The real scandal in the Petraeus episode isn't that a would-be journalist was sleeping with her subject, it's that lots and lots of other journalists are doing the same thing – metaphorically, anyway.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/one-interesting-thing-about-paula-broadwells-petraeus-biography-20121121

One Interesting Thing About

Paula Broadwell's Petraeus Biography

by Matt Taibbi

So over the weekend I read All In, Paula Broadwell's slobberific biography of General David Petraeus. It was nothing special, just a typically crappy piece of fawning, noncritical journalism, full of passages like the following:

At Petraeus's change of command in Baghdad in the summer of 2008, Secretary Gates claimed that "history [would] regard Petraeus as one of the nation's great battle captains . . ." Petraeus's success on the battlefield, his status as a military intellectual and his will to succeed allowed him to shape not only doctrine but also organizational design, training, education and leadership development in the Army and, in many respects, the broader military . . .

You can pretty much guess the rest of the plot from there. Every environment Petraeus enters is instantly bettered by his majestic personage. We see him passing through destroyed hamlets in Afghanistan, the weight of the world on his rugged shoulders, scratching his figurative chin as he worries which strategies to choose "so that villagers could once again live in peace and prosperity."

We see Petraeus giving stirring speeches, working past midnight until aides tear him away from his desk, and stoically receiving compliments from grateful colleagues (Gates later tells him: "You have stepped forward as the indispensable soldier/scholar of this era . . .").

The book is so one-sided that it is almost supernaturally dull, and I was forgetting about it just minutes after I put it down.

Then it hit me – it was an interesting book, after all! Because if you read All In carefully, the book's tone will remind you of pretty much any other authorized bio of any major figure in business or politics (particularly in business), and it will most particularly remind you of almost any Time or Newsweek famous-statesperson profile.

Which means: it's impossible to tell the difference between the tone of a reporter who we now know was literally sucking the dick of her subject and the tone of just about any other modern American reporter who is given access to a powerful person for a biography or feature-length profile.

All In, for instance, will instantly remind you of Time's notorious 1999 triple-profile of Bob Rubin, Alan Greenspan and Larry Summers, a worshipful front-pager with the classic headline, "The Committee to Save the World." Remember that one? That was the piece that started off with the Jay McInerney-style second-person "You slip into the bathroom and do a little more Bolivian Marching Powder" intro, in which the reader is thrust into the brilliant-but-adventuresome mind of then-Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin as he scans the seas for bonefish from a beach in the Caribbean:

The phone rings. You are on vacation in the Virgin Islands. You have been dreaming about the fishing for the better part of two months, and you are about to head out to chase the Christmastime bonefish running offshore and to spend a day on the water, with the sun leaching six months of Washington baloney from your brain. The phone rings, and because you are Secretary of the Treasury, you answer.

That piece went on to describe the "Three Marketeers" with language ripped from comic-books – check out these "Economic X-Men"-type capsule bios:

Greenspan, the data-loving analyst with government roots sunk back into the financial and moral chaos of the Nixon Administration, and a shaman-like power over global markets. Rubin, the Goldman Sachs wonder boy who ran the firm's complex and dangerous arbitrage operations and then led it to rocket-ship international growth. And Summers, the Harvard-trained academic who is invariably called the Kissinger of economics: a total pragmatist whose ambition sometimes grates but whose intellect never fails to dazzle.

You half-expect that last line to keep going: "Summers, the Harvard-trained academic . . . a total pragmatist, a Kissinger of economics whose intellect never fails to dazzle, and who can shoot frickin' laser beams out of his eyes . . ."

These fawning profiles aren't rare, they're the norm. Take for instance this past summer's lay-off-the-police Newsweek profile of NYPD chief Ray Kelly, who is described by publisher Tina Brown as having a "pugilist's mug and a lion's heart," and is shown gamely trying to fend off idiotic accusations of civil rights abuses from naïve New Yorkers who just don't seem to remember 9/11 often enough ("These questions would not surface — and did not surface — in 2002," Kelly seethes). Then there's the New Yorker's creepy profile of budget director Peter Orszag from a few years ago, which began with a description of poor Jon Stewart cringing before Orszag's tallness and "bulletproof" resume, and went on to describe Orszag as "more than just the budget director. He is the unlikely guardian of Obamaism itself."

And then there's almost every authorized profile ever done of every president in our lifetime, from HBO's loving take on Bush I ("41") to Bob Woodward's first volume on Bush II (the still-disturbing "Bush at War") to the now-notorious Vanity Fair Obama spread released just before this past election, and penned by the usually excellent Michael Lewis, in which the White House reportedly had veto power over quotes used. Glenn Greenwald (who also blasted our own Rolling Stone Obama piece) reacted thusly:

Ample ink is spilled over debating whether the US media is biased in favor of Republicans or Democrats. It is neither. The overwhelming, driving bias of the US media is subservience to power, whoever happens to be wielding it.

The real scandal in the Petraeus episode isn't that a would-be journalist was sleeping with her subject, it's that lots and lots of other journalists are doing the same thing – metaphorically, anyway.

