Qana outcry creates Israeli dilemma

Un-be-leev-able. That BBC headline, along with all of the mainstream reporting I have seen or heard, makes it clear that the Lebanese are unpersons. Each massacre-from-above, each precision strike on an ambulance, a UN post, or a residential structure are merely part of an overall dilemma for Israeli and American leaders on how to create a new Middle East. Indeed, if that is the project, then it obviously entails many tons of bombs dropped on civilians and their supporting infrastructure, as has been clear for some time. And this latest destruction is happening to the very country that these idiots where trumpeting as one of their democratic transformation successes.

One wonders how the average person can countenance such stupidity and such savagery, especially when it is presented as “defense” or worse, part of a struggle of the civilized against the evil terrorists. Or a cease-fire is predicated on a plan for sustainable peace, a meaningless phrase and yet another insult. Israel’s history of occupation and aggression, its relentless racist attitude toward its neighbors, clearly show that it has no interest in a sustainable peace short of Lebanon’s and other's acceptance of vassal status.

This is the global project for a hyper power and its client state, now running wild like children realizing there is nothing stopping their party once the parents leave town. Mass murdering hundreds, possibly thousands, destroying a country, and now the Qana massacre, and Bush continues to blather about “sustainable peace.” As if the whole conflagration wasn’t part of Dick and Rummy’s Long War that could last generations, as if Israel was not the aggressor and the terrorist in this conflict.

It’s easy to see that treating people as if their lives do not matter will eventually cause those people to enact a murderous price on the civilians whose nations are conducting the slaughter, and those deaths will be equally dismissed as “worth it.”

This is shaping up to be the most savage, hideous era in human history.

I think it’s time to order that Stupidity of Hubris bumpersticker. It will make an excellent epitaph.

Cretinity

[NEWS ITEM: “General MacArthur bans kissing in the streets in Tokyo: offenders would get six months in jail.”]

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They’re going to drop their systems of pride: this is the main point about future humanity. It’s a wonderful thing to contemplate, yet hardly easy for myself to do even in these moods of love & joy. But I’m doing it by degrees, and it’s easy! after all: the trick is to get rid of the pride with a conscious loathing of it. The only thing to fear is the inevitable cretin in our souls. Some people are more cretinous than they imagine. It’s not evil that's dangerous to the human world, that’s the wrong word, it’s cretinity that’s dangerous. MacArthur’s law is the dull musing impulse of a cretin, not the act of a man. A cretin is never afraid of being corrupted. Therefore a cretin wouldn’t hesitate at anything: There’s the cup before him, he doesn’t drink, he doesn’t fling it away, he just stares at it dullishly and doesn’t understand. How do I know this? – this was I at 22, that was the way I was then, I distinctly remember, especially how easy it was to be a cretin, how stupidly pleasant. (Yet I also remember a tremendous dull unhappiness which I don’t wish on anyone, either.) No, no, MacArthur, Oh man of destiny, no, no! – They’ll put a stop to your law in the backalleys of Tokyo, and in time, maybe tomorrow, in spite of the penalty, in divine human ignorance of the penalty, on the streets themselves. Because this is the Forest of Arden, at heart, and MacArthur’s tree is like all the other trees, and the lovers go to and fro beneath the boughs.

-- Jack Kerouac, Windbown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947-1954. ppgs 136-137. Viking. New York

Related here and here.

The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community

(excerpt)

A defining choice
We face a defining choice between two contrasting models for organizing human affairs. Give them the generic names Empire and Earth Community. Absent an understanding of the history and implications of this choice, we may squander valuable time and resources on efforts to preserve or mend cultures and institutions that cannot be fixed and must be replaced.

Empire organizes by domination at all levels, from relations among nations to relations among family members. Empire brings fortune to the few, condemns the majority to misery and servitude, suppresses the creative potential of all, and appropriates much of the wealth of human societies to maintain the institutions of domination.

Earth Community, by contrast, organizes by partnership, unleashes the human potential for creative co-operation, and shares resources and surpluses for the good of all. Supporting evidence for the possibilities of Earth Community comes from the findings of quantum physics, evolutionary biology, developmental psychology, anthropology, archaeology, and religious mysticism. It was the human way before Empire; we must make a choice to re-learn how to live by its principles.

Developments distinctive to our time are telling us that Empire has reached the limits of the exploitation that people and Earth will sustain. A mounting perfect economic storm born of a convergence of peak oil, climate change, and an imbalanced U.S. economy dependent on debts it can never repay is poised to bring a dramatic restructuring of every aspect of modern life. We have the power to choose, however, whether the consequences play out as a terminal crisis or an epic opportunity. The Great Turning is not a prophecy. It is a possibility.

