transfers (CCTs) need not have done so, however. Contrary to the expectations of both its supporters and critics, the Bloomberg experiment had almost no effect on its participants’ behavior. ... The program had no effect on students’ attendance rates compared with those of students in the control group; it had no effect on average test scores or academic proficiency rates; it had no effect on high school students’ overall accumulation of course credits or successfully passed Regents exams; it had only a negligible effect on the rate at which parents sought a free annual checkup for themselves or their children compared with parents in the control group; and it had a negative effect on the rate at which parents sought education or training for themselves. ...

“The premise of conditional cash transfers is that the stresses of poverty cause people to make choices that are not in their long-term interest,” MDRC president Gordon Berlin said at the press conference announcing the interim results. He may have it backward. It is the inability of some people to make choices in their long-term interest that causes poverty, as sociologist Edward Banfield argued four decades ago in The Unheavenly City. The poor have short time horizons, Banfield wrote, the rich, very long ones. No external force can change those psychological dispositions. ...

But the best solution for poverty reduction is the one that is the least likely to pass the lips of liberal policy makers: marriage. As was already abundantly clear before the CCTs, single-parent households are the primary source of long-term poverty in New York City and the country. Looked at from a purely economic standpoint (the least relevant one), a married father provides his children with additional material support and manpower backup when all hell breaks out in a household, as it periodically will. A father also serves as a more credible authority figure than a mother, on average, something that boys particularly need.

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Where are honest journalists when it comes to Israel?

In Why there is no mainstream investigative journalism about the Israel lobby, the intrepid Philip Weiss expresses anger over the mainstream media's pattern of relentless pursuit of the pedophilia scandal in the Catholic Church, while journalists gingerly skip around the scandal of the Israel lobby's ability to shut up all critics of Israeli policies.

Weiss describes a radio program and the manner in which reporters handled the subject of the Church's problems. The Catholic participants in the program, two of them journalists, wanted the scandal to be openly addressed, but they did not want it to hurt the Church. Following are excerpts:
• • •
Now let me get to the central dynamic of the show. The Catholic writers were performing damage control; still, [Marty] Moss-Coane [the woman host, not Catholic] bored in on them, and whenever a caller went further than she had gone, for instance, about sexuality and celibacy, she promptly echoed the caller’s point. She stood up for the Times coverage. She asked, wisely, Is the church treating a crime as a sin? She said, What signal does it send people when a former bishop who played an active role in covering up a sex scandal is awarded a sinecure? (The writers said, Well it’s a giant step down for the bishop…) She said, What about what that caller just asked, How is this affecting congregations?

And to every push by Moss-Coane, the Catholic writers pushed back and defended the church. And they would: because they love the church, they see it as a force for good.

Why do I think this was fine journalism? Because the host was behaving as a good broadcast journalist with smart questions, the New York Times was behaving like a good investigative zealous newspaper when it smells a disgraceful scandal, and the listeners were sharp and engaged, pushing the story. ...

When the Catholic writers protested that the memo the Times uncovered from the ’80s (describing slap-on-the-knuckles discipline in a pedophilia case, and the future Pope was cc’d) doesn’t implicate the Pope, because he was just part of a “culture,” I think, Don’t b.s. me. This was not a routine memo. And isn’t there a problem with an institution that wakes up 30 years after the fact to the idea that it’s not good to damage children?

The significance of this piece for me was wholly about the journalism of the Israel lobby. The central problem in that story is that the roles of the Journalist and the New York Times are being played by the Catholic writers! The very parochial attitudes that Moss-Coane found so distasteful in the Catholic story are exhibited by countless journalists when it comes to Israel. Because they are Jews who have an investment in the emotional goodness of the Jewish state. Yes, people like Dan Schorr and Wolf Blitzer and Tom Friedman and Jeffrey Goldberg and Ethan Bronner, but also a lot of fellow travelers whose investment is not as well known to me. And they all get away with their piety all the time!

In the Israel lobby case we have an allegation now several years old that is way more serious than the Catholic scandal: the allegation that the forcible conflation of American and Israeli interests is damaging our country’s reputation. It is a form of corruption as deep and “cultural” as the Catholic mess Moss-Coane is investigating, but this time the broker-journalists are implicated in the culture.

The former executive editor of the New York Times, Max Frankel, is vetting editorials to protect the Jewish state; my old newspaper the New York Observer is telling me to take a hike because I want to write about the Israel lobby; the Atlantic is killing Walt and Mearsheimer; Wolf Blitzer and Dan Schorr used to work for the lobby and are now all over cable; and Jeff Goldberg used to be an Israeli soldier and is interviewed on Meet the Press by David Gregory, who is studying Hebrew. Ethan Bronner’s son goes into the IDF (Israel Defense Forces), and Bronner is the lead reporter for the New York Times???!! And on it goes, it never stops.

I am saying that all the f—ing excuses that the two Catholic writers made for their beloved church are being made all the time for the Jewish state by our journalists; it is in the culture of our journalism; and meanwhile there is no Moss-Coane to jump on them and keep them honest. I wonder if she’s ever covered the Israel/Palestine situation with half the honesty she covered the Catholic scandal, let alone the question of how it is corrupting our politics. I bet she hasn’t. Has she ever had on Palestinians to talk about the separate roadways in the West Bank, and then asked, why Americans are supporting Jim Crow conditions?

Well you get the point. And again, the New York Times, which should be printing the Pentagon Papers of the Iraq war, which should be interrogating neoconservatives about their crazy theory that invading Baghdad would take the Arabs’ minds off Israel/Palestine, which should be asking John Mearsheimer what his evidence is that oil had nothing to do with the disastrous decision to go to war, which should be telling readers why Sheldon Adelson and Haim Saban give so much money to the political parties, and asking whether Adelson’s $300,000 gift in 2000 had anything to do with the hiring of Douglas “One-Jerusalem” Feith to a big job at the Pentagon where he would pass cooked data to Congress – the Times is doing no investigative journalism about the lobby at all. ...

And now we have General Petraeus saying that the special relationship is hurting us; and Obama is trying to take Netanyahu on; and still these powerful men are getting no goddamn cover from the mainstream press in the form of investigative journalism that arouses the public about the abuses. If I were the Catholic church, I’d be mad.

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Making peace across the ideological chasm

In the May 2010 edition of The American Conservative magazine is a symposium in which we hear from conservatives and progressives on the subject of the ongoing militarism carried over from Bush to Obama. Entitled Left & Right: Prospects for Peace, 13 writers offer their views on the potential for long-term peace.

Is it possible that an effective end to war and empire will only come about through an alliance of progressives and conservatives? One of my favorite conservatives, Paul Gottfried, offers his observations:

• • •
I have no hope for any alliance between the antiwar Right and any significant leftist force. Individual liberals may establish informal relations with self-identified conservatives, but one should avoid generalizing from this observation. Individual libertarians, like Bill Kauffman and Justin Raimondo, may get on well with maverick leftists Alexander Cockburn and Gore Vidal. But this does not foreshadow larger trends. During the Bush administration, the antiwar Right struggled to connect with leftist opponents of the war, and they received hardly any attention from their would-be partners in organizing antiwar activity.

The reasons for this non-recognition seem self-evident. First, the Left has no interest in being allied to social reactionaries by becoming identified with the antiwar Right. The Left is happier to deal with “conservatives” like David Frum and David Brooks, with whom they agree on most social issues, even if they remain apart on foreign policy. For those who consider gay marriage, unrestricted abortion, and special rights for minorities to be paramount issues, having Catholic traditionalists or paleolibertarians as allies is not a genuine strategic option.

Second, there is no recognizable advantage for the Left to be allied to marginalized people on the Right. As long as neoconservatives control the media and financial resources of the conservative movement, no one, except for hopelessly deluded antiwar rightists, would consider an alliance with our side to be a political coup. Unless the antiwar Right can push itself into public attention and counteract the neoconservative-fashioned image of “conservatives,” the Left can have no practical interest in reaching across the ideological chasm.

Finally, unlike the antiwar Right, which has suffered grievously for its principled stand, most of the Left’s opposition to the war against terror was mere posturing. It was a means to get a Democrat elected president and to be able to advance a leftist social agenda. The noisy opposition to Bush’s war on terror turned into a whisper as soon as a black leftist president was put in charge of it. Liberals are much less concerned than the antiwar Right about how executive power is exercised. They have no problem with left-wing dictatorships that engage in massive social reform. What they object to is having politicians whom they don’t regard as leftists exercising power. Once Obama and his crew took over the ship of state, for most of the Left, opposition to the war ceased to matter.