----------------
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A failure to respond will assure an ecological nightmare that will most probably be accompanied by an economic, social and political breakdown. The human species, the report says, will cross “critical social system thresholds,” and “existing institutions that would have supported adaptation actions would likely become much less effective or even collapse.”

November 26, 2012 by TruthDig.com

Stand Still For the Apocalypse

by Chris Hedges

Humans must immediately implement a series of radical measures to halt carbon emissions or prepare for the collapse of entire ecosystems and the displacement, suffering and death of hundreds of millions of the globe’s inhabitants, according to a report commissioned by the World Bank. The continued failure to respond aggressively to climate change, the report warns, will mean that the planet will inevitably warm by at least 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century, ushering in an apocalypse.

The 84-page document,“Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must Be Avoided,” was written for the World Bank by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Climate Analytics and published last week. The picture it paints of a world convulsed by rising temperatures is a mixture of mass chaos, systems collapse and medical suffering like that of the worst of the Black Plague, which in the 14th century killed 30 to 60 percent of Europe’s population. Coal workers in Shizuishan (photo: Bert van Dijk via flickr)

A planetwide temperature rise of 4 degrees C—and the report notes that the tepidness of the emission pledges and commitments of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will make such an increase almost inevitable—will cause a precipitous drop in crop yields, along with the loss of many fish species, resulting in widespread hunger and starvation. Hundreds of millions of people will be forced to abandon their homes in coastal areas and on islands that will be submerged as the sea rises. There will be an explosion in diseases such as malaria, cholera and dengue fever. Devastating heat waves and droughts, as well as floods, especially in the tropics, will render parts of the Earth uninhabitable. The rain forest covering the Amazon basin will disappear. Coral reefs will vanish. Numerous animal and plant species, many of which are vital to sustaining human populations, will become extinct. Monstrous storms will eradicate biodiversity, along with whole cities and communities. And as these extreme events begin to occur simultaneously in different regions of the world, the report finds, there will be “unprecedented stresses on human systems.” Global agricultural production will eventually not be able to compensate. Health and emergency systems, as well as institutions designed to maintain social cohesion and law and order, will crumble. The world’s poor, at first, will suffer the most. But we all will succumb in the end to the folly and hubris of the Industrial Age. And yet, we do nothing.

“It is useful to recall that a global mean temperature increase of 4°C approaches the difference between temperatures today and those of the last ice age, when much of central Europe and the northern United States were covered with kilometers of ice and global mean temperatures were about 4.5°C to 7°C lower,” the report reads. “And this magnitude of climate change—human induced—is occurring over a century, not millennia.”

The political and corporate elites in the industrialized world continue, in spite of overwhelming scientific data, to place short-term corporate profit and expediency before the protection of human life and the ecosystem. The fossil fuel industry is permitted to determine our relationship to the natural world, dooming future generations. Carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas, increased from its pre-industrial concentration of about 278 parts per million (ppm) to more than 391 ppm in September 2012, with the rate of rise now at 1.8 ppm per year. We have already passed the tipping point of 350 ppm; above that level, life as we have known it cannot be sustained. The CO2 concentration is higher now than at any time in the last 15 million years. The emissions of CO2, currently about 35 billion metric tons per year, are projected to climb to 41 billion metric tons per year by 2020.

Because about 90 percent of the excess heat trapped by the greenhouse effect since 1955 is momentarily in the oceans, we have begun a process that, even if we halted all carbon emissions today, will ensure rising sea levels and major climate disruptions, including the continued melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets as well as the acidification of the oceans. The report estimates that if warming accelerates toward 4 degrees Celsius, sea levels will rise 0.5 to 1 meter, possibly more, by 2100. Sea levels will increase several meters more in the coming centuries. If warming can be keep to 2 degrees or below, sea levels will still rise, by about 20 centimeters by 2100, and probably will continue to rise between 1.5 and 4 meters above present-day levels by the year 2300. Sea-level rise, the report concludes, is likely to be below 2 meters only if warming is kept to well below 1.5 degrees. The rise in sea levels will not be uniform. Coastal areas in tropical regions will be inundated by sea-level rises that are up to 20 percent higher than those in higher latitudes.

“In particular, the melting of the ice sheets will reduce the gravitational pull on the ocean toward the ice sheets and, as a consequence, ocean water will tend to gravitate toward the Equator,” the report reads. “Changes in wind and ocean currents due to global warming and other factors will also affect regional sea-level rise, as will patterns of ocean heat uptake and warming. Sea-level rise impacts are projected to be asymmetrical even within regions and countries. Of the impacts projected for 31 developing countries, only 10 cities account for two-thirds of the total exposure to extreme floods. Highly vulnerable cities are to be found in Mozambique, Madagascar, Mexico, Venezuela, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. For small island states and river delta regions, rising sea levels are likely to have far ranging adverse consequences, especially when combined with the projected increased intensity of tropical cyclones in many tropical regions, other extreme weather events, and climate change-induced effects on oceanic ecosystems (for example, loss of protective reefs due to temperature increases and ocean acidification).”

