Category: Current Issues

The Elections, the Assassination Attempt: Such a Joke!

As they say, if it weren’t so tragic, it would be laughable. I mean, they’re trying to make us believe that the upcoming election is (once again!) “the most important in our lifetime.”

What a joke! Yesterday morning New York Times editors wrote about how “centrism works,” and how important it is to avoid “radicalisms” of both the left and the right – as if in this country ANY politician represents left radicalism.

Truth is, they’re all either center right or extreme right.  There is no “left” in this country.

None at all.

Face it: we’re governed by a Uni-Party. Everybody knows that. There’s hardly a sliver of daylight between Trump and (I guess) Harris. Certainly not between Biden and Trump. They’re all perpetrators of genocide. They’re all warmongers. All of them!

Oh, I suppose there’s some separation on the irrelevancies our system identifies as important: abortion, gay rights, immigration, and “wokeness” (whatever that means). Yes, in the face of genocide all those issues are trivial! Genocide eclipses everything else.

But the candidates won’t touch the real matter. Check out yesterday’s Times. They listed the issues facing Ms. Harris. Not a mention of the genocide in Gaza. Nothing about the war in Ukraine and why there are billions and billions and billions and billions and billions for that, but no money for what Americans really care about: higher wages, inflation reduction, universal healthcare, free college tuition, debt cancellation, climate change, low-cost public housing, or elimination of nuclear weapons.  Not a word.

Neither does anyone explain why Joe Biden is not up to campaigning, but he’s still president. It seems the old man’s still somehow “in charge,” though everyone knows that’s never been the case. Obviously, they’ve been lying about his mental capacities for years. (They didn’t just discover it during the Trump debate.) But they continued to lie about it till a few days ago!

And now they expect us to believe they’re telling the truth. Don’t worry: they really do care about us. And Genocide Joe is really a nice grandfatherly humanitarian. And that Kamala. You go, girl!!

Of course Biden’s a liar; always has been. He’s a murderer straight up. And so is Harris. – and all those old white men who repeatedly jumped to applaud Benjamin Netanyahu when he addressed Congress last week.  It’s all disgraceful.

 I can’t vote for any perpetrators of genocide. Which means I can’t participate in the upcoming election.

And as for assassination attempt on Donald Trump? Do you see the hypocrisy as the whole thing is swept under the rug?

I mean, Imagine if a major political opponent of Vladimir Putin were shot and wounded while campaigning on stage. There is no doubt that the IMMEDIATE conclusion of “our” MSM would be PUTIN DID IT.

No wait and see. No waiting for an independent investigation. Just ridicule of any call for an inquiry especially if it were carried out under the aegis of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB).

Such inquiry would be dismissed as a joke, since like its predecessor, the KGB, the FSB could never be trusted to reach truthful conclusions.

You KNOW that’s true, don’t you?

In fact, that’s what happened when a minor Russian political figure called Alexy Navalny (who in no way threatened Putin’s continued presidency) died in prison last February. No sooner was his death announced than a firm conclusion was drawn, Putin did it.

The same thing happened last August, when another of Putin’s opponents, Yevgeny Prigozhin died in a helicopter crash. The wreckage was still smoldering when the press identified President Putin as the one responsible.

But why do I bring that up?

It’s because over here, any public expressions of suspicions involving the Biden administration around the Trump shooting are automatically dismissed as conspiratorial – if they’re even mentioned.

Yes, we’re told, there were inexplicable lapses on the part of the Secret Service surrounding Mr. Trump. But virtually no one even hints that the Biden administration, the CIA, the FBI, or the Secret Service was behind it.

Do you think those agencies are somehow above and beyond such assassination attempts? Do you think we can trust them to investigate themselves? Remember what ex-CIA chief Mike Pompeo confessed (and laughed about it): “We lie; we cheat; we steal; we take entire courses about how to do it.”

But no, after every assassination attempt (John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, George Wallace, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, Ronald Reagan, Martin Luther King . . .) it’s the same story. No conspiracy or government involvement. Nothing to see here. Just a lone wolf and all kinds of unanswered questions in documents that won’t be released for another 50 years.

“But trust us: our three-letter agencies will get to the bottom of it. Just don’t worry your pretty little head about that.”

It’s all so corrupt. Such a joke. I just can’t take it seriously.

The Fundamental Difference between the U.S. and China

Why is the United States so anti-Chinese? Why all this Sinophobia?   

It’s because of the basic difference between China and the U.S. that virtually none of our basically ignorant “leaders” — much less the mainstream media — seems to understand. Let me explain.

On the one hand, you have the United States. It’s leading a coalition of overwhelmingly white European colonialists who with less than 25% of the world’s population think they somehow have the right to control the entire world. In this context, the U.S. with 4.2% of the population considers itself the leader that can dictate terms to the other 95.8% of the world, including those Europeans whom it has successfully and surprisingly reduced to the status of obedient and subservient vassals.

In its position as world hegemon that alone emerged unscathed from the ravages of World War II (aka the second Intercapitalist war) the U.S. has decided to maintain control the world militarily. As a result, it annually invests more of its national treasure in war and preparation for war than the next nine countries combined (including China and Russia). A huge proportion of that treasure is spent on maintaining more than 750 military bases in more than 80 countries across the planet.

