Duty to Warn

Syndicated columnist Richard Cohen declared in the Washington Post on Tuesday that an-eye-for-an-eye would be a hopelessly wimpy policy for the Israeli government.

“Anyone who knows anything about the Middle East knows that proportionality is madness,” he wrote. “For Israel, a small country within reach, as we are finding out, of a missile launched from any enemy’s back yard, proportionality is not only inapplicable, it is suicide. The last thing it needs is a war of attrition. It is not good enough to take out this or that missile battery. It is necessary to reestablish deterrence: You slap me, I will punch out your lights.”

Cohen likes to sit in front of a computer and use flip phrases like “punch out your lights” as euphemisms for burning human flesh and bones with high-tech weapons, courtesy of American taxpayers.

In mid-November 1998, when President Clinton canceled plans for air attacks on Iraq after Saddam Hussein promised full cooperation with U.N. weapons inspectors, Cohen wrote: “Something is out of balance here. The Clinton administration waited too long to act. It needed to punch out Iraq’s lights, and it did not do so.”

AUSTIN, Texas -- Dear desperate Democrats,

Here's what we do. We run Bill Moyers for president. I am serious as a stroke about this. It's simple, cheap and effective, and it will move the entire spectrum of political discussion in this country. Moyers is the only public figure who can take the entire discussion and shove it toward moral clarity just by being there.

The poor man who is currently our president has reached such a point of befuddlement that he thinks stem cell research is the same as taking human lives, but that 40,000 dead Iraqi civilians are progress toward democracy.

Bush at the NAACP Convention

God lost this time. I counted: Bush mentioned God only six times in his speech to the NAACP today. The winner was 'faith' -- which got seven mentions, though if you count "The Creator" as God, well, then the Lord tied it.

Coming in right behind God and Faith, other big mentions in the First Home Boy's rap included: The Voting Rights Act, his family's "commitment to civil rights," the "death tax," rebuilding New Orleans and "public school choice" and "soft bigotry."

As the philosopher Aretha Franklin once said, "Who's zoomin' who?"

Let's take it one point at a time.

Death and Taxes -- Inheritance taxes apply only to those who leave assets exceeding $2 million. Mr. Bush realized how crucial this issue was to the NAACP. He said, "The [current] 'death tax' will prevent future African American entrepreneurs from being able to pass their assets from one generation to the next."

Auora owns two feedlot dairies (factory farms), and are developing two others, and is widely viewed in the organic community, by both farmers and consumers, as a "bad actor", attempting to profiteer at the expense of the livelihood of truly ethical family farmers. Now they are attempting to "calm consumer concerns" by purchasing the blessing of a corporate-friendly alternative to the organic label. If you can't meet the organic standards why not go out and find or invent some other standards that you can meet? Money talks but the flatulence of the thousands of cows, on unhealthy, high-production diets, managed by Aurora is drowning out their propaganda.

After getting out of Lebanon, writer June Rugh told Reuters: "As an American, I'm embarrassed and ashamed. My administration is letting it happen [by giving] tacit permission for Israel to destroy a country." The news service quoted another American evacuee, Andrew Muha, who had been in southern Lebanon. He said: "It's a travesty. There's a million homeless in Lebanon and the intense amount of bombing has brought an entire country to its knees."

Embarrassing. Shameful. A travesty. Those kinds of words begin to describe the alliance between the United States and Israel. Here are a few more: Government criminality. High-tech terror. Mass murder from the skies. The kind of premeditated action that the U.S. representative in Nuremberg at the International Conference on Military Trials -- Supreme Court Justice Robert L. Jackson -- was talking about on August 12, 1945, when he declared that "no grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy."

The United States and Israel. Right now, it's the most dangerous alliance in the world.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Never let it never be said our president does not provide laughs, even as we wobble on the rim of war in the Middle East.

Look what a good time Vladimir Putin had with him. Bush, responding to questions from the international press corps on his conversation with Putin the previous evening, said, "I talked about my desire to promote institutional change in parts of the world like Iraq, where there is a free press and free religion, and I told him that a lot of people in our country, you know, would hope that Russia would do the same thing."

Putin, with a fairly straight face, replied, "We certainly would not like to have the same of kind of democracy they have in Iraq, I'll tell you that quite honestly." Don't you hate it when the international press corps laughs at what a stoop Bush is? Bush, who fancies himself something of a fast-reply artist, said, "Just wait." Heh, heh.

I think the problem is the rest of the world doesn't understand Dekes (Delta Kappa Epsilon). We need a Deke short-course in embassies around the globe.

AUSTIN, Texas -- In case you haven't got anything else to worry about -- like war in the Middle East, nuclear showdowns, global warming or Apocalypse Now -- how about the suicide of capitalism?

Late last month, the U.S. Court of Appeals struck down a new rule by the Securities and Exchange Commission requiring mandatory registration with the SEC for most hedge funds. This may not strike you as the end of the world, but that's because you've either forgotten what a hedge fund is or how much trouble they can get us into.

These investment pools for rich folks are now a $1.2 trillion industry (known to insiders, I am pleased to report, as "the hedge fund community"). Hedge funds are now beginning to be used by average investors and pension investors. Back in 1998, there was this little-bitty old hedge fund called Long Term Capital Management. Because hedge funds make high-risk bets, Long Term Capital got itself in so much trouble its collapse actually threatened to wreck world markets, and regulators had to step in to negotiate a $3.6 billion bailout. A similar fiasco at this point probably would break world markets.

Now about sex.… One school would allow us no flavor for our fare and the other would have us all on a straight pepper diet. ~Alcoholics Anonymous p. 69

I see the world in this spiritual way – way more fluid than how we’re asked to define it. I actually think there’s a whole spectrum of gender, not just men and women. In a lot of cultures, there’s not just two. But I’m glad when people take their destiny into their own hands and take actions that they think will make them happy. ~ Daniella Sea, http://www.girlfriendsmag.com/feature.html June 2006.

The love that dared not speak its name now won’t shut its mouth. ~ Spoken at a dinner party

Remarks at Democracy Fest, San Diego, July 15, 2006

More than any other weapons system, the chief products of the military industrial complex are lies.  We just learned this week that Congress was cracking down on corruption by denying another contract to Halliburton.  In reality, Halliburton has completed its main task of building five permanent bases and doesn't care as much about more contracts for services for soldiers.  And, in fact, last month the Senate rejected, nearly along party lines, a bill to create honest contracting and impose penalties for fraud of the sort almost openly engaged in by Halliburton.

Lies and secrets are what the military industrial media complex sells us.  We say the phrase "military industrial complex," but the lies that it hides behind permeate our thinking and dominate the politics of both major parties.  Some of these lies are:

Being tough and hungry for war makes us safer.

The wars we wage have something to do with defense.

The wars we wage are fought for reasons related to foreign threats or international relations.

We wage our wars reluctantly.