“By the time the concentration reaches around 550 ppm (corresponding to a warming of about 2.4°C in the 2060s), it is likely that coral reefs in many areas would start to dissolve,” the report reads. “The combination of thermally induced bleaching events, ocean acidification, and sea-level rise threatens large fractions of coral reefs even at 1.5°C global warming. The regional extinction of entire coral reef eco-systems, which could occur well before 4°C is reached, would have profound consequences for their dependent species and for the people who depend on them for food, income, tourism, and shoreline protection.” The report projects that the rates of change in ocean acidity over the next century will be “unparalleled in Earth’s history.”

The global production of maize and wheat has, because of rising temperatures, been in steady decline since the 1980s. But these crop declines will be vastly accelerated in the coming years, with rising temperatures resulting in widespread malnutrition and starvation. It will mean that the poor, and especially children, will endure chronic hunger and malnutrition. There will be an increase in a variety of deadly epidemic diseases. Persistent flooding will contaminate drinking water, spreading diarrheal and respiratory illnesses. The 2012 drought, which affected 80 percent of the agricultural land in the United States, will become the norm. Tropical South America, Central Africa and all tropical islands in the Pacific are, the report says, likely to regularly experience heat waves of unprecedented magnitude, making human life in these areas difficult if not impossible to sustain.

“In this new high-temperature climate regime, the coolest months are likely to be substantially warmer than the warmest months at the end of the 20th century,” the report reads. “In regions such as the Mediterranean, North Africa, the Middle East, and the Tibetan plateau, almost all summer months are likely to be warmer than the most extreme heat waves presently experienced. For example, the warmest July in the Mediterranean region could be 9°C warmer than today’s warmest July.” It notes that these changes “potentially exceed the adaptive capacities of many societies and natural systems.”

The stress and insecurity caused by the breakdown in the climate will, the report says, “have negative effects on psychological and mental health.” It will lead to an increase in “levels of conflict and violence.” These changes “will have ramifications for national identification and alter the dynamics of traditional cultures.”

The report calls on the leaders of the industrial world to immediately institute radical steps—including a halt to the dependence on fossil fuels—to keep the global temperature rise below 2 degrees C, although the report concedes that even an increase of less than 2 degrees would result in serious damage to the environment and human populations. Without a massive investment in green infrastructure that can adapt to the heat and other new extreme weather, and in the building of efficient public transportation networks and renewable energy systems to minimize carbon emissions, we will succumb to our own stupidity.

A failure to respond will assure an ecological nightmare that will most probably be accompanied by an economic, social and political breakdown. The human species, the report says, will cross “critical social system thresholds,” and “existing institutions that would have supported adaptation actions would likely become much less effective or even collapse.” The “stresses on human health, such as heat waves, malnutrition, and decreasing quality of drinking water due to seawater intrusion, have the potential to overburden health-care systems to a point where adaptation is no longer possible, and dislocation is forced.”

“There is also no certainty that adaptation to a 4°C world is possible,” it goes on. “A 4°C world is likely to be one in which communities, cities and countries would experience severe disruptions, damage, and dislocation, with many of these risks spread unequally. It is likely that the poor will suffer most and the global community could become more fractured, and unequal than today. The projected 4°C warming simply must not be allowed to occur—the heat must be turned down.”

Copyright © 2012 Truthdig, L.L.C.

Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author of many books, including: War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, What Every Person Should Know About War, and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. His most recent book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.

If everyone thought of every person they encountered as a loved child, a much loved baby of someone's, wouldn't the intolerance, the anger, the prejudice be abated? I mean, if you thought of the guy who bumped into you and took your place in line as his mother's son, or you imagined the car that is moving painfully slow in front of you had a mom with a 5 yr old and his 'sick' goldfish in the bowl ...in his lap on the way to the vet, or you had to sit in the parking lot while a car inched up to the curb, the woman taking FOREVER to get out, and you realize it's a woman dropping her mom off to buy flowers for her husband's grave - wouldn't you rethink how irritated, impatient, and "in a hurry" you were? Step into their moccasins. If only for a moment.

This appear on Facebook from one whom was once a little girl,
Living in the house across the street from our family's home.
This little girl remembers SO much about our family,
About my brother's beautiful singing voice,
About my older sister's love of horses (which transferred
(to Beth - the once little neighbor girl)
About my mom's kindness and cooking.

Looking at it a second time,
It's a poem-song.
In need merely
Of some line breaks, and thus

If everyone thought of every person

they encountered as a loved child,

a much loved baby of someone's,

wouldn't the intolerance, the anger,

the prejudice be abated?

 

I mean, if you thought of the guy

who bumped into you and took

your place in line as his mother's son,

or you imagined the car that is moving

painfully slow in front of you had a mom

with a 5 yr old and his 'sick' goldfish in the bowl ...

in his lap on the way to the vet,

 

or you had to sit in the parking lot

while a car inched up to the curb,

the woman taking FOREVER to get out,

and you realize it's a woman dropping

her mom off to buy flowers

for her husband's grave -

 

wouldn't you rethink how irritated, impatient,

and "in a hurry" you were?

Step into their moccasins.

If only for a moment.

 

Many thanks, Beth!