A turn from life
According to cultural historian Riane Eisler, early humans evolved within a cultural and institutional frame of Earth Community. They organized to meet their needs by cooperating with life rather than by dominating it. Then some 5,000 years ago, beginning in Mesopotamia, our ancestors made a tragic turn from Earth Community to Empire. They turned away from a reverence for the generative power of life—represented by female gods or nature spirits—to a reverence for hierarchy and the power of the sword—represented by distant, usually male, gods. The wisdom of the elder and the priestess gave way to the arbitrary rule of the powerful, often ruthless, king.

...more

via thoughts on the eve

Lenin's Tomb on Israel-Lebanon conflict

Meanwhile, the crushing conformity of the media continues apace. Why even discuss it? They tell us some people died once in a while. Then they allow Bush or someone to remind us that Iran or Syria is to blame. Then they clamour about the evacuation of Westerners. Then they tell us about the heatwave and the difficulties in filling in forms. They even have a Labour MP sitting in front of a camera ready to discuss this inanity. Protests happening across the country (I know of several that happened only last night) are ignored. Eli Stephens notes the dehumanising language: the obliteration of poor Shi'ite neighbourhoods is described clinically as "Israeli warplanes pounded Hezbollah's stronghold in south Beirut". My intention, for what it's worth, is to reduce my time spent watching television news from a couple of hours a day to zero. It is demobilising, it dulls the senses, it cripples one's thinking with sheer insanity.

Textual links provided in the orginal. Lenin has been in fine form covering Israel's psychopathic response to the soldiers taken prisoner and the media's sickening bias toward Israel. Check for several other posts as well as Lenin's acerbic retorts to clueless wingers in the comments box.

Report

Mike Whitney's analysis of the unfolding atrocity in Lebanon

(excerpt)

Israel’s present battle-plan originated with a policy paper that was written by former Defense Policy Board chief Richard Perle and (Bush administration officials) David Wurmser and Douglas Feith. The document, which was titled “A Clean Break; Strategy for Securing the (Israeli) Realm” provides the details of Israel’s plan to topple potential rivals in the region and redraw the map of the Middle East.

The text reads: “Securing the Northern Border: Syria challenges Israel on Lebanese soil. An effective approach, and one which America can sympathize, would be if Israel seize the strategic initiative (preemption) along its northern borders by engaging Hezbollah, Syria and Iran as the principle agents of aggression in Lebanon including . . . striking military targets in Lebanon, and should that prove insufficient, striking at striking at select targets in Syria proper.”

Perle’s document outlines exactly what is presently taking place even though it was written back in 1996. (It was composed for the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.)

This shows that Israel is not acting irrationally or spontaneously, but executing a carefully considered master plan for crushing potential enemies and reconfiguring the Middle East to accommodate the modern Israeli kingdom. (Hence, the pretentious euphemism “Securing the Realm”)

This is the war that Israel wanted from the very beginning; a final showdown with arch-nemesis Hezbollah, followed by confrontations with Damascus and Tehran. It’s all in Perle’s blueprint for “total war.”

Prime Minister Olmert has not deviated one millimeter from the original scheme.

--

Throughout the Arab world the same theory of “pacification” is being applied as Bush and Olmert continue their wanton assault on the basic platforms for human survival, leaving millions of Muslims in abject poverty without food, medicine, clean drinking water, or sufficient heat or light. They have created tens of thousands of refugees who have been driven from their homes or left in the ruins to slowly die in the dark. From the Caspian to the Red Sea, from the Mediterranean to the western tip of Afghanistan, Israel and America are spreading their devastation across the Middle East transforming the entire region into one massive Gaza Strip.

more

A message from Corporate Jesus

Let's not lose sight of the most important thing. Corporations are making record profits, and CEO compensation is on average 450 times greater than that of the average worker. Some Executive branch accomplishments (props to Congress too): Bankruptcy Bill, Medicare Drug Bill, rolling back regulations, not enforcing existing regulations, appointing industry officials to oversee regulatory agencies, censoring scientific data that doesn't agree with policy, Clean Air Initiative, Healthy Forest Act, started 2 wars, increased military spending and contracting, defeated minimum wage increase, covertly approving illegal wage workers, and large scale spying on individuals that includes the purchasing of records from Corporations.

What we must remember is that it is only individuals that can become terrorists. There were no Corporations among the 9/11 hijackers!! Therefore it only makes sense that we watch any suspicious activity that threatens Corporate profits or the entrenched power structure. After all, freedom isn't free. Sometimes you have to pay for your freedom with your freedom.

Please continue to conduct all business as usual.

A nice find courtesy of the Tutor.