Aohell

Israeli Defense Force

And before I get a lot of grief on this from the pro-Israelis out there, there is an incredible amount of propaganda used to lie about what the IDF does and has done. It is an arm of the Israeli state that has been used in human rights violations, including ethnic deportations and massacres. Yes, there is a terrorist campaign against the Israeli state. No, it does not justify a state-sponsored terror campaign that kills three times as many Arab civilians as the Israelis lose to the PLO/Hamas/Hizbollah and other Palestinian Arab organizations. There are people who believe in Israel like it was God. It is not God. It is not an entity one follows blindly. It is not led by God. It is a secular state that abuses the power granted it by the United States to oppress millions of people it has rendered stateless, creating ghettos of Arabs on marginal lands.

People sometimes ask what would have happened if the Jews were able to organize an effective resistance under Hitler: what would it have been like? It would have been like the Palestinian resistance against Israel's robbery of their lands and property. No, Israel does not resort to death camps, thank goodness. On the other hand, it is resorting to the Stalinist solution: slow, determined grinding away to eliminate resistance in the long run. Stalin hoped to collect all the Jews in Russia to the Soviet Far East in a "homeland" of sorts, then liquidate the settlements there by severing rail links and letting Siberian winters do their thing. The way Israel seals off Gaza, starving it a little at a time, is more analagous to Stalin's methods than Hitler's, and I find Stalin to be much more the worse of the two tyrants. He just happened to have a better PR machine, that's all.

And Israel has a PR machine almost without parallel. The only thing that comes close to it in terms of viciousness and rabidity is the Turkish denial of the Armenian Holocaust. It would be nice if the USA quit shipping weapons to both those states, but that's not likely at all, especially under a president whose Chief of Staff is a golden boy in the American-Israeli PAC, or AIPAC. For those who are new to Washington lobbying groups, AIPAC is the one that makes sure the USA keeps sending arms and cash to Israel so it can continue to fire rockets into inhabited apartment blocks.

The death toll in Gaza so far in "Operation Cast Lead" is over 1000 civilians. All the US does is watch.

"Never again," my eye. More like "Never again to us, even if we have to make it happen again to others, in some form or fashion." And if you want one of the earliest comparisons of Israeli ethnic cleansing to the Nazis, look no further that the words of Golda Meir in 1948:

It is dreadful thing to see the dead city. I found next to the port [Palestinian Arab] children, women, the old, waiting for a way to leave. I entered the houses, there were houses where coffee and pitot were left on the table, I could not avoid [thinking] that this, indeed, had been the picture in many Jewish towns...

Gaza... Why?

Because, of course.

Hamas chucked missiles at Israel to provoke precisely the sort of ground attack that is happening now. In a few days, Hamas will launch more missiles to let Israel know it did not get all the missiles. Israel will remain in Gaza and its operation there will seem ineffective. If you've been following the Middle East, this should sound familiar, as it's exactly the sort of thing Hezbollah did to Israel in Lebanon. Israel left Lebanon without having defeated Hezbollah.

Hamas has had close ties with Hezbollah, so it's no surprise that they're carrying out a Hezbollah-style operation. For all the US-made rockets that the Israeli Defense Forces will fire into Gazan apartments, Hamas will survive and inflict unacceptable losses on Israel. Israel knows that if it withdraws, it looks weak. Hamas knows that, as well, and knows that Israel must eventually withdraw from Gaza. It cannot remain there indefinitely.

Israel missed its chance to have peace back in 1991. Now it's dealing with a Hamas that knows it can win a war of attrition, instead of the tired old Fatah of Yassir Arafat. Both sides are as bloody-minded as World War One generals, and will not step away from the violence, for fear of looking weak. In the long run, the Palestinians will win through weight of numbers, but only at a terrible civilian cost. The Israelis will lose in the long run, but also only at a terrible civilian cost.

Both sides' political leaders use the violence to perpetrate their power base. Both sides point to their own civilian casualties, rightly, as horrifying outrages. But they then point to the other side's civilian casualties, wrongly, as justifiable consequences for their struggle against evil.

