I Thought President Obama Did Something Right...... I Was Wrong! Look deeper into his speech, and you know what you'll find?......

That would be useless rhetoric, and a big helping of BULLSHIT.

Some excerpts for this story are taken from an article on Alternet, by John Mearsheimer

As the President expounded on the future of peace in the middle east, his rhetoric didn't ring true to either Israel or Palestine.
For example, Israel's hard-line supporters were outraged that he said, "Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps."
Israel's views are that the 1967 borders are "Auschwitz borders" and thus can never serve as a basis for negotiations.

Many Palestinians, on the other hand, did not like Obama's assertion that it made little sense for them to go to the UN General Assembly this September and win recognition for a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders. If in fact Palestine was to win that recognition from the UN General Assembly, it would put the United States in the position of voting against the decree, in order to remain firmly joined at the hip with Israel.
Surely Palestinians also noticed that shortly after saying that "every state has the right to self-defense, and Israel must be able to defend itself," the president then said that the Palestinians would have to be content with "a sovereign non-militarized state."
That means, in reality,... they won't be able to defend themselves against Israel, or any other state for that matter.

(Are we recognizing the hypocrisy and element of Bullshit, yet?)
The United States has little influence over events in the broader Middle East, as well. The Arab Spring, which Obama fully embraced in his speech, happened in spite of American foreign policy,... not because of it. After all, Washington has played a key role for decades in keeping friendly dictators like Hosni Mubarak in power. And not surprisingly, the Obama administration has remained quiet while Saudi and Bahrani security forces have been crushing the protestors in Bahrain. Why? Because the US Navy's 5th Fleet is stationed in Bahrain and we have excellent relations with its authoritarian leaders.

On top of all this, the US military is pinned down in messy wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Libya. The administration's hard-nosed policy for dealing with Iran's nuclear enrichment program is not working, but the president seems unwilling (or unable because of pressure from Israel and the lobby) to countenance a new approach for dealing with Tehran.

The bottom line is that the US is in deep trouble in the Middle East and needs new policies for that region. The possibilities of that occurring soon, are pretty much non-existent. President Obama's speech was destined to disappoint almost everyone. While we cannot be seen as opposing democracy, we surely don't want to see it flourish. That would change the scope of our influence drastically.

[John Mearsheimer is professor Political Science at the University of Chicago and co-author of the best-seller, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.]

It's Time For Me To Decompress, Again....... Here's An Original Poem By John Schweizer

John and I went to Berkeley High together. We reunited via "Facebook" and "Classmates", and from time to time John emails me a poem. Totally unpretentious.... always thought provoking, never easy to face in their stark emotional honesty. Thank you John. "You've got a friend in me."

This poem arose from answered prayer, yours and mine.

Forgiveness

I need forgiveness
Desperately, like drowning
Sailors need life rings

And caterpillars
Need leaves for food, shelter, and
Haven cocoons.

I did homicide
To Vietnamese soldiers
And Russian pilots,

Easier back then
Than the impossible Grace-
Guided battle plan.

Forgiveness comes now,
Each butterfly moment of
Eternal present

Created anew,
And the instant I know that
I need forgiveness.



John Schweizer

It Just Keeps Getting Better... The Shame of Our Leaders Knows No Bounds.

I received this as an email. Spread the word.

No one has been able to explain to me why young men and women serve in the U.S. Military for 20 years, risking their lives protecting freedom, and only get 50% of their pay. While Politicians hold their political positions in the safe confines of the capital, protected by these same men and women, and receive full pay retirement after serving one term. It just does not make any sense.

Monday on Fox news they learned that the staffers of Congress family members are exempt from having to pay back student loans. This will get national attention if other news networks will broadcast it. When you add this to the below, just where will all of it stop?

35 States file lawsuit against the Federal Government.

Governors of 35 states have filed suit against the Federal Government for imposing unlawful burdens upon them. It only takes 38 (of the 50) States to convene a Constitutional Convention.
This is an idea that we should address.

For too long we have been too complacent about the workings of Congress. Many citizens had no idea that members of Congress could retire with the same pay after only one term, that they specifically exempted themselves from many of the laws they have passed (such as being exempt from any fear of prosecution for sexual harassment) while ordinary citizens must live under those laws. The latest is to exempt themselves from the Healthcare Reform... in all of its forms. Somehow, that doesn't seem logical. We do not have an elite that is above the law.