U.S. bases represent a key element in our country’s neo-colonial strategy aimed at controlling the Global Majority (i.e. former colonies) by regime-change interventions. These interventions have the United States removing from office any governments seeking to directly improve the lives of their citizens by redistributing income, or by providing healthcare, education, or other benefits and laws directly benefitting working classes rather than the wealthy and corporate interests. Since the 1950s, the world has witnessed such interventions in Iran, Guatemala, Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Nicaragua, Iraq, Venezuela, Libya, and other locations too numerous to list here.

Yes, regime changes benefit the rich and powerful. However, in terms of directly benefitting you and me, those operations and the bases that support them contribute virtually nothing. Yes, they keep millions of military personnel off the streets as well as providing jobs for those working in weapons manufacturing plants. However, the bases and forever wars they stimulate are otherwise completely counterproductive.

For instance, over the past two years, Washington has spent $175 billion on its proxy war in Ukraine which according to Lloyd Austin is aimed at regime change in Russia. That means $175 billion not spent on universal healthcare, not funding college tuition, not providing improvements in infrastructure, not spent on highspeed rail or on mitigating the effects of climate change. All of us can see the results in our decaying urban centers with homeless beggars sleeping on sidewalks and in tents under our bridges.

In other words, overseas military bases are completely parasitic. They live off the rest of us devouring the nutrients that would otherwise sustain and improve our quality of life. Internationally, their purpose is to maintain “stability” in a world where power and wealth have since WWII been concentrated in the U.S. and Europe – the imperial countries that have controlled the world for the past half-millennium. It’s a world of billionaires on the one hand and grinding poverty on the other – especially in the former colonies.

Contrast this U.S. parasitism with the policies of China. As indicated above, China spends far less than the United States on its military. China maintains but a single military base outside its borders. It hasn’t fired a bullet beyond those confines over the last 40 years.

Instead of investing in bloodsucking military bases, China maintains what might be described as development nodes across the planet. Over the past decade and more, its “Belt and Road Initiative” has constructed highways, ports, electrical grids, and highspeed rail systems across Asia, Europe, Africa, and Latin America from Beijing to Tierra del Fuego. And those installations have vastly improved the lives of ordinary people wherever they appear – including those of the Chinese people themselves. As everyone knows, China was recently recognized by the United Nations as successfully raising more than 800,000 of its own citizens from extreme poverty.

What I’m describing here is the rebalancing of the world. Led by China, the planet’s majority is asserting the power that belongs to it in terms of population, which by the way is not white. China has about 18.5% of the world’s population; Africa has about the same; India has slightly more. All those non-white people are rebelling against the humiliation of control by the whites who have drawn completely arbitrary borders. That’s legendary in Africa and the Mid-East where colonizers in their tents drew lines on maps arbitrarily cutting up Africa and all that Mid-East desert land floating on a sea of oil. And they did so with virtually no knowledge of the countries, cultures, and populations they were dividing.

Accordingly, the non-white victims of such ignorance are currently refusing to honor such geographical restrictions. Under pressures from climate change (induced by the colonizers) and by the absolute decimation of western regime-change wars, the victims of such policies are relocating massively. And they won’t be stopped by walls, laws, or border patrols – and much less by ignorant nativist arguments. Yes, people of color are here to stay. Get used to it. Trump or no Trump, they will not be denied.

 It’s a new multi-polar world. It’s time has come. It is long overdue. My only fear is that the “leaders” of the collective west might find the loss of hegemony so threatening that they’ll decide to end the world by initiating a nuclear war. They’ve thought about this before. Remember “It’s better to be dead than red?”

Their new line seems to be: “It’s better to be dead than not in complete control.”

God help us!

Normalizing Genocide

[Sorry for not publishing lately. I recently spent 4 days in the hospital dealing with some ill-effects from my recent knee replacement surgery. And while the new knee is doing great, I still find myself very tired from an unexpected infection and early sepsis.]

__________

You know, it might be my recent illness. But these days I can’t listen to the news without sobbing. Really.

Just the terms genocide, Raffa, Zionists, Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF), settler colonialism, apartheid, 2000-pound bombs (supplied using my tax dollars), and unrestricted infanticide are enough to make me cry.

And let’s be clear. This is not a war. It’s a genocide. And our president Genocide Joe Biden is at the heart of it along with that butcher, Bibi Netanyahu.

No, it’s not a war. The only army with its air force, tanks, and sophisticated weapons (including a nuclear arsenal) is the IOF. Hamas is a rag tag group of Palestinian freedom fighters armed with Kalashnikovs and protected by an elaborate tunnel system that Zionist butchers find impossible to penetrate.

And their completely justified resistance did not begin on October 7th. It was a response to nearly 100 years of slaughter and mayhem at the bloody hands of Israeli Neo-Nazis.

I keep imagining my grandchildren and their mothers suffering the way little Gazans are. Can you imagine watching them undergo amputations without benefit of anesthesia?  The Zionists evidently love it. They’re sadists.

Yes, they’re committing war crimes before our very eyes – using food and water as weapons, bombing hospitals and schools, administering collective punishment, executing hospital patients with their hands tied behind their backs, beheading some, and machine-gunning starving Palestinians waiting in line for food. When is all this going to stop?

