Not My Hero

Jon Schwarz has an excellent critique of The Post at one of my favorite sites, The Intercept.

I wrote this comment about the Post and legendary publisher Katherine Graham.

The Post has always been at social center of plutocracy. Owner Edward McLean bought the Hope diamond for his wife, who wore it socially. Cursed or not, he died in a sanitarium, and the Post was purchased by the boy financial wizard of his time, Eugene Meyer, who had made $15 million dollars before the age of 40 in 1915. He used the pages of the Post to rail against the New Deal. Katherine Graham is his daughter. Eugene gifted the paper mostly to her husband, but also partly to her.
Certainly the paper represents the plutocratic class. Does it also represent the Deep State, CIA, and so on? It has long been alleged, and nothing in the facts would dissuade one from that belief. It's also been called the Pentagon Post.
By 1965 the Vietnam War was obsolete, the ultimate domino, Indonesia, having been taken by a client dictator and purged of adversaries. Johnson Advisors including McNamara were decrying pointlessness. Noam Chomsky has written the capitalist class was turning anti-war by the last years of the 1960's. But the war was a political inconvenience for some people, and opportunity for others. I narrowly escaped the draft years, but somehow never learned for decades that Nixon officially ended the war just before the 1972 election, the ultimate October Surprise. So it had finally served its purpose.
Anyway, printing the Pentagon Papers was gutsy and admirably, but hardly an act of treason either to the capitalist class or the national security class of the day.
Nixon, though he did oversee the undoing of Allende, was not proving the domestic neoliberal that the capitalist class really wanted, and finally got with Reagon, after Carter having done some capable preparatory work. Chomsky has called Nixon the last New Deal President, and Nixon's last unrealized proposal was national healthcare reform based on employer mandates. THAT is what was undone by exposing the Watergate Burglary.

*** end of comment posted.

The Book on Katherine Graham was originally written in the 1970's, entitled Katherine the Great.  It exposes much of the way the government used the paper as a propaganda mouthpiece for the government.  Katherine Graham herself suppressed the mainstream publication of the book.

I found this great background information site looking for info on Philip Graham and the CIA.  Important...read all the comments!  Mr Graham had a stellar rise, as editor of Harvard Law Review, clerk to Felix Frankfurter, and assistant to William O Donovan, the colorful "Oh So Social" director of the OSS.  Then he marries into the Washington Post by marrying Katherine Meyer, and turns it into the nation's most efficient conduit for pumping out pro-cold-war disinformation cooked up at CIA under Project Mockingbird.

But by the late 1950's, Philip's father-in-law begins to have doubts about the arrangement.  Philip and Katherine are living separately, often forcing friends to take sides.  Philip has a new mistress, and tries to get his will re-written 3 times to make her inheirit the Post.  Ultimately, at a press convention in the spring of 1963, he launches a tirade about government manipulation of the media.  He names a name.  His wife rushes to the scene, Philip is put in a strait jacket and put into a sanitarium (reminiscent of what happened to Edward McLean).  Later, Katherine drives him back to the country home, where he is shortly found dead in the bathtub, the death ruled a suicide.  The last will is ruled intestate, and Katherine becomes the full owner and publisher of The Post.  All this, the efficient elimination of a potential independent voice, someone who has actually had enough and won't take it anymore and might go public about the whole corrupt establishment--conveniently occurred just 4 months before the Kennedy assassination, when there might need to be good media control.

As her fate becomes secure Katherine Graham continues the Post's proud traditions of boosting war and plutocracy and otherwise serving the Deep State better than any major paper, ultimately becoming the last major US newspaper to denounce the Vietnam War.

The Post's leading role in exposing Watergate is also in the comments brushed away as I have done, against the background of the plutocracy deciding Nixon is too independent minded to implement the desired new regime of neoliberalism to replace the New Deal, so he is done in by the Deep State through their friendly local newspaper, somehow always owned and operated by friends, the Post.

Maidan Massacre

There were at least 50 foreign snipers in Kiev on February 20, 2014, sowing murder and chaos to overthrow the elected government of Ukraine and put in place a new NATO-friendly government.  The latest news is that one of the military commanders now appears to have been a "former" American soldier.

No less than Edward Herman underlined that the US media, quick to point out any hearsay about the Russians, has only given a stony silence to all the increasing evidence that the Maidan Revolution was a coup orchestrated by foreigners with the explicit aim of turning around Ukraine, once the heart of Russia, into a western client state armed to threaten Russia.

Accepting the Maidan Revolution as a Military Coup, which it clearly was, negates and reverses claims of Russian aggression afterwards.

So, western propagandizing media, stoking cold war as always, will not do so.

One State Solution

As masterfully defined by Professor Edward Said in 1999.

My only quibble: He says both Jews and Palestinians may need to relax the full "Right of Return" for all in their respective categories.   I think best to stick with categorical justice, which certainly must include right of return for all Palestinians.

The Real Jesus Story

As noted in a "greatest lie" section of Quora, constrasting the Christian legends with what common sense likely took place.

Jesus appears to have been very well born, with both of his parents having leading Royal blood (and they were cousins too) and literally being the grandson of the last greatly respected King of the Jews.  The second in line only to his elder cousin John the Baptist, and after John's murder Jesus becomes a replacement public figure...a new contender for a good new King.

He rides into Jerusalem in phrophesized style with his followers, and attempts to start a debt jubilee by turning over the money changers tables.  Economist Michael Hudson believes that debt jubilees were a great idea which should be brought back.  In any case, it's a brash populist-socialist move on the part of a new aspiring king-to-be, and also portrays his populist socialist tendencies.

But the Romans are having none of it, and kidnap Jesus' own son.  Judas, Jesus cousin and closest confidante, works out an amazing deal with the Romans in which Jesus' son is freed, and Jesus himself gets to spend a mere 3-6 hours on the cross just before the Jewish holiday...and most importantly not having his legs broken...and to get hauled away by his father to his father's royal tomb.  He was well attended, quickly recovered, and ultimately escaped to live a life in exile, where he is occasionally recognized but otherwise keeps a very low profile.  To his followers, this is a symbolic watershed which they will soon avenge--but even with their support newer generations of Jewish  Resistance face ultimate defeat, with the multiple sackings of the the too-independent-thinking Jerusalem by the Romans, who ultimately found Israel incompatible with the Roman Empire principles and renamed it Palestine for the long co-inhabitant "Philistines" who remained after the departure of the more well placed and known diaspora Jews.

Jesus never made an issue of his god-ness, but once Jesus had passed on, an antagonistic outsider named Saul changed his identity to Paul and hijacked the identity of Jesus for the godhead he was enterpreneuring, declared that Jesus had not merely escaped death but arisen from the dead, with "gospels" ultimately created to blend his new religion-of-idealist-deity with the old Jesus-was-the-good-king-who-showed-the-principles-of-courage-and-love-and-survived-and-will-be-restored, and that became the Christianity we know, well after it got hijacked and filtered again by the clerics appointed by Constantine, and so on.

And it all fit a pattern of many similar stories in many other cultures beforehand, such as Buddha, etc.

The real Jesus story is that when the blindfolds are removed we all understand the essential nature of the common good and that it cannot be achieved by selfish means alone.  There is hope then that we can work together.

As a Jew, ...

After my Kindergarten era best friend, a Danish/Irish ancestry kid surnamed Anderson, moved away to the Bay Area in 1963, all of my childhood friends were Jewish, of Russian ancestry (which I now find interestingly coincident with when Kennedy was replaced by Johnson, apparently with the assistance with some involvement of a vehemently anti-communist Russian exile community in Texas which "handled" Oswald for the CIA...perhaps I was being "handled" by the CIA as well, and this is only one of several cases where political swings coincided with unintended departure of my best friends in curious ways).

Sometime not long after my mother put me in Lutheran bible school.  But while I found many of the kids there entertaining, somehow none of them ever became my friends.

The Jewish kids were cooler.  Perhaps it was also they took much more initiative in making friends, inviting me to their homes, on their outings.

I might have converted to Judaism.  Except for one thing.  Sometime around 1973 I became aware of the occupation of the west bank.  This did not fit my childhood myths about Israel: that the Palestinians within Israel to the west of Jerusalem were equal citizens in a democracy, and that the West Bank and Eastern Jerusalem were Palestine, where Palestians were free citizens a somewhat backward but picturesque country with many of the most interesting sites to Christianity.

Vision having been thusly shattered, by some voices on Pacifica Radio, I tried to ask all my Jewish friends about Israel and Palestine.  Or, at least three of them.  The most important ones at the time.  It was pretty much the end, or at least at the ending point, of all 3 friendships.

I think now, if my Jewish friends could ever have answered me satisfactorily, I might well have converted to Judaism.  Christianity had nothing for me, my friends were Jewish, and Jewish girls were usually the most attractive.  So, one way I could classify myself would be would-have-been-Jewish, a kind of Jewishness.

And there are other angles, such as one having been called a Jew, and defending Jews at that time.

Jewish ancestry likely also.  My mother, who had been adopted during her infancy, looked vaguely Russian-Jewish, herself always proclaiming the now-discredited Twelve Tribes theory, of being among best children of Israel.  A discredited theory...but perhaps the truth in her undocumented ancestry includes Jewish maternity or something like it.

So, in the fashion of any Marque, I declare myself a Jew, under my own authority., all other worldly authorities being hopeless corrupt  Actually, as it turns out, as I could expound upon in greater fashion another time, the King of Jews.  But not exclusive of other categories, nationalities, and causes, including Palestinian, Iranian, and Russian, for example.

But, anyway, I prefaced one of the most relationship-fatal questions to a Jewish girl I had been in great lust with for a long time, with the ill chosen and immediately regretted words, which slipped off the tongue so easily I must have been primed by endless TV programming, "As a Jew"

"As a Jew, what do you think about Israel and the Palestinians?"  Or something like that.

Immediately offended, at great length she critized the phrase "As a Jew", not identifying otherwise, or even at all, but with the notion that Jews should be expected to have, as a group, an opinion on this or any other matter.  Some Jews, she noted (setting the stage for what I have become) there were anti-Zionist Jews.

After a minute or two of this backlash, I tried to rephrase my question.  "Well I'm sorry for putting it that way.  But...what do You think about Israel's treatment of the Palestinians?"

I continued not to get an answer, just more backlash for asking the question as if Jews should have a collective opinion on it.

Now, gazillion years later, I'm listening to the great orthodox rabbi on Youtube describing the opposition between Zionism and Judaism.  At some point in this previously terrific little lecture, he veers off into the badness of being asked about Israel's treatment of the Palestians as a Jew...he doesn't therein delve deeply in the semantics or philosophy, just with the rhetorical response, "Why don't you ask me about China and how it treats it's citizens."

As far as I'm concerned, this is one of the worst forms of argument, begging the question to get off from having to make a hard statement with respect to a group one self identifies as.

