Here's a panorama of issues and ideas served up piping hot, with seconds and thirds always welcome. Ring the bell, from A (Abortion) to Z (Zionism), and let's go!
What does 1,000,000 gallons of oil a day ravaging our environment look like, as we speak?
Likely you've already had that horrific little underwater preview:
By now, the Gulf Coast is turning into one disastrous mess, for the Gulf residents, the birds, fish, plants, everything.
I just wonder at what point did Pert Palin's handlers decide to delete bouncy little "DBD!" Republican Refrain from her boiler plate road show. Or--nooooooo--she's still at it??
In any event, Demos should pray that Gov. Sarah DOES indeed get the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, so this little beauty can be shared with the voters day & night on every network and the all over the blessed blogosphere:
Thanks for sharing, Sarah, Big Oil, and our bird-brained Republican friends.
“Most people," remarked naturalist John Muir, "are on the world, not in it--having no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them--undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate."
I take it back, with apologies to the birds. It's granite-brained Republican friends.
The facts aren't just searingly painful. The situation is outrageous, disgusting, unbearable.
The perpetrators continue running their machine on your tax dollars, Americans. Generously squeezed out of a sheep-like Congress, year after year after year, by the crushingly effective Israeli lobby, AIPAC.
The Israeli Regime just committed another act of piracy today, to maintain its Warsaw Ghetto as the world's largest open air prison. And what a hell on earth place they've transformed Gaza.
There is no reason on earth to partner up with war criminals. Have a look at this report's "plain language" and ask yourself the question:
"Who is it that's in the cast in this 'War On Terror'?"
The latest Israeli assault on human decency--will this atrocity simply fade from public consciousness, day by day, as other stories emerge to take its place? Oil spills, Miley's new shoes, or the newest episode of CSI?
What's painfully clear is that the might-makes-right dictum too often plagues our world, whether local, national, or global. Perhaps some tyrannical boss at the office trashing ethics or a politician you trusted betraying his promises or some foreign power bullying anyone in the way of its "national interest."
We watched our faithful U.S. government-backed Israeli stormtroopers come blasting aboard an unarmed mercy fleet, like Blackbeard's pirates on a plunder. All because some humanitarians were simply trying to give hungry, homeless refugees in the world's largest open air prison some food and housing materials.
It is sickening beyond words.
The insult to injury is Israel and its apologists' appalling fabrications trying to justify such cruelty, a relentless process that began over 60 years ago when the Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their homes.
Not that such barbarism and suffering has been limited to the Middle East, of course. It's a universal curse and has been the root of so much grief. One of the most overpowering expressions I've ever witnessed of this angst is a 1965 ballad, utterly timeless.
You'd only have to graft some contemporary events onto the lyrics and one would never tell the difference.
"The poundin' of the drums, the pride and disgrace You can bury your dead, but don't leave a trace...."
The Dylanesque message resonates like few others have and the singer unleashes it with a pathos that nearly mows me down.
But like that potent scene of DeNiro getting battered in the ring in "Raging Bull," he taunts his tormentor with the assurance that he "nevah went doooown."
Even if he did, or you do, just get the hell back up, no matter what. Stay on your feet, moving in the direction of the headwaters of faith.
Maya Angelou's immortal words sparkle in the water. Get in. Rejuvenate. One beleaguered person, or an entire nation under siege, it works.
"Out of the huts of history's shame I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide, Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise....."
And with the elation, the promise of a different kind of "eve" comes into view.
A more spiritual, comforting realm.
Call it, for want of a better term......the "Eve Of Construction."