Can you imagine the outcry if Russia performed such atrocities in Ukraine? We’d never hear the end of it. I mean the ICC without a moment’s hesitation issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin for removing children from a war zone. Nothing of the sort for Netanyahu, much less for Genocide Joe. They both deserve to be hung the way Nazis were for the genocide they committed in those prison camps that were the precursors of Gaza, “the world’s largest open-air prison” – itself a concentration camp.

Thank God for student protestors at Colombia, Princeton, at the New School, and elsewhere. Shame on the administrators of those institutions for calling in the police to harass and arrest peaceful demonstrators. Such a disgrace to “higher education.”

And then there’s the Mainstream Media (MSM) normalizing it all. This morning’s New York Times published a lead article entitled “The Debate over Rafah.” In it they completely normalized genocide, presenting the dilemma facing Butcher Bibi and Genocide Joe. Here, they said, are the arguments on both sides of the question! There are good reasons for Israel to invade, and equally valid reasons not to. That is: there are good reasons for genocide and equally good reasons against.

Every word written in that vein should make anyone sick. We should all be in tears.

In Defense of Higher Education: How To Address Genocidal Congress-members

As a life-long academic, I’m still smarting from watching Minouche Shafik, the president of Columbia University, being bullied during her nearly four-hour testimony before the Republican-led Committee on Education and the Workforce.

The House committee was convened to uncover anti-Semitism on U.S. campuses in the context of students protesting the genocide taking place before our eyes in Gaza and on the West Bank.

It was embarrassing to see President Minouche Shafik grovel before congress-members who evidently know nothing about higher education. Adopting her best baby fundie voice and attitude, she squirmed, smiled, and assured her interrogators that student “mobs” protesting Zionist genocide would be duly restricted and professors exposing students to Palestinian history and viewpoints would be fired.  

Previously, the committee exuding full redolence of the McCarthy era, had been successful in forcing the resignations of the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. The resignations resulted from the women’s alleged failures to restrict student demonstrations on their campuses against the slaughter taking place in Palestine over the past six months.

Evidently, the intention in grilling president Shafik was to add a third victim to their list of forced presidential resignations. 

 While my disappointment with the Colombia president was real, my heart went out to the poor woman. She seemed intimidated, anxious to please, fawning, and frankly fearful of losing her job.

Imagine having to answer questions like the one posed by Representative Lisa McClain (R Michigan). She demanded a “yes or no” answer to her question: “Are mobs shouting, ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,’ or ‘long live the infanttada (sic)’ – are those antisemitic comments. Yes or no?

In response, poor Ms. Shafik was at a complete loss for words.

She shouldn’t have been.

As an academic, she should have had the wherewithal to say, “Ms. McClain, that’s not a yes or no question. It’s like the old saw, “’Yes or no, are you still beating your wife?’ Or like my asking you, ‘Tell me, yes or no, are you still accepting bribes from the military-industrial complex.’ I mean, it’s either a trick gotcha question or (with all due respect) an ignorant one. The answer is complicated.

“For example, Benjamin Netanyahu has endorsed the slogan ‘From the river to the sea’ to define Israel’s ambitions in Palestine. Yes, he has. You can Google it. Was Netanyahu’s (as you put it) an anti-Semitic comment? Remember the Palestinians are Semites too. Or perhaps you’ve forgotten that.”

“Do you see the complications I’m talking about?’

And as for your questions about Intifada. . .. (And by the way, it’s pronounced ‘in-teh-fah-dah’ not ‘infant-tah-dah’) Do you know what the word means? Yes or no, do you?

“In case you don’t, let me tell you it refers to aggressive nonviolent resistance to illegal Zionist occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem by the apartheid Israeli government. You can Google that too.

“And even if such protests turned violent, are you familiar with Article 51of the UN Charter? Yes or no.

“I can see by your hesitation, that perhaps you don’t. So let me inform you that Article 51 gives the right to those in illegally occupied territories to use violence against their occupiers.”

It would have been fun to see Ms. McClain squirm a bit and to hear her comments.

Can’t be done, you say?

Yes, it can.

Left-wing member of the British Parliament George Galloway showed how. In 2005 he testified before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. He had been accused of making a questionable oil deal on behalf of his campaign to end the Iraq war. Had the deal included a kick-back to the then villain of the hour, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein? Yes or no.

Here’s a shortened version of how he addressed his questioners. (It’s also worth reviewing his entire 48-minute statement): 

Had President Shafik adopted George Galloway’s confidence and tone, she would have said something like this:

“Honorable congress-members, thank you for inviting me here today and offering me opportunity to defend the University of Colombia and  its students from the slander, calumny, and outright lies endorsed by this committee. Let me assure you that Colombia University today under my leadership is the same institution of higher learning that its proud history has always shown it to be. In that tradition, we have a first-class faculty that has been vetted, constantly peer-reviewed, and evaluated, and held to the highest standards. Those standards require professors in every discipline to introduce students to all sides of every debate. There can no limits to topics addressed. Absolutely none. So, for you to summon me here under accusations that a topic or point of view forbidden by the state has been addressed, discussed, or expressed by members of our faculty is frankly insulting. It is also insulting for you to demand that I dismiss Columbia faculty members on the mere accusation of their engaging in speech forbidden by the state. We have rules and procedures at Colombia that restrict such precipitous termination without hearings and deliberation by faculty commissions. That is, your demands reveal a profound misunderstanding of the function and democratic procedures governing higher education. Similarly, your evident desire to prevent students from taking sides with the victims of genocide now unfolding in Gaza flies in the face of our university’s valued tradition of freedom of expression, and of our nation’s Constitution which guarantees freedom of speech and the right of petition. In this committee, you seem unaware that more than 34,000 Gazans (fully half of them children and their mothers) have been slaughtered by the Zionists over the last six months before our very eyes. At Colombia, we are proud that our students can recognize such genocide and reject the very crimes that you, are aiding and abetting. I mean, everyone here who has voted to supply the Zionists with arms is guilty of genocide. Shame on you all! Your participation in that crime reveals this present reincarnation of McCarthyism for what it is. This hearing is nothing more than a smokescreen to divert public attention from your crimes and from those of Zionist apartheid settler-colonialists. Again, I thank you for the opportunity to set the record straight.”

Yes, Ms. Shafik could have responded just as George Galloway did. That she didn’t shows how not only our representatives and the mass media have become agents of state propaganda. So has higher education.

Reporting In….

Just so you know, and as if you care, here’s why I haven’t been posting much lately. I’ve just had my second knee replacement (last Tuesday – 4 days ago).

Happily, the recovery process is going even better than the first which occurred five months ago. I’m already walking without a cane. And the pain is under control without use of opioids.

But, of course, that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been thinking about what’s happening in our world. Like you, I’m horrified by Gaza, the genocide unfolding there; Ukraine, what’s happening in the South China Sea; identification of Russia, China, and Iran as our mortal enemies; D.C.’s absence of any diplomacy whatsoever, and its complete reliance on force, regime change, and terrorism . . .. That’s just a short list of concerns.

And the hell of it is that the United States is ultimately responsible for all of it. ALL OF IT!! As Dr. King put it, the U.S. remains “the world’s greatest purveyor of violence.” If our country fell off the map tomorrow, the world would be so much better off.

Think about it . . .. We have 4.2% of the world’ population; China has 18.5%; India slightly more; Africa too. Then there’s Latin America, and South Asia. And yet despite being an extreme minority, “we” claim the right to rule the entire world, to fill it with weapons, and to maintain more than 800 military bases across the planet. It’s racism. It’s arrogance. It’s criminal.

Meanwhile I’ve heard that the rest of the world’s countries combined have 70 bases outside their national boundaries. China has like one! It hasn’t fired a bullet outside its national territory in the last 40 years. Yet, our “leaders” want us to believe the China is somehow our enemy and the aggressor.

It’s enough to make sick anyone with a pulse and functioning conscience.

And now they’re talking about winnable nuclear war! Are they completely crazy? Of course they are. They’ll kill us all. And lest there be any doubt, I’m talking about the ancient white men who are making catastrophic decisions about our grandchildren’s (lack of) future.

Do they have grandchildren? Do they love them at all? Are they completely nuts?

And I don’t see it getting any better. How can it? For instance, our choice next November is between Genocide Joe and Dumb Donald Trump. Dimwit incompetents! Neither of them and virtually none of our politicians are in the same intellectual and diplomatic league as Putin or Xi. Jinping.

The truth is that our system of government is completely outmoded. It just doesn’t work. It’s frozen. It can’t do anything about the real issues except make them worse. I’m talking about global warming, the threat of nuclear war, genocide unfolding before our eyes, and improving the lives of ordinary people.

They don’t care!

Instead, they focus on what in the large scheme of things are ultimately non-issues: immigration, abortion, appropriate bathrooms, the war in Ukraine (which they provoked). Billions and billions for war, while “Americans” live under bridges and are imprisoned at rates that dwarf those of China or Russia.

What, after all, is Ukraine to us? I don’t get the obsession.

Have you seen our subways? Have you seen theirs? China has more than 25,000 miles of high- speed rail in country and have built hundreds of thousands of railway miles elsewhere. We have virtually none.

Their economies are growing and prospering. Their leaders have approval ratings north of 80%. And we’re stuck with Genocide Joe and Dumb Donald whose plans for making America great are to exclude immigrants like our great grandparents. Yeah, that will fix it all, I’m sure!

Face it: we need revolution. As I said, our form of government is outmoded. We need to learn from China’s “whole process people’s democratic” model.

And get over it; there’s no question here about democracy vs. authoritarianism. We have two parties. That’s just one more than one. And both are in the hip pockets of the 1%. It’s a “uniparty” completely dedicated to the welfare of the politicians’ donors. They care NOTHING about us. Don’t be fooled.

Vote accordingly! There’s no future in what we have.  

Even for “Democracy Now” Putin’s To Blame for the Rock Concert Massacre

Last week at least 137 Russians were killed at the Crocus rock concert outside of Moscow. Untold numbers were wounded, some remaining in critical condition. ISIS K has claimed responsibility.

However, do you know who’s truly responsible according to “Democracy Now” (DN)?

“Putin!”

That’s the takeaway the show’s audience was left with at the end of today’s program (3/25/24).

The presentation said little about the attack itself, much less about its impact on the Russian people. Nothing at all about how or by whom the attack was planned. Nothing but denials about Ukraine, and not even a mention of possible U.S. involvement.