Obama is very tight with the AIPAC. He'll send gobs of cash and material to Israel, but not soldiers. Hamas knows that if they can kill enough Israelis, all the cash and gadgetry in the USA won't save Israel. They're ready to fight this out for another 140 years.

After all, the last time Crusaders set up a state in Palestine, it took the Arabs 200 years to wipe it out - at terrible civilian cost to both sides. So it goes in the Middle East when the major powers pick sides instead of true peace.

Suggestions for Republicans that Want to Leave the Nation

When Bush won in 2000 and 2004, many liberals threatened to leave the US. They had lots of left-leaning places to choose from: everything from North Korea to Canada, with France, England, and Mexico in between.

Now right-wingers are talking about leaving the nation. Where are they going to go? OK, there are right-wing dictatorships with death squads here and there, but those might not be the cup of tea for freedom-lovin' American Republicans.

Another right-winger problem is that they don't want to move anywhere that doesn't speak American. If American can't be had, English might be all right, but not if it's spoken with a funny accent. Even so, the politics of the English-speaking world is pretty darn liberal. The grass looks greener over there because it is greener, thanks to their signing the Kyoto Protocol and working harder to protect their environment. Buncha hippie tree-huggers over in them other places in the world.

Maybe the Republicans should consider internal migration to states with lots of mountains where they can hunker down and live off the land - so long as the gas and electricity doesn't get cut off. Idaho and Utah already got plenty of Republican fellow travelers. But those are cold states. If a righty wants a warmer climate, consider the swamps of South Carolina and Louisiana. True, they take a direct hit from a hurricane every now and then, but with Bush out of office, federal aid might actually get there in time to do some good.

McCain may have lost, but at least he said he'd stay around to help do what he could. That's what a real patriot does. Suck it in, crybaby Republicans: you now have an opportunity to be the loyal opposition. Obama will make plenty of mistakes and if you're outside the borders of the US, how will you be able to take advantage of them?

Fiscal Policy

Questions for a Future Debate...

Having seen the debates thus far, I have to say I'm disgusted at the way the politicians dodge some issues, make no mention of others, and beat the drum on real vote-getters. Is that all democracy has done for the US? Produce men that have no desire to care for their nation, but to get to the top of the greasy pole of politics?

I don't think I'll ever be in a position to ask these questions point-blank to any candidate. I'm not in the major media groups, and even if I was, asking these questions would likely get me fired, transferred, or otherwise shoved under a bus. That's the irony of this whole thing... we have a free press, but it has no ability to air its views or truly reach the nation's leaders. That reach is reserved for the corporations and the lobbies that know how to act as corporations.

Anyway, my questions:

1. Haiti is the nation with perhaps the longest-running "nation-building" relationship with the United States. Given the conditions there - people scrounging around to find the least toxic dirt to eat - what hope do you have that what the US is doing in Iraq or Afghanistan won't eventually end in similar failure?

And, yes, least toxic dirt. The poor of Haiti can't afford food, so they are forced to turn to a certain kind of dirt that can be mixed with a little butter and salt and sun-baked into a cake. It has next to no nutritive value, but helps to end the pains of hunger. The toxins in the dirt, however, are themselves debilitating. Eating the dirt cakes is known as "bleaching the belly". This is a nation the US has tried to rebuild since 1914. Nearly a century later, they are eating toxic dirt. If there was oil there, things would be worse, I guess...

2. If the American-Israel PAC told you to wear underwear on top of your head, would you wear boxers or briefs and would you make it a campaign issue about how slow your opponent was to don his undergarments in the AIPAC-requested fashion?

Honestly, the US should just make Israel the 51st state. That way, no other nation on earth could attack it and it would prosper with all the guarantees the United States grants its minority populations with substantial amounts of cash. They would further rest assured that the Arabs would be given an alternative ethnic descriptor with loads more syllables in it so they could be properly ignored like all of the US' minority populations without substantial amounts of cash.

3. Given how much money the candidates are receiving from the banking, insurance, and real estate industries, will either really, really take care of the current financial mess in a way that does not somehow enrich further the very people who created it?