"As a Jew" as I declare myself to be, I can answer the question.  Or "as a human being" or "as a leftist" as I describe myself in those ways also.

And, it's quite simple.  The treatment of Palestinians by Israel is abominable.  It must be stopped.  The best way to stop it would be to stop US imperialism, and the hype that sustains it.  BDS is another perfectly legitimate tactic, and there is no good reason why a religion supremicist state needs to exist for Jews or anyone else, and it's peculiarly oximoronic for Judaism.  "The Jewish State" is a contradiction in terms, and the Israeli government not only doesn't speak for me, it speaks for what I deeply oppose, and vice versa.  The creation of "The Jewish State" without coincidentally solving the displacement and refugee crisis was a terrible mistake, for which my country was a key facilitator and still is, to the great loss of many including Palestinians,  and for which minimal justice requires a full right to return for all displaced Palestinians as well as full equal rights for all Palestinians in Phisreal.

But, what about Russian leftists?

I describe Russiagate as the Deep State response to the potential (perhaps in some small ways realized) softer tone between the US and Russia under Trump.  The Deep State presumed Hillary would be elected.  My fear was that military confrontation might begin pretty soon after Jan 21, as Hillary was the ultimate Deep State invention--a proven imperial hawk, a friend of Kissinger since the 1970's, a Zionist to the core, a neoliberal bankster slave to the core, yet with the required appearance of being a progressive--despite the very destructive Presidency of her Husband* which from all appearances she strongly supported then and still does.  Hillary seemed to approve of stronger action against Russia, before the election, and afterwards, and the whole Russiagate narrative which she and her Deep State friends authored, proves it to the hilt--that they wanted and still want greater cold if not hot war with Russia, and will stop at nothing to get there.

(*Remember the million Iraqi children killed by the heartless US sanctions against Iraq for basic supplies such as to continue chlorinating their water?  Only by the even more militarily destructive standards of all Presidents who have followed does Bill Clinton look like a peace nik.  And then he tore up the most basic welfare program, AFDC, and eliminated the basic banking protections of the New Deal, and failed to allow regulation to be extended to credit derivatives, the crucial actions which directly led to the crash of 2008.  He intended to destroy Social Security as well, fortunately Monica Lewinsky saved us from that.  On the plus side, he created a partial decade of prosperity--the best we've had since the 1960's--through long overdue tax increases.)

I see Russian actions in Ukraine and Crimea to have been largely defensive responses to well orchestrated US/NATO provoked seccessionism and imperial expansion.  And, the biggest part of all I contend, is that we did and are continuing to do far worse.  By such standards there should be far harsher sanctions against--against the USA for our continuing actions and influences in many places, including Afghanistan and Yemen and Palestine.


My critics portray me as being too soft on Putin, too soft on Russian imperialism as well as backwardness in civil rights.  And, most troublesome to me, they say I'm not considering the point of view of Russian leftists, and those of Ukraine and Syria.  They question my leftism...and assert I've been brainwashed by Russian propaganda.

But this brings up many key points, in philosophy, the nature of leftism, and so on.

In philosophy, the important thing is the whole truth, the big picture.  On the world stage, US imperialism has wreaked far greater destruction over the world than Soviet/Russian imperialism.

Of course it cannot be denied that, in the big picture, there are small villans as well as the bigger ones.

But, there is a basic problem here.  We (the USA, and NATO Countries, and Israel and Saudi Arabia and other imperial clients of US) are the ones doing the greater violence.  For us to criticize Russia is to ignore the log in our own eye, in the words of Jesus, to criticize the mote in another's.

OK, there is one way we *could* do this, and it would be in each and every case criticizing Russia we simultanously, without interruption, similarly denounce our own crimes.  Or, better yet, start with ours and proceed to the lesser Russian's, and so on.

But when have you heard that done?  I've heard it once or twice, in gazillion comments about evil Russia, Putin, Assad, etc.

In fact, following the same reasoning, it's far worse Not to mention our crimes, than not to mention the Russian (Syrian, etc) crimes.

So then, in being soft on Russia, Putin, Syria, Assad, etc., or not even mentioning them at all, one is being far less bad than doing the reverse...which nearly everyone does all the time.

So, then, it can't be all that bad.  And given there is a limited amount of time, at any such point as making an argument, and in life in general, it can't be such a big deal to save a bit of time by not mentioning all the lesser points, ad infinitum.

And, meanwhile, WE (the people of the US) are the ones nominally an otherwise somewhat more responsible and capable of peacefully confronting and diminishing the US Imperial violence.  By criticizing the violence of others, we may position ourselves to further violence with less violent actors, principally not because of their violence but because they are independent of US, and a threat to our hegemony.  This furthers the greater evil of mentioning their crimes and not ours, by providing the starting point for even worse crimes on our part.  We further the ends of the greater evil, effectively becoming part of it.

So much for my philosophical point.

About those Russian leftists.  One always has to understand that Leftism is not inherently a local thing.  By it's own definitions and concerns, leftism is global.  Leftists are the true Globalists.

But there are several problems here.  In our own time, Globalism has been hijacked by those who would decimate labor solidarity, drive wages to starvation and free capital to rule over all.  As Jim Hightower calls it, Globaloney.

Such little official social democracy as we have in this world, real existing social democracy, exists almost entirely through nation state institutions.  Very little of it exists in global institutions.  Social Democracy has been stripped out of the newfangled multilateral agreements such as NATO and WTO.  Only the crippled and essentially powerless UN is there anything almost like social democracy, and there it only takes the form of high minded declarations without any funding.

So, as a leftist cares about social democracy, always better than none even if not the perfect proletarian rule, he cares about nation institutions.

But as a leftist cares about the world, a leftist also cares about the world imperialism of capital, which is precisely what all existing globalism is, with the tiny exception of a tiny amount of progressive world labor unionism and NGO's.  And, even moreso, this leftist would care about where the greater imperial world violence comes from.

And in the bigger stage, the US has been the greatest and most destructive imperialist.  If our Russian Leftists have not been blinded by US propaganda or contributions, they would see this as clearly as I do.

If they choose not to, then they aren't real leftists, are they?

Monopsony

A criticism of my "selling sex should be as free as selling anything else...regulated for fairness and safety" philosophy as applied to that venerable (but never again) institution, the casting couch.

Suppose I'm a talented actress, I want to make a cutting edge independent film, have it produced by the best.  Why should that require having sex with Harvey Weinstein?

I admit, my weak glibertarian response, such people can find someone else to produce their movie, may not always be available.

There may not be the big no-sex-required studio to compete with all the old boys.  The old boys have a monopony on buying talent, they are the only ones with all the right connections, don't you know, to make and distribute movies.  And old boys can help keep the old boys club going, and so on.

It still seems to me there could be "Harvey's Orgy Club and Movie Studio."  It just has to be openly that...and not a market controlling force, by itself, or in coordination.

Strange how insistent Harvey was about including a superfluous sex scene in the movie Frida.  That's what seems to figure as much as Harvey himself trying to tough talk his way into personal sex, in a recent story compellingly told by Selma Hayek.

Yes, we the public have noticed how movies sometimes seem to contain bits of sex, perhaps for the higher ratings themselves.  One of many many "commercialisms."  Higher rated movies go into different streams, just what the producer might be trying to do, to coordinate business.

Disgusting.

The word people also use, perhaps more general, is Gatekeeper.

Basically, there shouldn't be Gatekeepers.

But Gatekeepers exist, with myriad different claimed faults.  Some discriminate upon skin color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, political orientations.  Most of these are far more deeply ingrained, in most industries, than willingness to perform sex acts.

The alternative to gatekeepers might be panels drawn by lottery.

Seen in this context, discrimination based on whether or not you will consent to some kind sex with some producer...is at least something you can change.  Unique resistance to that, as opposed to all kinds of gatekeeping and harassment, represents an aesthetic elitist solidarity of the most powerful, who could be defined as those who can always define themselves not as such.

Sex-willingness gatekeepers have a potential use in serving industries where participants could engage in group orgies, which may even serve the end of production of sexual-oriented entertainment by developing greater closeness and flexibility.

So I still believe there is a place, in sex entertainment businesses, where a casting couch is a reasonable gatekeeping arena, assuming there is always consent.

Russia-Gate called out by Edward S Herman

I've been wondering how to write a definitive take down of Russia-gate, which sadly has sucked in many of my friends looking for a cheap and easy way to dump Trump.

I saw Russia-gate as dangerous war mongering and distraction right from the beginning, and of course I will not forget that it began with denunciations of the Wikileaks release of DNC emails proving active DNC favoritism for Clinton over Sanders, which had previously been vehemently denied by the mainstream media which had been busy inventing cheap shots to discredit Sanders supporters.  The ultimate orientation of Russia-gate as a weapon against anti-imperialism, anti-neoliberalism, and other independent thinking was not hard to discern.

Edward S. Herman, who co-authored Manufacturing Consent with Noam Chomsky in 1988, had already done the definitive work this past July, shortly before his death.  He cites precedents back to 1917.  Russia-phobic fake news has never been a purely Republican or conservative thing; liberals have often played key and supporting roles.  Palmer of the Palmer Raids was a liberal Democrat.  Robert F Kennedy came very close to being McCarthy's chief counsel.

Now, the producer of a Pacifica 14 part series on Julian Assange, Randy Credico, has been subpoenaed to testify in a private transcribed interview (aka star chamber) by the Russia-gate inquisitors.  He had declined to testify voluntarily, and now says he would prefer a public hearing, where he could call out the McCarthyism.

One breaking headline after another emerges, for more than a year now, with no actual evidence for Russia (by which is meant Putin) colluding in the election with the Trump and his aides.  And yet, as Herman said, the mainstream media continues to take the veracity of all the claims for granted, simply piling on more.

The currently breaking Flynn plea bargain may only be unusual in that the basic story has been around so long.  Flynn talked to the Russian ambassador in the lame duck interim between when Trump won the selection and took office.  This would seem to a sane person to be a good thing, for an incoming security advisor to talk with to ambassadors, particular of one so central to US concerns as Russia.

Now, however, we have the actual details that Flynn didn't previously report.  He didn't previously report having asked the Russians, on behalf of Netanyahu, Kushner, and Trump, if Russia would kindly veto the UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel for the settlements.  The background is that Obama had decided to abstain this time, instead of the usual double veto (vetoed from UN Security council law, and also vetoed from history--virtually never reported in the mainstream media--the very many votes taken to censure Israel which are double vetoed by the US).  So this was not Russian influence--it was Israeli influence that was motivating this conversation, trying to get Russia to do something (which, in this case, it failed to do, Russia did not veto the Security Council resolution, and for the first time that I can remember going back 30 years, the UNSC condemned Israel, fwiw).

This first part is of course the part that won't get told as much in the...zionist imperialist...media.