Instead, it was all about “Putin” (never “President Putin” or “Mr. Putin,” only a disdainful “Putin.”)

Accordingly, DN centralized interviews with two anti-Kremlin guests whose evident intention it was to blame the whole tragedy on the Russian president. The guests were Nina Khrushcheva, Professor of international affairs at the New School, and Moscow correspondent of The New Yorker, Joshua Yaffa. According to both:

  • The attack represents a major failure of Putin and his security apparatus.
  • It was the result of longstanding Russian mistreatment of the country’s substantial Muslim population.
  • The United States had responsibly and generously warned the Kremlin about the impending attack.
  • However, its paranoid president chose to ignore the warnings referring to them as “blackmail.”
  • Moreover, with zero evidence, only the Russian president’s “paranoia” has made him accuse Ukraine of being involved.
  • Furthermore, It’s a mistake to jump to the conclusion that the perpetrators of the attack were attempting an escape to Ukraine, since their route was interrupted by Russian police 140 miles from that supposed destination.
  • After all, Putin’s interests are not in protecting the Russian people, but only his own authoritarian regime that has been responsible for the assassination of Alexi Navalny and has imprisoned more people than were incarcerated under previous Soviet leaders.
  • Shockingly, when they appeared in court, those arrested for the crime bore marks of torture.
  • And of course, Russia’s (already week’s long) attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure is an attempt to divert attention from Putin’s own failures.

I found all that extremely disappointing – especially since (to her credit) Amy Goodman’s coverage of world events does not usually follow the direction mandated by U.S. propaganda. However, in this case, it clearly did. 

Instead of the usual denunciations of “Putin” it would have been much more informative to investigate the actual perpetrators of last week’s massacre. Ex-CIA personnel such as Ray McGovern and Larry Johnson could have helped with that.  So could an interview with Scott Ritter (see below). Together or separately, they might have contextualized the horrific event by pointing out:      

  • Victoria Nuland’s cryptic statement about “nasty surprises” in store for Russia in its near future.
  • The Russian president’s un-paranoid reasons for suspecting U.S. involvement in the attack given longstanding U.S connections with ISIS in Afghanistan, Syria, and elsewhere to wage war specifically against Russia.
  • A long history of U.S. sponsorship of terrorist attacks on Russia including its recent destruction of the Nord Stream Pipeline.
  • John Kirby’s strange premature disavowal of Ukrainian responsibility for the massacre before allowing any time whatsoever for investigation. (This was like the immediate indictment of “Putin” for the death of Alexi Navalny and for that of Yevgeny Prigozhin before their corpses were even cold.)
  • The attack’s convenient (for the west) and distracting effect in the wake of Mr. Putin’s recent landslide victory in a presidential election that (according to non-Russian sources) witnessed a voter turnout of 70% and a vote 87% for Mr. Putin.

In any case, here’s what Russian expert and former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter had to say about the Crocus tragedy:

  • The attack indeed represents a puzzling failure on the part of President Putin’s security apparatus. It has much to answer for.
  • However, that’s far from the point that needs highlighting – viz., the event’s perpetrators and possible connections to Russia’s avowed enemies, Ukraine, and the United States.
  • The attack’s attribution to Muslim terrorists also provides reason to doubt such jihadist identification since the killers untypically accepted money for their crime and did not choose “martyrdom” rather than surrender in its aftermath.
  • On March 7th (well before the Russian elections) the United States did indeed issue a warning to U.S. residents in Russia about impending terrorist attacks and the advisability of staying away from large gatherings such as concerts.
  • The Russians “know everything” about the attack and the destination of its fleeing perpetrators.
  • Principal sources of official information are the captured cell phones of the fugitives.
  • Additionally, their phone conversations were intercepted in real time as they fled towards the Ukrainian border.
  • Both sources also contain incriminating information such as videos made while casing the crime site just before Russia’s presidential elections.
  • Such evidence suggests that the mass shooting was planned to disrupt that process, but that heavy security surrounding it forced postponement of the crime.
  • Phone information has also allowed authorities to track down the terrorist cell in Moscow that provided logistical support for their comrades.
  • All those arrested are currently divulging much more information that will soon come to light.

The lesson to be drawn from all this is one of extreme caution. Putin is not the issue here. Possible connection with Ukraine and the CIA is.

And regardless of what we might think of Scott Ritter’s analysis, it signals the complications of the questions at hand, the importance of not jumping to conclusions and of asking the right questions.

Propaganda, fake news, changing the subject, and gaslighting are everywhere. Even “Democracy Now,” even Amy Goodman are not immune from disseminating Russophobia. They too can be fooled by the Grand Wurlitzer of U.S. propaganda voiced by characters such as Khrushcheva, and Jaffa.

The lesson here (as always) is to focus on the heart of the matter, don’t allow misdirection of attention; retain constant suspicion of anything our government tells you. They’re all liars. Ex-CIA director Mike Pompeo put it best when he said as much.

Do They Think We’re Stupid? Maybe We Are. . .

Watching the news this morning on “Democracy Now” (DN) I couldn’t help feeling outraged, humiliated, and taken for a fool.

I mean, think about what’s happening in Haiti, Honduras, at our southern border, and in Gaza.