Israel.....a nation steamrolled into existence over the instant ruins of another--Palestine. Some other glowing candles for its 62nd Birthday Cake:
• Israel holds the world record in the number of towns & villages it ethnically cleansed: Over 500
• Israel holds the world record in the number of refugees it's created: Over 4,000,000
• Israel holds the world record in the number of homes it demolished: Over 60,000
• Israel is the country with the highest record of UN condemnations: Over 500
• Israel is the country with the highest number of protective US Security council vetoes: Over 100
• Israel has killed more innocent civilians per capita than any other country: Over 50,000 • Israel has imprisoned more civilians per capita than any other country: Over 250,000
• Israel has rendered more innocent civilians handicapped per capita than any other country: Over 50,000
• Israel has injured more innocent civilians per capita than any other country: Over 200,000
• Israel has only two countries to defend its policies in the United Nations. These countries are America & Micronesia. The population for Micronesia, as of June 2008, was 108,000
• Israel is the only country on Earth that denies the right of return of refugees
• Israel is the only country on Earth that still occupies a whole other country & parts of two other countries
• Israel is the only country on Earth that publicly steals the water of its neighbours
• Israel is the only country on Earth that has legalized home demolishing as a method of collective punishment
• Israel is the only country on Earth that uproots trees as a method of collective punishment
• Israel is the only country on Earth that deliberately targets civilian infrastructure and justifies it
• Israel is the only country on Earth that legalized assassination
• Israel stands unique in using human shields in military operations
• Amongst all countries, Israel is the only one that has legalized torture
• Israel is the only country on Earth that builds illegal settlements in occupied lands
• Israel is the only country on Earth that publicly jails activists without trial
• According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Israel has created the highest number of checkpoints
• According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Israel holds the world record in the number of curfews imposed on the Palestinians
• Israel is the only country on Earth whose checkpoints deny women access to hospitals, many who've been forced to give birth alone, with fatal results.
• Israel is exceptional in being the only country on Earth whose checkpoints denies patients access to hospitals, with fatal results.
• Israel is the only country on Earth whose checkpoints are where wedding parades come to an end
• Israel is the only country on Earth who checkpoints school children, denies them access to school, and puts an end to their classes
• Israel is one of two countries that, against International Law, uses cluster bombs and depleted uranium bombs. America is the other.
• Israel holds the world record in the number of soldiers refusing to serve in the army
• Israel, despite being a rich country, receives the highest financial aid, more than the sum aid to all sub-Saharan Africa.
• While talking about its enemies wanting to wipe it off the map, Israel is in the 62nd year of finishing the wiping of another country--Palestine--off the map. With American tax dollars.
• Israel is the county that has introduced nuclear weapons into the Middle East, but continues to be the only country in the Middle East that refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty
• After East Germany, Israel has been the only country that is building a segregation wall
• Second to South Africa, Israel is the only country to establish an apartheid regime
• Israeli engineers developed the world's first iron gates on roads
• Israeli engineers developed the world's first cities-turned-to-jails, with gates and opening hours
• Israeli engineers developed the world's first apartheid walls
• Israeli engineers developed the world's first electrified segregation fences
• Israeli engineers developed the world's first "eyes specific" rubber bullets
• Israeli engineers developed the world's first abortion-efficient, infant killing tear gas
• Israeli engineers developed the world's first humiliation-guaranteed human cages
• Israel is the only country on Earth that has a political party that publicly advocates ethnic cleansing of native citizens (Palestinians)
• Israel is the only country on Earth that still has racist laws that discriminate against native citizens (Palestinians)
• Israel is the only country on Earth known to have a memorial dedicated to a terrorist where his followers gather and dance
• Israel is the only country on Earth that imprisons children for political reasons
• Israel is the only country on Earth where you get a one month community service for deliberately smashing the head of a child
• Israel is the only country on Earth that does not hold its soldiers accountable for shooting--and bulldozing to death--peace activists in cold blood
• No other country on Earth has towns and cities allocated exclusively for one ethnic group
• The only country on Earth, where people live in homes stolen from living refugees is, Israel
• The only place on Earth where people cultivate fields stolen from living refugees is Israel
• Israel has the highest number of towns built upon ethnically cleansed villages, whose former residents are living refugees
“We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border...." -- Zionism Founder Theodor Herzl Diary Entry, 1895
This award-winning expose came out almost exactly one year ago today.
See the film. Get angry.
DO SOMETHING.
Or get used to that dry, thirsty feeling of slow death.
Thinking Republican and that this is juuuuust another "liberal" plot to undermine the glorious global free enterprise system? A "hoax," like our Climate Change nightmare??
