Thursday, June 3, 2010

Well, Fuck! Israelis Attack Unarmed, Humanitarian Gaza Aid Ships, Obama Obscures Facts As Usual (Re: Dick Cheney’s Despicable Song of America)

(EXTRA: If anyone could make a contribution to my PayPal account (or otherwise - contact me for further info), it would be sincerely appreciated as I've just gone off the cliff financially. I really appreciate everything that my kind readers have done for me in the past financially and otherwise. Now . . . back to your regular viewing.) I'm personally quite mad about Glenn Greenwald, his political dissections (so fine!), and his reporting on the most controversial international issues of our time, but this week he has outdone himself. Please read the whole article as it's more than worth your time. My only question is: Is anybody paying attention? American Idiots? American non-idiots? You decide. (Kinda gives us some real insight into what's really going on out there, doesn't it?) Click here for the link to the TV special.

I was just on MSNBC talking about Israel, the Gaza blockade and the flotilla attack with Eliot Spitzer, who was guest-hosting for Dylan Ratigan. It was a rather contentious discussion, though quite illustrative of how Israel is (and is not) typically discussed on American television, so I'm posting the whole 8-minute segment below.

Two points: (1) before I was on, Spitzer had on an Israel-defending law professor, followed by Netanyahu's former Chief of Staff, and both of them (along with Spitzer) were spewing pure Israeli propaganda in uninterrupted and unchallenged fashion; at the end of Spitzer's discussions with them, he asked them to "stick around just in case," and once I was left, he brought at least one of them back on to respond to what I said without challenge; (2) literally 90 seconds before my segment was about to begin, the new cam and sound system I just acquired stopped working, forcing me to unplug everything and use only my laptop cam and mic, which caused the technical aspects to be less than ideal (though still perfectly workable); to watch in full screen, click play, then click in the lower right hand corner of the picture and select "option"

Paul Craig Roberts' opinion may not be sought after so much today, and although formerly he "had careers in scholarship and academia, public service, and journalism . . . served in the Congressional staff and as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration . . . from 1971 until 2004 he was associated with the Hoover Institution, Stanford University . . . a former editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal and columnist for Business Week and the Scripps Howard News Service . . . nationally syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate in Los Angeles," he may no longer be worth much of anyone's time to give even five minutes to, but I beg to differ.

For my two cents worth, he's provided incisive reporting on the rightwingers since the advent of the Bush/Cheney War-Maddened juggernaut and is threatening to continue to do the same for the Obama-run-amucks. And he's not half bad at it. (Emphasis marks added - Ed.)

As I write at 5pm on Monday, May 31, all day has passed since the early morning reports of the Israeli commando attack on the unarmed ships carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, and there has been no response from President Obama except to say that he needed to learn "all the facts about this morning's tragic events" and that Israeli prime minister Netanyahu had canceled his plans to meet with him at the White House. Thus has Obama made America complicit once again in Israel's barbaric war crimes. Just as the US Congress voted to deep-six Judge Goldstone's report on Israel's war crimes committed in Israel's January 2009 invasion of Gaza, Obama has deep-sixed Israel's latest act of barbarism by pretending that he doesn't know what has happened. No one in the world will believe that Israel attacked ships in international waters carrying Israeli citizens, a Nobel Laureate, elected politicians, and noted humanitarians bringing medicines and building materials to Palestinians in Gaza, who have been living in the rubble of their homes without repairs or medicines since January 2009, without first clearing the crime with its American protector. Without America's protection, Israel, a totally artificial state, could not exist. No one in the world will believe that America's spy apparatus did not detect the movement of the Israeli attack force toward the aid ships in international waters in an act of piracy, killing 20, wounding 50, and kidnapping the rest. Obama's pretense at ignorance confirms his complicity. Once again the US government has permitted the Israeli state to murder good people known for their moral conscience. The Israeli state has declared that anyone with a moral conscience is an enemy of Israel, and every American president except Eisenhower and Carter has agreed. Obama's 12-hour silence in the face of extreme barbarity is his signal to the controlled corporate media to remain on the sidelines until Israeli propaganda sets the story. The Israeli story, preposterous as always, is that the humanitarians on one of the ships took two pistols from Israeli commandos, highly trained troops armed with automatic weapons, and fired on the attack force. The Israeli government claims that the commandos' response (70 casualties at last reporting) was justified self-defense. Israel was innocent. Israel did not do anything except drop commandos aboard from helicopters in order to intercept an arms shipment to Gazans being brought in by ships manned by terrorists. Many Christian evangelicals, brainwashed by their pastors that it is God's will for Americans to protect Israel, will believe the Israeli story, especially when it is unlikely they will ever hear any other. Conservative Americans, especially on Memorial Day when they are celebrating feats of American arms, will admire Israel for its toughness.