The second part we've heard before, it was once again to ask the Russians for a favor.  The Russians were asked not to retaliate for Obama's final set of sanctions.  Well this may have been somewhat effective as the Russians did indeed withhold retaliation...for a few months.  Once again, this does not seem like a bad thing in itself, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the 2017 election.  But it was part of the deep state effort to pressure Trump to be tough on Russia.  And that was a bad thing that doesn't get talked about in the mainstream media at all.  And, it was effective, before long Trump was back to playing the tough game with Russia, though still the mainstream media was saying it wasn't truly serious or serious enough.  And that's another bad thing, which has little to do with Trump but everything to do with how the deep state works through controlling the media to push for a more imperialist militarist corporatist policy.

Here's a good discussion at Mondoweiss.  One commenter notes that acting on behalf of Israel to undermine still acting President Obama, it could be argued, could be interpreted as treason, as well as violation of the Logan act--which many people feel is unenforceable.  But if Israel influence in government were called out in a McCarthy style hearing, there wouldn't be any elected government officials left.

"Left" Politics in the USA

The Left should be about Equality and Universal Respect, and not Identity Politics, Neoliberalism, or Russiaphobia.

I went to an Our Revolution meeting today and found it quite inspiring.  To get an Our Revolution endorsement, all candidates must agree to working to $15 minimum wage, Medicare for All, and Free College Tuition, the very progressive ideas promoted by Bernie Sanders during his primary campaign.

Bernie Sanders was the best Presidential candidate since Henry Wallace ran on the Progressive Party ticket in 1948.  There was no good reason not to support Sanders in the 2016 Presidential Primary, and then if necessary vote for Hillary Clinton in the General Election in Swing States.  And I'm even more pleased that Sanders created Our Revolution to continue the political revolution needed in the USA.  This may be a force against useless plutocrat imperialist enabling candidates like Clinton, which has almost been the only choice since 1992.

Obama was basically a corporatist imperialist candidate, but he gave us a few good surprises we might not have seen if Clinton had been elected in 2008.  Among those, the Iran Agreement, and not jumping to war with Syria or Russia.  He blocked the Keystone XL, Arctic Drilling, and privatizing Social Security and Medicare.

Needless to say, I can't imagine anything positive coming from Hillary Clinton or organizations that continue to support her.  She should just retire from politics, along with the center right politics she and her husband advanced throughout their careers.  I've recently confirmed the story that Bill Clinton was just about to advance his plan to privatize Social Security when the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke.  Monica deserves our gratitude.

The Democratic Party has only rarely ever shown a spot of leftism with such people as Bernie Sanders (a nominal independent who the DNC made sure couldn't win), Henry Wallace, Huey Long, and occasionally within the lives of FDR, JFK,  LBJ and Hubert Humphrey--who each did a few good things.  It's generally worth the small effort to vote for Democrats when they have the best chance of stopping Republicans anyway, as the Republicans are always far worse.

Since the 1940's the Democratic Party has been essentially run by Cold Warriors, with Feminists and Zionists becoming key activists starting in the 1960's, and by then mostly for the benefit of Plutocrats and Imperialists.  I am defining "Feminists" as those who are extremists or supremacists, and likewise Zionists as Israel Supremacists.  There is no problem with any groups seeking equality through leftism as exemplified by Martin Luther King, but he never was an Identity Politician foremost, but rather a seeker of universal justice and equality for blacks and whites (as well as separation of church and state--which had been the Baptist line until 1979).  Feminists so defined are often attacking freedom of press by attacking all pornography, and attacking male intelligence by dreaming up pseudo ailments such as "objectification," but even when they aren't doing that, they're nearly always begging us to vote for super Imperialists and corporate shills like Hillary Clinton as compared to real progressives like Bernie Sanders simply because we "need" more women in government.  No!!!  When and if Feminists actually produce an identically Left or Lefter candidate...I'll vote for her.  Is that too much to ask???  Until then, Feminism is a divisive strategy which destroys Leftism.  On the other hand, it is true that women on average vote better than men.  Why haven't women made lefter candidates?

There are many strains of socialism.  Bernie represented the Democratic Socialists of America, the best of them, which sustains both leftist ideals and pragmatism.  The other Socialists tend to be useless ideologues.

Big C Communists (CPUSA) have been run by Democratic Party apologists since 1989, but are generally about the same as DSA and often very good people.  Prior to 1989, CPUSA got money from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which wasn't always a good thing--the worst excess caused by that support were the destruction of other left groups in the 20's and 30's.  In 1989, CPUSA broke from CPSU (on principle that Soviet Union dropped the Jobs Guarantee), and before long CPSU didn't exist anymore.  Around 1989, CPUSA also stopped running their own super long shot candidates, and instead backing democrats, which in and of itself was a better approach.  One should vote for the devil as necessary, but not apologize for him or her.  Of course, for a long time CPUSA had turned a blind eye to excesses in the Soviet Union itself.  But that never should have been or actually was a major concern to the USA.  The "Cold War" was generally an excuse to beat up on independent left movements around the world, not an actual war with the Soviet Union.  If the Soviet Union hadn't existed, Cold Warriors would have had to invent it, as they are doing now with Russiaphobia and Putinphobia.  Putin may be a authoritarian crook...but he's not our authoritarian crook and generally not worth a moment's concern in the USA.  Likewise with Russia.  The excess death count has inarguably been higher on our side since the 1940's.  And don't get me started on "influence."  We should follow the wise words of Jesus here and concern ourselves with the log in our own eye.

Little C Communists and Anarchists are run by small time Totalitarians and Ideologues.

Greens in the USA are generally useless spoilers who waste too much time thinking about winning elections for their own super long shot candidates, and much less time actually pushing mainstream candidates to progressive positions.

Helping the Starving Plutocracy

Paul Krugman has written some very illuminating posts recently on how useless the Republican proposed tax cuts would be for stimulating the general economy.  In one of them he compared the usefulness of the cut-cut-cuts to tax cuts for Martians.

Going still further in denouncing our largess for Plutocrats and austerity for everyone else is the even more illuminating George H. Blackford (Economist at Large) who has created a great website debunking the Plutocrat Economics that have become standard Republican arguments since 1980.

The "Sexual Harassment" Circus Rolls On and On

Yesterday NPR featured Gretchen Carlson.  She said nothing except that she had fear.  But what was she afraid of?  What happened?  According to the EEOC, "Sexual Harrasment" could be as little as somebody asking her for a date, saying a "dirty" word, or making a disparaging comment about women in general several times.

Wikipedia says more.  Gretchen Carlson alleged that she was fired for refusing sexual advances from Roger Ailes.  And for that, she got a $20 million settlement.

People can be fired for just about anything.  Most people live in fear of that all the time.  How do we know that she wasn't going to be fired anyway, but Ailes thought if she could do this, she'd be worth keeping.  That seems most likely to be the case--if she was a super duper money maker for FOX, Ailes wouldn't dare to upset her.

If Roger Ailes wants to hire, promote, or retain staffers who provide him sex, what's wrong with that?   He probably needed it, wasn't getting it any other way, and I see no problem with letting him buy it--if he can pay enough to get someone to do it voluntarily--and likely that was happening some of the time--so there must have been some willing to do it for the high incomes that TV personalities make, just not Carlson.

IMO, laws prohibiting sex for hire are oppression.  And they permit people who have been going along with the program for awhile (like O'Reilly's sidekick who stayed with his show more than a decade) to turn around later and litigate for millions.

And laws like the ones against Sexual Harrasment are an even worse form of oppression.  Now on top of every other possible reason for being fired, we could be fired for asking for dates or saying dirty words, and face criminal charges too.

Sexual Harassment became a crime in 1970 under our former czar J Edgar Hoover--a closeted gay prude psychopath who ran the country for decades and couldn't care less if heterosexuals were able to get dates.  Defined so broadly, it could be selectively applied to anyone Hoover wanted to destroy.  Say, perhaps, if they were going to make leftist movies or weren't following the demanded Imperialist/Zionist script on TV.

Meanwhile, companies fearing big lawsuits may well institute zero tolerance bans on asking for dates and saying dirty words.  Such bans might also be selectively enforced, giving the top boss the liberties to push the envelope, whereas others quiver in fear at the thought they might accidentally slip up, even though the law itself pretends not to be directed at occasional remarks.

The effect of media circuses is going to produce a wave of such zero tolerance bans, in fact the media and endless arbiters of good behavior--mostly female--are specifically calling for that.

And then where are lonely guys supposed to go?  Bars?  Church?  Neither provides a particularly good opportunity to get to know other people.   Bars are oriented to selling drinks, so they crank up the music so loud you can't even talk to anyone else.  Church does the same thing by giving few opportunities to put a word in except through participation in endless additional activities...which themselves are structured to make it difficult...so you have to keep going and going to get the rare moment to say something.

Work is really the optimal place in many ways to find compatible others, as people spend more time there than anywhere else except alone at home in front of a TV.  And this is especially true for workaholics who spend nearly all their waking hours at work.

It's no wonder heterosexuality is broken in the USA and western countries generally, except among the extremely religious (and from what I hear, it's not necessarily any easier there...except when the leaders decide to put people together...which only serves the needs of those running the place and not the average seat warmer).

It's no wonder that lonely horny guys bring piles of shotguns up to high floors to shoot the lucky few who have managed to get dates.  This may be especially true if they are trying to change their life by forswearing masturbation and pornography, as cutting those things out may create unresolved sexual tension and sleeplessness.

In the end, this serves the needs of scandal exploiting media too, by creating more interest in their product.

Now this is not to say that Roger Ailes is any kind of hero.  For almost two decades he was responsible for promoting war and the economic destruction of the middle class, helping in the destruction of millions of lives and livelihoods.  It's for that he deserved the greatest condemnation as an evil force.  This so-called Sexual Harassment thing is a big nothing.

On the other hand, Harvey Weinstein is a hero.  He struggled against Eisner and others at Disney to get Fahrenheit 9/11 produced, and it is a great antiwar movie, and one of the most popular documentaries of all time.  And that was only one of dozens of great and thought provoking movies he produced.  He also made stars of many fine actors and directors and helped employ thousands of people.

Producing movies is a tough business, and one can imagine endless struggles over every detail.  One can imagine big egos everywhere, but in the end, the producer has the last word.  So there are going to be endless people who think it didn't go down the right way--a lot of hurt feelings if not ruffled feathers.

But where are the dead bodies?  Where is the blood and injury?  Where are the lost homes and careers?  At most, nothing he ever did created more than offense or hurt feelings.  Meahwhile he was minting stars and making great movies.  So it's no wonder that nobody reported anything to the police.  It isn't because there's some kind of great Hollywood conspiracy.  It's because all that he is accused of now was really no big deal then, or now, except that when the Media whips up a new character assassination, people are sucked in, put a different spin on everything, and begin to remember things differently.  At the time people were "crying" all the way to the bank to cash their million dollar checks, just as Gretchen Carlson was and is now.

