America Save Yourself

Shuttle lunacy

2007-10-22T09:35:00.000-07:00

San Francisco Chronicle
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice finds that her star is fading
Joel Brinkley
Sunday, July 22, 2007
"But what has she accomplished? Iraq has slid far downhill in the past 2 1/2 years. Iran is no closer to giving up its nuclear development program than when she took office. Even though the Bush administration has done more than any other country to help the victims in Darfur, the carnage there continues unabated. Last week, the Sudanese government began bombing Darfur civilians again.
Relations with Russia, her area of speciality, have steadily worsened; a week ago, Russia dropped out of a key arms control treaty. Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, has evolved from an irritant to a menace as he moves to nationalize Venezuela's oil industry. Despite many visits to Israel and the Palestinian territories, she has had no appreciable impact on events there.
September 2006 the Israeli government said it plans to build 700 new homes in two settlement blocs in the occupied West Bank"

Shuttle Lunacy
Essay Forty-Four

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice came back from her recent Middle East tour on Thursday Oct 18,2007. Her statement to the press was either out of a jet lag brain or scripted by the White House before she landed. She said, "there is moment of opportunity" for peace but much work was still needed to be done. She plans to return in two weeks. What opportunity?
"The teams are serious," she said. "The people are serious, the issues are serious, and so I'm not surprised that there are some tensions. I'm not surprised that there are some ups and downs. ... But I was encouraged by what I heard." WHAT?
She went to London ostensible to gain support from the King of Jordan for a Mideast peace
repeating the admonition that Israelis and Palestinians have a new "moment of opportunity" to forge peace, despite the obstacles. What?
Comics and cartoonists are having a field day with the woman who seems to believe that she is doing something important. The poor befuddled Secretary never appears to have a reference point.
Even during her many Trips back and forth the Israelis mock her. Israel announced on October 2,2003 it would build 565 new homes in Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Should that not have been her reference point?
Does not the "road map" peace plan require a freeze in construction in 150 Jewish settlements?
Should that not be her reference point? Wasn’t that a plan the US agreed to?
Israel has repeatedly violated that plan. Actually the so -called Road map Peace plan was nothing more than a political speech by Bush probably written by someone like Carl Rove. The U.S. State Department drafted it,
Fourth Geneva Convention, article 49 prohibits any occupying power from transferring citizens from its own territory to the occupied territory The Hague Regulations "prohibit the occupying power from undertaking permanent changes in the occupied area, unless these are due to military needs in the narrow sense of the term.
Foundation for Middle East Peace reports Israel’s many violations such as Settlers from Tekoa set fire to 300 dunams of land owned by Palestinians from the nearby village of Tuqu’, damaging some 400 olive trees. (OCHA) IDF soldiers and security personnel guarding the Susiya settlement prevent a surveyor hired by Palestinians from surveying their lands in preparation for a presentation to the Israeli High Court. (OCHA)Settlers from Susiya force Palestinian landowners off land located near the settlement. (OCHA)Settlers from Hebron’s Beit Hadassa assault and injure a 13 year old Palestinian boy from Hebron City. (OCHA)OCHA reports on an investigation by the IDF into the uprooting of 300 olive trees belonging to a Palestinian farmer from Qaryut, Nablus. The IDF discovered that the trees had been uprooted by settlers from the Shilo outpost and 140 of them were replanted in the outpost. The IDF returned the trees to the farmer.
It is a land completely out of control and as Condi Rice waves and smiles from the steps of the plane, she give the impression that she is totally unaware of the depth of the problem and the hatred that has been allowed to fester all these years. She has very little if any credibility in the area and her frequent jaunts only add to her image of a lost diplomat without direction.
In all fairness to Secretary Rice what direction can she get from Dupya in the White House?
There is a great deal of talk in Russia about US President Roosevelt. Russian Television recently did a documentary stressing that Americans trusted FDR and so did the rest of the world.
Apparently Putin is comparing himself to Roosevelt. One can only imagine what Putin thinks of Secretary Rice as she flits in and out of Moscow.
It seems no one can capture the trust and credibility we all had in our Government under FDR. Cordell Hull, a man who literally came out of a Tennessee log cabin to become the Secretary of State under FDR before and during the war, would probably view Secretary Rice as I do. A butterfly flitting meaninglessly about and living a short political life.
When I was a young student I learned in History class that the expansionists were the evil ones like the Spaniards that raped and pillaged behind the cross through South America and the Japanese that did the same to China and the beastly nazis who did the same to Europe.
I was given to believe that Secretary Rice was a good student in school, but perhaps she had different teachers and different textbooks.
THE POLITICS OF DENIAL Pluto Press book Review
The 1948 war ended in the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their villages and homes. Israeli settlers moved in to occupy their land and the Palestinian refugees found themselves in refugee camps, or in neighboring Arab countries. Today there are nearly four million Palestinian refugees -- and they want the right to go home. Their problem is the greatest and most enduring refugee problem in the world.
Ninety-three percent of the land is now characterized as Jewish land, meaning that no non-Jew is allowed to lease, sell or buy it.
Genevieve Cora Fraser once wrote from Ramallah
Is America a Servant to the Will of Israel? Is America a servant of Israel's Will?
"Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians since 1948 has also been to regard them as "untermenschen" sub-humans and never more so than today. In January 2001 Ha'aretz published an article by Amir Oren, "At the Gates of Yassergrad" which cites an Israeli officer's statement that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) studies the 1943 military tactics of the Nazi SS against the Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto, for application against the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza.Even without the Ha'aretz article, casual observation of the incarceration of the 3.5 million men, women and children of Palestine in concentration camp conditions within the confines of the Apartheid wall, electrified razor wire fence, Israeli-only roads, and nearly 900 checkpoints and roadblocks is a tip-off that something is up. When you add in the destruction of a million olive and fruit trees, farmlands, livestock and beehives, enforced starvation (bombing of the UN food warehouse and refusal to allow in food aid) and dehydration (reservoirs, wells and roof top water tanks destroyed by the IDF), curfews that spread into weeks and sometimes a month or more, plus 24/7 IDF assaults on civilians whose defense is the use of rocks, confiscated rifles and homemade bombs, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand why the term neo-Nazi is common graffiti at certain protest sites.
So what is Secretary Rice’s point of reference?
David Truskoff
www.erols.com/suttonbear

