APRIL-MAY2008
TWO essays by frank scott
Where Are We
Going?
A garbage dump described as twice the size of the USA is
floating in the Pacific Ocean, a creation of global
capitalist production. Given the major role we play in
the manufacture of rubbish, it’s no wonder an
analogy would be made to the U.S. But there is far more
deadly waste that we can claim as our own , its origin
not shared with other manufacturers. With invading
armies, occupying forces and military bases all over the
globe, we continue to squander more money on warfare than
all other nations combined. We call it defense spending,
but it defends America the way that condoms defend
virginity.
Our Ponzi scheme economy, floating on an ocean of debt
speculation more colossal than the plastic dump in the
Pacific , shows signs of returning to its source ; the
imagination . But its material horrors threaten to make
more people unemployed, homeless, and eventually affect
many who think they are safely inoculated against the
national epidemic of market excess .
The drug and medical industry astronomically raises
costs, creating windfall profits for the vampires of
insurance who suck the blood our Sweeney Todd health care
merchants produce for them.
And yet, things are much worse for people in other
nations subjected to the ravages of our rapidly eroding
system .
If you live in Iraq, Afghanistan or Palestine, no study
of the political economy is necessary to reveal why you
are suffering and see things getting worse before they
can get better. These and other victims of imperial wrath
need no graduate school investigation to tell them what
is wrong . They understand their enemy, and are taking
political and military steps to overcome the hardships
imposed by the empire of economic and racial supremacy.
However drastic their conditions may be in the present,
the future would seem to be on their side , while the
long range picture doesn't look as good for us . Can we
reasonably anticipate a better and more just tomorrow for
ourselves?
A regime in Washington that would be imprisoned if we had
a real democracy will soon be replaced, but only because
its term expires. A shamelessly inept opposition,
controlled by corporate capital and a foreign lobby and
derelict in any responsibility to the people , will
continue the deceitfully vicious war against terror and
slavish support for Israel. With minor changes in
rhetoric and rationale , if it bumbles into power it will
change overt abuse to a more covert style . It will
extoll democracy and humanitarian values in theory , and
continue perverting them in practice.
We are told that the hundreds of millions shamelessly
spent on the American Idol show called Presidential
Primaries will assure that everything will soon change.
But the only candidates confronting reality and
suggesting transformation are financially blacked out,
while supporters of the status quo continue blathering
platitudes to satisfy the media presentation that passes
for democracy. Despite being treated with a disrespect
bordering on contempt, the people show a much greater
understanding than their mind managers assume. By
staggering majorities they find the president a failure,
and by larger majorities the congress even worse. They
were told that something called Super Tuesday would be
the most exciting primary day in history, and in the
nation’s most populous state , more than 65% of the
electorate didn't even bother to participate. The Super
Bowl , always belittled by the minority that is able to
identify corporate power in sports but remains blind to
its control of politics, attracted vastly more people and
caused much greater excitement than the farce that posed
as democracy.
People understand the irrelevance of much that is going
on, despite attempts at consciousness control through
pundit predictions which change almost daily and poll
projections that only assure less confidence in polling.
They saw a candidate spend fifty million dollars to
purchase one delegate, while another laid out more than a
million for each of his supporters until he finally
conceded . They know that one of those who'll ultimately
spend two or three times as much will become corporate
America’s top employee , at which time the
corporadoes and the Israel lobby will get what
they’ve paid for. No matter who the applicants are,
the hired help will do what the job
entails; preserve the status quo, with minor adjustments
to placate those who think they will actually get change
in material substance rather than simply in rhetorical
style.
Identity politics may finally triumph, at least for its
true believers, but whether the Democrats choose a white
woman or a black man as their candidate, they’ll
need all the help they can get from the Republican job
applicant . He may be our first mentally disturbed
nominee, having established his conservative credentials
by calling for a revival of the 100 years war. Yet
he’s considered a liberal by some whose primitively
developed capacity to reason would embarrass our
neanderthal ancestors .
But despite the wretched condition of war and a crippled
economy that this regime has made much worse, Democrats
are always capable of turning sure victory into certain
defeat. Although they tried to blame their failure on
everything from stolen votes to stupid voters, this is a
party that was twice defeated by the most incompetent and
criminal president in the nation’s history.
Don’t bet the farm on these political geniuses who
have the potential to make the guys from Dumb and Dumber
look like Smart and Smarter.
Can we change the substance of our national dilemma with
the next election? Cars change lanes all the time, but
they are still compelled to run on gasoline. Keep those
seat belts on, citizens, and be sure the air bags are
working. This ride will continue to be a very rough one,
and it will go on well past November.