Now the middle class has lost trillions in what people thought was their net worth, and our politics have been so structured that the very rich continue to get richer while millions are impoverished, unemployed, underemployed, and ultimately homeless. We’re becoming a Third World country.

Weekend Edition November 23-25, 2012

Demand MORE, Not Less, Social Security and Medicare!

Taking the Offensive In Defense of The Safety Net

by ROBERT ROTH

As the federal government approaches the “fiscal cliff,” a package of tax increases and spending cuts that would further undermine an already anemic economic recovery, the likely hazards of a bipartisan effort to reduce so-called “entitlements” like Medicare and Social Security have been covered extensively here. And the smiling faces that emerged from first discussions between President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner are not reassuring. But most opposition to such a Great Betrayal are geared to merely preserving what is left of the safety net.

It’s time to go on the offensive!

The neoliberals Obama appointed as a majority on the Simpson-Bowles Commission claim the government must balance the budget by slashing Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, instead of restoring progressive taxation. Bill Black, author of The Best Way To Rob A Bank Is To Own One, calling this the Great Betrayal, points out that only a Democrat can make it politically safe for Republicans who hate the safety net to unravel it, by legitimizing the claim that it must be cut. And if Obama weakens the safety net, ostensibly to save it, the effect would be to legitimize future Republican assaults on the safety net.

The really illegitimate “entitlements” are all but beyond criticism. Yet Stage One of the negotiations should rightfully be the end of subsidies to which recipients and constituencies who tend to feel entitled but really are not: to agribusiness, Big Oil, businesses that ship jobs overseas, and all those hundreds of U.S. military bases around the world. Yet they all belong in the “canceled” column, along with most of the unconscionably gigantic budget for “defense” (sic: war). We could make an all but immediate down payment on the deficit by stopping the cash flow of $2 Billion a week to the war in Afghanistan. And the bulk of “defense” spending, our 5,000 nuclear warheads and our ongoing wars do not enhance our security, but instead undermine it by bankrupting our government and helping recruit new generations of terrorists. Cutting these could save hundreds of billions easily.

Progressive taxation, based on ability to pay, and a financial transactions tax could raise billions more.

Having saved all that money in Stage One, we could deal in Stage Two with the genuine entitlements by increasing, not cutting, Social Security benefits and Medicare payments; lowering, not raising, the retirement age for Social Security, and extending Medicare coverage, for starters, to all those age 55 or over. These simple steps would provide real stimulus to the economy and by enabling and hastening retirements, produce millions of job openings for younger people who need work.

Still think we can’t afford it? Then perhaps you didn’t notice that, as economist Michael Hudson observes, “After the 2007 crash the Fed printed $13 trillion on its computers to give to bankers. It can do the same for Social Security….It can [also] pay state and local pension obligations in the same way it has paid Wall Street’s 1%. The problem is that the Fed is only willing … to save bondholders and the banks’ high-flying counterparties, not the 99%.”

Handling the deficit by attacking the social safety net connects with the effort to undermine and privatize another collective enterprise, the U.S. Postal Service. As others have pointed out, the USPS is doing fine financially in its operations but is being forced by legislation Congress enacted in 2006 to funds its retirement program for the next 75 years. And now we have efforts to diminish service, as by closing a local mail processing center here in Springfield, Oregon and stopping Saturday delivery. That’s how privatizers work: First undermine the effectiveness of the program, then claim it can be done better by “private industry.”

The safety net and the Postal Service are under attack for the same reasons: Each promotes the common good and stands for the proposition that we have interests in common that we can and should address collectively, through government as well as other forms of social organization. Each exemplifies and implements the notion that we should care about and for one another, and need not engage in a perpetual war of each against all. These core ideas, along with the living standards of the 99% (more precisely, the 99.9%), have been under relentless attack for decades. It began with deregulation of key industries and an ongoing effort to crush unions and the working class, and is now moving on to programs that promote the general welfare, not only Medicare and Social Security but Medicaid, Head Start, food stamps, college loans, unemployment benefits, and others.

Homelessness and suicide are on the rise. But these are symptoms of much larger problems. The basic story is that for about the last 30 years, incomes of everyone but the very rich stagnated. People compensated by working two jobs, longer hours, and then, by borrowing on the value of their homes, which was rising with the bubble that popped a few years ago. Now the middle class has lost trillions in what people thought was their net worth, and our politics have been so structured that the very rich continue to get richer while millions are impoverished, unemployed, underemployed, and ultimately homeless. We’re becoming a Third World country. More details are in Bill Moyers’ January 13, 2012 interview, “Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson on Engineered Inequality,” video and transcript both available at http://billmoyers.com/segment/jacob-hacker-paul-pierson-on-engineered-inequality/.

But I say Yes, We Can! afford a humane society. All we have to do to build upon the framework we now have for one is to de-fund programs that undermine our security and humanity, and tax citizens who can best afford it and processes, like financial transactions, that are most entitled to taxation. We could also use the $40 billion a month the Fed is currently spending on, as Mike Whitney has noted in detail, what amounts to garbage. And the first beneficiaries should be the core elements of the safety net: Social Security and Medicare.