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A dereliction of duty

Pat Buchanan once again offers his practical insights on the subject of immigration. In Whose Country Is This? he discusses the implications of Arizona's new law. Following are excerpts:

• • •
With the support of 70 percent of its citizens, Arizona has ordered sheriffs and police to secure the border and remove illegal aliens, half a million of whom now reside there. Arizona acted because the U.S. government has abdicated its constitutional duty to protect the states from invasion and refuses to enforce America’s immigration laws.

“We in Arizona have been more than patient waiting for Washington to act,” said Gov. Jan Brewer. “But decades of inaction and misguided policy have created an unacceptable situation.” We have a crisis in Arizona because we have a failed state in Washington. What is the response of Barack Obama, who took an oath to see to it that federal laws are faithfully executed?

He is siding with the law-breakers. He is pandering to the ethnic lobbies. He is not berating a Mexican regime that aids and abets this invasion of the country of which he is commander in chief. Instead, he attacks the government of Arizona for trying to fill a gaping hole in law enforcement left by his own dereliction of duty. ...

The state has a fiscal crisis caused in part by the burden of providing schooling and social welfare for illegals and their families, who consume far more in services than they pay in taxes and who continue to pour in.

Police officers and a prominent rancher have been murdered. There have been kidnappings believed to be tied to the Mexican drug cartels. There are nightly high-speed chases through the barrios where innocent people are constantly at risk. If Arizona does not get control of the border and stop the invasion, U.S. citizens will stop coming to Arizona and will begin to depart, as they are already fleeing California. ...

The tasks that Arizonans are themselves undertaking are ones that belong by right, the Constitution and federal law, to the Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Homeland Security. Arizona has been compelled to assume the feds’ role because the feds won’t do their job. And for that dereliction of duty the buck stops on the desk of the President of the United States.

Why is Obama paralyzed? Why does he not enforce the law, even if he dislikes it, by punishing the businessmen who hire illegals and by sending the 12 million to 20 million illegals back home? President Eisenhower did it. Why won’t he? Because he is politically correct. Because he owes a big debt to the Hispanic lobby that helped deliver two-thirds of that vote in 2008. Though most citizens of Hispanic descent in Arizona want the border protected and the laws enforced, the Hispanic lobby demands that the law be changed. ...

Let us see how many African-Americans, who are today frozen out of the 8 million jobs held by illegal aliens that might otherwise go to them or their children, will march to defend an invasion for which they are themselves paying the heaviest price. [See the role that black politicians play in promoting the invasion at the expense of working class blacks, in Immigration: Betrayal By Black Elites.]

Last year, while Americans were losing a net of 5 million jobs, the U.S. government — Bush and Obama both — issued 1,131,000 green cards to legal immigrants to come and take the jobs that did open up, a flood of immigrants equaled in only four other years in our history.

What are we doing to our own people? Whose country is this, anyway?

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Tea Party folk love big government when it makes war, wiretaps, and waterboards

So, the Tea Party folk are reported to be "wealthier and more educated than the general public," as opposed to that 1993 designation of this ilk as "largely poor, uneducated, and easy to command" (famously misquoted as "easily led"). In Tea party activists: Do they hate liberals more than they love liberty?, Jim Bovard reflects on this group, based on the Partiers' claims to being patriotic constitutionalists and the policies they have supported over recent years. Following are excerpts:

• • •
A recent "tea party" rally showed lots of anger toward President Obama, but little consistent support for liberty in America. Many “tea party” activists staunchly oppose big government, except when it is warring, wiretapping, or waterboarding. A movement that started out denouncing government power apparently has no beef with some of the worst abuses of modern times. Unfortunately, there is scant evidence that most tea partyers have studied the copies of the Constitution they generously hand out to bystanders.

Ken Timmerman, the author of Preachers of Hate: Islam and the War on America and other hawkish books, declaimed that the US government must take every step to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. Mr. Timmerman denounced the Obama administration for being soft on Tehran and urged support for legislation to impose harsh sanctions on Iran. Timmerman previously advocated a US naval blockade of Iran, which he claimed was planning a nuclear attack on the United States. [Easily led?]

Running through a litany of President Obama’s greatest failings, Timmerman denounced him for forcing US agents to “stop using enhanced interrogation methods. Has that made us safer?” “No!” the crowd hollered indignantly. ...

The rally featured a string of Republican candidates praising fiscal responsibility and denouncing the national debt. One would have thought that it had been 50 years, rather than 15 months, since the Republicans controlled the White House.

There was almost no dissent from any of the 300 attendees. One 50-something man in a faded green T-shirt walked around with a handmade sign declaring, “Stop the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – Bring Our Troops Home Now!” He told me that almost no one he’d talked to agreed with his message. Much more in tune with the crowd was the 20-something woman carrying a sign: “PROUD to be the Military Super Power.”

The fact that the cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq thus far roughly equals the projected cost of the first decade of Obama’s health-care program is irrelevant. Military spending is viewed as holy water by many activists who otherwise despise Washington. While tea party activists rage over Obama’s alleged lies, they ignore the Bush administration’s deceptive justification to attack Iraq. ...

There are many decent Americans who understandably feel that the government has become too powerful and oppressive. Yet, seeking enlightenment from most tea party speakers is like searching in a dark room for a black cat that isn’t there.

Read complete article here.

See Jim Bovard's blog here.
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You can't have your country back

In two articles, the New York Times offers us essentially the same theme and point of view, first from a black columnist, Charles Blow, and then from a white one, Frank Rich. You could render the theme as: White people are dwindling away and there's nothing you can do about it, Ha, Ha! Each writer seems to impart satisfaction over the fact that, at long last, whites will have a minimum influence in the nation founded by their ancestors. The theme is in keeping with former President Bill Clinton's discourse when he exulted, back in the 1990s, over the fact that whites would soon be in the minority in this country. Like Rich, he, too, seemed quite pleased about the prospect for the demise of his own race.

In The Rage Is Not About Health Care, Rich writes about "an inexorable and immutable change in the very identity of America." In Whose Country Is It?, Blow snickers over the Tea Party movement, calling it "anachronistic to the direction of the country's demographics."

Rich claims that the "tsunami of anger" now being expressed by many whites is "illogical." But is it? Other than the current breed of Western whites, when has a group of people so willingly acquiesced in their own extinction, or submitted to the re-population of their space and territory without a bitter fight? Although we see the stirrings of consciousness among some whites, who have begun to understand what is taking place, most of them are still snoozing, enjoying the almost daily introduction of some new tech toy, while sending their sons off to Third World countries, apparently to fight for the "freedom" to continue enjoying the pleasures of said toys.

Blow is right to point out that the Tea Party "is not the future." If it were to have had any impact on the future, its members should have organized at least 20 years ago. Even then, the prospect of reversing immigration legislation or stemming the tide of social programs and biased laws created especially for certain "protected" groups would have been an upward struggle, given the nature of the Republican party, to which over 70% of Tea Party members belong. Yet it is feasible that the GOP might have been turned around a couple of decades ago had it been confronted with the kind of passion now on display.

In the face of a Hispanic population that is expected to triple over the next generation, that "inexorable and immutable change" is almost here. This will soon be a Latin American nation, with heavy doses of Asians and Africans, who will have options to write a new Constitution more befitting to the inclinations of its new owners. Kai Wright, in The Nation magazine, informs us that "Young, colored folks will drive the economy, the culture, the politics." Why shouldn't the formerly dominant white population resist its own displacement?

Blow cynically describes the new America as the "Remix," a land that is driven by "the relentless, irrepressible march of change." This demographic change, however, was not at all inevitable, but one engineered by those who opened the country's borders in the mid-60s to masses of foreigners, now correctly referred to as the "replacement population."

White Americans' counterparts in Europe also have opened their borders to masses of Third World immigrants. In one country after another, we see these outsiders rushing in to run for political office, in order to possess power and influence over the native European residents. Population replacement is swiftly underway, to the point where black Africans are strutting around calling themselves "Swedish," rendering the term meaningless. This is, indeed, "progress" for the African, as he flees his disordered lands and insists that he is capable of running the white man's countries, but, apparently, not his own.