2007-10-11T11:45:00.000-07:00

Essay Forty Three
Open letter to Bolivian President Evo Morales Ayma

Dear President Evo Morales,
I have read the speech you gave to members of the United Nations and I was immediately reminded of a speech that I heard back in 1986 in Moscow. That speech was given by Mikhail Gorbachev to the Twenty Seventh Congress. He said then; "The Soviet Union declares once again that it will steadfastly pursue the Leninist policy of peace and peaceful co-existence which is determined by our social system and world outlook."
Now Mister president, just ten years after the Gorbachev speech the Socialist Soviet Union was no more and in its place was a regressive, mindless version of what was called, "free market capitalism". A few oligarchs got very rich and the workers got very poor. They had to give up their free health care, Education benefits, and right to work laws. Rents became so burdensome that a new phenomenon appeared in Russia; street people. Many bewildered leftist intellectuals debated whether Gorbachev was the most naive leader in the world; a stupid man or an out right traitor. Recently I received an email; from a friend who pointed out the large amount of money that Gorbachev has made since he became the darling of the west proves him to be a traitor, bought and paid for. I disagree. Few of us take into consideration the inner battles Gorbachev must have faced and what he inherited that was still called Communism but was far from the works of Lenin and Marx. Eighteen years of Breznev-led stagnation pushed young Soviets away from Communism.
From 1986 to 1996 the CIA and British agents had been at work to create the coup that finally toppled him and the Soviet union, but Gorbachev surely was aware of the many attempts that were made to overthrow the revolution including the outright US invasion of Russia at Murmansk. Unlike you mister President he did not fully present his problems to the people and the people were not fully informed until it was too late.
When Putin, called the demise of the Soviet Union the greatest political catastrophe of the 20th century, he was no doubt remembering the words of Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko who said that "no conflict anywhere on the globe could be settled without taking into account the attitude and interests of the Soviet Union." What Putin meant to project to the world is there would not be American Troops in Afghanistan nor would there be the ugly crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Israelis against the Palestinian people if there was still a strong Soviet Union
As I write this, leftist around the world are remembering the anniversary of the murder of a realist like you. A young committed realist named Che Guevara who was killed forty years ago today in your country.
"THE CIA killed Che Guevara and planned to do so from 1959 along with the destruction of the Cuban Revolution because of the example they set to the rest of Latin America", said former CIA agent Philip Agee. He also said. "There was no person more feared by the company (CIA) then Che Guevara because he had the capacity and charisma necessary to direct the struggle against the political repression of the traditional hierarchies in power in the countries of Latin America." The world knows that on October 9th, 1967, Ernesto "Che" Guevara was put to death by Bolivian soldiers, trained, equipped and guided by U.S. Green Beret and CIA operatives.
In a very prophetic statement Leon Trotsky wrote in The Revolution Betrayed: "A collapse of the Soviet regime would lead inevitably to the collapse of the planned economy, and thus the abolition of state property. The bond of compulsion between the trusts and the factories within them would fall away. The more successful enterprises would succeed in coming out on the road of independence. They might convert themselves into stock companies, or they might find some other transitional form of property - one, for example, in which the workers should participate in the profits. The collective farms would disintegrate at the same time and far more easily. The fall of the present bureaucratic dictatorship, if it were not replaced by a new socialist power, would thus mean a return to capitalist relations with a catastrophic decline of industry and culture." That certainly has happened.
Mister President, I am impressed by your comments that Capitalism has twins "The market and war." We all know the market thrives on war, but my question to you is how, in a world of capitalist power, can Bolivia compete in the world market, save its non capitalist system, control greed, and continue to grow economically? After listening to Radio Free Europe, seeing western television, Young Russians wanted to own things. Under Yeltsin the West took over the media and Capitalism triumphed.
In Israel today there is awful poverty not just for the Arab population, but also for Jewish holocaust survivors. While the oppressed become the oppressors the state deteriorates. Primarily Socialists founded Israel. Early Kibbutz were communes.
My question is what are you doing in terms of education for the young in Bolivia to prevent the same cycle that realist my age have seen happen again and again. The fuel of Capitalism is greed. Greed can only be controlled with early education. The west waits for Castro to die hoping that will end the growth of socialism in your part of the world? Right wing Cubans in America are preparing for that day. Are you?