A movement that united and mobilized to achieve such demands would be better informed and empowered and in a better position to achieve more fundamental change, while people who are struggling for the means of sustenance can’t even think about such things. And if we add Jobs For All to the existing and expanded safety net, we’re on the way a comprehensive program with enormous appeal to the entire 99%. But we have to begin by climbing out of the trenches and taking the offensive.

Robert Roth, a retired public interest lawyer who prosecuted false advertising and consumer and financial fraud for the attorneys general of New York and Oregon, blogs at www.healingjustice.wordpress.com.

The Obama administration hates nothing more than the unintended release of classified information: despite anonymously leaking favorable-but-Top Secret information to the New York Times on a weekly basis, the Obama Administration has tried to use the Espionage Act to convict whistle-blowers more often than all previous administrations combined.

Weekend Edition November 23-25, 2012

The National Insecurity State

Leniency for Generals, Jail Time for Whistleblowers

by NATHAN FULLER

It’s no secret that the powerful in America are frequently immune to prosecution for committing far worse crimes than those by the powerless. Bush Administration torturers are on book tours while torture whistle-blowers are on trial. Wall Street executives are counting their bonuses while foreclosed homeowners are packing their bags. Life’s not fair.

That’s one reason why it was so startling to see General David Petraeus resign upon learning the FBI had discovered his extramarital affair with biographer Paula Broadwell. Surely, the director of the accountability-free, drone-happy CIA could sleep around as he pleased and not fear a fellow government agency would rat him out, right?

Ah, the unexpected pleasures of the ever-growing security state. It turns out the FBI found out that Petraeus shared more than a bed with Broadwell – likely his emails, rife with classified information, too, though he claims that Broadwell got the information from officials in Afghanistan. And this administration hates nothing more than the unintended release of classified information: despite anonymously leaking favorable-but-Top Secret information to the New York Times on a weekly basis, the Obama Administration has tried to use the Espionage Act to convict whistle-blowers more often than all previous administrations combined.

But not so fast. Gen. Petraeus is still their man, with a reputation to uphold. So when President Obama was asked about the potential security breach, he said, “I have no evidence at this point, from what I’ve seen, that classified information was disclosed that in any way would have had a negative impact on our national security.”

The statement is crafted to appear interested in the good of national security, to appear to put America’s safety first. But the subtext says much more: ‘There may have been a classified disclosure that didn’t impact national security at all, or that did so positively, but that isn’t a problem.’

These comments directly contradict government arguments in a much bigger ongoing investigation: that of WikiLeaks and PFC Bradley Manning. Cutting off PFC Manning’s ability to argue that he was a whistle-blower, who knew that the information WikiLeaks released wouldn’t bring harm to national security but instead would properly inform the American citizenry, the government prosecution has fully precluded discussion of whether or not WikiLeaks’ releases brought harm to national security from the trial. Even conceding that WikiLeaks’ release of hundreds of thousands of documents may not have harmed national security, the government says the effect is irrelevant to PFC Manning’s guilt or innocence.

But Gen. Petraeus – or any of the other high-ranking officials who leak Top Secret information, a classification level higher than anything PFC Manning is accused of releasing – will not be held to this standard.

This is the chilling effect on whistle-blowing: share classified information with a biographer selling books by glorifying your war-making, and your president assures the press that you’ve caused no harm; share crimes, uncounted civilian casualties, and corporate backroom dealing with your fellow tax-paying citizens, and you face a potential life sentence in prison, not to mention nine months of confinement abuse, an extensively delayed trial, and your presidentdeclaring you guilty before trial.

Time and again, PFC Bradley Manning is stepped on so the military can discipline dissent and discourage those he might inspire. Meanwhile, the prurient press is more curious about Gen. Petraeus’ sex life than the growing security state and the whistle-blowers trying in vain to stop it before it consumes as all. We cannot afford to abide this double standard any longer.

Nathan Fuller, a writer for the Bradley Manning Support Network, who can be reached at Nathan@bradleymanning.org

Recent scholarship like that of Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman (The Bible Unearthed, 2001) suggests that the Biblical narrative of the Exodus did not happen. They conclude rather that both Egypt and Judah during the seventh century BCE was a time of great revival... These conclusions would suggest that the Bible as the word of God is rather a fabrication created for the masses for political, religious and cultural reasons.

November 26, 2012

Pillar of Superstition

The Politics of the Exodus Myth

by WILLIAM A. COOK

“I will send my fear before thee, and will destroy all the people to whom thou shalt come, and I will make all thine enemies turn their backs unto thee.”

– Exodus 23:27

During this interlude in Israel’s second unprovoked incursion of Gaza, we might pause to reflect on what is, arguably, the real reasons for Netanyahu and Lieberman to execute their victims corralled in the walled prison of Gaza. This incursion, (curious the word incursion which means a “temporary invasion,”) reflects the will of the ancient G-d of the Israelites as the above quote from Exodus suggests, especially if we continue to read from Chapter 23: “…I will drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites; … I will drive them out little by little before you, until you have grown numerous enough to take possession of their land.” Then does this G-d draw the boundaries of Israel: “I will set your boundaries from the Red Sea to the sea of the Philistines, and from the desert to the River” (i.e.to the sea, Mediterranean, to the river, Euphrates). Reflect now if you will on how these words of the ancient G-d of the ancient tribes of Israelites captures the reality of Israel’s present gift to the people of Gaza: “…all who dwell in this land I will hand over to you to be driven out of your way. You shall not make a covenant with them or their gods.”