The French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, is calling for outright miscegenation between white Europeans and the immigrant invaders. Here's a white man who can't wait to let nature take its course, but would speed up the assimilation process, so that the world might finally be rid of white skin, blue eyes and straight, light hair. Perhaps Europeans like Sarkozy can engineer a short cut to this enchanting future, by sponsoring government laws that would make marriages within the same race illegal. If forced miscegenation became the law of the land, impatient whites would not have to wait too long to see Europe transformed into a Haiti or Detroit.

Meanwhile, back in the USA, obtuse whites continue to encourage their sons to go off to die in worthless military conflicts, or end up as vegetables, as IEDs scramble their brains or relieve them of their limbs and eyesight. And those Tea Party folk, as dumb as rocks when it comes to what is really at stake, throw parties for a warmonger and immigration enthusiast like John McCain. It is understandable that Charles Blow mocks these misguided souls and their desperate dreams of taking their country back. "You may want your country back," he cajoles, "but you can't have it."

Actually, they don't deserve it. How else can you feel about a people who cheered on the destruction of their once unique republic, as it morphed from the Founders' intentions into an insidious empire? How else can you feel about a people who acceded to their country's manipulation by foreign lobbyists determined to keep it in permanent war mode, thus bankrupting its coffers?

How else to feel about a people who insist that loyalty to a foreign power is an imperative litmus test, in order to prove loyalty to the land of Jefferson, Madison and Jay? And how else can one feel about a people whose warped religious obsessions compel them to buy the poisonous doctrine of America's responsibility to "liberate the world" from wicked, godless tyrants, no matter the financial or moral costs to its citizens? Do such people deserve to take this country back?
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A terse response

I caught up too late with comments on another blog concerning one of my posts on this blog. My initial post,
No apologies, please, excoriated the waste of American lives and the mutilated bodies of young soldiers, along with the thousands of dead Iraqis -- all for nothing.

Here is the comment that piqued my interest:
"I wonder if Ms. Wright would’ve opposed U.S. battling the Nazis in World War II, allowing the Nazis to kill even more millions of Jews, Gypsies, etc. After all, Germany never attacked the U.S. Also, since the U.S. helped install Iraq's Saddam Hussein in the first place, why did the U.S. not have a moral obligation to remove him?"

You got that right about WWII. This country's security was never in jeopardy in either of Europe's so-called World Wars -- not in No. 1, nor in No. 2. The U.S. was under no threat from Germany and in no danger of Hitler carrying on a war 3,000 miles from his shores. He could hardly handle the blitzing of that little island just across the pond. Europeans have been killing off one another since forever. We had no reason to meddle in yet another of their ludicrous and centuries-long squabbles. Of course, the Great WWII has been sanctified by all those ridiculous Hollywood movies, and by the men who fought in it and, understandably, don't want to think of their efforts as worthless. If ever there was an "entangling alliance" that we could have stayed out of, this was it.

And where did the ignorant notion come from that this country went to war to "save the Jews," or any of Hitler's other victims? This is obviously a trope that has become popular as we move further away in years from the actual conflict. Churchill and Roosevelt weren't conferencing over such matters to alter these events, even though there were rumors of atrocities going on.

And the justification for invading Iraq and removing Saddam Hussein is a new one. So, whenever we install a dictator in a country, that gives us an automatic right to return to that land, kill off endless numbers of its population, turn its society and culture upside down, while taking out the dictator we originally installed? This is so dumb, that it's un-effing-believable! Such a policy could keep the U.S. busy at war for the rest of its history. A "moral obligation" to kill Iraqis, so that we could murder the country's leader? What kind of twisted rationalization is that?

By the way, the blog being referenced is made up of "black conservatives." Most of the responding comments were pretty much along the lines of the above quoted one. They are heavy into justifying "collateral damage," i.e., our unfortunate soldiers and the unlucky Iraqi people. Ho-hum, somebody's got to die, after all.

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Wrecking what was left of the West
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The wholesale irrelevance of public opinion

Glenn Greenwald has been in his cups lately in drawing attention to the rank hypocrisy of America's wonderful rightwing "patriots." In "The GOP's newfound love of public opinion," he describes the Republicans who expressed outrage over the manner in which the health care bill was handled by the Democrats.

Greenwald writes, "One Republican leader after the next stood up yesterday to depict the health care bill as a grave threat to democracy because it was enacted in the face of disapproval from a majority of Americans." He cites Rep. John Boehner, who claimed, "We have failed to listen to America ... failed to reflect the will of our constituents. And when we fail to reflect that will -- we fail ourselves and we fail our country." Not to be outdone by Boehner's bluster, Rep. Mike Pence thundered, "We're breaking with our finest traditions ... the consent of the governed."

Can you imagine such dutiful concern for the people's preferences, coming from Republicans? These hysterical outbursts were instigated by the notion that the health care bill should never have been deliberated, because it was opposed by a majority of Americans. Greenwald retorts, "Of course, these are the same exact people who spent years funding the Iraq War without end and without conditions even in the face of extreme public opposition, which consistently remained in the 60-65% range." He reminds us that "the wholesale irrelevance of public opinion was a central tenet of GOP rule for eight years."

He recalls a recurring theme of the contemptuous Vice President Cheney who, when told in 2008 that two-thirds of American citizens said the Iraq war was not worth fighting, simply brushed off the people's opinion. Cheney expressed the prevailing GOP view of the American public, that their opinion did not matter in the slightest. Greenwald writes, "The view of our political class generally is that public opinion plays a role in how our government functions only during elections, and after that, those who win are free to do whatever they want regardless of what 'the people' want."

George W. Bush actually spelled this out by explaining, in 2005, why no one in his administration had been held accountable for the fraud that led to the war. He obnoxiously claimed that the 2004 election itself was that "accountability moment." Greenwald asserts, "Watching these same Republicans now pretend that public opinion must be honored and that our democracy is imperiled when bills are passed without majority support is truly nauseating."

And, again, in another column, "Rampant patriotism breaches on America's right," Greenwald cites the rightwing Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds who, during the Bush years accused opponents of the Iraq war of being "unpatriotic" and, in fact, committing "treason." Reynolds said of those who opposed the war, "They're not so much 'antiwar' as just on the other side."

However, today, Reynolds sees things differently. Greenwald quotes him: "If I were the Israelis, not only would I bomb Iran, but I'd do so in such a way as to create as much trouble for China, Russia, Europe and the United States as possible." Observes Greenwald, "Calling on a foreign country to act in a way that creates 'as much trouble as possible' for your
own country seems to be the very definition of being 'on the other side,' does it not?" And, "The action Reynolds is endorsing -- Israel's bombing of Iran -- likely would, according to America's top military official, directly result in the
deaths of American soldiers."

That official is Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen, who warned on March 11, that an Israeli attack on Iran might lead to escalation, undermine the region's stability and endanger the lives of Americans in the Persian Gulf "who are under the threat envelope right now."

"By Reynolds' own standards," reasons Greenwald, "blithely endorsing such outcomes would seem, definitively, to place
one 'on the other side.'" So, who's "unpatriotic" now, and just who's guilty of "treason?"

During Bush times, when war opponents criticized Gen. David Petraeus, they were denounced for "endangering the troops," through their lack of respect for Petraeus' command. Yet, after Petraeus' recent remarks about how Israel's conflict with the Palestinians endangers the lives of American troops, the ADL's Abraham Foxman and others of his ilk condemned Petraeus, calling his remarks "dangerous and counterproductive," just stopping short of dumping the "anti-Semite" label on him.

Greenwald contends that Petraeus' remarks were, indeed, counterproductive "for those who want the U.S. to blindly support Israeli actions even when doing so directly harms American interests." What kind of person, asks Greenwald, would condemn the Commander in charge of the welfare of our troops "all in the name of serving the interests of a foreign government?" It is the peak of hypocrisy that the rightwing super patriots are ready to revoke their standards when it comes to Israel, and readily do so at the expense of their own country.
Read more!

Ethnic ties as strong as ever

Another truly brilliant insight from the pen and brain of Pat Buchanan. In The Wars of Tribe and Faith, he describes nationalist reality, as the Globalists continue on their hapless journey to undo the ties that bind, and to foist alien systems on the world's populations. Following is Buchanan's complete column:

• • •
When the Soviet Union disintegrated, most Americans likely had never heard of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan. Yet the ethnonationalism of these Asian peoples, boiling to the surface after centuries of tsarist and communist repression, helped tear apart one of the great empires of history.