In each of those cases, the repeated refrain from Amy Goodman’s guests was that the U.S. is majorly responsible for the disasters in question.  All of them are marked either by State Department regime changes, support of drug dealers, and/or by U.S.-backed slaughters that beggar description.

But to my point here: in each of the cases just mentioned, the Biden administration and its predecessors have shown complete contempt for our ability to remember, think, or exhibit any sense of morality. Our leaders are evidently convinced that we’re all like them complete idiots without a trace of humanity or moral compass.

And perhaps they’re right because of constant brainwashing by our ahistorical schooling and unrelenting mainstream media (MSM) propaganda. I mean, which of us really cares about the history behind U.S. interventions in Haiti, Honduras, Gaza, or at the border in Tijuana?

Which of us really cares about learning our own history?

Haiti  

Begin with Haiti.

There we’re supposed to scratch our heads wondering why the country — the first in the world to be run by former slaves – is so out of control.

Why is it apparently run by “gangs?”

DN’s guest, Haitian American scholar Jemima Pierre, explains why.

It’s because in 2004, the Clinton administration regime-changed the country’s first elected president, Jean Bertrand Aristide – a former Catholic priest and liberation theologian.

Since then, the State Department has assisted in the complete destruction of democracy in the country. According to Professor Pierre, the country had 7000 elected representatives in 2004. Thanks to U.S. interference in the name of “democracy,” it now has NONE (Zero, 0).  

And right now, the United States gives its unquestioning support to Ariel Henry an unelected “president” who succeeded President Jovenel Moise who was assassinated in 2021.

You can’t understand any of that, Professor Pierre explained, if you don’t start your thinking with U.S. interference in Haitian politics in 2004 – and (I would add) since the Haitian revolution of 1791.

Bottom line: The U.S. is responsible for Haiti’s problems. We’re the main troublemakers there – and (I’ll add) virtually everywhere in the world.

Honduras

“We” did something similar in Honduras.

There, according to DN, “we” completely supported yet another regime change, under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The operation took place in 2014.

From then until two years ago Washington supported the presidency of Juan Orlando Hernandez who was well known as the head of a crime family of drug dealers. According to DN guest Dana Frank (professor of history emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz) the Hernandez family was “legitimated and celebrated” by multiple U.S. administrations. Meanwhile its corrupt narco-regime created widespread havoc in Honduras and misery for ordinary people there.   

Now (over the objections of the Biden administration) the Southern District of New York has succeeded in bringing Juan Orlando Hernandez to justice. He was convicted of cocaine trafficking on Friday after a two-week trial. He now faces life imprisonment OVER THE OBJECTIONS OF THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION!

Bottom line: “Our” government supports drug dealers! They’ve been doing it for decades.

Border Problems

Do you think any of what I’ve just mentioned has something to do with “American” concern about migration problems?

Do you think?

It’s a pattern:

  • You overthrow elected governments in “our backyard” by military coups or by application of sanctions aimed at making life miserable for ordinary people (to incentivize them to rebellion or revolution).
  • You replace duly elected bodies with corrupt criminals including drug dealers interested only in lining their own pockets and those of the country’s elite.
  • The latter flourish.
  • Meanwhile, the poor are miserable and seek exit from intolerable situations.
  • Then we’re left wondering why asylum seekers leave home and cross borders to where it’s safer and more promising.

Bottom line: All of this has characterized U.S. policy towards Venezuela, Nicaragua, and other countries in our hemisphere. That’s why Americans are prone to chant “Mr. Trump, put up that wall!”

Gaza  

And finally, there’s the worst expression of contempt for our intelligence. It’s unfolding in Gaza.

Who can believe it?

We’re supposed to accept “policy” that on one hand continues to send 5000-pound bombs to Israel to genocide Gazan women and children.

Then on the other hand our resulting outrage is supposed to be mollified by a few pallets of rancid food dropped on the victims who survive the bombing.

In fact, Genocide Joe even promises to build some kind of pier (taking months to erect) where the same rancid products will accumulate only to be inspected and (not) delivered by the IOF (Israeli Occupation Forces). It will be no better than the situation of the trucks of food that have been waiting for months on the Egyptian border.

What?  How is that supposed to help? Do they think we’re completely stupid? Are we? You figure it out.

Bottom Line: Benjamin Netanyahu has more political power in the U.S. than senile, weak, and evidently insanely dumb Genocide Joe.

Netanyahu’s Bible Is Not about God

The ongoing genocide in Gaza at the hands of Apartheid Israel has brought the question of biblical interpretation from the margins to the center.

The impetus to do so has come from Benjamin Netanyahu. Think of his pronouncements about his Amalek strategy justifying his attacks in Gaza. Couple that with his IOF (Israel Occupation Force) song and dance celebrating the same. It has all raised the perennial question of the very nature of the God of the Jewish Testament.

And the question is simple. It was articulated by the ancient fathers of the Christian community – men like Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, and the hereticated Marcion of Sinope. All of them wondered how anyone with a drop of humanity or possessed of the most elementary moral compass could believe in a God who commanded complete genocides directed specifically against women, children, infants, cattle, and sheep?

Of course, similar questions might be addressed today to Bibi Netanyahu or Genocide Joe Biden. Where’s your humanity? Have you completely lost your moral compass? What kind of God would justify your crimes?

