A unique but critical conversation on Israel and Palestine is taking place outside the traditional discourse of Israeli colonialism and the Palestinian quest for liberation. It is an awkward and difficult - but overdue - discussion concerning American Jews’ relation to Israel and their commitment to its Zionist ideology.
For many years, Israel has conveniently dubbed Jews who do not support Israel, or worse, advocate Palestinian freedom, as ‘self-hating Jews’. This term, designated to describe dissident anti-Zionist Jews, is similar to the accusation of ‘antisemitism’ made against non-Jews, which includes Semitic Arabs, for daring to criticize Israel. This approach, however, is no longer as effective as it once was.
Four weeks from now, a right-wing Republican could win the governor's office in California. Some polling indicates that Democrat Gavin Newsom is likely to lose his job via the recall election set for Sept. 14. When CBS News released a poll on Sunday, Gov. Newsom’s razor-thin edge among likely voters was within the margin of error.
Book Review: Rituals. Killers. Wars. & Sex.
By Pete Johnson
Richard S. Ehrlich's book, "Rituals. Killers. Wars. & Sex. -- Tibet,
India, Nepal, Laos, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka & New York," is a
compilation of his experiences as an American foreign correspondent
based in Asia.
Ehrlich's introduction says his "news stories portray fragments of
people and their distant voices."
As a result the book is fragmented.
Although it is divided into four chapters, the chapters are not
related to each other, so it is really four stories.
The four stories -- the title of the book, "Rituals. Killers. Wars. &
Sex" -- are related to each other geographically, as they are stories
originated in Asia.
The four stories are interesting, they are a window into the dark
underbelly of Asia.
Chapter 1 "Rituals" describes four specific bizarre Asian rituals
involving death.
This reader was completely unaware of all four of these practices,
which are driven by geography and, of course, religion.
The August 9 hour-long CNN program Being… AOC about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a case study in how corporate media covers – or, rather, covers up – socialism. The reddest or pinkest thing about this debut of CNN’s new Being… series were AOC’s lips. More time was spent bantering about the 31-year-old’s lipstick, fashion sense and being a magazine cover girl than her leftwing politics.
CNN’s Dana Bash was positively bashful about asking America’s most famous living female socialist about her ideology. The only time socialism per se was actually alluded to at all was in a clip from a Fox News show that referred to the leftist congressmember as a “socialist” in a chyron. And when AOC and Bash trod down a Bronx street an older white male passerby booed Ocasio-Cortez, denouncing her as a “communist.”
Rome is scorching hot. This beautiful city is becoming unbearable for other reasons, too. Though every corner of the beaming metropolis is a monument to historical grandeur, from the Colosseum in Rione Monti to the Basilica of Saint John Lateran in San Giovanni, it is now struggling under the weight of its own contradictions.
In Via Appia, bins are overflowing with garbage, often spilling over into the streets. The smell, especially during Italy’s increasingly sweltering summers, is suffocating.
And the least secret agent of all . . . Agent Orange!
On August 10, 1961, the United States, several years before it actually sent troops, started poisoning the forests and crops of Vietnam with herbicides. The purpose: to deprive our declared enemy, the commies of Ho Chi Minh, of food and ground cover that allowed them to trek from North to South. It was called, innocuously, Operation Ranch Hand.
ANADA – Activists across Canada marked the third anniversary of the Yemen school bus massacre on Monday with protests at weapons manufacturers and government offices, calling on Canada to stop all weapons exports to Saudi Arabia. The Saudi bombing of a school bus in a crowded market in northern Yemen on August 9, 2018 killed 44 children and ten adults and wounded many more.
In Nova Scotia activists protested outside Lockheed Martin’s Dartmouth facility. The bomb used in the airstrike on the Yemeni school bus was made by weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin Canada is a wholly-owned subsidiary of U.S. company Lockheed Martin.
There is an ongoing, but hidden, Israeli war on the Palestinians which is rarely highlighted or even known. It is a water war, which has been in the making for decades.
On July 26 and 27, two separate but intrinsically linked events took place in the Ein al-Hilweh area in the occupied Jordan Valley, and near the town of Beita, south of Nablus.
In the first incident, Jewish settlers from the illegal settlement of Maskiyot began construction in the Ein al-Hilweh Spring, which has been a source of freshwater for villages and hundreds of Palestinian families in that area. The seizure of the spring has been developing for months, all under the watchful eye of the Israeli occupation army.
In the United States we now live under a government that largely operates in secret, headed by an executive that ignores the constitutional separation of powers and backed by a legislature that is more interested in social engineering than in benefitting the American people. The US, together with its best friend and faux ally Israel, has become the ultimate rogue nation, asserting its right to attack anyone at any time who refuses to recognize Washington’s leadership. America is a country in decline, its influence having been eroded by a string of foreign policy and military disasters starting with Vietnam and more recently including Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen and the Ukraine. As a result, respect for the United States has plummeted most particularly over the past twenty years since the War on Terror was declared and the country has become a debtor nation as it prints money to sustain a pointless policy of global hegemony which no one else either desires or respects.