Now maybe if you were some kind of super sensitive woman you'd think twice of working for Harvey Weinstein now that the story has been unfolded.  But if you are some kind of super sensitive woman you should probably consider a very different kind of career than being a movie star or TV personality.  That doesn't seem to be applicable among any of the current accusers, especially the most interesting ones.  They seem to be the type who could handle and/or destroy any kind of man, just as they are doing now.

Certainly in the cast selection for every movie there are more people who don't get the role than those who do.  But in many of the current allegations of how people were propositioned in some way by Harvey, many people got the parts anyway.  If so, perhaps what he was really looking for was someone who could turn him down with enough class.  And what better test of how well someone would submit to his authority as producer could there be than someone who showed him a good time in bed?

In the case of one lady who didn't really think she was going to make it in movies anyway, after allegedly turning Harvey down she made a career for herself as professor of sexual "objectification" which is nothing more than a slur against men, and something I find very offensive.  But nice work if you can get it.

Where is the concern about Harvey himself, losing his career, his reputation, his social standing, and his wife, if not freedom itself?

While war criminals and similar mass murderers and destroyers and their enablers remain at the top of our society, given endless prizes and honorariums and bonuses, anybody who can be accused of being sexually forward under certain circumstances is destroyed, at the whim of the war crime enabling media, likely for political purposes not to mention selling papers.  Where is the justice in that???

And meanwhile, the actually destructive exploitation that occurs in in the workplace and elsewhere isn't counted at all--because it doesn't involve sex and wouldn't make the headlines in the endlessly exploitative and yet extremely blinkered media.

And hetersexual relationships become only for the deeply religious, who are assigned partners by their religious elders, who take the risks upon themselves only when total loyalty has been proven.

Orwellian Sexual McCarthyism

Yes doesn't mean Yes Anymore

In the new discourse of Sexual Sensitivity inspired by Second Wave Feminism, Yes doesn't mean Yes anymore.   This doublespeak is clearly at play in one current allegation of harassment, if not all of them.

(*Some hold that Feminism is merely trying to establish equal rights for women.  Of course, equal rights are good.  Even an inclusive form of equal rights which deals with the fact that women uniquely might carry Fetal life--over which full equality necessitates the unique right of women to choose when they wish to carry--since men aren't burdened with that unique set of personal costs at all.   But the simple pursuit of fully considered equal rights for all could more accurately be described as Universalism, which is the term I'm going to use hereafter, and reserve the term Feminism for the various formulations of Female Supremacy advanced by Second Wave Feminism, and some other waves, it's hard to keep track after Second Wave, depending on who was counting.)

If there is any differential of Power, Age, Size, Ugliness, etc., involved, nowadays even an explicit affirmation of consent isn't good enough.  It's not clear where this slippery slope ends.  Is it simply impossible for anyone to engage in any kind of sex related discussion, display, or interaction if there is any difference of any kind?  Same sex sex would seem to be the only kind possible then, is that where this is going?  Would having a lawyer review the acquiescence with the alleged less powerful person beforehand be good enough?

In most areas of life, and especially anything having to do with sex, it's hard, hard, hard to even get explicit consent beforehand.  As Grace Hopper (a Hero of mine) once famously said, "It's easier to get forgiveness than permission."

I know a lot about this from personal experience, as Feminism became Big right at the time I entered something like dating age.  I was able to get just two date-like experiences while I was in high school.  I dared not even touch my date during the first, and during the second--at a theme park--I saw others holding hands, and so I ventured ahead to hold my date's hand without asking permission, and it was fine (as it has been on many other occasions).

But it was not fine on my third date.  I had really been looking forwards to this date, as it was the girl I had a crush on for the entire Freshman year.  We'd spent much time next to each other at the common dinner tables.  I sat there because the seat was nearly always open, and it was my group of friends also.  I thought I sort of knew her, but she was hard to reach otherwise.  Finally, after helping her get her stuff in her car for the first summer vacation, we had a Hug*, which was one of my first, and it felt uniquely comforting.  So then I asked if we could have a date over the summer, and she assented.

(*This was not preauthorized, except perhaps by mutual moves towards it.)

But as we got to our first destination and were walking up the hill, and I reached out to hold her hand.  I had thought by that time that the worst that could happen was that she would say No, but probably wouldn't.

I got more than I bargained for.  I got a three minute scold.  I felt really cut down, but struggled to carry on as if nothing had happened.  The date seemed to end nicely at her mother's house, with her mother eagerly showing me some of the household artwork.  And I promised to call back.  But I just couldn't.

Before the summer was over she sent a nice letter about her trip to England.  And so we found ourselves talking together several times at the beginning of the next year.  And yet there was still hardly a chance for me to get a word in edgewise, and as a mere 18 year old I had not become a very good listener.  And not very good at figuring out what I wanted to say either.  And so I finally gave up trying to talk about me, my feelings, and my wishes, which seemed not to be of importance anyway.  And then I gave up on the idea of ever going anywhere with this young lady also.

About then, a new girl arrived on the my scene, and she was not like that at all.  We met on a Friday and in a whirlwind of togetherness we were in bed together doing sexual stuff--my first ever--by Saturday night.  I had all the sexual experience I had in College and for years after in the year that followed, then it all ended, and I graduated as a very lonely guy.

For several following decades I couldn't figure out what kind of moves were the right ones.  Generally I took a very conservative approach.  I went out on individual dates with women that seemed to go fine, but with no attempt on my part to touch in any way.  After all, I presumed by then, touching isn't really authorized on the first date.  The best thing is to ask permission.  But it made me feel gutless, and each experience had a certain hollow quality.

Around that time, I saw a British sitcom with two guys.  One seemed to take initiatives--touching hands, hugging, kissing--without asking permission.  And this guy seemed like the winner.  The other spinelessly wouldn't do anything without asking my permission.  And he became the loser who didn't get anything.  My older sister watched the movie along with me and she never said a bad word about it.  After it was over, I asked my sister if asking permission isn't the right way to do these things?  And she said no, that's silly, it would nearly always get in the way.

By then I was in my late 20's.  I started taking more initiative, and started having longer and deeper relationships as well.

But just as with my 3rd date, it didn't always go well.  After nearly a decade I got another bad scolding from a lady I had been with many times dancing--and she sent me home.  I called back and give numerous apologies and promises.  That relationship--which was my one and only "dancing" relationship and very important to me as a guy who loves to dance--then continued for awhile and we had some very good times traveling and dancing for several months (but...no touching...and we did touchless dancing).

Then, on a second date with another lady I was crazy about, I tried merely to touch her hand in the theater, as I had done for years with an earlier girlfriend.  She ran out of the theater screaming and dismissed my attempts to apologize.  I attended her only until her brother could pick her up.

That was one of my last attempts for at least another 10 years.  By this time, I didn't even try to push the envelope any more.  No touching, until it's clearly OK.  It took a particularly assertive woman--who just grabbed my hand--and it wasn't even a date merely a chance encounter--to get me going again.

In my current antiquity, I think I would always just take the chance.  If they scold, whatever, it's OK, but I wouldn't go out of my way to call back again.  Though many times I have called back after the scolding too.

But I wonder how it's going to be for young culturally aware youth in the future, after the current regime gives way to an even more Orwellian one.

Rape isn't necessarily Rape

A similar doublespeak has arisen around other sexual allegations such as Rape.

In the case of Julian Assange, for example, the alleged Rape simply allegedly involved him not following the correct sexually protective protocol.

The allegation is this: Julian offered to use a condom he had obtained.  The Swedish woman told him she did not want him to use any condom.  Julian went ahead and did as she had asked...no condom.

But Swedish law requires the condom ALWAYS to be used in such encounters, even if the woman says No.

Now you might think an allegation like this would be laughed out of court.  And, in fact, the charges were dismissed by the first court.  But reinstated on repeal, where higher powers might have considerable influence.

To anyone actually reading beyond the highly charged (but increasingly meaningless) term of Rape, this looks to be sting operation which was designed to catch Assange and send him to the USA, just as he has always claimed.

Leaving aside Assange's accusers, who were almost certainly agents or well managed assets themselves, endless sympathy is aroused for the alleged victims worldwide merely by the use of the word Rape, not to mention all the other now very generously defined Sex crimes, including Sexual Assault.  Assault doesn't necessarily even involve touching, only the threat or suggesting of touching.
In principle, something as simple as a male thrusting his hips into space could be considered sexual assault.  Or of course masturbation.  These do not seem like crimes to me.  If something is interesting, you can watch, if something is repulsive, you can turn the other way.

Women are endlessly used as useful idiots in the crushing of leftist leaders of all kinds by throwing around these loaded words.

There are some similarities in one of the most famous rape allegations of all time, involving the leftist producer Roman Polanski.  Everything Polanski did had full prior consent of the alleged victim.  He had the Yes which he thought meant Yes.  No one disputed this, the issue at hand was that the young lady was beneath the age of consent.

The original judge allowed Polanski to plead guilty to the charge I have just described, and since he was not considered a danger to society or likely to try to have sex with a minor again, he was slated to be released at the end of a few months of treatment.  However the treatment didn't go well, Polanski alleged he was being sexually abused.  And then he got word that a superior judge was going to vacate his plea bargain.  Rather than face the possibility of continuing sex abuse in incarceration for years, Polanski fled the country.

This episode also looks very much like a sting operation which was targeted at Polanski because of his genius at creating evocative movies like Chinatown which show the potential of corruption below the surface of things.

Even if judicial double dealing had not been involved, I find the very notion of an Age of Consent in a sexually capable person--as Polanski's subject clearly was--to be a religious concept which has no place in universal criminal law.  In earlier times, and in some societies still, women are married at very young ages.  Not allowing young men and women to make such decisions for themselves--is religious tyranny.  We must keep the young locked up for two decades to be sure they get the full religious indoctrination.

Interestingly, with enough work, a young person can get themselves emancipated from their parents at a quite young age.  One of Weinstein's chief accusers got herself emancipated from her parents at 15, and then spent years on her own hanging around with punk rockers before becoming a star in horror movies.

So if someone can do that, why can't they also agree to having sex with a genteel movie director who might be able to make them a star?  I can imagine many girls would have loved to have the chance, at least prior to the endless smearing of Polanski that has occurred ever since.  He has always seemed like nothing less than a perfect gentleman to me, as well as a genius and someone who escaped a Nazi death camp in Poland.

And, whose beautiful pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, was murdered by the gang of Charles Manson, in part of an earlier deep state operation.

Those murders were actually conspiracy going all the way back to J Edgar Hoover, who was in full control of Cointelpro at the time.  Manson got his start with LSD in the infamous MK Ultra program, who goal was to develop mind control methods to create manchurian murderers.  Cointelpro was the companion FBI program which had connections with MK Ultra.

Hoover wanted Sharon Tate murdered because she had witnessed the Robert Kennedy assassination in Los Angeles a few months beforehand, and she knew the story involving the hapless Sirhan Sirhan was a load of crap.  Something else had actually gone down, and she was sharing the evidence with her closest friends--on the very night of the infamous murders.  As well as the murders going down, various key bits of evidence Tate possessed disappeared that night.