Certainly the Israeli military together with the Prime Minister chose to lead the Israeli IDF into this latest “incursion” of Gaza with the announcement beforehand that the ancient G-d of the tribes would be visible as a pillar of clouds by day and a pillar of fire by night. This is an appeal to the religious parties and the rigid right wing “settlers” who accept the word of their bible that G-d has defined the true borders of Israel and determined how that “historical” land should be regained. No doubt this is also the reason that the State of Israel has not declared its borders nor created a constitution to guide this purported “democratic state.” It is also a testament to the power of the religious parties and the settlers that they can control the government of Israel because no government can be formed now without their inclusion. Reflect now if you will on what this means in the 21st century.

Recent scholarship like that of Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman (The Bible Unearthed, 2001) suggests that the Biblical narrative of the Exodus did not happen. They conclude rather that both Egypt and Judah during the seventh century BCE was a time of great revival. “It was a time when Josiah embarked on an ambitious attempt to take advantage of the Assyrian collapse and unite all Israelites under his rule. His program was to expand to the north of Judah, to the territories where Israelites were still living a century after the fall of the kingdom of Israel, and to realize the dream of a glorious united monarchy: a large and powerful state of all Israelites worshipping one God in one Temple in one capital—Jerusalem—and ruled by one king of Davidic lineage.” Instead of the Exodus happening in the 13th century, when the estimated population of the Israelites numbered somewhere between 20,000 and 40,000, it never happened as told about the Israelites. It was recorded in the 7th century using ancient stories gathered together into a “history” of the Israelites to aid Josiah in creating his dream kingdom. “The conclusion—that the Exodus did not happen at the time and in the manner described in the Bible—seems irrefutable when we examine the evidence …” (see also Doug’s Biblical Chronology, Dr. Aardsma’s Chronology of Exodus, and www.accuracyinggenesis.com).

These conclusions would suggest that the Bible as the word of God is rather a fabrication created for the masses for political, religious and cultural reasons. That the words of that God could mobilize another gathering of people from around the world in 2012 to accomplish the same end, including the conquering of lands inhabited by millions of people for over twenty five hundred years, seems preposterous.

Yet recent commentators have suggested that many religious leaders claim that Jewish religious laws justify killing of civilians during war time; statements made in 1974 following the Yom Kippur war and later in 2004 when Israel invaded the West Bank and Gaza, and again in 2006 when Israel invaded Lebanon, support this observation. More recently, Dr. Noam Chomsky has noted the increasing role played by Rabbis in sanctioning military wars:

”[Israel's Supreme Rabbinical Council] gave their endorsement to the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, declaring that it conformed to the Halachi (religious) law and that participation in the war ‘in all its aspects’ is a religious duty. The military Rabbinate meanwhile distributed a document to soldiers containing a map of Lebanon with the names of cities replaced by alleged Hebrew names taken from the Bible…. A military Rabbi in Lebanon explained the biblical sources that justify ‘our being here and our opening the war; we do our Jewish religious duty by being here.’”[71]

In an article titled “Views of Violence in Judaism” published in Wikileaks, the following points are made:

“In 2007, Mordechai Eliyahu, the former Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel wrote that “there was absolutely no moral prohibition against the indiscriminate killing of civilians during a potential massive military offensive on Gaza aimed at stopping the rocket launchings”.[72] His son, Shmuel Eliyahu chief rabbi of Safed, called for the “carpet bombing” of the general area from which the Kassams were launched, to stop rocket attacks on Israel, saying “This is a message to all leaders of the Jewish people not to be compassionate with those who shoot [rockets] at civilians in their houses.” he continued, “If they don’t stop after we kill 100, then we must kill 1,000. And if they don’t stop after 1,000, then we must kill 10,000. If they still don’t stop we must kill 100,000. Even a million. Whatever it takes to make them stop.”[72]

An influential Chabad Lubavitch Hassid rabbi Manis Friedman in 2009 was quoted as saying: “I don’t believe in western morality, i.e. don’t kill civilians or children, don’t destroy holy sites, don’t fight during holiday seasons, don’t bomb cemeteries, don’t shoot until they shoot first because it is immoral. The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way: Destroy their holy sites. Kill men.”

Finally, Gilad Sharon, the son of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the “Butcher of Beirut, offered the following observations, perhaps more properly declarations of genocide, on November 18, the Sunday of this last incursion:

“There is no middle path here – either the Gazans and their infrastructure are made to pay the price, or we reoccupy the entire Gaza Strip.

The desire to prevent harm to innocent civilians in Gaza will ultimately lead to harming the truly innocent: the residents of southern Israel. The residents of Gaza are not innocent, they elected Hamas. The Gazans aren’t hostages; they chose this freely, and must live with the consequences.