Opensecrets.org has information on industry donors by sector. $116 million of corporate spending came from banking, finance, and real estate. That's the single-largest set of contributions. I'm sorry, but I simply can't look at that and smile. This next president will be bought and paid for, that's what it looks like. Whether or not it's like other presidents makes no difference: it's still a nauseating tragedy.

4. Can we trust either of the candidates with our tax dollars?

Hold on, this question was asked in the debate. Neither candidate managed an answer that didn't sound like some kind of used car sales pitch. I'm not convinced we can trust any of them.

5. Why are candidates that are neither Republican nor Democrat excluded from participation in the debates by the bi-partisan Federal Election Commission?

Oh, snap. It's because a bipartisan commission doesn't want to upset the apple cart with any views other than the existing currently carefully-scripted ones. Heaven forfend someone outside the influence of corporate America should speak his mind in a well-attended public forum.

6. What is your position on nuclear disarmament?

7. If a rising tide is supposed to lift all boats, why does the increasing GDP of the USA leave an increased disparity between the richest Americans and its poorest citizens? Does the government of America truly represent all people or only the ones able to purchase access to government bodies?

8. What assurances can the candidates give us that the recently-announced NATO authorization to go after heroin producers in Afghanistan isn't a move to wipe out the producers that compete with the associates of the brother of Afghanistan's president? How do we know this isn't a move designed to boost heroin prices worldwide to benefit the heroin producers working with the Afghan government at the expense of the heroin producers working for al-Qaeda and the Taliban?

I'm sure I could think of more questions. I'll let these stand for now.

The Winner of the Debate Is...

... the lady that asked, "How can we trust either of you with our money?"

Seriously.

How can we trust either party? They're in cahoots with each other and major corporations. Fie on both Republicans and Democrats. Fie, fie, fie.

Fall of the Euro?

The very fact that such a question could seriously be asked is indicative of how severe the current financial crisis is.

Truly, can the Euro area keep it together? Some European nations are suffering a collapse in their real estate markets. Others are not. One currency and one monetary policy simply can't cover both kinds of situations. It will reward one and beggar the other.

Either way, it's not good. And breaking up the Euro? That's not good either. In a world financial market searching for stability, the last thing it needs is the possibility of a stable currency, the Euro.

Here's hoping the Euro can make it, but I'm not optimistic...

Survivalists Take Note...

Many survivalists plan on the end of civilization: they have food stores, seeds, shelter, generators... and weapons. But I'll wager they lack what will be needed if those weapons are used: a lime pit.

When you kill the marauder that seeks your food store, you gotta do something about the corpse. Burial is too much work and burning uses up too much precious firewood. No, just have an open pit where you can dump the body and then cover it in lime - sodium hydroxide, not the fruit - which will both disinfect and dissolve the corpse.

If you'd rather not want to consider a future where considerations such as this are important, then do what you can to reduce your consumerism, that you might have a more sustainable sort of lifestyle.

There really is hope for the world, but it involves abandoning the temptation of riches.

Palin on Pakistan

The Devil We Know...

WaMu was wiped out with an electronic bank run. There is panic in the world of banking, and although the whole idea of spending as much money as was spent on five years of war in Iraq at a stroke to rescue the credit markets makes reason stare and stomachs turn, it must be done.

If that panic isn't halted, WaMu's failure will pale in the face of business closures due to an inability on their part to secure financing for day-to-day operations. Banks have suspended lending to each other and they need a sign from Washington that there is something substantial propping up the system.

Yes, these are guys that serve Mammon, not God. We want to see them burn for their sins. But if we don't move to prop up the market now, they'll take us all down to hell with us.

I would say this episode shows the bankruptcy of unregulated free-market capitalism. It's as pollyanna as notions of socialist workers' paradises. We live in a world with evil men afoot, and no pure system is going to succeed once they latch on to it for fun and profit. Better to have the annual growth rates slashed a percent or two and have a smoother climb up than risk an unregulated crash into the ground.