Hoover also didn't like to see leftists like Polanski and Tate having the power to do their own thing in Hollywood, in open defiance of the regular CIA/FBI controls.  So he had multiple motives to set up the murder.

Hoover himself had been deeply involved in the murders of JFK, Martin Luther King, and RFK.  He had a lot to hide, but did an exceptionally good job of covering his trail.  Manson didn't get his drugs from the well known purveyor Bear.  He had a super special ratline that went all the way back to J Edgar Hoover, and also came with special instructions.

Seeing the BS trial run by Bugliosi, Polanksi may not have understood the full extent of what happened, but he knew the LAPD and their associates could not be trusted with anything...which was the idea that finally got made into the movie Chinatown (which is my personal favorite movie of all time).

Surprise, surprise, we were not to see a JFK assassination movie until Oliver Stone took a crack at it, decades after the Tate murders.  And no RFK conspiracy movie now, or likely ever.

So, if two of the more high profile allegations of Rape of all time are just crap, and part of deep state operations, what can we expect in the even more sexually Sensitive society of today, where the deep state has simultaneously been busy creating another new Russian McCarthyism?

Not only does the drama distract from the real news, it empowers elite Feminist opinion makers to ever more thoroughly destroy middle class heterosexuality.  Which might itself have function in creating a lot more mercenaries to take part in domestic and international mass murder operations to come.

To prevent this endless slippery slope toward armageddon, sexual and otherwise, I'd try to make all crimes described universally, also recognizing that heterosexually generally requires males to be initators*, so permits some discretion, basically action until noncompliant resistance, or the third No.

So, there can be a crime for Harassment, but not Sexual Harassment, because the latter is a loaded term which prioritizes penalizing sexual words and potentially pro sexual activities.  All forms of harassment should be seen as equal, judged on the basis of objective harms or threats of harms.

Likewise with Assault.  And I'd say assault must involve deliberately painful touching or the threat of same, or worse.  Battery should only be when assault causes physical injury.

Rape should be that when sexual penetration is at least started, and then only when the third No is disregarded, or overwheming force, or the threat of overwheming force, is applied.

(*This, and similar rights to buy pornography, are the needed counterpoint to women having the right to choose to carry a fetus or not.  Women have fetus, men have penis.  I've talked to women who make more hardcore pornography than I'd ever like, and they say they are not abused through their work, that's just the claim of antisex prudes and manipulators.  I'm fine with the production of pornography being regulated so as not to include harassment, assault, battery, or worse.)

Clarence Thomas

Whatever his meritoriousness at being selected by GHW Bush to be on the Supreme Court, (Bush needed a conservative black to replace the famous black liberal Justice...and preferably one with no paper trail as that had led to the disapproval of an earlier attempted appointment...so who better than Thomas with one year on the bench)  being a terrible sex harrasser does not seem to be one of his faults.

Most of what was described by Anita Hill was partly Thomas clumsily trying to get a date, and then even more clumsily denouncing female homosexuality (using the metaphor of 'sex between humans and barnyard animals' to describe female on female penetration).  Him raising these points may have some offensive, but hardly seem meritorious to sue for criminal or civil sanctions.

Even after having been 'harrassed' and deciding to leave Washington DC (who would want to live there in the first place) Anita was fine with having Thomas drive her to the airport, then and on a later visit.

Leaving the government anyway, she could have had her day in court had she wanted to.  But she even said at her government hearing, it was not about getting at Thomas personally then or now, it was merely that she did not believe him to be Supreme Court Justice material.

Roy Moore

Alleged to have made a date with a 14 year old girl, and then on that date, pushed if not forced her hand to genitals.  Also alleged to have secretly dated other teenage girls (though above the Alabama Age of Consent which is 16) which he has not denied, while himself being a 28 year old District Attorney.

It does test the social libertarian idea that there is no need for an Age of Consent.

Frankly, however, I don't consider the assault aspect of this (so long as there is no injury, etc)  as important as another crime.  In fact probably better NOT to make too much of the assault aspect, to turn it into a phobia for the youngster, who probably already got the lesson.  And a little bit of forward pressure, among consenting adults, may be a good thing.

The real crime is Breach of Trust.

Parents should be able to trust people in a variety of public (and similar private) capacities with their children.  Including law enforcement, detention (a big area of crime by many reports), other government services, education, clergy, and health care providers.

They may not need to axiomatically trust the punk rockers on the other side of the tracks regardless of what they say ("but mam, we're certified, licensed and bonded...you can trust us to make your daughter a rock star...").

But they should be able to trust that nice deputy District Attorney.  In fact, they may have no other choice.

People in such capacities should not be fraternizing with minors at all.  That is part of the deal to get such work.  I suspect this is already universally spelled out in relevant employment contracts.

This might even not need to be a crime as such.  Simply cause for suspension, transfer, termination of employment, disqualification, or  not being elected to anything again, depending on risk and occurrences.  And likewise for higher ups who ignore such things.

Parody

Within the Redskin, ZS distribution center of Amalgamated Superbomb, in the Chieftan Superior's office:

"Yes, I'm sorry Mr. Foobar about the death of your wife.  But you know, if we spent $1,000 on a fence around the reactor core, we wouldn't be able to compete with the Vietnamese."

"But, how am I going to put food on the table now?"

"I saw that 12 year old son of yours at the last mandatory company picnic.  He looks a bit spindly, but he could probably handle the 120 pound loads that your wife used to.  Or at least work up to it, after just a few strains and gashes."

"I'll send him right over now.  He doesn't need to be in school anymore, that's just communist propaganda."

TV blaring, "Today, just minutes before the President of Foobaria was assasinated, a wedding and funeral march of 200 people was obliterated by an accidental explosion of a depleted uranium cluster bomb with a defective trigger made by Amalgamated..."

Chieftan Superior slamming the phone.

"Pighead, how many times have I told you we don't watch that pinko Cat News.  Switch it over to Dog News."

"But, I thought you might want to hear this, your highness.  This looks like it's going to be good for business."

"You got me there, Shithead.  But enough's enough.  Change it now.  Those long words give me a headache."

A few seconds later, over in the Accounting offices, where the temperature is 39 degrees with 5 percent humidity, but everyone must still follow the summertime dress code--it is after all 120 degrees outside.

"You know, Ms Faithful, that you must reach at least Level 3 if you expect to keep your job in this department.  We're having a Zwarkwon study group this weekend from 8am to midnight on Saturday and Sunday.  After that, you'd be sure to understand the Way of the Illuminated Fetus.  At least enough to get to Level 3 and carve a Z into your own forehead.  And then you'd be able to participate in our daily body part gift exchange.  That's how people get ahead around here.  Or at least keep from being kicked behind."

"I was going to drive my son to College.  He starts his first year at 1am on Monday morning with the mass drilling.  But I'm sure he can hitch a ride.  He probably won't hear a bad word.  That sort of thing just doesn't happen anymore.  Someone might shoot him, but that would actually save us a lot of money."

Meanwhile, back in the Chieftan Superior's office.

"P...., we don't use that word around here, tell me what actually happened?"

"Well, that's what Mrs. Foobar said, just after I slipped on an oil spot and knocked her into the reactor."

"We will have to settle this one.  Do you think $15 million will be enough to keep Ms Righteous quiet about hearing that word.  We don't want anyone getting the idea there might be Sexual Harrasment here!"

"She's asking for $16 million."

"OK, get her $32 million, I think we'll be able to get that from the Pension Fund.  There won't be anyone living to retirement age here anyway."

******** Epilogue

Since action produces reaction, extremism tends always to backfire before long.  You could say that extremism eats its own future.  This is the common knowledge of provocateurs.

Feminism did not grow out of Liberalism, but by the late 1970's was becoming the key--even defining--aspect of it.  As a Liberal, one dared not criticize Feminism, and Feminism redefined the terms of liberal thinking generally.  Once again this shows the power that women denied they had.

The short term consequences were a a backlash against liberalism--a rise in a new deep seated cultural reactionaryism.  First Reagan, then Trump.

If Trump was the outcome of 1960's Feminism, what can be expected of the Feminist Crusades which we are seeing in 2017?

I think what we are seeing is the continuing of a process which long ago created the frequently misogynist traditional societies of the middle and far east.  The modern west is a far younger culture, which is why it is only happening here now.

This happens in several ways.  For those who never bought into feminism, such as Christian Conservatives and other cultural reactionaries, it is rendered harmless.  The Teflon Effect.

Meanwhile, those men who had formerly declared themselves Feminist are destroyed are destroyed by it.  Those like Harvey Weinstein, who produced films on sexual harassment and donated funds for a feminist academic center.  I don't think this was phony, I think he is an actual Liberal, for what it's worth, and his accusers not so liberal.  Back in the day the current acusers claimed to have zero power against his being all powerful...but how is it now a few words by a few people can bring down an illustrious career that took decades to establish?  And without judge or jury?

Then, amidst the backlash against liberalism, it ultimately  becomes more and more useful to segregate men and women, as was the common practice before the 1960's.  This is the natural protective response of institutions.

With greater separation, greater inequality returns.   This is the end of Liberalism, and it can be seen all over.

What is usually not recognized by Feminists is the basic fact that women ultimately have greater, not lesser, power in civil societies (those not dominated by violence).  If women choose to use that power selfishly, the natural response of society is to constrain institutionally by harsher and harsher means.

Some might actually rejoice in this process for the endpoint I am imagining--a highly female controlling society like "fundamentalist" Islam.  I am not one of them.  I value both freedom and equality, and justice.  Freedom gives toleration but also demands tolerance.

There is a far deeper truth in the saying "Blessed are the meek" than is usually understood.  Those who are powerful and wise retain that power by being meek.  To step ahead is to fall over.  One must always remain on the center of the line of progress.

It is at this deepest level that Feminism is just like Zionism, as both are about stepping ahead, and taking more than is given, for a mere mask--an Identity.  Behind the masks, we are all the same.

RT has Chris Hedges!

RT has the following top shelf hosts, each one better than ANYONE on US mainstream media:

Chris Hedges
Ed Shultz
Thom Hartmann
Larry King
Mike Papantonio

I discovered this reading the comments on this article, also very worth reading, about how the New York Times has been trying to smear RT, when it is RT that has the story right, and the Times just ignores the actual story, just shouting "Russia!" like they have for decades.

I can still watch any of the above by going to YouTube and searching.  For example:

Chris Hedges RT

Hopefully there will not be the kind of censorship the Times wants any time soon.


Yves Smith points out that RT has the following guests (among many others):

Erin Brockovich
Stephen Hawking
Harrison Ford
Robert Kennedy, Jr
Michele Obama
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Dick Cheney
Oprah Winfrey
John Krakauer
Dan Rather
Malcolm Gladwell
Yves Smith

And it's not merely the Corporatist/Militarist/Plutocratist/Zionist New York Times that has been bashing them, but also a Soros supported think tank called European Values.