There swiftly followed the collapse of Yugoslavia. Yet, if one knew nothing of the Habsburg and Ottoman empires or the First and Second Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, one would likely have been surprised by the sudden emergence of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Kosovo on the map of Europe.

What the splintering of the Soviet Union and of a Yugoslavia whose baptismal certificate dated to the Paris peace conference of 1919 revealed was the accuracy of Arthur Schlesinger's insight in his 1991 Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society:

Nationalism remains after two centuries the most vital political emotion in the world -- far more vital than social ideologies such as communism or fascism or even democracy. ... Within nation-states, nationalism takes the form of ethnicity or tribalism.

Ethnic ties, Schlesinger wrote, might prove more powerful and historically important than the forces of globalism and democratism, which then seemed ascendant. He only neglected to mention religious faith as often a "far more vital" emotion than ideology.

And though the Iraq elections have been hailed as a triumph of democracy, they would seem to prove him right. Kurds voted for Kurds, Shia for Shia, Sunni for Sunni on a slate led by Ayad Allawi, a secular Shia who campaigned on a unity ticket. The election results resemble a national census.

In the struggle between Allawi and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to put together a government, both are courting the Kurds, whose near-term goal is Kirkuk, control of which would mean control of 40 percent of Iraq's oil reserves. If the Kurds, who have been forcing their way into Kirkuk and pushing Arabs out, can annex the city, they will have the economic base of a Kurdistan nation, the dream of a people whose kinfolk are spread across Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.

The Kurds are using democratic means for ethnonational ends. Maliki's strength is in the Shia south and the capital, Baghdad, that has been slowly cleansed of Sunni.

Among Allawi's weaknesses is that the Shia majority may not support as Iraq's prime minister a Shia secularist whose strength comes from a Sunni minority that was the bulwark of the Baath Party of Saddam Hussein. Among the Shia are leaders who spent the Iran-Iraq war in exile in Iran, and whose ties to the Iranian Shia seem stronger than any ties to their Sunni countrymen.

Hence, as we indulge in self-congratulation for having brought democracy to Iraq, Iraqis seem to be using the process to advance ethnonational and sectarian ends that are the antithesis of U.S. democracy. We see democracy as an end in itself. Many in that part of the world see it as a means of establishing their ascendancy and hegemony over other religious and ethnic minorities.

In 2005, George W. Bush, then promoting global democracy as the answer to all of mankind's ills and an essential precondition for any permanent security for the United States, demanded free elections in Egypt, Lebanon and Palestine. The winners: the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas. A perplexed Bush refused to accept the results or recognize and talk to the winners.

Before the invasion, most Americans were probably unaware of the tribal and sectarian divisions in Iraq that may yet produce a new Saddam to keep that country from coming apart in sectarian and civil war.

And how many Americans were aware of the ethnic divisions in Afghanistan, among Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras and Pashtun, before we invaded? A program is underway to bring more Pashtun into the army and police, lest the Pashtun in the south feel invaded and occupied by alien tribes.

Globalization is no longer on the march, but on the defensive. Economic nationalism is rising. Across the Third World, we see an upsurge of ethnonationalism and fundamentalism, especially among the Islamic peoples. From Nigeria to Sudan to Mindanao, Muslims battle Christians, as Christians are persecuted in Egypt, Iraq and Pakistan.

In India and Thailand, Muslims battle Hindu and Buddhists. In the Northern Caucasus, they fight Russians.

Ethnonationalism, that relentless drive of peoples to secede and dwell apart, to establish their own nation-state, where their faith is predominant, their language spoken, their heroes and history revered, and they rule to the exclusion of all others, is rampant.

In China, Tibetans fight assimilation and the mass migration of Han Chinese into what was their country, as do the Uighurs in the west who dream of an East Turkestan breaking away and taking its place among the nations of the world.

In speaking of the rising tribalism abroad, Schlesinger added, "The ethnic upsurge in America, far from being unique, partakes of the global fever." Indeed, separatism and secessionism seem to be in the air.
Read more!

The last accepted colonialism

From an Indiana University press release, we learn of Professor Rafael Reuveny's statement concerning recent developments in the Middle East. Professor Reuveny, formerly a resident of Israel, who came to the US in 1992, served as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and is the author of several books on the Middle East, including The Last Colonialist: Israel in the Occupied Territories since 1967 [Independent Review]. Following is the full press release of March 15:

• • •
Indiana University
Monday, March 15, 2010

IU Professor: U.S. must immediately stop funding Israeli colonial project

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Vice President Joe Biden's rebuke of Israel over proposed settlement expansion in Greater East Jerusalem is not only ineffective, it's hypocritical, said Professor Rafael Reuveny, a researcher on Middle East violence and political economy at the Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs in Bloomington.

"The United States has been funding the Israeli colonial project for decades," Reuveny said.

While Israel annually receives billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars and weapons, money and easy loans are then passed on to Israeli settlers to build homes and businesses in Palestinian territory. "It is terribly difficult for Palestinians who have very few rights in their homeland," Reuveny said. "Not only has such colonialism come to be rejected everywhere else in the world, it defeats U.S. and Israeli interests and gravely risks their national security."

As the United States struggles with security problems resulting from Israel-induced anti-Americanism, Israel faces a demographic bomb. "Because Palestinians have one of the highest fertility rates in the world, they will become the majority within approximately 10-15 years," he said. "When that happens, Israeli colonial control will resemble South Africa or Rhodesia, essentially creating a system of apartheid. As a result, international pressure will mount for a bi-national state, which is a receipt for endless violence in the Middle East and around the world."

According to Reuveny, who first arrived in the U.S. from Israel in 1992, the only way to secure peace is for Israel to dismantle all settlements, evacuate all settlers, and return to the 1967 border. "Obama's idea to freeze settlement expansion in order to bring about peace is not going to do a thing, similar to if we simply freeze the level of heroin consumption in order to bring about detoxification," he said. "By now, many Israeli citizens have come to agree with this, but religious Zionist settlers and the Israeli right wing do not, as in other efforts toward decolonization since 1945."

History has shown, he said, that a "cold-turkey," full-scale withdrawal is the only way to end wars of decolonization. "As Israel's bankroller, it is time for the United States to stop enabling Israel and force an immediate West Bank decolonization by cutting financial and military support to Israel if it does not comply. In 1991, George H. Bush was not afraid to stand up to Israel. And it worked."

Pointing to President Obama's speech in Cairo promising to bring peace to the region, Reuveny said the president has the opportunity to finally end this long-suffering conflict that plagues the world.

"He will then, undisputedly, deserve the Nobel Peace Prize," Reuveny said.

---

See Why don't you leave, already? [On the systematic bulldozing of Palestinians' homes and farmlands]
• • •
Related

Since it is unusual for someone in as high a position as General David Petraeus (CENTCOM Commander) to engage in any verbiage other than obfuscation or outright lies, his recent remarks before the US Senate are worth noting. Although his comments are nothing more than obvious observations known to any conscious citizen, there appears to be a ring of sincerity in them.

Excerpts from
Statement of General David H. Petraeus,
U.S. Army Commander
Before the Senate Armed Services Committee
March 16, 2010

The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests in the AOR [Area of Responsibility of CENTCOM]. Israeli-Palestinian tensions often flare into violence and large-scale armed confrontations. The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the AOR and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support. ...

Unresolved issues of disputed territorial boundaries and disagreements over the sharing of vital resources, such as water, oil, and natural gas, serve as sources of tension and conflict between and within states in the region. ...

Finally, because we want lasting conditions of security and prosperity, we must seek long term, enduring solutions to the challenges in the region. To this end, we work to address the root causes of instability rather than apply quick fixes to their symptoms.

---

Related
Israel First? by Joe Klein

Read more!

"This is starting to get dangerous"

You mean there has been an intention, by some, at least, to resolve the mess this country has made in the Middle East, and to resolve what has become almost affectionately known as the "Israeli-Palestinian conflict?" Apparently so, as we learn from a remarkable report of events furnished by Foreign Policy magazine.