The Gaza Strip functions as a state – it has a government and conducts foreign relations, there are schools, medical facilities, there are armed forces and all the other trappings of statehood. We have no territorial conflict with “Gaza State,” and it is not under Israeli siege – it shares a border with Egypt. Despite this, it fires on our citizens without restraint.

Why do our citizens have to live with rocket fire from Gaza while we fight with our hands tied? Why are the citizens of Gaza immune? If the Syrians were to open fire on our towns, would we not attack Damascus? If the Cubans were to fire at Miami, wouldn’t Havana suffer the consequences? That’s what’s called “deterrence” – if you shoot at me, I’ll shoot at you. There is no justification for the State of Gaza being able to shoot at our towns with impunity. We need to flatten entire neighborhoods in Gaza. Flatten all of Gaza. The Americans didn’t stop with Hiroshima – the Japanese weren’t surrendering fast enough, so they hit Nagasaki, too.

There should be no electricity in Gaza, no gasoline or moving vehicles, nothing. Then they’d really call for a ceasefire.

Were this to happen, the images from Gaza might be unpleasant – but victory would be swift, and the lives of our soldiers and civilians spared.

If the government isn’t prepared to go all the way on this, it will mean reoccupying the entire Gaza Strip. Not a few neighborhoods in the suburbs, as with Cast Lead, but the entire Strip, like in Defensive Shield, so that rockets can no longer be fired.

There is no middle path here – either the Gazans and their infrastructure are made to pay the price, or we reoccupy the entire Gaza Strip. Otherwise there will be no decisive victory. And we’re running out of time – we must achieve victory quickly. The Netanyahu government is on a short international leash. Soon the pressure will start – and a million civilians can’t live under fire for long. This needs to end quickly – with a bang, not a whimper.”

Needless to say, these ragings of a fool do not refer to the biblical wording, but they reflect the guidance that Israel’s ancient God directed to His people as He led them to genocide against the tribes that inhabited His land. So let us reflect on the barbarity inherent in the biblical commands to destroy one’s enemies.

The current state of Israel uses passages from an ancient text, a series of mythological narratives, to rally its citizens to yet another “temporary” war. It resurrects the words of men who were small in number relative to the millions that inhabit today’s Palestine, who concocted these tales to unite their disparate tribes against their enemies. Today, 193 nations around the world have united to form a world governing body to monitor universal human rights and the morality that will govern just wars, a morality that is protected by all members through the UN Human Rights Council. Yet one nation, signor of the UN Charters, defies these nations with total impunity to guilt

Only the United States can achieve such total impunity through its control of the policy body of the United Nations, the Security Council. Only the US Congress passes unamimously, without deliberation, resolutions that support the religious dictates of the theocratic state of Israel. Only a controlled media could mask the reality of the invasion into Gaza once again as self-defense. Only a benumbed people made ignorant of the catastrophic atrocities being committed in the name of a God form the seventh century before the common era, atrocities paid for by their tax dollars, dollars supporting superstition and egregious acts of barbarity appropriate for the seventh century perhaps, but let’s hope not the 21st century. Only a President elected initially to stop the racist actions of this rogue state can intervene now to halt this aggression despite the mythological God that is used by the Zionists to control its citizens.

In March of 2009, shortly after the first of the invasions that destroyed Gaza, I wrote this commentary to the President of the United States, a commentary that unfortunately requires repetition now that Israel has decided to return to the slaughter:

“The will to change requires fortitude, a firmness of mind to endure pain, conviction in belief that stands against self-interest, and commitment to act regardless of consequences. To stand against the will of those with power and resources, those determined to force their ideology on a government appointed by the people, necessitates confrontation of intellect and will. It is ultimately a battle of individual rights against forces committed to destruction of those rights.

A man that wills to effect change would not boycott what he must face; that is the coward’s way. This man knows what apartheid means; he understands what discrimination is; he has felt the blows of the white dominant elite; he can see the consequences of Israel’s policies that allow for stealing of land, for bulldozing of homes, for preventing food stuffs, medicine, fuel, water, the necessities of life to enter Gaza; he knows of their annexing of the aquifers from the Palestinians; he has heard of the plight of the people of Ramallah; he has read about the massacres in Jenin and Rafah; he realizes in his heart of hearts that what Israel has done to the people of Palestine is abominable, beyond the pale of human righteousness, inexcusable by any humane measure, unendurable if put in a position where change could be effected.

“To stand against the will of those with power and resources, those determined to force their ideology on a government appointed by the people, necessitates confrontation of intellect and will. It is ultimately a battle of individual rights against forces committed to destruction of those rights.

“This President must, on behalf of the rights of the American people, confront the Zionist ideology that governs our Congress and the government of Israel, knowing that he alone can force this issue into the open, force the government of Israel to choose friendship with the United States as it reconfirms the ideals on which it was founded – equity, integrity, equal and individual rights protected by law – or choose to remain defiant against the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and remain an isolated, alienated nation, a rogue state floundering in a sea of animosity.