Here in north Georgia where I am at the moment, I have heard several say, admiringly, "Them, Israelis, they don't put up with nuthin." Conservative Americans want the US to be like Israel. They do not understand why the US doesn't stop pissing around after nine years and just go ahead and defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan. They don't understand why the US didn't defeat whoever was opposing American forces in Iraq. Conservatives are incensed that America had to "win" the war by buying off the Iraqis and putting them on the US payroll. Israel murders people and then blames its victims. This appeals to American conservatives, who want the US to do the same.

It is likely that Americans will accept Israeli propagandist Mark Regev's story that Israelis were met by deadly fire when they tried to intercept an arms shipment to Palestinian terrorists from IHH, a radical Turkish Islamist organization hiding under the cover of humanitarian aid. This explanation is crafted to allow Americans to sink back into their stupor. Americans will never hear from the US media that Turkey's prime minister Erdogan declared that the aid ships were carefully inspected before departure from Turkey and that there were no terrorists or arms aboard:

. . . Turkey is a US ally, a member of NATO. Turkey's cooperation is important to American's plan for world hegemony. Turkey now realizes that the Israeli state is comprised of total evil.

Global Research Articles by Paul Craig Roberts

And one for the road, remember Dick Cheney's ultimate plan for U.S. domination of the world?

No? Well, babeez, Dick Cheney rides again. Although he's never really stopped has he? I'll never forget that look of contempt he bestowed on his departing audience as he left D.C. when Obama was sworn in as the new president. I'd swear he was pretty angry about losing the job (but a sweet southern belle such as myself would never swear), but come on, Dick! Your dream has come true. How about having heart failure in surprise. And brought to you by the Obamaniacs? What sweet revenge.

Harper's Magazine (0017789X, Oct 2002, Vol. 305, Issue 1829) did us proud.
Dick Cheney’s Song of America
The Plan is for the United States to rule the world. The overt theme is unilateralism, but it is ultimately a story of domination. It calls for the United States to maintain its overwhelming military superiority and prevent new rivals from rising up to challenge it on the world stage. It calls for dominion over friends and enemies alike. It says not that the United States must be more powerful, or most powerful, but that it must be absolutely powerful.
Suzan signs off. No. Really. _______________

2 comments:

Jack Jodell said...

Suzan,
I am all for a safe and secure Israel, and an Israel as a sovereign nation for the Jewish people. But I am NOT for a Zionist, expansionist country which displaces indigent Palestinian peoples to set up illegal settlements for solicited immigrants. Nor do I support the destruction of unarmed aid ships by a country which shoots first and then asks questions later, if at all.

Israel's behavior regarding Palestinians is every bit as bad as was our government's genocide against Native Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries. And it is very similar: encouraging immigration and expansion into land not your own and then forcing its native population into subjugation under gunpoint. The United States must stand up to Israel, just as it has to other corrupt and unjust regimes in the past.

Cirze said...

I agree with your every word, Jack.

Thanks for commenting, dollface!

Love ya,

S
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