I truly don't care if you are Democrat, Republican, Independent or whatever. The self-serving must stop.

If each person that sees this will forward it on to 20 people, in three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message.. This is one proposal that really should be passed around.

Proposed 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution: "Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and/or Representatives; and, Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and/or Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States."

And presidents!

My Hypocrite, Facists, Representatives...... Senators Feinstein and Boxer, Just Voted To Extend "The Patriot Act" until 2015....... Am I Pissed Off? How can you tell?

These two have a lot of nerve calling themselves "Americans"!
Their support of the Patriot Act is a slap in the face to everyone of their constituents. I don't know about you, but my respect for these "Representatives" of the people, has just taken a nose dive.

They are traitors to everything the United States used to stand for. I for one will be working to get these two out of office.

To help cover their evil ways they have cut off their emails from receiving messages.
I urge each and every one out there to call and voice your displeasure. Their fascist action must not go unanswered. Call your Senators at 202-224-3121, and tell them you don't want to live in a police state. It's time to take democracy back. Tell them their support of this heinous bill, that was installed under the dictatorship of George W. Bush, under a pretense of lies and falsehoods, is an abomination to the values of America, and it will not go unanswered.

It's time to stop this travesty.

Because you've got to start somewhere.

Why Don't You Pass These Words of Wisdom,... (or lack thereof) to Israel, Harry?

This came in from Newsmax....

Reid Rejects Obama's Israel-Palestinian Border Stance

President Barack Obama has lost at least one ally for his views on the Mideast. In a speech Monday night, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid rejected Obama’s own talk last week in which he called for Israel to negotiate peace with the Palestinians using pre-1967 borders as a baseline, Politico reports.

“The place where negotiating will happen must be at the negotiating table — and nowhere else,” Reid told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. “Those negotiations . . . will not happen — and their terms will not be set — through speeches, or in the streets, or in the media.”

As for the borders issue, “No one should set premature parameters about borders, about building, or about anything else,” he said.

[MS comment from here on]
So, now if Harry Reid could just get Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to actually sit down with a realistic respect for Palestine, and face the fact that as long as Israel keeps destroying Palestinian homes, to make room for the occupation of settlers on Palestinian land, there will NEVER....., repeat.... NEVER, be peace or support of free thinking people for Israel. Then,... he might actually be saying something meaningful. Until that time comes, Harry and the President are just whistling in the wind. If we want Israel to take peace negotiations seriously, we've got to stop supporting their unconscionable actions in the Middle East. Having terrorists as allies is not only a threat to peace in the region, it's a threat to the credibility of the United States throughout the world.

Here's A Take A Breath Moment....... Breathe...... Slowly...

Just When I think He's Totally Wrong about Almost Everything,.... He Does Something Good and Right. Way to go, Mr. President!

Now,... if you'll just stick to your guns.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is endorsing the Palestinians' demand for their future state to be based on the borders that existed before the 1967 Middle East war, in a move that will likely infuriate Israel. Israel says the borders of a Palestinian state have to be determined through negotiations.

In a speech outlining U.S. policy in the Middle East and North Africa, Obama on Thursday sided with the Palestinians' opening position a day ahead of a visit to Washington by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu is vehemently opposed to referring to the 1967 borders.

Until Thursday, the U.S. position had been that the Palestinian goal of a state based on the 1967 borders, with agreed land swaps, should be reconciled with Israel's desire for a secure Jewish state through negotiations.

Below is a single paragraph from the President's speech. To read the transcript of the entire speech, go to The Guardian UK (You can click the link on the right of this page in the "Here's a Few Things I Follow" section.)

"So while the core issues of the conflict must be negotiated, the basis of those negotiations is clear: a viable Palestine, and a secure Israel. The United States believes that negotiations should result in two states, with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine. The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states. The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state."

When Did "Justice" Become The Lynch Mob Mentality In This Country?

This came to me via email from "The Pen".They are right on the money with this. What happened to our sense of justice? When did we become everything we been fighting against for decades?

It turns out after all these years all they had to do to find Bin Laden was check the roster of the Islamabad Jihadists basketball team where he was the starting center. Of course, nobody for a thousand miles would breathe a word of it, that is just how much they hate America in that part of the world. In any case, all these Middle East occupations and wars have always been and remain destructive and counterproductive even to our own interests. So we start with the action page.