So, let’s examine the question of Apartheid Israel’s genocidal God. Let’s think about divinity bereft of moral compass. Start with facing the fact that the Hebrew Bible might not be about God at all. Next look at the powerful beings who are presented there. And finally, consider Jesus’ attitude towards the so-called God of Israel.  

No God in the Hebrew Bible

On this first and second points, I’m following the direction of scholars like the Australian Paul Wallis and the Italian biblical scholar Mauro Biglino. They question entirely the traditional interpretations of the biblical God.

According to Biglino and Wallis, the Hebrew Bible’s genocidal God is no God at all. In fact, the Hebrew Testament itself is not about God. Instead, close examination reveals that it is about “Elohim,” i.e., “Powerful Ones.”

These were Beings from Beyond who in the ancient world vied for control of our planet. Stories of such paleo-contacts with extraterrestrials (ETs) are found throughout revered texts across the planet from China to Egypt, and Babylon; from the Philippines to the Mayan Popol Vu. In fact, every ancient civilization holds that we came from above – from the sons of the stars.

Most often these foreign entities appear in reptilian forms or as fire-breathing dragons, Sometimes they possess wings. At others, the Powerful Ones appear in human form and are recognized as giants, witches, magicians, governors, lawgivers, as “Sons of God” or simply as kings whose specific names were forgotten, but who were remembered as divine. Still elsewhere the Powerful Ones take the form of “angels,” (messengers from beyond) or demons. Invariably, they possess super-human powers.  

In biblical texts these “Powerful Ones” had names such as El, El Shaddai, Elion, Baal, Ruach, Ashera, and Yahweh. Together they comprised a family that included 70 sons of El. Among them Yahweh was an inferior subordinate of his father who apportioned to his offspring control of various geographical regions. Yahweh’s assignment was to protect the nation of Israel. (Note El’s name in the term Yisra-El itself.)

Only at the beginning of the first millennium BCE was El replaced by Yahweh as the supreme and only God. That is, Jewish polytheism and henotheism morphed into monotheism for the first time around 530 BCE – after the Babylonian exile. It was then that Judah’s elite in the persons of Ezra, Josiah (640-609 BCE), and Nehemiah reformulated the nation’s longstanding traditions. Their patriarchal work removed, downplayed, and/or reinterpreted all references acknowledging the existence and power of Gods from above other than Yahweh, Judah’s national deity.

Put otherwise, the Jewish biblical tradition was rewritten with the name Yahweh pasted over references to the Elohim as if Israel had always been monotheistic. This is how Yahweh became responsible for the genocides of El Shaddai and other “divinities” who lacked human feeling or moral compass.  

The reformers took special pains to erase references to goddess worship. Against great resistance, Israel’s beloved goddess Ashera was consigned to the biblical memory hole.

Not God for Yeshua

The impoverished and imperialized prophet, Yeshua of Nazareth, had little to do with the Yahweh pasted over the traditions of the Elohim. Nowhere does he even refer to God using that name.

On the contrary, the prophet was highly critical of and even rejected any understandings of an exclusively national God, much less as one who commanded the slaughter of enemies.  

Instead, Yeshua spoke of God as a Universal Father and as the One his disciple Paul of Tarsus described as the Source of the universe and everything in it – as the One in whom we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28).

For Yeshua and his disciples, God was international, universal, and unconcerned with Temple worship and sacrifice. This eventually led Yeshua’s followers to reject not only Judaism’s limited understandings of God, but Judaism and its law in general.

Still, the Christian tradition continued to embrace the Jewish Testament as part of the Holy Bible as though Jesus was a worshipper of Yahweh. It did so because Christians understood Jesus as fulfilling Jewish testament prophecies.

The resulting process of distortion was straight forward. Christianity started out as a sect of Judaism that followed the teachings of the Jewish prophet, Yeshua. After his execution around 30 CE, his followers inspired by his international and universal vision had grown geographically and numerically far beyond the Jewish community. Their movement had spread to all parts of the Roman Empire to become a largely gentile association that for various reasons even came to despise its Jewish origins.

These international characteristics led to the Bible’s becoming a world book by the 4th century CE.  For it was then that the Roman Emperor Constantine’s Edict of Milan legalized Yeshua’s Jewish movement now called “The Way.”

The change was necessary because the Roman Empire’s unifying religion (also for various reasons associated with the increasing cultural diversity of its subjects) had lost credibility across its ever-expanding territories. It needed an international unifying religious ideology that would uphold the belief that the Emperor was supported by divine authority.

So, in the early 4th century and after long years of persecuting “Christians,” the Empire’s Office for Religious Affairs (under Constantine) decided to legalize the sect that had become more universal than what the Roman pantheon had come to represent. Eventually, by 380 CE Christianity became Rome’s official religion (under Theodosius).

Afterwards, widely diverse beliefs about the identity of Yeshua of Nazareth (and about the Bible and its tales) were streamlined into official doctrines, while alternative understandings were condemned and punished as heresies.

Thus Jesus became understood as a worshipper of the Elohim-become-Yahweh with all their contradictions, instead of as a prophet who rejected all but the Mosaic tradition as championed by Israel’s prophets and as universal father and spirit in whom we live and move and have our being.

Conclusion

To summarize: the Bible is not a world book written for humankind in general. Instead, it is a memoir of a small marginal and relatively insignificant group in the ancient Mideast called “Hebrews.” It was written for them, not for Christians.