As conveyed by reporter Mark Perry, General David Petraeus, commander of US forces in the Middle East, in January, sent a team from US Central Command (CENTCOM) to the Pentagon, to brief the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen. This briefing consisted of explicit concerns expressed by Petraeus himself. Perry writes:

The briefers reported that there was a growing perception among Arab leaders that the U.S. was incapable of standing up to Israel, that CENTCOM's mostly Arab constituency was losing faith in American promises, that Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region, and that envoy George Mitchell himself was (as a senior Pentagon officer later bluntly described it) "too old, too slow ... and too late."

Perry calls the briefing "unprecedented." He declares, "No previous CENTCOM commander had ever expressed himself on what is essentially a political issue."

On instruction from Petraeus, the military team conferred with senior Arab leaders. Perry reports:

"Everywhere they went, the message was pretty humbling," a Pentagon officer familiar with the briefing says. "America was not only viewed as weak, but its military posture in the region was eroding." But Petraeus wasn't finished: two days after the Mullen briefing, Petraeus sent a paper to the White House requesting that the West Bank and Gaza (which, with Israel, is a part of the European Command -- or EUCOM), be made a part of his area of operations.

Didn't you always think that this area was well, sort of, kind of part of Petraeus's operations? (As it turns out, the paper was actually sent to Mullen; it is assumed that it was forwarded to the White House.)

Apparently, Petraeus thought it a sensible idea, since US troops are deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, that the US appear to Arab leaders to be "engaged" [as opposed to being a puppet?] "in the region's most troublesome conflict," i.e., Israel-Palestine.

Given the fact of the thousands of American soldiers who have already dropped like flies throughout this pointless atrocity, Vice President Biden's angry retort to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, upon learning that Israel will be constructing new housing in East Jerusalem, is pitifully weak. As reported in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, Biden wailed, "This is starting to get dangerous for us." Starting to get dangerous? I think most would agree that we're well past the danger point for over 4,000 dead soldiers and tens of thousands of limbless and blind ones. What tough talk from Biden to the man who is really in charge of things. And, Biden dared to continue, "What you're doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan."

According to Yedioth Ahronoth:

"The vice president told his Israeli hosts that since many people in the Muslim world perceived a connection between Israel's actions and US policy, any decision about construction that undermines Palestinian rights in East Jerusalem could have an impact on the personal safety of American troops fighting against Islamic terrorism."

Perry writes: "The message couldn't be plainer: Israel's intransigence could cost American lives."

Perry seems to harbor the hope that the US military, which he calls the country's most "powerful lobby," can assert itself above all those other lobbies with which we're so familiar, and deliver Petraeus's message. Perry interprets that message as a "stark warning," that is: "America's relationship with Israel is important, but not as important as the lives of America's soldiers."

Far more likely, instead of the assertion of American power, we shall witness yet another round of groveling, bootlicking politicians offering grand apologies for a "misunderstanding," as everything falls back into place again and returns to business as usual ... and our soldiers go on dying.

Related

Suddenly the 'special relationship' is… embarrassing, by Philip Weiss

Israel is putting American lives at risk, by Paul Woodward

The Poodle Gets Kicked [Biden, that is], by Pat Buchanan

Humiliating America, by Eric Margolis

Israel First? by Joe Klein

Read more!

New immigration TV ads

Here is a notice from Californians for Population Stabiliation (CAPS), an organization that has worked tirelessly, in spite of the bricks thrown at them over the years, to impact immigration reform. The new ads tie the massive unemployment in this country to a lack of immigration enforcement by a government that is still admitting more than a million foreign workers a year.

• • •
Californians for Population Stabiliation (CAPS) and its partners in the Coalition for the American Worker launched two new TV ads asking why the President and congressional leaders have cut job site enforcement of immigration laws at a time when at least 8 million jobs are held by illegal foreign workers and so many Americans are unemployed.

While President Obama says his top priority is jobs he apparently does not mean jobs for Americans. The Country faces the highest unemployment rate in decades. Americans desperately need jobs. Yet the Obama Administration is reducing worksite enforcement of immigration laws even though worksite enforcement opens jobs for Americans.

When illegal workers are caught, they're not often deported, which means they can take another American job. Also, the U.S. continues to admit more than a million foreign workers a year to take American jobs. Good paying jobs. Our ads ask viewers to call the White House at 202-456-1414 and tell the President that Americans want their jobs back!
• • •
Go to the CAPS website to view the ads.

Related

Immigration and the SPLC: How the Southern Poverty Law Center Invented a Smear, Served La Raza, Manipulated the Press, and Duped its Donors, published by CIS

Read more!

If it's war, then it can't be a mistake

Jack Hunter offers one of the best appraisals of the film, The Hurt Locker. Following are excerpts from "Why 'The Hurt Locker' Hurts":

• • •
The characters in this film do not talk about “victory,” or “winning” or the politics of the situation in which they find themselves. Indeed, given the everyday situations these soldiers experience, notions of victory seem almost laughable. The closest thing to political commentary is when an Iraqi taxi driver is manhandled by American soldiers, Renner’s character remarks “If he wasn’t an insurgent, he sure the hell is now.” Former CIA terrorism expert Michael Scheuer recently criticized “Obama’s brass” for “continuing to reassuringly chant the Bush-Clinton-Bush lie to Americans that Islamists attack us because of our way of life not because of our interventionism.”

Though still hard for some Americans to comprehend, Scheuer’s observation that US foreign military intervention breeds Islamic terrorists would not be considered controversial, but fairly obvious, to the soldiers in this film.

The film’s intention is to make us think about the Iraq war in realistic terms, and it accomplishes this, or as much as any Hollywood production possibly could. ... It is not the soldier’s job to ask questions. Soldiers simply do their duty, and hopefully, survive. Asking questions is our job. When leaving the theater after seeing this movie in July, my first, obvious question was “was Iraq worth all that?” Virtually everything we were told about our reasons for invading Iraq — Saddam Hussein being behind 9/11, possessing weapons of mass destruction or threatening the U.S. — turned out to be untrue. ...

Why do so many continue to still say the Iraq war was “worth it?” If this is true, then any war our government can possibly conceive of could be considered “worth it.” Americans too often tend to justify war for its own sake. As citizens we neglect our important role of questioning our government, and that neglect has translated into too many de facto endorsements of the reckless use of our military. It seems we would rather eternally send more soldiers into even more “hurt lockers” than ever confront and deal with gross government incompetence on foreign policy. As with Vietnam, if Iraq wasn’t a mistake, it’s hard to imagine Americans admitting any war was a mistake. ...

If our government decides to go to war — too many Americans assume that it is their patriotic “duty” to support those wars without question. This is obscene, as the only thing standing between a soldier and a bad government decision is the American public. With the invasion of Iraq, Americans did not “support the troops” — we needlessly abused them. “The Hurt Locker” is a movie about that abuse.
• • •Read complete article here.

Related

Six Questions for Michael Scheuer on National Security, (former CIA), Harper's magazine


Read more!

Why don't you leave, already?

See, this is how it works. We bulldoze and destroy your olive groves and homes and all that you require for a livelihood, and eventually you will get the idea to leave for good. Why do you persist in staying here, when you know we will return, after you've done your best to restore your home and possessions, and bulldoze you again? How many decades, or is it centuries, will it take to stamp you out of this land? Why don't you go, damn it!

What follows is a description of habitual actions in Gaza, as the citizens of the region never know at what time of day or night to expect destruction of their lands and possessions. These are events that don't get reported in the American press, because they're so routine that they're boring. Who would care to hear yet another sob story like this one?
• • •
Homes and livelihoods gone in an instant

Radia Abu Sbaih, 47, lives with her sister and one niece on family land roughly 700 meters from the “green line” boundary between Israel and Gaza. Until 18 February 2010, they had nearly 600 olive, fruit, date and nut trees, an agricultural cistern, a water well, various vegetables and a house.

Around 8:00 am that morning, approximately five Israeli military bulldozers and upwards of 10 Israeli tanks, accompanied by more than 50 foot soldiers, invaded the farming region, according to locals. “We were in our home when we heard the Israeli tanks and bulldozers approaching. We ran off immediately,” says Sbaih.

“It’s all destroyed. Look, our clothes are buried,” she shouts, pulling at a sweater caught beneath the concrete block pile.
Household belongings are strewn on top of and beneath the pyramid of rubble. A gas range, several cooking pots, a plastic water bottle filled with olives, another with olive oil — both from their land and their destroyed olive trees — denote where the kitchen once stood.