Better think again, and wiser--like about what the hell we're going to do about the dry wave that's morphing to tsunami speed and headed in all directions, folks. Thank you negligent, idiot governments and a whole lot of corporate water bandits across the planet for helping it along!
Latest news: The world's fourth-largest lake bites the dust, quite literally.
Anybody need a drink?
UN's Ban calls Aral Sea ''shocking disaster''
By JIM HEINTZ, Associated Press Writer Jim Heintz, Associated Press Writer – Sun Apr 4, 6:22 pm ET
NUKUS, Uzbekistan – The drying up of the Aral Sea is one of the planet's most shocking environmental disasters, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Sunday as he urged Central Asian leaders to step up efforts to solve the problem. Once the world's fourth-largest lake, the sea has shrunk by 90 percent since the rivers that feed it were largely diverted in a Soviet project to boost cotton production in the arid region. The shrunken sea has ruined the once-robust fishing economy and left fishing trawlers stranded in sandy wastelands, leaning over as if they dropped from the air. The sea's evaporation has left layers of highly salted sand, which winds can carry as far away as Scandinavia and Japan, and which plague local people with health troubles. Ban toured the sea by helicopter as part of a visit to the five countries of former Soviet Central Asia. His trip included a touchdown in Muynak, Uzbekistan, a town once on the shore where a pier stretches eerily over gray desert and camels stand near the hulks of stranded ships. "On the pier, I wasn't seeing anything, I could see only a graveyard of ships," Ban told reporters after arriving in Nukus, the nearest sizable city and capital of the autonomous Karakalpak region. "It is clearly one of the worst disasters, environmental disasters of the world. I was so shocked," he said. The Aral Sea catastrophe is one of Ban's top concerns on his six-day trip through the region and he is calling on the countries' leaders to set aside rivalries to cooperate on repairing some of the damage. "I urge all the leaders ... to sit down together and try to find the solutions," he said, promising United Nations support. However, cooperation is hampered by disagreements over who has rights to scarce water and how it should be used. In a presentation to Ban before his flyover, Uzbek officials complained that dam projects in Tajikistan will severely reduce the amount of water flowing into Uzbekistan. Impoverished Tajikistan sees the hydroelectric projects as potential key revenue earners. Competition for water could become increasingly heated as global warming and rising populations further reduce the amount of water available per capita.Water problems also could brew further dissatisfaction among civilians already troubled by poverty and repressive governments; some observers fear that could feed growing Islamist sentiment in the region.
Israeli implores us to stop government's continuing support for Tel Aviv's terrorism
By Jonathan Ben-Artzi Christian Science Monitor -- April 1, 2010 More than 20 years ago, many Americans decided they could no longer watch as racial segregation divided South Africa. Compelled by an injustice thousands of miles away, they demanded that their communities, their colleges, their municipalities, and their government take a stand.
As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Today, a similar discussion is taking place on campuses across the United States. Increasingly, students are questioning the morality of the ties US institutions have with the unjust practices being carried out in Israel and in the occupied Palestinian territories. Students are seeing that these practices are often more than merely “unjust.” They are racist. Humiliating. Inhumane. Savage.
Sometimes it takes a good friend to tell you when enough is enough. As they did with South Africa two decades ago, concerned citizens across the US can make a difference by encouraging Washington to get the message to Israel that this cannot continue.
A legitimate question is, Why should I care? Americans are heavily involved in the conflict: from funding (the US provides Israel with roughly $3 billion annually in military aid) to corporate investments (Microsoft has one of its major facilities in Israel) to diplomatic support (the US has vetoed 32 United Nations Security Council resolutions unsavory to Israel between 1982 and 2006).
Why do I care? I am an Israeli. Both my parents were born in Israel. Both my grandmothers were born in Palestine (when there was no “Israel” yet). In fact, I am a ninth-generation native of Palestine. My ancestors were among the founders of today’s modern Jerusalem.
Both my grandfathers fled the Nazis and came to Palestine. Both were subsequently injured in the 1948 Arab-Israli War. My mother’s only brother was a paratrooper killed in combat in 1968. All of my relatives served in the Israeli military for extensive periods of time, some of them in units most people don’t even know exist.