End The Wars In Afghanistan And Iraq:
http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1078.php

If nothing else, the demise of Osama bin Laden again raises the question of what exactly we think we are doing occupying so many countries in the Middle East. Surely not to fight terrorism. Instead, terrorism is driven precisely by these same kinds of operations. There is nothing at the end of this road but utter ruin for our own country, unless we somehow find the political courage to change course. So we speak out again, and will continue to do so.

The only thing good the right wing has had to say about the Bin Laden
operation is that this action by Obama was just a continuation of the
policies of George Bush. In one respect that is completely false. It
was the policy of Bush NOT to pursue Bin Laden, but rather to use him
as an excuse and justification for all the wars they had on their
pre-existing agenda. The last thing the right wing wanted to do was
to actually catch Bin Laden.

But in a larger sense, and sadly, they are correct in that Obama has
done absolutely nothing to change anything of substance whatsoever
about American foreign policy. The wars and occupations continue and
have even been enlarged, run by exactly the same people who started
them in the first place, with all Bush holdovers otherwise still in
actual charge. And nothing about that will change until so-called
liberals and so-called progressives stop giving Obama a pass when he
just acts like a smarter version of George Bush.

By way of a disclaimer, our position is that we do not support the
death penalty, and in particular we do not support the institution of
war as the mutually preferred cultural institution for settling
differences among nations. So we can only be appalled by the raucous
celebration of what now appears to be the summary execution of a man
already in custody.

It is perfectly obvious that there was never any intention of
bringing Bin Laden back alive under any circumstances. If we have
learned nothing else from recent history, it should have been
anticipated that all we were told night one about the Bin Laden raid
were just made up lies and fairy tales. What was portrayed initially
as a "fire fight" might have consisted of one person firing back. And
once that person was taken down, what proceeded after that can only
be described as a precision "execution" operation of every adult male
present.

None of this should surprise anyone. We have had people in custody
now for upwards of 10 years already who will NEVER have an actual
trial. So why would anyone think we would bring Bin Laden back for a
trial? The clear order was to kill him on the spot regardless. Is
there really any doubt of that? Bin Laden was an important long term
CIA asset who turned on his handlers. A talking Bin Laden in custody
was the last thing they could afford.

The word used most often night one in the corporate media about the
Bin Laden killing was "justice". "Justice had been done," they said.
There may be some primitive, ultimate "justice" in it. But the most
appropriate choice of word, if our language has not been completely
corrupted already, would be "revenge". Justice would be to put the
man on trial before the world. But there is no law, even of war, that
would permit the summary killing of a man already subdued and in
custody, regardless of his crimes. Isn't that what the bad guys do?

"We don't need a trial!" Where have you heard those words shouted
before, outside of the scene of lynch mob in a movie? The lynch mob
is a grand old American tradition, and unfortunately not one to be
proud of. The fact that historically those lynched were most likely
innocent, where as Bin Laden proudly professed to his own guilt,
changes nothing about the process. What value is a justice system if
it could not convict someone like Bin Laden?


And anyone celebrating the manner in which Bin Laden was killed may
in fact be celebrating the demise of that justice system MORE than
the demise of Bin Laden himself. Meet the New American Lynch Mob.

My final comment on the sad state of affairs that this country is wallowing in is.......
"This should be the new flag of our country. It seems to be closer to the sense of justice we subscribe to.

Would We Be Out for Revenge?? .... You're Damn Skippy We Would!!

I don't usually like to run serial articles from an author, but in this case Noam Chomsky has once again captured my thoughts with an expression of clarity that sums it all up.

It’s increasingly clear that the operation was a planned assassination, multiply violating elementary norms of international law. There appears to have been no attempt to apprehend the unarmed victim, as presumably could have been done by 80 commandos facing virtually no opposition—except, they claim, from his wife, who lunged towards them. In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial. I stress “suspects.” In April 2002, the head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, informed the press that after the most intensive investigation in history, the FBI could say no more than that it “believed” that the plot was hatched in Afghanistan, though implemented in the UAE and Germany. What they only believed in April 2002, they obviously didn’t know 8 months earlier, when Washington dismissed tentative offers by the Taliban (how serious, we do not know, because they were instantly dismissed) to extradite bin Laden if they were presented with evidence—which, as we soon learned, Washington didn’t have. Thus Obama was simply lying when he said, in his White House statement, that “we quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al Qaeda.”