“We were self-sufficient. Twenty people lived off this land. We had our own water source and we grew all our own vegetables: onions, spinach, carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes, radishes, beans …” Nothing, save a stray sprig of green onion, remains. “Now we have no electricity, no shelter, no water. I walk one hour both ways every day to bring jugs of water for drinking,” says Sbaih.

But for her, it is the loss of their trees that hits the hardest. In the hour or less it took the bulldozers to raze all their property and possessions, Radia Sbaih’s trees were cut to the ground and plowed into the valley. Haggard limbs studding the earth and thick ground-level stumps are all the evidence of the 10 dunams (a dunam is the equivalent of 1,000 square meters) of formerly thick growth. “They were healthy trees, many over 50 years old. And so many fruit trees: guava, orange, lemon, pomegranate, date, almond, sugar cane, cactus fruit …” recalls Sbaih.

An Israeli warplane thunders over and Sbaih comments, “It’s normal, they’re always over us.” The roar is accompanied by the continual whine of Israeli “drones” (unmanned aerial vehicles) patrolling the skies.

Sbaih’s words and losses are echoed by the two other families half a kilometer south. Moin Abu Said says, "When the bulldozers and tanks came, I was taking my son Nassim to school, around 7:30 am. I heard the noise of the invasion even from the school.” Abu Said returned to find the house that he had worked eight years to build completely flattened. “We only lived in it one month,” he says in disbelief. Like most in the border region, this is not the first time Abu Said’s land has been razed. “Ten years ago they bulldozed everything, but we replanted. Now it’s all gone again.”
• • •
The arbitrary repetition of this barbarism is at the heart of the strategy to get these stubborn people to leave Gaza for good. Needless to say, over the years, thousands of Palestinians have left the region. Women like Sbaih learn to suffer the losses, and determine to start the journey towards subsistence again. But what does it do to the spirit of the boys who grow into men experiencing these degrading acts over and over, throughout their youth – those "superfluous young men," in the words of Harvard's Martin Kramer?

In addition to maintaining a high level of fear is a design to emasculate, and to let these Palestinians know who the real men are. Do you think such repeated humiliating brutalities might incite enough anger to wreak revenge, even without the promise of 72 virgins?

Homes and livelihoods gone in an instant

Related

Will Israel Join the March of Folly? by Uri Dromi, New York Times

The Prime Minister is failing in his duties, by Haaretz Editorial Staff

Anywhere but here: IDF protest in NY today gets ink, by Philip Weiss

Israel and Its Neighbors: Leveling the Playing Field, by Michael Neumann
Read more!

"Cold cases" versus "warm cases"

The black blogger Constructive Feedback (CF), after informing us about the FBI's focus on civil rights "cold cases," i.e., alleged civil rights crimes of the past, then asks whether this agency, or any other, will pursue the thugs who are killing blacks today. He writes: "In our conditioning we are made to believe that the White man who killed a Black person back in 1952 is a greater threat to our community than the Street Pirate who murdered two people last month and is still on the loose."

CF calls it "repulsive" when blacks who commit crimes against others are not held to a standard of "full equality." It is shameful that there are those whose brand of racism fails to ask of blacks "equal measure that is asked of his long time oppressor." Apparently, black inferiority is implied in the very nature of this approach to today's black criminals, since they are too "damaged" to be expected to uphold societal standards. But, of course, CF reasons, black inferiority is the activists' currency.

Here's how the cold case business came about. To show a determination to go after alleged criminals who have gone unpunished for their deeds, in 2007, bills were introduced in the House and Senate "to provide for the investigation of certain unsolved crimes." These laws granted agents of the FBI and Department of Justice authority to plow through old alleged crimes committed against blacks prior to 1969, i.e., during the civil rights period. [See Far from a "post-racial" society: Dredging up the past forever and Dredging up the past-Part 2.]

Over the recent decades, we have witnessed clever blacks who have profited off every conceivable angle involving race. It comes as no surprise that there have always been even cleverer white elites who have made lucrative livings off the story of blacks, as well. One of these whites is Jerry Mitchell, "investigative reporter," who, last year, was recipient of a MacArthur Foundation grant of a half million dollars. With this tidy sum, Mitchell is expected to continue his lifelong hobby of "ferreting out crimes of the 1960s."

I wonder if Mr. Mitchell might consider Constructive Feedback's suggestion, and apply his energies and this financial windfall to pursuing atrocities being committed among blacks in the here and now. Perhaps he could put aside his passionate interest in "cold cases," and pursue, instead, that which CF calls "warm cases."
Read more!

No apologies, please

While our rightwing "patriots" rant about the moral and physical superiority of the USA! USA! USA!, and spend so much of their time ostentatiously, very ostentatiously, thanking the troops for their "service" in Iraq and Afghanistan, we're not supposed to notice that these very patriots don't give a damn about the fact that not one of the thousands of soldiers who are gone forever died in the protection of this nation. It is uncool to emphasize the fact that they died for a foreign policy that was designed to protect somebody else's nation.

Nor do these loyalists care about the rest of those young soldiers who are not only left without arms that they can never wrap around a woman, but also without sexual organs that were blown away. The essence of their life wiped out for nothing. (Or is that too delicate a matter to bring up?) Is it also too delicate to mention the fact that only cold-blooded villains would have used government to rob these naive, young men of so much in an era when the U.S. need never have waged war against any country?

Is it likely that we will ever hear an apology to these men, or to the millions of innocents who happened to be in the way of U.S. imperial arrogance, as its missiles and drones and other life-exterminating devices exterminated life?

In his review of former Governor Mitt Romney's new book, No Apology: The Case for American Greatness, Connor Boyack outlines several U.S. interventions abroad that have led to unfortunate and often unintentional catastrophes for civilians. He quotes the shallow (and might we say hollow) George H.W. Bush who, as Vice President in 1988, proclaimed, after a U.S. Navy missile destroyed an Iranian civilian airplane, killing all 290 passengers including 66 children, "I will never apologize for the United States. I don't care what the facts are. I'm not an apologize-for-America kind of guy."

Are such people part of the human race?

After detailing a multitude of instances of U.S. troops, driven by American hubris, stamping around the world, destroying ordinary people's institutions and livelihoods, Boyack asks:

Should America offer no apology for any of the aforementioned atrocities? Should our government be able to wash its hands so easily of these actions by merely declaring them necessary for "protecting America’s interests," "spreading democracy," or some similarly pathetic response? And should the ignorance and/or arrogance of current politicians be tolerated when they declare that "we should not apologize for America"?

Read complete article here.
Read more!

The Southern Poverty Law Center, again

In a post of 10/21/09, Exposing the charlatans at the Southern Poverty Law Center, I offered a profile of this intrusive, self-appointed "anti-racist" Watchdog of America's thoughts and social habits. I discussed its "hit list," to which the SPLC applies its own inscrutable standards, and the organization's regular practice of character assassination as it links and smears individuals and groups.

Joining what is now becoming a chorus of voices speaking out against the arbitrary practices of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Reason magazine's Jesse Walker reveals the weak evidence offered by the SPLC in its disparagement of various activists and groups. Citing "scaremongering" for fundraising as the primary goal of the SPLC, Walker writes:

As far as the SPLC is concerned, though, skinheads and Birchers and Glenn Beck fans are all tied together in one big ball of scary. The group delights in finding tenuous ties between the tendencies it tracks, then describing its discoveries in as ominous a tone as possible.

Read complete article here.

Related

‘Hate group’ masquerading as advocate of human rights?

Immigration & the SPLC: Stopping 'Hate' Is Really about Stopping Debate

Immigration and the SPLC: How the Southern Poverty Law Center Invented a Smear, Served La Raza, Manipulated the Press, and Duped its Donors, published by CIS

Read more!

How to deal with shameless maligners

If anybody knows what it's like to be smeared and maligned for expressing unpopular opinions, it is Stephen Walt. He and John Mearsheimer are co-authors of one of the most controversial documents, originally disseminated as an online manuscript, and then published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux as a book in 2007. Entitled "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," it directly confronts the once taboo subject of the United States' involvement with Israel. Their book describes the role played by supporters of Israel in shaping U.S. foreign policy and distorting it in the interests of Israel. The authors have been credited with creating "political space" for the open discussion of this volatile topic.