Copyright (c) 2008 by Frank Scott. All rights reserved.
email: frankscott@comcast.net
TIME TO BOYCOTT,
DIVEST AND SANCTION
by Frank Scott
"I am a black South African, and if I were to change
the names, a description of what is happening in the Gaza
Strip and the West Bank could describe events in South
Africa." ~Archbishop Desmond Tutu
The situation in Israel has become more murderous and
unjust than ever in the sixty year life of that nation.
Founded over the bodies of an indigenous population, and
rationalized as somehow permissible because of the Nazi
persecution of European Jews in World War Two, the Jewish
state has been treated by the USA as a holy land beyond
criticism, and often beyond rational thought. The
Palestinian people were thrown out of their homeland,
into refugee camps, or forced to live in Israel as second
class citizens, maligned and forgotten souls who had done
nothing to incur the vengeful wrath that was visited upon
them, and has grown worse over the years.
Israel’s birth at the expense of indigenous people
was really not that different from America’s and in
keeping with the ancient and bloody history of one people
attacking another and taking over their habitat. But this
new nation was supposed to somehow be uniquely based on
justice, to serve a people who had survived persecution ,
abuse, loss of their homelands and massacres at the hands
of oppressors. Result? They persecuted, abused , expelled
from their homeland and massacred the
inhabitants of Palestine. And this was treated with
uncritical support and financing by much of the guilty
west, never with more passionate and unquestioning
devotion than by the USA.
We have been the major financial and military sponsor of
the Jewish state, far surpassing aid it received from
Germany, which at least had reason to atone for its
previous dreadful treatment of Jews. Why has the USA
given tens of billions of dollars and thousands of lives
as well, to help perpetuate a Jewish apartheid state ?
The answer is the American Jewish lobby, which uses the
power of money, and guilt, and sees to it that our
government responds to Israeli interests first, by often
placing American interests second. This charge usually
provokes frenzied accusations of anti-Semitism, even when
it is made by supposedly safe establishment figures like
academics or ex presidents. Though the anti-Semitic label
is losing some of its power, it still can make
presidential candidates and the American congress tremble
in fear. Why? How?
The White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) power structure
that exercised much control over the U.S. government
through the middle of the twentieth century has since
been replaced by the Jewish Lobby. And though many
critics insist on calling it just another lobby, it is
unlike any other , past or present. It doesn't support
industries, as most commercial lobbies did under WASP
control, nor does it represent ethnic, racial or
religious groups , as do lobbies which originated after
the WASP era ended and identity group politics, no threat
to their power, began. It stands exclusively for the
interests of a foreign country, and it exercises an
antidemocratic control over the American political
process to an extreme that has become more threatening
with time.
The worst political and military excesses of the USA in
the Middle East are rationalized by some as simply being
about control of oil. But whether they are sincerely
ignorant , cynical apologists, or cringing cowards , they
are in a state of treacherous denial. Our uncritical
support for Israel is not only the cause of much hatred
for our nation in the rest of the world, but could
inflict future damage on the USA far beyond the tragedy
of 911.
It is irresponsible to think, as some do, that a small
minority of American Jews who speak out against Israeli
policies can change the situation. They are relatively
meaningless , not only in number and financial clout, but
in that they rarely if ever identify the lobby, often in
fear of being called self hating Jews. It is for the
American people as a whole to speak in a democratic voice
and demand an end to the existence of a Jewish state,
perpetuated on the backs of a conquered people, and
surviving in its present form only because of American
dollars and military might . And to do so in no uncertain
terms.
The economic policy of divestiture, boycott and sanctions
worked to make the world aware that change had to come in
the apartheid state of South Africa, and that kind of
movement must be brought to bear on American support for
the apartheid state of Israel. Many church , community
and campus groups have already begun to take such action
and need the support of new groups , to literally join in
a democratic lobby against the lobby. And to do so with
what power fears almost as much as the barrel of a gun ;
that is, the contents of a wallet .
Our federal tax dollars supporting Israel are not the
only ones we should be conscious of , though we need to
pressure our government in Washington most of all .
States, counties and municipalities, as well as labor
unions and pension funds use our taxes to invest in
Israel Bonds and financial paper, as well as private
Israeli firms. We need to exercise control of our money
and divest it from those sources that are under the sway
of the lobby and are used to strengthen injustice. Funds
supposedly under public and not private control need to
be the first, but not the only targets of this campaign.
And it must be conducted with all deliberate speed, to
end a human rights atrocity and help bring about a
democratic state of Palestine with equal rights for all
its people; Jews, Christians and Muslims.
--
Copyright (c) 2008 by Frank Scott. All rights reserved.
frank scott
email: frankscott@comcast.net
Frank Scott writes political commentary which
appears in the Coastal Post, The Independent Monitor and
on his shared blog at:http://legalienate.blogspot.com