by Diane V. McLoughlin
One small nuclear bomb did this to Hiroshima. Today's
nuclear weapons hold ten to fifteen times the destructive force.
August 18, 2010 - Comment No. 56: I cannot get over the dreadful feeling that, on the business of speaking out against aggressive, unnecessary military action I am perpetually a dollar short and a day late no matter how hard I try. Today I read that John Bolton is telling the Israelis that in light of Russia's impending delivery of fuel rods for nuclear energy generation in Iran, there is but eight days left for Israel to strike. (see in J-Post.) Meanwhile, the U.S. is spending more on nuclear weapons funding (2) than in any time in U.S. history, New START or no New START. Enough false starts. Let's try something new: Full STOP.
- editor, mcloughlinpost.com
----------------------------
To: 'Why Not to Bomb Iran'; Robert Wright; Aug. 17, 2010; NYT
(1) 'Israel has 8 days to strike Iran'; J-Post.com staff; Aug. 17, 2010
http://www.jpost.com/IranianThreat/News/Article.aspx?id=185044
(2) 'Obama wants 80 billion to upgrade nuclear arms complex'; Susan Cornwell, Phil Stewart; Reuters; May 13, 2010
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64C5KP20100513
*My Amazon recommend: 'The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine' - by Israel-based historian Ilan Pappe
Showing posts with label NYT comments. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NYT comments. Show all posts
August 18, 2010
August 11, 2010
Israel - Obstruction One, Peace Blank
by Diane V. McLoughlin
August 11, 2010: The New York Times appears to be stuck in some sort of fantastical time-warp, while Israel's master planners have marched on. There are over 500,000 illegal Jewish colonizers on stolen Palestinian land in the West Bank. There is, interestingly, not one word about that wrinkle in your two-state argument.
The two-state solution is dead. See the Youtube where Netanyahu is caught telling settlers that he 'killed Oslo', proudly so. I feel it important enough to have it front-paged.
Abbas? Abbas has no mandate. For him to deal on behalf of the Palestinian people would be a criminal act, it would seem to me. Abbas's political term in office expired many months ago. A new election must be held.
As for the continued attempts to de-legitimize Hamas, that they are, quote: 'rejectionist rivals', does not square with Reuters' report in May, 2010:
'Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal has stated explicitly that the Palestinian Islamist group will end its armed struggle against Israel if the Jewish state withdraws from Palestinian land it occupied in the 1967 Middle East War.' (1)
Israel is an Apartheid regime, with rights, privileges and the vote for Jews and none for occupied Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
*Comment 104 to NYT editorial, 'President Abbas and Peace Talks'; August 11, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/11/opinion/11wed1.html
(1) 'Hamas renews offer to end fight if Israel withdraws'; Reuters; May 30, 2010
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64T2AM20100530
August 11, 2010: The New York Times appears to be stuck in some sort of fantastical time-warp, while Israel's master planners have marched on. There are over 500,000 illegal Jewish colonizers on stolen Palestinian land in the West Bank. There is, interestingly, not one word about that wrinkle in your two-state argument.
The two-state solution is dead. See the Youtube where Netanyahu is caught telling settlers that he 'killed Oslo', proudly so. I feel it important enough to have it front-paged.
Abbas? Abbas has no mandate. For him to deal on behalf of the Palestinian people would be a criminal act, it would seem to me. Abbas's political term in office expired many months ago. A new election must be held.
As for the continued attempts to de-legitimize Hamas, that they are, quote: 'rejectionist rivals', does not square with Reuters' report in May, 2010:
'Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal has stated explicitly that the Palestinian Islamist group will end its armed struggle against Israel if the Jewish state withdraws from Palestinian land it occupied in the 1967 Middle East War.' (1)
Israel is an Apartheid regime, with rights, privileges and the vote for Jews and none for occupied Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
*Comment 104 to NYT editorial, 'President Abbas and Peace Talks'; August 11, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/11/opinion/11wed1.html
(1) 'Hamas renews offer to end fight if Israel withdraws'; Reuters; May 30, 2010
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64T2AM20100530
June 02, 2010
CENSORED - NYT COMMENTS ON GAZA, FREEDOM FLOTILLA and ISRAEL
Subtitle: Starving Writer Can't Give Facts on Gaza Away For Free - Comments Censored at New York Times
June 1st, 2010: Netanyahu uses rocket-fire from Gaza as justification for continuing
the siege of Gaza's 1.5 million men, women and children (a crime against humanity known as collective punishment). He also uses Gaza rocketfire to justify the attack on the Freedom Flotilla which was attempting to bring humanitarian supplies such as wheelchairs, school supplies and building cement to the people of Gaza. I will address his lie following, below.