Their impressive establishment credentials as leading academic scholars (University of Chicago and Harvard affiliations), and the fact that their presentation was carefully researched and documented, did not save them from vicious verbal assaults and personal vilification. In a current Foreign Policy magazine article, "On grabbing the third rail," Walt offers his advice to those who would dare to publicly dissent from orthodox canon, whatever the subject. He shares his ideas on how to deal with the inevitable personal attacks by people who never rationally address your arguments but, instead, stoop to assaults on your character, while purposely misrepresenting your position, and impugning your motives for expressing your dissident opinions in the first place.

Walt offers 10 guidelines to follow in dealing with such adversaries who "take the low road." It is a fascinating little discourse and should be read in its entirety. Following are excerpts from five of the guidelines:
• • •
3. Never Get Mad. Let your critics throw the mud, but you should always stick to the facts, especially when they are on your side. In my own case, many of the people who attacked me and my co-author proved to be unwitting allies, because they lost their cool in public or in print, made wild charges and ad hominem arguments, and generally acted in a transparently mean-spirited manner. It always works to your advantage when opponents act in an uncivil fashion, because it causes almost everyone else to swing your way. ... In short, the more ludicrous the charges, the more critics undermine their own case. So stick to the high ground; the view is nicer up there.

4. Don't Respond to Every Single Attack. A well-organized smear campaign will try to bury you in an avalanche flurry of bogus charges, many of which are simply not worth answering. It is easier for opponents to dream up false charges than it is for you to refute each one, and you will exhaust yourself rebutting every critical word directed at you. So focus mainly on answering the more intelligent criticisms while ignoring the more outrageous ones, which you should treat with the contempt they deserve. ...

6. The More Compelling Your Arguments Are, The Nastier the Attacks Will Be. If critics can refute your evidence or your logic, then that's what they will do and it will be very effective. However, if you have made a powerful case and there aren't any obvious weaknesses in it, your adversaries are likely to misrepresent what you have said and throw lots of mud at you. ... If you are in a very public spat about a controversial issue like gay marriage or abortion or gun control, a solid and well-documented argument will probably attract more scurrilous attacks than a flimsy argument that is easily refuted. So be prepared.

8. Be Willing to Admit When You're Wrong, But Don't Adopt a Defensive Crouch. Nobody writing on a controversial and contested subject is infallible, and you're bound to make a mistake or two along the way. There's no harm in admitting to errors when they occur; indeed, harm is done when you make a mistake and then try to deny it. More generally, however, it makes good sense to make your case assertively and not shy away from engaging your critics. In short, the best defense is a smart offense, even when you are acknowledging errors or offering a correction. ...

9. Challenging Orthodoxy Is a Form of "Asymmetric Conflict." You Win By "Not Losing." When someone challenges a taboo or takes on some well-entrenched conventional wisdom, his or her opponents invariably have the upper hand at first. They will seek to silence or discredit you as quickly as they can, so that your perspective, which they obviously won't like, does not gain any traction with the public. But this means that as long as you remain part of the debate, you're winning. Minds don't change overnight, and it is difficult to know how well an intellectual campaign is going at any particular point in time. So get ready for an emotional roller coaster. Some days you might think you're winning big, while other days the deck will appear to be stacked against you. But the real question is: are you still in the game?

Read complete article here.

Related

The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt

The country that wouldn't grow up, by Tony Judt

Ferment Over "The Israel Lobby," by Philip Weiss

Read more!

The Constitution: A fantasy from the beginning?

Thomas J. DiLorenzo offers a depressing, yet probably correct, observation about enforcement of the Constitution. I'm sure many people have considered this idea, that is, the Founders' Constitution didn't stand a chance against government tyranny. James Madison talked about human nature and how hard it is for most of us, once in power, to behave ourselves. In fact, we cannot be expected to behave ourselves.

In "Doomed from the Start: The Myth of Limited Constitutional Government in America," DiLorenzo writes about John Calhoun's speculations:
• • •
After spending a lifetime in politics John C. Calhoun (U.S. Senator, Vice President of the United States, Secretary of War) wrote his brilliant treatise, A Disquisition on Government, which was published posthumously shortly after his death in 1850. In it Calhoun warned that it is an error to believe that a written constitution alone is “sufficient, of itself, without the aid of any organism except such as is necessary to separate its several departments, and render them independent of each other to counteract the tendency of the numerical majority to oppression and abuse of power.” The separation of powers is fine as far as it goes, in other words, but it would never be a sufficient defense against governmental tyranny, said Calhoun.

Moreover, it is a “great mistake,” Calhoun wrote, to suppose that “the mere insertion of provisions to restrict and limit the powers of the government, without investing those for whose protection they are inserted, with the means of enforcing their observance, will be sufficient to prevent the major and dominant party from abusing its powers.” The party “in possession of the government” will always be opposed to any and all restrictions on its powers. They “will have no need of these restrictions” and “would come, in time, to regard these limitations as unnecessary and improper restraints and endeavor to elude them . . .”

The “party in favor of the restrictions” (i.e., strict constructionists) would inevitably be overpowered. It is sheer folly, Calhoun argued, to suppose that “the party in possession of the ballot box and the physical force of the country, could be successfully resisted by an appeal to reason, truth, justice, or the obligations imposed by the constitution.” He predicted that “the restrictions [of government power in the Constitution] would ultimately be annulled, and the government be converted into one of unlimited powers.” He was right, of course.

Read complete article and learn more about those other colonials, the ones DiLorenzo calls the "Founding Fathers of Constitutional Subversion" here.
Read more!

Google and the blocking of websites

NOTICE: To anyone clicking a link from this Blog to articles on the Issues & Views website, depending on the browser you're using, you might encounter a statement by Google warning about "malware" on the Issues & Views website. Google has actually blocked the site, and put up a fearful message about possible "infections."

After giving the warning not to enter the site, Google then says:

"Over the past 90 days, issues-views.com did not appear to function as an intermediary for the infection of any sites," and "This site has not hosted malicious software over the past 90 days."

Although Google has blocked the site in Firefox, it is not blocked in Google's own browser, Chrome. All pages of the site, including PayPal, open just fine with no warnings in Google's browser. Go figure!

There is no way to contact anyone directly at Google, and I am hopeful that my website's host will figure out something, so that this warning message will some day be removed. When did Google become the monitor of the Internet? Read more!

Palin, the exemplary role model

It's been repeated so many times and it appears to be true. That is, conservatives take longer to internalize and promote the politically correct dictates that liberals concoct. In other words, liberals invent some platitude or piece of dogma that becomes standardized in the public mind. Conservatives initially fight the new mandate, but then, before you know it, they have joined the liberal bandwagon. They then set about denouncing others for a lack of enlightenment, as they help to disseminate the very terminology or social trend they once sensibly scorned and ridiculed.

Think of just about any exaggerated and over-abused expression. We all know how the "racist" tag has been done to death. Conservatives used to denounce libs for making a fetish of this term. Not any longer. Conservatives now can hardly wait to punish an opponent with the "racist" smear, just as heartily as a die-hard Democrat. The word is now as much a part of the conservative lexicon as are the smears "un-American" and "unpatriotic." In fact, many of these so-called independent thinkers on the right appear to equate a person who harbors sentiments that "exclude" others as un-American. "Inclusion" is the order of the day – because liberals taught them so. Now that Sarah Palin is on the scene, conservatives are warming to the task of smearing opponents as "sexist." Yet another victory for their liberal mentors.

If a "racist" is someone who prefers the company of members of his own ethnic group as opposed to others, why isn't this an individual choice that a true conservative would endorse? Apparently it is not, for such a person, no matter how benignly he expresses his preference, is generally attacked by conservatives just as belligerently as liberals. After all, doesn't he understand that rejection of others might result in "hurt" feelings? And isn't it "feelings" that count over individual rights?

Is a "sexist" someone who rejects the notion that Nature made the two sexes equal? The rejection of this notion was, until very recently, a foundation stone of conservatism. [See The emasculation is done.] But now that today's conservative worries, along with Sarah Palin, about breaking "glass ceilings," they must conform to the more "progressive" view on full equality of the sexes, as defined by liberal philosophy.

Palin now brings further enlightenment to old-fashioned conservatives, by endorsing still more politically correct language, that originally sprang straight from the liberal mindset. How conservatives used to laugh, as liberals made pests of themselves by scolding everyone in sight for using "insensitive" language, which might be offensive to some anonymous thin-skinned population. But they laugh no more. Mother Palin is teaching them to have the "correct" regard for language according to liberal ethics.