In Israel, military service for both men and women is compulsory. When my time to serve came, I refused, because I realized I was obliged to do something about these acts of segregation. I was denied conscientious objector status, like the majority of 18-year-old males who seek this status. Because I refused to serve, I spent a year and a half in military prison.
Some of the acts of segregation that I saw while growing up in Israel include towns for Jews only, immigration laws that allow Jews from around the world to immigrate but deny displaced indigenous Palestinians that same right, and national healthcare and school systems that receive significantly more funding in Jewish towns than in Arab towns.
As former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in 2008: “We have not yet overcome the barrier of discrimination, which is a deliberate discrimination and the gap is insufferable.... Governments have denied [Arab Israelis] their rights to improve their quality of life.”
The situation in the occupied territories is even worse. Nearly 4 million Palestinians have been living under Israeli occupation for over 40 years without the most basic human and civil rights.
One example is segregation on roads in the West Bank, where settlers travel on roads that are for Jews only, while Palestinians are stopped at checkpoints, and a 10-mile commute might take seven hours.
Another example is discrimination in water supply: Israel pumps drinking water from occupied territory (in violation of international law). Israelis use as much as four times more water than Palestinians, while Palestinians are not allowed to dig their own wells and must rely on Israeli supply.
Civil freedom is no better: In an effort to break the spirit of Palestinians, Israel conducts sporadic arrests and detentions with no judicial supervision. According to one prisoner support and human rights association, roughly 4 in 10 Palestinian males have spent some time in Israeli prisons. That’s 40 percent of all Palestinian males!
And finally, perhaps one of the greatest injustices takes place in the Gaza Strip, where Israel is collectively punishing more than 1.5 million Palestinians by sealing them off in the largest open-air prison on earth.
Because of the US’s relationship with Israel, it is important for all Americans to educate themselves about the realities of the conflict. When they do, they will realize that just as much as support for South Africa decades ago was mostly damaging for South Africa itself, contemporary blind support for Israel hurts us Israelis.
We must lift the ruthless siege of Gaza, which only breeds more anger and frustration among Gazans, who respond by hurling primitive, homemade rockets at Israeli towns.
We must remove travel restrictions from West Bank Palestinians. How can we live in peace with a population where most children cannot visit their grandparents living in the neighboring village, without being stopped and harassed at military checkpoints for hours?
Finally, we must give equal rights to all. Regardless of what the final resolution will be – the so-called “one state solution,” the “two state solution,” or any other form of governance.
Israel governs the lives of 5.5 million Israeli Jews, 1.5 million Israeli Palestinians, and 4 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. As long as Israel is responsible for all of these people, it must ensure that all have equal rights, the same access to resources, and the same opportunities in education and healthcare. Only through such a platform of basic human rights for all humans can a resolution come to the region.
If Americans truly are our friends, they should shake us up and take away the keys, because right now we are driving drunk, and without this wake-up call, we will soon find ourselves in the ditch of an undemocratic, doomed state.
Jonathan Ben-Artzi was one of the spokespeople for the Hadash party in the Israeli general elections in 2006. His parents are professors in Israel, and his extended family includes uncle Benjamin Netanyahu. Mr. Ben-Artzi is a PhD student at Brown University in Providence, R.I.
Thank you, Sarah Elias from Facebook, for initially posting this report. So, anyone out there with some lingering doubt about the appalling injustice? Just read today's news and hear about the fresh wave of Israeli air attacks on Gaza's women and children.
Then click below--get angry enough to call that craven, shameless congressmen or senator that keeps sending more and more lethal aid to this murderous regime:
I've lived on both coasts of the United States as well as Central America (where I became bilingual), and traveled to over two dozen countries. This afforded me an enriched perspective as a writer and teacher. "Incandescent Planet" and "Jonestown Apologists Alert" provide choice cuts from the human landscape, featuring politics, popular culture, and the senseless saga of a doomed cult.
I'm certain you'll find an abundance of well-seasoned food for thought. Let's eat.