Fortitude, conviction and commitment necessitate principled action not quibbling servility, a determination of selflessness on behalf of country not self-interest to avoid pain, and recognition that what is done correctly is done forever. Change is indeed constant, but meaningful change is deliberate.”

We took this man at his word, that he wanted change, that he would guide America in new directions, away from the amoral behavior of the Bush administration, away from the chosen elite that have run the nation into the economic toilet, and toward a new vision where the security of all is put first and equity for all is the hallmark of America once again. Now, with absolutely unfathomable logic, this man determined that the United States must boycott the 2009 World Conference against Racism and today determined that the US will not initiate a world conference on ridding the world of WMD. Why? Because in 2009 Israel was threatened with being relabeled an apartheid nation, a racist nation as it has demonstrated a total disregard for the multiple resolutions issued by the United Nations for its abuse of the conventions enunciated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that it is has signed. And today, it is Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons that has forced America to acquiesce to the Zionists lest that nation’s hypocrisy be made self-evident to the world.

William A. Cook’s latest book is Decade of Deceit.

The only thing worse than a newspaper recusing itself in an election is a publication that finds itself zigging when its readers are zagging. The fact that so many newspapers were not on the same page as the majority of voters in several swing states in this election suggests they may be dangerously out of tune with the communities they serve. (AMEN!) And the reason for this may be that newspapers tend to be published by and for older white people, an increasingly shrinking portion of the population and the electorate. Without new products and services to appeal to next-generation voters, the relevance and influence of newspapers will continue to diminish, too.

I (used to) love to read newspapers.  Something about the feel of them, the various looks, shapes, etc.  True, at one time, I started with the bridge column, continued to the comics, advanced to the JUMBLE, skimmed the Arts & Entertainment Section, devoured any columns by Mike Royko, Molly Ivins, Sidney Harris, Bob Verdi, or Melissa Issacson, and now with the SUDUKO (cross word puzzles for people more fluent in numbers than in letters), pretty much in that order.

Then came mom's first stroke, and while hospitalized, and dealing with aphasia, she determined that we WOULD go online.  And we did.  And my life has not been the same since: I have become extremely critical of many newspapers, many opion writers, and sometimes staff editorials (although some writers still delight me, excite me, and have the gift of running me through the full range of the emotional gauntlet).  For facts, and opinions, WHEN you choose your internet sources well, you have available information that is generally kept secret from much of the population.

One of the most pleasurable blogs I read is Reflections of a Newsosaur. 

The following blog post comes from that blog.  Enjoy!

Thursday, November 08, 2012

Newspaper endorsements: Out of step?

Supporters of President Obama gasped prior to the election when four of the major newspapers in Iowa backed Mitt Romney for president in that crucial state. As it turns out, they needn’t have worried, with the President breezing to victory with 52% of the Hawkeye vote.

But the endorsements penned by the Des Moines Register, Cedar Rapids Gazette, Quad-City Times and Sioux City Journal were far from the only ones in the country this election cycle that were out of step with voters in their states. The disconnect was similar in a number of pivotal states, suggesting the waning power of newspaper endorsements – at least in this particular election – to sway the electorate in an age when readers have access to multiple digital and cable-news sources to shape their political views. In a rundown of swing-state endorsements, Poynter.Org found publisher-reader disconnects all over the place.

Though final returns from Florida were pending at this writing, Romney evidently was narrowly defeated in spite of being endorsed by seven of the state’s dailies. He failed in Nevada, even though he was backed by two of the three biggest newspapers in the state. And he lost Ohio in spite of being pushed by the Cincinnati Enquirer and Columbus Dispatch, which serve two of the biggest blue counties in the must-win state.The disconnect was bipartisan. Romney captured North Carolina, even though Obama was favored by five dailies in the state, including such biggies as the Charlotte Observer, the Raleigh News & Observer and the Winston-Salem Journal. At the same time the recommendations of many newspapers diverged from the sentiments of the majority of voters in their states, a number of publishers skipped endorsing a presidential candidate altogether. Among the major publications declining to back a candidate this year were the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the Virginia Pilot and the Palm Beach Post. Given the number of publishers whose endorsements failed to help their chosen candidate carry their states, is the decision not to endorse a presidential candidate the better part of valor? Maybe. But maybe not. A non-endorsement policy might be good for a newspaper’s credibility, because it eliminates one of the potential arguments that its coverage is biased. And a gelded editorial page might be good for business, because an endorsement-free publication minimizes the chances of offending readers and advertisers. But a newspaper lacking the gumption to endorse a presidential candidate looks pretty lame in a day when opinions are a dime a dozen on the Internet and the airwaves. The only thing worse than a newspaper recusing itself in an election is a publication that finds itself zigging when its readers are zagging. The fact that so many newspapers were not on the same page as the majority of voters in several swing states in this election suggests they may be dangerously out of tune with the communities they serve.

And the reason for this may be that newspapers tend to be published by and for older white people, an increasingly shrinking portion of the population and the electorate. Without new products and services to appeal to next-generation voters, the relevance and influence of newspapers will continue to diminish, too.

And that cannot possibly be good for business.