In fact they published a list of 2327 major political figures who have appeared on RT, including

Bernie Sanders
Jill Stein
Ralph Nader
Ron Paul
Jeremy Corbyn
Steve Keen
Michael Hudson
Julian Assange
Noam Chomsky
Steve Wozniak

And of course, the war mongering think tank funded by Soros is declaring them all as 'useful idiots' undermining Western Democracy.

Democracy?  I hope somebody gets to try it some time.

It looks to me that RT is definitely the channel to watch!

Links

The truth behind the "Russia Elections Hacking" narrative.

The Deep State Marches on: The truth about Trump and JFK.

The Vietnam War and the Phoenix Program: A computerized genocide.

The unraveleling of American/Russian relations.

"Liberation" as dependency on Washington.

Iran does NOT have a nuclear weapons program, so why does media keep saying so.

The death of Israeli "citizenship."

The stern EU words on the US and the JPCOA.

Trump ignores his own Advisors on Iran, instead follows the Zionist money of Adelson, Marcus, and Singer.

"Anti-Semitism"

[As with the essay that was drafted shortly afterwards, on an ostensibly very different topic but which shares some interesting connections, this is a currently a work in progress which needs major editing.  It may take quite awhile to finish.  I find it peculiarly difficult to work on, so progress is slow.  So I apologize in advance.  However, I find I must do this editing on an already public document because otherwise I wouldn't be able to get myself to write it at all, and I feel the topic is extremely important, both by itself, and together with the following essay.]

Zionists in Europe, the UK, and the USA are pushing for laws that define anti-semitism as including criticism of the State of Israel and the Israel Lobby, and punish people for those kinds of political speech.  This is worse than merely outrageous.  It is Orwellian.

In the USA, a schoolteacher in Kansas has lost her teaching contract because she is a member of the Mennonite church, which has officially endorsed BDS, a boycott of goods from Israel and/or the Palestinian territories illegally occupied by Israel.  She is currently being defended by the ACLU.  In Texas, flood repair contractors must sign a form declaring that they are not participating in BDS in order to receive state relief funds.  This is quite ironic for a country which claims to be "free" and whose founding was partly motivated by the desire to escape from forced trade.

In the UK, this has resulted in the expulsion of a Jewish mathematics and philosophy professor, Moshe Machover, from the UK Labour Party.  Ironically the specific reason for his dismissal was that he had written an article titled "Anti-Zionism does not equal Anti-Semitism" for a publication of the Labour Party Marxists group.  Machover himself was born and raised in Israel.

Anti-Zionism was the mainstream position of nearly all Jews before the holocaust, as well as being the Orthodox view according to the Jewish Torah and Talmud and all of the oral and written Jewish tradition as affirmed by all rabbis.  There are many different Jewish groups which continue to hold that view to this day.  One group which is very visible and active is Neturei Karta.  I am proud and happy to be able to contribute to them (as a fellow of good will primarily).  It warmed my heart to get a nice blessing from one of their Orthodox rabbis.  They demonstrate frequently in their Orthodox suits (they are Orthodox, and they do not like being described as Ultra Orthodox--as they often are--but nobody doubts they are Jews) carrying signs saying things such as:


Authentic Rabbis have always opposed Zionism and the State of "Israel"

Zionism and Judaism are Extreme Opposites

Peaceful Dismantling of the Zionist State Is the REAL SOLUTION

Zionists Have No Right to Rule Over ANY PART of the HOLY LAND

Judaism rejects the Zionist state and condemns its CRIMINAL SIEGE & OCCUPATION


 Neturei Karta descibes their history as follows:

The group was founded in Jerusalem, Palestine in 1938, splitting off from Agudas Yisroel. Agudas Yisroel was established in 1912 for the purpose of fighting Zionism. Gradually lured by money and honor they sold out to the "Golden-Calf" (see Exodus, XXXII) of Zionism. Those who wanted to maintain their faith and continue the struggle against Zionism, dissociated themselves from Agudas Yisroel and associated parties.

Counting the people in their communities and synagogues (they specifically list 4 synagogues and say there are others) Neturei Karta say they number about 5000.  But also that Jews who think and believe just like them number in the hundreds of thousands.

This is not at all hard to believe seeing the demonstrations by anti-Zionist Jews in Britain and Israel itself, with 60,000 anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews gathered in huge stadiums within Israel, as shown by an umbrella organization of anti-Zionist Jews, IVJ, who may have better pictures of  mass demonstrations of 20,000 or more anti-Zionist Jews which are happening in places like New York State every year if not every month.   Of course you don't see these things in the Zionist US Media.

It might have been IVJ who organized a workshop I attended at the US Social Forum in 2007 which was riveting and made fundamental changes in my thinking.  Since then, I'm sure the ideas of anti-Zionism have only spread further among Jews and others.

Here's another website, and one of their videos shows 20,000 Anti-Zionist Othrodox Jews at a New York State stadium in 2017.  A rabbi interviewed says they have speakers and guest representing Anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews from Canada, Europe, South Africa, and around the world.  What has recently galvanized  Orthodox Jews is that the Israeli government has decided that Orthodox Jews are required to serve in the IDF like all other Jews in Israel, and dragging Orthodox Jews out of their homes in the middle of the night (they show the pictures), beating themup and hauling them to prison for refusing the draft.  Not just draftees are hauled away...family members are dragged away first for standing in the way (I've seen one picture of an old lady being dragged away).  But the draftees who refuse are not just dragged away and put in jail for a few days...they are given prison sentences.

Orthodox Jews like this say they should not be forced to fight for a state that should not exist according to the Torah.  They do not recognize the State of Israel and they say it is NOT a Jewish state, but a Zionist state, and Zionism is the extreme opposite of Judaism.  They say they were living in Palestine (and around the world) for hundreds of years in peace with their Palestinian neighbors until the Zionist terrorists took control and started killing both them and the Palestinians who stood in their way.

The more I look the more events like this I find.  I'm convinced there are indeed hundreds of thousands of Anti-Zionist Jews, if not more.  And they are not just sitting at home, they appear to be out there organizing and demonstrating far more than most.  And they do not submit to Zionist authorities, they resist them all they can.  Anti-Zionist Orthodox are

Here is a 90 minute lecture by Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro contrasting Judaism with Zionism.  The aim of Zionism, he explains, was to destroy Torah Judaism--a religion of peace, celebration, and tolerant coexistence--and replace it with a militaristic identity-based nationalism.  Hertzl did not invent Zionism. Zionism had been invented centuries beforehand by Christians.  What Hertzl did was to popularize Zionism among Jews, in total opposition opposition to what rabbis of the time were saying.  (Zionism did not win over many Jews or Rabbis until the Holocaust.)  Rabbi Shapiro argues well that Zionism did not originate as a reaction to anti-semitism, nor is it the correct response to anti-semitism, nor is it a wise approach to providing Jews safe haven.  He argues that Zionism was openly understood by its founders to make Jews more like the very people they feared most.  Jewish Zionism was seen by its founders as a plan to cure Judaism and its tendency to make Jews physically weak and scholarly rather than muscular and prideful.  Ultimately the result of Zionism is to increase anti-semitism around the world (every time Israel engages in some brutal act, anti-semitism rises everywhere) and make Jews everywhere less safe, as well as Israel being about the least safe place for Jews to be in the first place.  I think Rabbi Shapiro's presentations are well worth watching and wonderful with a few caveats that aren't relevant to this essay but which I'll address later.

Here's a wonderful debate between Rabbi Shapiro and Gilad Atzmon.  Atzmon lived in Israel as a Jew and became so disgusted with the entire operation that he came to the USA and renounced his Judaism.  He makes the point (to which Rabbi Shapiro silently concurs) that "we agree that Zionism itself is anti-semitism."

So, are all these Jewish Anti-Zionists "anti-semitic" ?  Seeing all this, it does appear to be the other way around.

Now this all may seem nutty and inconsequential now.  Anti-Zionists are only a small (but growing) fraction of Jews.  Clearly Zionism has the much greater footprint among those commonly accepted as Jews.  This is not likely to change soon.  Nor does Israel seem to be crumbling under pressure from its neighbors* or "enemies," instead it is raising and reinforcing the Citadel further all the time--and some Zionists have even been talking about a Greater Land of Israel extending not merely to the Jordan but to the Euphrates.  While some neighbors used to be among Israel's enemies--as evidenced by the wars of 1967 and 1973--since then Israel and its imperial partner the USA have cultivated client-state relationships with Israel's neighbors, including Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia.  Others such have been damaged or weakened by US/Israeli covert and overt aggression for decades and are in no position now to challenge Israel for the forseeable future...not to mention the USA.

But I look at the big picture and the long view.  I believe that by 2300, or even 2100, it will not seem so nutty.  Many things are virtually certain to change by then:

1) The abandonment if not collapse of the Empire of the USA.

2) At least 3 degrees of Global Heating, if not 6.  This might sound small, but in fact the effects are huge and dramatic.  (See the book "Six Degrees.")  Even with the fraction of a degree we are seeing so far...the effects are starting to look fairly dramatic.

The Southern Levant is virtually certain to be even more like a desert than it is now.  This will be a test of who the real desert semites are.  And a test of who can live in peace with their neighbors without the use of force.  I believe that people who are more largely European or Asian won't like it in the southern Levant any more.  The people who really are the desert people will still find the Southern Levant to be their place, even more uniquely.  This may include a few Jews.  I forsee return to the racial distribution of about 1900, if not 1800.

Meanwhile, the best course of action is not to depend on militarism now and in the future to maintain security, but on the good will of one's neighbors, from across the street to the other side of the world. Empires rise and fall.

The best that Zionist Jews (as well as others) can hope for, in the long run, is the peaceful dismantlement of the Zionist state, and the quick restoration of the good will of most others through re-committing themselves to the well being of others, the true lesson of Judaism (as well as Christianity and most other religions, and true leftist atheism).  The sooner this is started, the better.

In these regards, I see the true Jewish tradition, as upheld by the Neturei Karta,  as being quite prophetic.  Remarkably so.  Though I do take issue with the categorical imperative to "Be Fruitful and Multiply."  That can't hold up in the long run, though it may have some further use in the not so distant future.  I also wouldn't condemn the Enlightenment completely, but it's clear already it was full of thorns as well as rose-- and followers of the Enlightenment need to take care never to think in only self-interested terms.


*****

Machover spelled out the historical facts that Hertzl himself thought anti-semitic regimes would be allies in the Zionist cause, and for this reason Zionists of the time welcomed the early Nazi policies including the Nuremburg laws of 1935, before the Nazis switched to a policy of extermination.