Thank you Mister President and keep on
David Truskoff
Speech by Bolivian President Evo Morales Ayma during the United Nations meeting on Climate Change, New York, September 24, 2007
I’d like to sincerely apologize if some countries or some groups are affected by the survival of my country, the survival of the indigenous people. I think that that capitalism is the worst enemy of humanity and if we do not change the model, change the system, then our presence, our debate, our exchange, and the proposals that we make in these meetings at the United Nations will be totally in vain.Capitalism has twins, the market and war. The market converts life into commodities, it converts land into a commodity. And when capitalists cannot sustain this economic model based on looting, on exploitation, on marginalisation, on exclusion and, above all, on the accumulation of capital, they rely on war, the arms race. If we ask ourselves how much money is spent on the arms race — we are never concerned about that.
Because if we don’t think that way, if we do not change, it won’t matter if business owners have a lot of money, no matter if they are a multinational or even a country — no one can escape these ecological problems, environment problems, and climate change. No one will be spared, and the wealth that some country, some region or some capitalist may have will be useless.
If we do not think about how this ecological debt will be paid, how are we going to solve the problems of life and humanity?I want to say, dear colleagues and friends, that we must assume the responsibility as leaders or as presidents, as governments — we must save life, we must save humanity, we must save the entire planet.
Bolivia remains the poorest country in South America, with about 60 percent of the population of 9.1 million mired in deep poverty, making such debates crucial.
Revenue from oil and natural gas climbed to 13.3 percent of gross domestic product in 2006 from 5 percent in 2004, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington.
That boost has placed Bolivia on its most enviable economic footing in years, with growth of about 4 percent expected this year.

NAIL BITING TIME

2007-09-26T11:35:00.000-07:00

Hallelujah! The Fed cut the interest rates. Newspapers clear across the USA
had front page Headlines such as, "Rate drops, Dow leaps. The New York stock exchange gained more than three hundred points.
All that it means to the average American is that the rich will get more rich and
the poor will get poorer. For days before the increase actually happened it was expected by those close to the market. If you had your computers ready and bought early and bought big can you imagine the profits that you would have gained? Let’s say you invested $250, 000 on 9/18 or 9/17/2007 and the market went up as you expected over 300 points; your profit would be tremendous. Of course you would have to be the person or organization that could have the $250,000 in the first place.
After the market went down 50 points on the twentieth the Associated Press ran this story, "profit taking sends stocks lower." Wall street had driven the Dow Jones industrials up more than 400 points in just two days after the Fed’s half-point rate reduction, so it was expected that investors would eventually stop to cash in gains."
The fact is that the foundation the market was built on was the premise that if workers put their money into the market to help companies grow it would mean more jobs and a better economy. That has not been the case for a long time. If the average worker puts money into is company that same company may send his job overseas. The Average worker does not benefit from the stock market gyrations.
Mr. Greenspan the ex chairman of the United States Federal Reserve Board, which oversees the Federal Reserve Bank, said In his book, that he worries if wages for the average US worker do not start to rise more quickly political support for free markets may be undermined.
Greenspan also said the chances for a recession in the United States were still "somewhat more" than 1 out of 3, despite the cut in the Fed's overnight federal funds rate to 4.75 percent, but cautioned it was hard to be more precise.
Essay Forty-One
Nail Biting time
In the American game of football, when a quarterback is running to his right and does not see a defender about to hit him on his left it is called being blind sided. That is exactly what Wall Street has done to the average worker in America. They are made to think that they are running for a score when in fact they are losing ground.
When Alan Greenspan was on the Jon Stewart program (9/19/2007) he admitted that the need to stimulate the economy was to get the people to have the confidence to spend more. Ever since the market crash of 1929 Americans have always been told that the market crash was the reason for the great depression. The reason for the market crash and the roles of the uncontrolled robber barons is seldom discussed. So Americans are led to believe that if the market is doing well, America is doing well.
On the same program Greenspan said that the big boost in the market was to give the American public that confidence.