Neither is the Bible about a universal “God.” Rather, it is about various kings and generals and Powerful Ones from the world above. In their various ancient pre-literate oral traditions Hebrews called them “Elohim,” “El,” “El Shaddai,” “Ruach,” “Baal,” “Ashera,” and “Yahweh.” The Powerful Ones included generals and kings who were often gradually elevated to divine status, just as happened with kings in other Mideastern cultures. Many of these Elohim were cruel and violent colonizers interested only in accumulating herds, gold, and virgin girls to improve their DNA.

“Yahweh” was the member of the Elohim to whose protection the Hebrew people were assigned, while (according to pre-literate traditions) other peoples were assigned other protectors drawn from the supra-human “Powerful Ones” who might even have been extra-terrestrials referenced in their own ways by virtually all ancient traditions across the planet.

In the 6th century BCE under Josiah, the Hebrew religion was streamlined and was rendered monotheistic. Biblical texts were rewritten as though Yahweh had always been the only God recognized by Israel.

In effect, what’s recorded in the Jewish Testament is a “Battle of the Gods,” i.e., contradictory, and incompatible understandings of powerful entities presented side-by-side with the inconsistencies ignored.

Today’s Palestinians in Gaza are the latest victims of the cruelest of the biblical Elohim.

Regime Change in the U.S.: A Taste of Our Own Medicine

 I’ve given up on the United States. It’s irreformable. It’s a failed state.

Think about it.  As things stand, the U.S. can do nothing but fight wars, close borders, impose sanctions, and fight meaningless culture wars. And even at that, despite the more than $2 billion it spends on “defense” each day, our country can’t win its forever wars. It lost in Vietnam, in Iraq, and Afghanistan. It’s in the process of losing in Ukraine. And yet, it’s planning a further foray into China.

Ukraine is the best illustration of the failed policy just mentioned. We’ve sent billions upon billions to support the war there, but the Russians are prevailing, nonetheless.

Meanwhile, our own infrastructure is in decay; millions are without healthcare, millions more are addicted to pain killers; there’s a mass shooting every day (literally); homelessness abounds, young people can’t afford college tuition; prisons are overflowing; our money-driven elections are a sham, and our government is complicit with the genocide unfolding in Gaza. At the same time, we end up blaming the poorest people in the world – the immigrants at our southern gates – for all our problems.

Yes, we need regime change.

And I’m not just talking about changing presidents or even the criminals now “serving” in the Congress.

No, I’m talking about REGIME CHANGE – a new order responsive to people like us, rather than to corporations, bankers, financiers, and Wall Street.

That means replacing all that with a system that would cut military spending by at least 75%, prioritize the issue of climate change, close foreign military bases, eliminate nuclear weapons, practice real diplomacy (which always means dialog and compromise) and derive its leadership from the working class, instead of from the bosses who control our work lives.

So, if we need regime change, why not apply to the U.S. the formula our bosses routinely use for that process — I mean the one it’s employed against the Soviet Union all during the Cold War, against Iran in 1953, Guatemala the following year, Cuba over the last 65 years, Chile in 1973, Nicaragua since 1979; Venezuela since Hugo Chavez instituted his Bolivarian Revolution. . .. The list goes on and on., but the formula’s always the same.

In every case, it’s: (1) make the life of working-class people as miserable as possible (2) by creating crisis. (I’m talking about military coups, sanctions, creation of food and fuel shortages, outright terrorism, and deprivation of human rights.) In fact, (3) make ordinary people so miserable that (4) the victims of such measures will rise and overthrow Stalin, Mossadegh, Arbenz, Castro, Allende, the Sandinistas, Maduro, etc. and (5) introduce a fascist American puppet like Resa Pahlavi or Augusto Pinochet.  

Again, that’s the strategy: immiserate ordinary people and make them overthrow America’s official (usually socialist-leaning) enemies and replace those enemies with right-wing fascist pawns.

The problem is (for the U.S.) that such gambits rarely work for long. They often end up awakening the left who then replace American puppets with leftists like Lula in Brazil.

Well, I’m thinking, why not turn the tables on the bosses and run the same gambit here at home, but this time against the bosses themselves? In our current circumstances, this might entail:

  1. Not voting in the next election.
  2. Alternatively, voting for “uncommitted,” for Cornel West, RFK, or Marianne Williamson.
  3. Thereby, allowing Donald Trump to be elected next November.
  4. He’ll of course make our lives miserable over the short term.
  5. But his policies will make clear the above-noted disfunctions of the system and awaken the currently dormant left.
  6. This may eventually spark a progressive movement for the radical systemic change I’ve been referring to.
  7. Which one way or another may eventually overthrow the corrupt system that even now immiserates our lives.

It’s worth a try. And when you think about it, what have we got to lose? As I said:

  • Our system is broken beyond repair.
  • It is incapable of addressing our real problems noted above.
  • We need something to awaken the left and force the required changes,
  • This means enduring at least four years of fascism under Donald Trump who might refuse to leave office after four years.
  • Sparking even wider discontent and rebellion.
  •  And at the very least, giving us a taste of our own medicine.

In any case, it’s what “our” government has been doing all over the world at least since the end of the Second Inter-capitalist War. There’s no way of sugar-coating the required remedy.