After WWII, the worst atrocities of the Nazis became the ultimate justification for Zionism, as an eternal get-out-of-jail-free-and-label-others-as-the-monsters card through which the newly US owned and operated world could ignore the forcible expulsion of other peoples (also mostly semitic) from the newly claimed State of Israel.  This has continued without significant change, and is now in its deep stage having clearly become Genocide itself.  While on-the-street Israelis are openly calling for the Final Solution for Palestinians--nothing new, ever since Golda Meier defined the Palestinians into non-existence or long before and I've heard similar sentiments from Zionists ever since 1967, and recently the West Bank having been annexed complete by official political statements now (of the sort "we are never going to allow...")--and where for a long the original people have had no right to property, privacy or life, and Gaza getting a periodic Mowing the Lawn killing tens of thousands and terrorizing all--while always being a prison from which no travel or exchange is possible except what little is allowed by the Israeli gatekeepers and their police state allies.  The is not merely "Apartheid"--the Blacks in South Aftrica were not being systematically driven from the country they were doing the work.  In Israel--there is no alternative to no alternative for "Palestinians"--the people who occupied the country and to whom it had been promised before it was taken from them by force in the late 1940's.

Palestinians suffer mightily while their country has been demolished to make way for rich whiter people seeking refuge from previous enemies who are now legally and traditionally bound not to be anti-semitic--threatening to be to the point of criticizing any of their actions.  The US and the UK are both excellent places for Jews, who are the single richest ethnic group in the USA--a fact rarely mentioned.   Meanwhile, wars and destructions intended to shore up Imperial control of the Middle East (for Empire and Israel, or Israel and Empire, or something like that) have been enormously destructive and costly and unending.  This does not look like something that goes on well forever.  It is a matter of Imperial Patience, or perhaps Imperial Succession.  I will go on saying that at best Zionism was a big mistake, Diaspora was and remains the better choice for most Jews, the ultimately safer choice, as well as being the most ethical choice without extreme devotion to Palestinian rights or sovereignty (which is now legally prohibited by that "Democratic" but also "Jewish" state of Israel---you could be denied entry or immediately deported for calling for BDS).

To add to the deep ironies, the most prominent arbiter of the new anti-semitic thought crimes is Johnathan Freedland, a senior columnist at the Guardian and the Jewish Chronicle, who is himself a winner of the Orwell Award.  (I had to look it up, and was disappointed to find that the Orwell Award was not some kind of sarcastic anti-Award.  Or maybe it is, and they're simply not upfront about it.  Freedland won apparently for a series of articles on different topics, which look a bit edgy, but also try to mix left and conservative memes for a kind of bogus centrism.  In an oped about Thatcher's passing, he contrasted his left center feeling that Thatcher should merely not be specially blessed to the "idiots" who wrote "the bitch is dead."  Count me with the latter.)  I learned long ago not to completely trust the Guardian.  They seem to have a particular thing against real leftism--as somewhat represented by Corbyn whom the Guardian is always smearing with one hatchet job or another--and instead pushing for neoliberalism and identity politics and Zionism.  Yes, perhaps the Guardian is not quite as bad as the New York Times, but with those same tendencies take further, and with the Times being in addition the one of the best examples of a pro-War propaganda machines in history, with the latest red scare about "Russians manipulating our Elections!" being as bogus and counter contextual as previous examples going back to at least the bombing of the US Maine, and designed deliberately to promote militaristic and Zionistic ends.  The whole "Russians!" thing is daily debunked by the ultimate investigative reporter Robert Parry at Consortium News, to this day.  Every knows which foreign government more far more than any other manipulates the US government,:Israel and it's lobbyists mostly, and massively.  It's likely they have a very outsized effect on elections also, from their millions in contributions and dedicated mobilization.  Meanwhile the NYTimes hyperventilates about how alledgedly a few Russians bought Puppy ads for some reason costing a few thousand dollars cash in all, having no likely impact, but potentially making a pretext for war if detected, something chessmaster Putin would be certain to never do.

Well despite this Orwellian counter reaction by some people in high places in the media and politics, the main action, as Machover says, is the international world of people pulling away from a knee jerk lock step alignment with the hawkish needs of Zionists.  This is especially notable with those under 30, even among Jews, perhaps especially among Jews.  (Somehow never my somewhat more elderly friends.  Not in 60 years of associating with mostly jews from my Southern California semi elite background, has one of my own Jewish friends been or become anti-Zionist.  But I see Jewish anti-Zionists to be the majorities of young jews in radical conferences.  Before WWII, the majority of jews and most Rabbis was anti-Zionist, there was a long Talmudic tradition of opposing a new State of Israeli until certain conditions were met.)  Many Orthodox Jews today refuse to accept the legitimacy of Israel and say the best solution is for it to be peacefully dismantled.

But meanwhile, UK courts finally cleared for release and undercover investigation by Al Jazeera into the Israeli Lobby and it's influence in the UK.  Among the findings were how Zionists in the Labour Party did actually try to undermine Corbyn.  The judge decided against the claims that criticism of Israel or the Israeli lobby would constitute anti-semitism.

Hopefully we will see the results of a similar documentary made undercover within the US Israeli Lobby, the existence of which was subsequently made known.

The most authoritative account of the way the Israeli Lobby and its Zionist friends have manipulated US foreign policy to their own ends is a book by two highly respected and prominent Jewish scholars, Mearsheimer and Walt, in their book aptly titled, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.

But I admire the straightforwardness of one commenter who quotes this from another website (from a prolific Jewish scholar in the USA):

Israeli power over the making and implementing of US Middle East policy has led to the US invasions of Iraq, Syria and Libya; the current economic boycott and blockade of Iran; the breakup of Sudan; and the bombing of Somalia.

We could quibble that it's not just Israel and it's armies of lobbyists and friends including officials and people in "think tanks".  There are cold war imperialists who might not care at all for Israel itself except as a projection point for US power...for which all of the above might also make sense.  I see as an even confluence of forces, Zionist and Imperialist, with each person and organization having some combination.  However, the Zionist part is a major part, and why should Zionists be running US Foreign Policy ???  See all the harmful things it has gotten us into.  And now, war with the most successful independent country in the middle east, Iran???

The basic problem with Zionism is not Judaism.  Judaism is a fine religion, and Jews are fine people.  The problem is ethnic nationalism.  Ethnic nationalism is toxic wherever it arises.  It rots the mind and soul.

Once ethnic nationalism sets in, and there are "others" to move outside the perimeter of social welfare, serious ethical and moral problems begin to arise.

Judaism itself teaches the importance of treating "the other" better than family.  That is the true lesson of Sodom.  It was for disrespecting the laws of hospitality that Sodom was consumed by fire and brimstone.

Historical Justice, Zionists, and BDS

A Zionist is someone for whom the creation of a "Jewish State" is the most important historical imperative, ahead of such concerns as peace, justice, and freedom.  Jews are not necessarily Zionists nor are Zionists necessarily Jews.  Zionists like to say that "Israel has a right to exist."

As Noam Chomsky says, the concept that any state has a "Right to Exist" itself did not exist until Zionists invented it to silence their critics.  Noam Chomsky is a Jew who lived in Israel early in his life.  He actually does believe that there should be an Israel, but he is not a Zionist.  He believes that there should be an Israel which respects international laws and universal principles, and co-exists with an adjacent Palestinian state along the internationally agreed borders.  Norman Finkelstein believes that also.  I agree with them that if this option were actually attainable, it probably ought to be agreed to, as the best deal that might be imagined in a century or so.

But many Jews and other people, including most BDS supporters and "leadership", believe that this is not possible anymore, if it ever was, and so what is actually needed is a single state within the combined borders of Israel and Palestine which has fully equal rights for Palestinians and Jews, including the right of all Palestinians to return and live with fully equal rights in their homeland.  This is much closer to what seems like justice.  It is sometimes claim that Zionists would fight this to the bitter end, perhaps the last person standing, as it represents the end of the dream of a Jewish racist supremacist state.

I don't see how it is necessary to agree completely.  The BDS tactics are available to anyone, regardless of whether they agree with the ultimate aim of BDS "leadership."  In fact it's not exactly clear that BDS has a centralized leadership as such.  There does not appear to be a "BDS Organization" one can actually join.  The BDS website looks for sympathetic organizations close to where you live.  BDS is primarily just a tactic, and the tactic really just involves Boycott and Divestment now, to achieve peace and greater justice than we have now, nothing else in particular, since everything else is subject to negotiation by representatives of the actual parties involved.

The Creation of Israel was a Historic Injustice

I've seen a great video of Anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews protesting Israel on Balfour Day in London.  There seemed to be hundreds of Orthodox Jews in the protest.  They were only one set of many protestors totaling tens of thousands.

The Orthodox Rabbi speaking soft-pedaled the guilt of the British for the Balfour Declaration, saying that the British did not intend to create a Jewish State, rather only to allow a limited number of Jews to settle.  It was the Zionists who defied the British to make the Zionist State.

There is much truth to this.  The Balfour Declaration says nothing about a Jewish State, only a Jewish Homeland.  A clause in the Declaration purported that no Palestinian rights would be abridged.  However, the Declaration was actually a letter to Lord Rothschild, a key Zionist, who of course was interested in a Jewish State, and Balfour had no standing to even allow for a Jewish Homeland, which itself was an abridgement of the rights of the occupants of Palestine to self determination.

Misterioso at Mondoweiss wrote an excellent summary in a discussion of other groups at the Balfour Day protest in London.  He spells out the injustice of the Declaration itself, as well as the Partition Plan decades later.  However this summary also makes clear that Britain many times thereafter made it clear that they had no intention of allowing for a Jewish state:

Britain’s illegal (i.e, in violation of the well established legal maxim, “nemo dat quod non habet” – nobody can give what he does not possess) Balfour Declaration laid the foundation for the eventual dispossession and expulsion of Palestine’s indigenous Arab Muslim and Christian inhabitants. To quote Chaim Weizmann, “the Balfour Declaration of 1917 was built on air.” 