She has not only decreed the words "retard" and "retarded" politically incorrect to use, but would set the standard for the firing by one's employer for the use of these terms. And the good lady justifies her stance by linking these terms to the word "Nigger," implying, obviously, that anyone who makes use of this "N" word is also automatically deserving of job loss. Really?

When conservatives would read about some kid getting suspended from school for drawing a silly picture or teasing a schoolmate, they would be outraged at the over-the-top, zero tolerance policies practiced by some school administrators, and the expectation that everyone must agree to alter his/her sense of humor and manner of expression, to accommodate the leftist Thought Police. Palin would, no doubt, be right at home with the "sensitivity" training and "re-education" sessions that now inundate college campuses and the workplace, in order to bring all thought and expression into line with multicultural politics.

The former vice presidential candidate is, indeed, a piece of work. We watched in amazement as she publicly celebrated teenage sex and illegitimacy at a national political convention, we were astounded as she, apparently, condoned promiscuity among the young ("life happens"), we are stupefied, or is it bemused, as she promotes anti-conservative feminist doctrines, and our jaws drop even further as she now strives to ban particular words from our language.

Palin is so thoroughly a liberal in her instincts that she is tone-deaf to genuine conservative principles. Indeed, she possesses no conservative instincts. Whatever notion or policy she supports automatically becomes "conservative" in nature, simply because she deems it so. She repeatedly declares herself for small government and keeping that government at bay as much as possible, yet expresses admiration for Title IX, for years, a major nemesis of Phyllis Schlafly.

This federal statute, contrived at the behest of powerful feminist lobbyists, imposes gender quotas on sports in educational institutions that receive government funding. Although only a fraction of women in college seek to engage in competitive sports, the law rules that if a college has fewer than 56% of women on athletic teams, this would be judged as "sex discrimination," and a "gender quota discrepancy."

This quota equality mandate has compelled easily intimidated college administrators, fearful of losing government funds, to disband men's teams, even though these have a high degree of participation and membership. The loss of men's sports, such as track and field, swimming and gymnastics, is of no benefit to women, yet colleges still penalize male students, in order to reflect the same proportion of men to women in sports.

Although conservatives have fought this atrocious federal mandate for years, with Schlafly in the lead, this is the law with which Ms. Palin finds no fault. After all, it's "progressive," isn't it?

After she declared support of teachers' unions and spoke against school vouchers, and sided with ambulance-chasing lawyers who seek no financial caps on outrageous punitive damage awards, conservative newspaper columnist Paul Mulshine concluded about Palin: "Palin is motivated not by a coherent political philosophy so much as by a set of inchoate urges." He quotes the remarks of one of his readers, about Palin's fans: "They project whatever image they want onto her, and they keep repeating the mantra that she brings conservatism to the ticket, despite what she does and says."

Mulshine charges, "She has never given any indication that she has an identifiable political philosophy, conservative or liberal. She is not so much a political figure as a sort of national fertility symbol."

M.J. Rosenberg claims that Palin has been "kidnapped by the neocons." If she's been kidnapped by anything, it's by the prospect of accumulating a tidy bundle of wealth before the bloom is off the rose. Palin proves she is a thinking woman and understands some facts about Nature. She is smart enough to understand that if she is ever to get rich, it is now or never. It's called milking those final magic moments in a woman's physical development, before the beauty fades. Once she hits the wall, like all other women, people won't be quite so tolerant of her empty rhetoric, and all those smitten rightwing men won't be so eager to hand over $395 to hear her recitation of clichés and banalities, while ogling her lovely legs and stiletto heels.

Is there nothing that the cynical, popular media offers in which Palin will not partake? She quits her post as Governor of Alaska, because the media offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get rich quick, while becoming a TV star. She further sullies what's left of her family's reputation by encouraging her teenage daughter to pose with her illegitimate baby on the cover of a national gossip magazine, while Mother Sarah shares the stage with daughter on the cover of yet another magazine. She uses her infant son as a stage prop at her speaking events.

Writer Bonnie Fuller calls the People magazine cover "a total promotion for teen pregnancy." Daughter Bristol is learning from Mom how best to exploit what conservatives once looked upon as an unfortunate circumstance, about which the less said the better. What a glamorous life has opened up for Bristol, writes Fuller, as she becomes the "poster girl for teen momhood." Did both Mom and Daughter receive a million dollars from People?

The magazine In Touch apparently did not consider the Palin duo worth any more than $100,000 for a cover spread. Their caution proved wise, as the alluring Mom/Daughter team did not get much pick-up from newstands, in spite of the engaging photos of them holding Trig and Tripp, or is it Track?

Palin, as has been observed by many, is a walking cliché factory, where never an original thought falls from her lips. Substance? Not a chance. When recently asked about her policy for handling America's foreign enemies, her response was, "They lose, we win." Now there's a policy! Repeated clichés and platitudes form her mindset, which is fixed in her own special style of demagoguery.

Traditionalist minister Chuck Baldwin warns true conservatives among the Tea Party movement not to be fooled by Sarah Palin. He writes, "Palin is currently playing both sides. She is promoting Big Government neocons such as John McCain on the one hand, and sincere conservative-libertarians such as Rand Paul on the other hand."

She and her minions constantly crow about their support of the Constitution, yet their actions show that they know little and care even less about the actual contents of this document. It is only when they believe that the Constitution can be used for their own pet causes, such as the abolition of abortion laws, that they climb out of the woodwork to tout the Constitution.

Palin's acolytes don't seem to know where liberal indoctrination leaves off, and where their supposed highly-touted "conservative values" begin. They rant about the desire for "small government," yet George W. Bush taught us what a lie that is. Big government is desirable whenever it can enhance Republican policies. One wonders why these people insist on labeling themselves "conservative." They are nothing more than Republican lackeys and, as such, they need take no ideological label at all.

The head of their political party is not the party's National Chairman, the dimwitted Michael Steele. It is not even the whip John Boehner or John McCain. Their party is led by a radio talk show host, the irrepressible Rush Limbaugh, that standard bearer for "family values." Actually, Limbaugh is the perfect representative for today's "conservative" who conforms to modern social trends, having been married and divorced three times. He wisely chooses women who also come out of multiple marriages, such as the last one for whom he was her fourth husband. (How many broken marriage vows between them does that make?) But, hey, "life happens," right? Lead on!

When criticism is made of Palin's obvious indifference to her teenage daughter's carefree lifestyle (as demonstrated by Levi, the not-quite-son-in-law, having access to her daughter's bedroom), her faithful camp followers chant, almost in unison, that ultimately children make their own choices, and parents cannot control the behavior of their offspring. But, of course, this is not the point. After all, liberals have been in the vanguard of teaching us such hackneyed facts of life. We all know one of their favorite mantras about sex and the young: "They're going to do it anyway." To claim that no one is responsible for their children's choices is the cop-out used by all parents, most especially the more derelict and irresponsible ones.

Here's the point. If there has been a clear demonstration that you not only have failed at your minimum duties to protect the weak and impressionable who depend upon you, and you don't even have the sense to handle the negative aftermath in an honorable manner, then you should get to the back of the leadership line. At the front of that line should be those people who have successfully navigated life's challenges, and are role models for others to do the same. Not everyone can be such a model. Who needs more bad role models and mentors in positions of leadership?

After pseudo-conservatives have spent a decade bringing some of the worst types to leadership – the fool George W. Bush, the abhorrent warmonger Dick Cheney, and various assortments of their avaricious cronies – it's time to conserve the last remnants of the Founders' original visions, which did not include subservience to a political party or to foreign lobbies. Nor did those visions include the killing of our young soldiers for the protection of a foreign country, or allowing minority special interests, whether race or gender, to gain power in order to undermine the constitutional rights of the majority. We need no charlatan like Sarah Palin to continue enabling this country's social and political decline.

Related

Thank you for nothing, Ms. Palin

Palin fills in those cracks in the ceiling

The good liberal Palin makes a mockery of conservatives

Pro-lifers bring underclass mores into the mainstream

Palin, still the darling of the mainstream media

Thanks to Sarah, we can do just about anything

Parading the unwed daughter

Teenage pregnancy should never be glorified

Book - Prude: How the Sex-Obsessed Culture Damages Girls (and America, Too!), by Carol Platt Liebau
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