Nothing serious has been provided since. There is much talk of bin Laden’s “confession,” but that is rather like my confession that I won the Boston Marathon. He boasted of what he regarded as a great achievement.

There is also much media discussion of Washington’s anger that Pakistan didn’t turn over bin Laden, though surely elements of the military and security forces were aware of his presence in Abbottabad. Less is said about Pakistani anger that the U.S. invaded their territory to carry out a political assassination. Anti-American fervor is already very high in Pakistan, and these events are likely to exacerbate it. The decision to dump the body at sea is already, predictably, provoking both anger and skepticism in much of the Muslim world.

We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. Uncontroversially, his crimes vastly exceed bin Laden’s, and he is not a “suspect” but uncontroversially the “decider” who gave the orders to commit the “supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for which Nazi criminals were hanged: the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country, the bitter sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region.

There’s more to say about [Cuban airline bomber Orlando] Bosch, who just died peacefully in Florida, including reference to the “Bush doctrine” that societies that harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists themselves and should be treated accordingly. No one seemed to notice that Bush was calling for invasion and destruction of the U.S. and murder of its criminal president.

Same with the name, Operation Geronimo. The imperial mentality is so profound, throughout western society, that no one can perceive that they are glorifying bin Laden by identifying him with courageous resistance against genocidal invaders. It’s like naming our murder weapons after victims of our crimes: Apache, Tomahawk… It’s as if the Luftwaffe were to call its fighter planes “Jew” and “Gypsy.”

There is much more to say, but even the most obvious and elementary facts should provide us with a good deal to think about.

© 2011 Noam Chomsky

By George, I think He's Got it!

This is right off of Democracy Now...... True, true...

Noam Chomsky: "The U.S. and Its Allies Will Do Anything to Prevent Democracy in the Arab World"

Speaking at the 25th anniversary celebration of the national media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, world-renowned political dissident and linguist Noam Chomsky analyzes the U.S. response to the popular uprisings sweeping the Middle East and North Africa. "Across the [Middle East], an overwhelming majority of the population regards the United States as the main threat to their interests," Chomsky says. "The reason is very simple... Plainly, the U.S. and its allies are not going to want governments which are responsive to the will of the people. If that happens, not only will the U.S. not control the region, but it will be thrown out."

Worth a read. Check out the whole story and a video at http://www.democracynow.org/tags/noam_chomsky

M.S. Comment:
Yeah,... the USA talks a good game, but "democracy" as we know it, here, today.... is a far cry from the democracy being sought throughout the Arab World. If they knew what form of democracy we have in store for them, they'd be careful what they wish for. Our support comes with a heavy price tag. And, that price tag is controlled by corporations for profit.
True democracy has left the building...... "Thank you very much."

Osama Bin Laden Is Dead..... O.K.... So, Can We Go Home Now?

Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden (March 10, 1957 – April 2011) was a member of the wealthy Saudi bin Laden family and the founder of the jihadist organization al-Qaeda, most widely recognized for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets. As a result of his dealings in and advocacy of violent extremist jihad, Osama bin Laden lost his Saudi citizenship and was disowned by his billionaire family. On Sunday, May 1st 2011, U.S. officials announced that bin Laden was dead. -wikipedia

He was in a mansion in Abbottabad, 90 miles north of Islamabad, Pakistan instead of hiding in a cave as commonly thought. CNN reports it was not a drone strike, but a manned team, and that some family members may also have been killed. The Pakistani Intelligence Service was NOT also involved in this operation as initially reported. His location in a mansion brings up the spectre that there might have been a certain degree of collusion with some powerful elements within Pakistan to keep him hidden and safe, although that is speculative at this point. The second in command of Al Qaeda, Ayman Muhammad Rabaie al-Zawahiri was not at the mansion.

So,.. Who gets the $25,000,000? .... Not the Navy Seals, I'll bet.
We'll probably need the money to finance our divorce from Pakistan. Not that we're getting a divorce, but it is getting a little tenuous to keep calling them allies, when we keep finding high ranking Al Qaeda leaders living in high end neighborhoods.

Hey! I'm just saying.....

Alternet has an excellent article that expands on peripheral aspects of this story, titled "Inside His Mansion, Inside the Mission, Inside the Media Reaction."

While researching this story I discovered that there are already pictures of him dead out there in all their graphic splendor. No need to thank me for not posting one.