In 2006 USA Today ran this story, "U.S. income inequality has risen to such a level that "there are signs that (it) is intensifying resistance to globalization, impairing social cohesion, and could, ultimately, undermine American democracy," San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank President Janet Yellen said.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke recently cautioned that without steps to smooth the effects of a changing economy, people could "become less willing to accept the dynamism that is so essential to economic progress. Although we Americans strive to provide equality of economic opportunity, we do not guarantee equality of economic outcomes, nor should we," Bernanke said. "That said, we also believe that no one should be allowed to slip too far down the economic ladder."
The last twenty years have shown the top 300,000 Americans collectively enjoyed almost as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans. Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics, said such growing disparities were significant in terms of social and political stability.
Prof. Emmanuel Saez, the University of California, Berkeley, economist who analyzed the Internal Revenue Service data, said such growing disparities were significant in terms of social and political stability. "If the economy is growing but only a few are enjoying the benefits, it goes to our sense of fairness," Professor Saez said. "It can have important political consequences."One can now see why the mass media, in particular Rupert Murdoch’s world wide media empire, in the USA and UK and the Australian press are almost daily running stories about the evil of Communism. They very often tell their readers that Communism is dead. If that is so why do they refuse to bury it? The answer is that it is nail-biting time. They know as those quoted above know. A social upheaval is on the horizon and no one knows who or what is going to fill the void.
USA is no longer a world leader and has not been such since it lost the war in Vietnam.
A political surge is growing in Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe and yes even in the UK toward new leadership and new politics.

Think back to tomorrow

2005-02-12T07:09:00.000-08:00

As WWll was winding down a buddy and I were hitchhiking from new York city to my home in New Jersey. As we approached the Lincoln tunnel and large red faced policeman stopped us. "Are you looking for a ride through," he asked. When we said yes, he stopped the first car and asked the driver if he wanted to take a couple of sailors through. The man said,"Of course" and he drove us all the way home, telling us about his son in the Marines as we went. We were one then and real or unreal it was such a great feeling. As Americans we were applauded overseas and felt part of one large family at home. We were proud of our country and our leaders. I want that feeling back. I want young Americans to experience it. I was moved to tears when I heard a neighbor tell his children that when his company sends him to Europe, he tells people he is French rather than have to defend America's present day actions.

As General Clark said, I also am ashamed of our leaders and we must attend town committee meetings and State Committe meetings to take our country back. If you have time to go to little league practice surely you have time to Save America. read REBIRTH OF A REALIST. at www.erols.com/suttonbear

America Save Yourself

2005-02-11T15:57:00.000-08:00

AS WWll was winding down a buddy and I were hitchhiking back from New York to my home in
New Jersey. As we entered the Lincoln tunnel a large red faced policeman approached us and asked if we wanted a ride through the tunnel. When we said yes, he stopped the first car and asked the driver if he wanted to take a couple of sailors through. The driver said, "of Course." and he drove us all the way home and told us about his son in the Marines.

We were one then and real or unreal it was a great feeling. We were proud of our country and proud of our leaders. We were applauded overseas and felt part of a large American family.
I want our young people to experience that feeling again. How terrible for young people today to see priests getting arrested; cops getting arrested, teachers getting arrested, mayors getting arrested and we in Connecticut are waiting for the judge to sentence our felon Governor.
How terrible to hear my nieghbor telling his family that when his company sends him to other countries he pretends that he is French.
As the old expression goes, "from the head the rotting fish stinks first". We must develope new
leadership and to do that we must take control of our country by being active citizens and attending town committee meetings and state committee meetings. If we can take the time for little league surely we can take the time to save America.