SHIFTING PERSPECTIVES ......

Despite American admonitions to avoid estranging Arab partners like Saudi, Egypt, the Gulf Emirates and Morocco, with too much democracy, righteousness and human rights issues, Israel has already adjusted to the region's shifting geopolitics, even to some eastern big powers like China and India, China just opened the first private port in Israel over American objections. Clearly despite Israel's frequent demands that the U.S. continue to defer to the Israeli government's interests and goals. Tel Aviv will not do the same for Washington nor necessarily reciprocate with American goals and long foreign politics. 

Although unprecedented, the last Israeli moves toward some Arab countries and the east in general pursuing its own political and economic agenda reveal a widening divide between the two long lasting pseudo allies, as well, the U.S. must take the same independent approach. It is long past time for American to get out of Israeli direct influence on our foreign policies. And for our successive administrations and presidents to prioritize U.S. interests over those of Israel. 

The outbreak of our efforts and diplomacy under Israeli dominance in the Persian golf and the greater Middle-East , plus our adventures in Iraq and elsewhere, always under Israeli influence, that contributed heavily to Arab animosity toward Iran, as well as toward America. Ironically only when the U.S. decreased its influence on all countries around the gulf they started coexisting with more pragmatism and realism. 

While Chinese and Russian influence in the entire region expands, and the U.S. is left to watch from afar. meanwhile Israel is adapting itself fast to these new geopolitical new games. As neither China nor Russia will give in to Israel's own interests, as it was with America for long decades, maybe this is why Israel is nervous and shifting policies. It's important though that no adventure of anyone's making to topple the game could drag the U.S. into a new war for anyone's sake or benefit. 

Apparently, the U.S. removed most of its missile defenses from Saudi Arabia in the past several weeks, leaving the kingdom and its neighbors feeling vulnerable to different missile attacks from Yemen and elsewhere, as well the administration's releasing a classified FBI report revealing contacts between the 9/11 hijackers and certain Saudi officials, it all confirms the U.S. further detachment from Saudi and the area in general. It is confirmed that American forces have withdrawn from at least 3 bases in eastern Syria. Not to mention the possibility of reaching a nuclear agreement with Iran. Even the sudden decampment from Afghanistan and handing it to the Taliban to annoy and threaten all its neighbors, and create some welcomed instability in central and western Asia. All these are clear indications that the U.S. foreign policies are moving to a more independent and not as in thrall to Saudi or Israeli hegemonic preferences. 

The Arab-Persian discord, suited perfectly Israeli hegemony and the U.S. war machine manipulators, and the Neocons under Israeli dominance, for these reasons the divide is growing, and Israel is showing us its teeth, anger and impatience. President Obama in a 2016 speech asserted that "the Saudis and Iranians need to learn how to share the region," Israel, China and Russia now, are all looking for shares of the new divided cake. 

A writer, Sam Keen, reminds me of the policies that Israel plays while the U.S. totally obliged for many decades, he says; " When your icon of the enemy is complete,  you will be able to kill without guilt, slaughter without shame." That has been the motto of our politics for too long, it's high time for a change of philosophy, we have enough problems on our own plate internally. 

My, as always, many thanks for your time. stay safe and well.                           

Power .....

September 6, 2021

Patrick Lawrence asks some pertinent questions of the American people.

Are Americans going to sit around indefinitely eating potato chips while the State Department and Treasury starve Venezuelan children? Are Americans going to play video games while Israel fires U.S.–made missiles into Damascus from Lebanese airspace—two violations of international law?

Are Americans going to sit around watching corporate sports while the Pentagon drone-murders entire families and Congress votes to increase its post–Afghanistan budget? Are Americans going to sit on their sofas while the United States condemns several generations of Cubans to lives of desperation because they have chosen to live in a socialist republic?

Are Americans going spectate on their sofas while the CIA and other rogue intelligence agencies subvert the Republic of Nicaragua, the Syrian Arab Republic, and any other nation that resists American hegemony? Are Americans going continue stuffing their faces with Cheetos, Hot Pockets, and Bac–O’–Bits while the Saudis use American–supplied bombers and bombs to drive Yemen into a state of famine and reduce its people to  Dachau-like skeletons? 

Are Americans going to sit around silently while no-neck generals push the U.S. relentlessly toward military confrontations with China and Russia, two nuclear-armed nations? Are Americans going to shop on Amazon while The New York Times, CNN, and the rest of the monstrous propaganda machine cultivate their ignorance—purposefully, knowingly, and with malign intent—by way of gross omissions and outright falsehoods as to America’s international conduct?

Are Americans going to sit around worrying about their lawns while climate change burns half the country, floods the other half, and a federal judge tells the Biden administration it is obliged by law to auction new oil– and gas-drilling leases on hundreds of millions of acres? 

Are Americans going to read The New Yorker and The Nation while mainstream journalists cheer the creeping suppression of independent media and post-adolescent know-nothings in Silicon Valley are authorized to censor their speech, what Americans read, and—it will come—what Americans think?

Are Americans going to sit around dribbling on their shirtfronts while Julian Assange, Daniel Hale, Steven Donziger, and other courageous people acting in their behalf are made victims of extravagantly corrupted judicial systems? 

Are Americans going to remain silent while millions of them are malnourished and evicted from their homes in the name of the market god? Are Americans going to sit around while millions more get sick because they can’t afford perfectly ordinary medical care and those who could remedy this crisis are paid by insurers, hospitals associations, and drug companies to refuse to do so? Are Americans going to sit around while Big Pharma treats a global health crisis as if it were simply an eternal profit center?

Are Americans going to sit around stuffing their faces with chlorinated chicken, Velveeta, and Pepsi while corporations colonize every minute of their lives and every cell in their bodies? Are Americans going to sit around soporifically watching television while Rachel Maddow takes home $30 million a year for turning news into a Barnum and Bailey circus? 