The King-Crane Commission made it clear where it stood regarding the Zionist’s historical claim to Palestine: “…the initial claim, often submitted by Zionist representatives, that they have a `right’ to Palestine, based on an occupation of two thousand years ago, can hardly be seriously considered.” (“The American King-Crane Commission of Inquiry, 1919” quoted in From Haven to Conquest, p. 217, edited by Harvard Professor Walid Khalidi) Or as Lord Sydenham stated before the British House of Lords on 21 June 1922: “If we are going to admit claims on conquest thousands of years ago, the whole world will have to be turned upside down.” (Hansard) 

The Balfour Declaration was also opposed by Gertrude Bell, one of the era’s greatest Arabists, a colleague of T.E. Lawrence and a member of British intelligence in Cairo. Realizing what it could lead to, she wrote the British cabinet of PM Lloyd George advising it that “an independent Jewish Palestine” was impractical because “[Palestine]…is not Jewish; ” the native population would not “accept Jewish authority…. Jerusalem is equally sacred to three faiths and should not be put under the exclusive control of any one….” (Sanders, The High Walls of Jerusalem, p. 585) 

By incorporating the Balfour Declaration the 1922 League of Nations British Class A mandate for Palestine did facilitate Jewish immigration to “secure the establishment of the Jewish National Home,” but it did not call for the creation of a sovereign Jewish state or homeland in Palestine or any form of partition. This was made very clear in the Churchill Memorandum (1 July 1922) regarding the British Mandate: “[T]he status of all citizens of Palestine in the eyes of the law shall be Palestinian, and it has never been intended that they, or any section of them, should possess any other juridical status.”
Furthermore, regarding the British Mandate, as approved by the Council of the League of Nations, the British government declared: “His Majesty’s Government therefore now declare unequivocally that it is not part of their policy that Palestine should become a Jewish State.” (Command Paper, 1922) 

In May 1939, the British government issued the MacDonald White Paper, which in accordance with the Mandate, ruled out any possibility of a Jewish state, and declared Great Britain “could not have intended Palestine should be converted into a Jewish state against the will of the Arab population of the country.” It called for a Palestinian state in which Jews and Arabs would govern jointly based on a constitution to be drafted by their representatives and those of Britain. The constitution would safeguard the “Jewish National Home” in Palestine and if good relations developed between Jews and Arabs, the country would be granted independence in ten years. Land sales to Jews were to be restricted and the annual level of Jewish immigration was to be limited to 15,000 for five years, following which, Palestinian Arab acquiescence would be required.  

Re the Partition Plan:
Palestinians rejected the Partition Plan (UNGA Res. 181, Nov. 29/47) for entirely justified reasons based on international law. While Jews made up just 31% of the population (90% of foreign origin, only 30% had become citizens, thousands were illegal immigrants) and privately owned only between 6% and 7% of the land, the Partition Plan (recommendatory only, no legal foundation, contrary to the British Class A Mandate and the Atlantic Charter, never adopted by the UNSC) outrageously recommended they receive 56% of Palestine (including its most fertile areas) in which Palestinians made up 45% of the population. (10% of Palestine’s Jewish population consisted of native Palestinian/Arab Jews who were anti-Zionist.)
48% of the total land area of mandated Palestine was privately owned (‘mulk khaas’) by Palestinian Arabs. As noted above, total Jewish privately owned land was only between 6% and 7%. About 45% of the total land area was state owned, i.e., by citizens of Palestine, and it was comprised of Communal Property (‘mashaa’), Endowment Property, (‘waqf’), and Government Property, (‘miri’.) (The British Mandate kept an extensive land registry and the UN used the registry during its early deliberations. It has in its archives 453,000 records of individual Palestinian owners defined by name, location & area.) 

Although Palestinian Arab citizens made up at least 69% of the population and to repeat, privately owned 48% of the land, the Partition Plan recommended they receive only 42% as a state. (The 2% of Palestine comprised of Jerusalem and Bethlehem was to be placed under international control, a corpus separatum.)
Land ownership by Sub-district in all of mandated Palestine, 1947:
Acre: 87% Palestinian Arab owned, 3% Jewish owned, 10% state owned; Safed: 68% Palestinian Arab owned, 18% Jewish owned, 14% state owned; Haifa: 42% Palestinian Arab owned, 35% Jewish owned, 23% state owned; Nazareth: 52% Palestinian Arab owned, 28% Jewish owned, 20% state owned; Tiberias: 51% Palestinian Arab owned, 38% Jewish owned, 11% state owned; Jenin: 84% Palestinian Arab owned, less than 1% Jewish owned, 16% state owned; Beisan: 44% Palestinian Arab owned, 34% Jewish owned, 22% state owned; Tulkarm: 78% Palestinan Arab owned; 17% Jewish owned, 5% state owned; Nablus: 87% Palestinian Arab owned, less than 1% Jewish owned, 13% state owned; Jaffa: 47% Palestinian Arab owned, 39% Jewish owned, 14% state owned; Ramleh: 77% Palestinian Arab owned, 14% Jewish owned, 9% state owned; Ramallah: 99% Palestinian Arab owned, less than 1% Jewish owned, less than 1% state owned; Jerusalem (West and East): 84% Palestinian Arab owned, 2% Jewish owned, 14% state owned; Gaza: 75% Palestinian Arab owned, 4% Jewish owned, 21% state owned; Hebron: 96% Palestinian Arab owned, less than 1% Jewish owned, 4% state owned; Bersheeba (Negev): 15% Palestinian Arab owned, less than 1% Jewish owned, 85% state owned. (Village Statistics, Jerusalem: Palestine Government, 1945; subsequently published as United Nations Map no. 94b, August, 1950)
Population of and land ownership in West and East Jerusalem in 1947: The total population of West Jerusalem (the New City) and East Jerusalem (the Old City) and their environs was about 200,000 with a slight Arab majority. (Professor Walid Khalidi, Harvard, “Plan Dalet,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Autumn, 1988, p. 17)
The total land area of West Jerusalem (the New City) in 1947 was 19,331 dunams (about 4,833 acres) of which 40 per cent was owned by Palestinian Muslims and Christians, 26.12 per cent by Jews and 13.86 per cent by others, including Christian communities. Government and municipal land made up 2.90 per cent and roads and railways 17.12 per cent. 

East Jerusalem (the Old City) consisted of 800 dunams (about 240 acres) of which five dunams (just over one acre) were Jewish owned and the remaining 795 dunams were owned by Palestinian Muslims and Christians. (“Assessing Palestinian Property in the City,” by Dalia Habash and Terry Rempel, Jerusalem 1948: The Arab Neighbourhoods and their Fate in the War, edited by Salim Tamari, The Institute of Jerusalem Studies, 1999, map, pp. 184-85) 

In short, Palestinians were entirely justified and in full accordance with international law when they rejected the Partition Plan.
Rubbing salt into the wound, the United States quashed a proposal based on international law put forth by Arab delegates at the UN that a referendum be conducted in Palestine to determine the wishes of the majority regarding the Partition Plan. The United States also thwarted their request to have the matter referred to the International Court of Justice.

Racism, Apartheid, and Genocide Have No Right to Exist

Certainly it can be said that Genocide or Apartheid have no right to exist, and when they arise, it is the moral responsibility of all to stop them as quickly as possible.

All people may be racist to one degree or another--it can't be prevented.  If people say racist things that offend others, that is not good, but it should not be illegal, as it is more important that people have freedom of speech.  Institutions, however, should not operate in a Racist way, to the largest degree that it can be prevented.  Even if it can never be fully stopped, it would be silly to think that Racism has a right to exist.

Jews are the Very Nicest People

At least in my experience, Jews have been the very nicest people.

All of my best friends for the first 36 years of my life were Jews and many still are (I've simply lost touch with all the others).

Starting from age 7, friendly and outgoing Jewish boys I met in school (in Los Angeles) brought me into their lives, homes, and even synagogues.  All of them were very smart (though not always the smartest), but more than that, hip, and fun to be with.

I was raised in a Christian church, but none of the people I associated with in church or Sunday School became my best friends.  I'm not sure why, but I never developed the same feeling of closeness with them.

I had Passover with one of my Jewish friend's families many times, and they even took me on vacations.  They brought me to meet still more Jewish friends.  I attended one friend's Bar Mitzvah.  I attended two Jewish weddings, one where I was something like 'Best Man.'

Many times, I've had this strange feeling, I wanted to be a Jew also.  Only 5 years ago, I started looking into what it might take to convert to Judaism.  Of course it is not easy, so I dropped the thought, though it made me cry.  And seriously, I think I've found my place as a leftist athiest, that's what suits my way of thinking.  I feel heartened by the fact that one of my personal heroes, Richard Stallman, considers himself an Atheist and not a Jew.

My brother in law is Jewish and he is an Atheist also.

I always wanted to have a Jewish girlfriend.  That never went very far, though I know many very fine Jewish ladies.  My girlfriend of 9 years so far is at least 1/4 Jewish.  Perhaps that was part of why I was attracted to her.

I have no known Jewish ancestry, but I've wondered ever since some mean anti-semitic kid in Junior High School called me "Jew."  I told him I was not insulted, I would think it very fine to be a Jew like all my friends, but he was mistaken.  He said he wasn't mistaken--just look at that nose.

I do not have the biggest Jewish nose, if that's what it is, but in truth it doesn't look exactly like the mixed Scandinavian ancestry I'm supposed to have either.   Ever since then I've thought I must have some Jewish ancestry, though nobody knows when or where going back several generations.  Given how related all the people in the world are, it's probably just a matter of how many generations you have to go back to find a Jewish ancestor.

While Jews are the very nicest people, I've learned not to discuss Palestine.  It doesn't take long for every Jew I've known personally o go off the rails of a reasonable universalism it has usually seemed to me, and into a heated argument.  This has saddened me.

Before I go further, I'll also say that all my favorite writers, movie directors, and professors are Jewish also (and also mostly athiests).  Woody Allen is my very favorite movie producer and director.

I think one particular Jew, Noam Chomsky, is the very smartest person I've ever heard or read.  And of course one could go on with a list including Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, and many others who are (or were) also among the very most intelligent people ever.

While this is not true of all Jews...as I have shown many are anti-Zionist or non-Zionist...it has often seemed to me that  for all their intelligence Jews often lack critical thinking in a few key areas, including Israel.  Often they can have the very best critical thinking in most areas...and then lose all ability to think critically it one or two areas.  But this is probably true of most people, including me, it's just hard for each one of us to see our own blind spots.

I do not want bad things to happen to Jews.  I am fine with Jews living in the southern Levant, if that's where they choose to live, though it seems ridiculous to me.

But I can see no ethical alternative to allowing all the Palestinians to return to their homeland.  I think Jews and others were sold a very rotten deal with Zionism, which was dreamed up and promoted by just a few Jews, and then 'realized' by early Zionist terrorists.  It's fallen into the blind spots of many Jews not to see how rotten this deal was, and how it's probably just not going to work out as they have dreamed.  And that is very sad.

And Terrible for the Palestinians who have lost their homeland in a historic Catastrophe caused by  Jews blinded by the false dream of nationalism, which the Jews' own ancient writers sternly warned against, allied with powerful Imperialists.

I would like to see the Jewish Zionists mend their ways and get back to sort of fully ethical Judiasm that is my dream.  And I would like to see my own country get out of the business of Empire.

Empire and Zionism are the two faces on the same rotten coin which has brought catastrophe and terror not just to the middle east but the entire world.

*****

Lest I be unclear, if asked what the reasonably just solution and possible solution would be, I couldn't agree more with Edward Said when he wrote about The One State Solution in 1999.

Even more just might include large reparations, subsidized resettlement, highly paid labor, or, even, some expulsion of Jews.  But I wouldn't let the impossible be the enemy of the decent.

Just making the right-of-return equivalent for Palestinians and Jews, and full equal rights everywhere, would be a gigantic leap, into modern and legal statehood.