Are Americans going to sit around watching Walt Disney movies while Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez and other such “progressives” betray every voter who got them into office? Are Americans going to sit around talking about their IRA accounts while a dense web of mind-manipulating institutions, corporations, corrupt pols, and the national security state totalizes its grip on power?

Not one year into the Biden presidency, the mind regurgitates. The mind dreams of exile in the way all those principled anti–Cold War people expatriated during the 1950s, having had enough. 

And the mind wonders.  When?

When are Americans going to stand up? When are Americans going to clear the litter millionaire bums have left on their village greens and reclaim their public space? When are Americans going to stop indulging the weak-minded fiction that they are powerless?

When are Americans going to transcend the atomization of American society systematically inflicted upon it since April 30, 1975, and learn again to speak and act for the commonweal? When are Americans going to present themselves with dignity to show they have regained their self-respect, their respect for those who have to look at them, and their respect for their reawakened civic selves?

When are Americans going to figure out that a global class war rages and that race is a subset of class and not the other way around? When are Americans going to stop bickering about pronouns, gender preferences, bathroom doors, bronze statues, identity politics, and all such distracting rubbish?

When are Americans going to read the scholarly definition of fascism and then look at themselves in their mirrors? When are Americans going to dismember the scam economic “model” that produces and reproduces billionaires and an ever more impoverished majority?

When are Americans going to admit to ourselves that America’s nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, biological weapons, drones, bombs, and landmines are the root reason all these weapons proliferate globally? When are Americans going to tell the Pentagon, “That’s our money.” When are Americans going to demand radical action to counter the climate crisis and change their lives—joyfully and with commitment?

When are Americans going to impose civilian control over the CIA and the other appendages of the “national security” octopus? When are Americans going to say, No!” to subversive “democracy promotion” interventions in other nations? When are Americans going to reject the Russophobia and Sinophobia their “leaders” and their clerks in the press malignly stir up? When are Americans going to object that the U.S. started and prolonged the Cold War because the Pentagon needed it and defense contractors profited from it? 

When are Americans going to turn off their televisions? When are Americans going to stop eating Fritos? When are Americans going to stop bothering to write their congressmen?  When are Americans going to stop pretending their political process is intact and voting matters?

When are Americans going to stop pretending Joe Biden is mentally competent? When are Americans going to stop pretending Joe Biden is the second coming of FDR? When are Americans going to stop pretending Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, and Ned Price are anything more than programmed robots? 

When are Americans going to recognize that The New York Times is now a propaganda organ and the future of journalism lies in independent media?

This article by Patrick Lawrence who is Salon's foreign affairs columnist, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, a columnist, essayist, author and lecturer, he authored several books.

My usual many thanks to all.  

A NEW MENTALITY .....

 

Less than a year after a clear majority of Americans across the country delivered a resounding defeat to Donald Trump in the 2020 elections, Trumpism has not stopped rearing its ugly and obstinate presence in almost every state of the Union. The ex president is announcing full throated endorsements of many candidates for different positions all over, diminishing the chances that Republicans with integrity and better social understanding are being able to get elected. 

He is with his machine of extremists and lackeys destroying any chances of hearing the real voices of the Republican party, representing almost 27% of American voters, he is with his oligarchy and family members and big big money from corporate and extreme rich billionaires as well as special interests, they are systematically turning the party into a rich man and special interests organization, to shape and legislate strictly for their benefits, while turning the rest of Americans into cheap tools and robo- workers and soldiers ready to serve their interests and profits, no matter what this absolute majority pays or sacrifice for these goals. 

Leaving Trumpism and antidemocratic fascism unchecked in any corner of the country shouldn't be an option, and is to be fought ideologically and politically by all means, if we want to preserve and maintain a good free America, a prosperous to all America. One example of what and how these tactics are working, is taking place nowadays in Virginia. 

We have soon in VA, an election coming for governor and many executive members for the state, the Democrat candidate is an ex governor known for his rationality and attention to all Virginians and their needs. The Republican candidate is a big rich man who was hand picked by Trump for the post of governor. Mr. Glen Youngkin who pledged to spend 75 million$ of his own money fortune to buy the governor's seat. 

One should ask, who's Donald Trump in politics to decide who's who, more so in local politics, except to insure more lackeys and followers willing to serve and facilitate his political agenda. The second question would be; anywhere in the world when a politician spends lots of his own money on an election, he or she expects to get it back at least doubled within the life of the position, so is Mr. Youngkin looking actively to make 150 millions or more within his tenure ?? 

No one is a saint, but to go all the other way to devilish behavior and acts shouldn't be the policy of the land in the 21st century and beyond, let's leave these tactics to some failed countries, the Levant come to mind, with Lebanon and Syria leading. It could lead to disastrous situations and total chaos for all. 

Basically the mainstream media machine have for long years operated on the assumption that there are always two sides to every story, and that their job is to represent the balanced reasonable center, well that is not true anymore. Today in America one side is trying to protect voting rights for all, and the other side is trying to suppress votes because it's more advantageous to them. 

One side is advocating for science and the other side is pushing pandemic conspiracy theories and climate denials. One side wants the rich and corporate taxes reduced or eliminated, while the other is advocating for universal healthcare, free education for all and more affordable prescription medicine. Equating them all is misleading and dangerous, it will kill democracy and the well being of the majority of Americans. 

As we should all keep fighting against abhorrent wealth inequality, and the money grab of power and politicians, we must fight and resist media inequality and all its misleading arms. And as the saying goes; "Why are guns good, sex bad and God seemingly okay with it all."                                                     As always, my profound thanks for your time, stay safe and well.