It is interesting to note the internationally-renowned roster of dignitaries that were counted among the flotilla travellers: It includes a former U.S. Ambassador (Edward Peck); former U.S. Congresswoman (Cynthia McKinney); 85 year-old Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein; an Irish Nobel Peace Prize winner; and multiple artists, politicians, peace activists and humanitarians from around the world.
Perhaps it would be best if the New York Times reporters assigned, sought broader scope for information and analysis than Israel's office of Public Relations.
Mid-2008 there was a mutually agreed-upon ceasefire between Israel and Gaza's duly elected Hamas political leadership. This ceasefire, it was clearly understood, was to have lead to more confidence-building measures including the lifting of the blockade and the normalizing of political relations between the two sides.
Hamas abided by the ceasefire. Rocketfire fell from hundreds a month, to 11 rockets in-total for the months of July, August, September and October combined. Hamas is not the only political faction in Gaza. They did their very best to contain the desperate and suffering people from fighting back against the starvation imposed by Israel.
The entire time, Israel, behind their backs, girded for total destruction of Gaza, with plenty of arms, bombs and chemical weapons donated from the U.S. government, instead.
Israel broke the ceasefire mid-November.
Over 1,400 people were killed - most of them civilians - during Israel's assault, which they code-named Operation Cast Lead. Over 20% of Gaza's farmland, crucially important for Gazans to feed themselves - destroyed; chicken farms - and the chickens - destroyed; water wells - destroyed; a third of schools - destroyed; the U.N.'s main food and medicine warehouse - destroyed - and on, and on, and on.
The above are not acts of self-defense. They are acts of pure racial hatred and genocide.
Israel does not want normalized peaceful relations with the Palestinians. Really. It doesn't matter what the Palestinians do, the results always remain the same.
The two-state 'solution' itself is a trick. Israel has absolutely no intention of permitting the Palestinians to have any actual freedom to rule themselves.
Israel does not want peace. Israel wants to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians out. They have done an admirable job of it.
Do all Israelis support this? Of course not. But obviously, there are not enough who want peace to overrule those who want something else far more.
Isreal's right-wing extremists are not our friends. We have absolutely nothing in common with them. They are violent racists.
(See: PDF document by Israel's intelligence community, pg. six, graph on rocket fire month to month 2008:
http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/pdf/ipc_e007.pdf
*Any problems with above link, the same link, mid-page, can be accessed here:
http://www.mcloughlinpost.com/LinksAndResourcesOnGazaIsraelAndPalestine.html)
- writer, mcloughlinpost.com
````````````````````````````````````````````````
I am an independent writer, unaffiliated or supported in any way by any publisher or patron or think tank. If you found the
above to be something you wish you could read more of, please consider making a non-tax deductible donation. $1, $2, + your donation gives a much-needed boost of practical as well as moral support.
There were 768 comments accepted by the New York Times comment editors - but not this one - to the article, 'NYT: 'Pressure Mounts on Israel as Activists Vow to Test Blockade Again'; Isabel Kershner, Neil McFarquhar; June 1, 2010.
Censored NYT comment by writer Diane V. McLoughlin:
the siege of Gaza's 1.5 million men, women and children (a crime against humanity known as collective punishment). He also uses Gaza rocketfire to justify the attack on the Freedom Flotilla which was attempting to bring humanitarian supplies such as wheelchairs, school supplies and building cement to the people of Gaza. I will address his lie following, below.
It is interesting to note the internationally-renowned roster of dignitaries that were counted among the flotilla travellers: It includes a former U.S. Ambassador (Edward Peck); former U.S. Congresswoman (Cynthia McKinney); 85 year-old Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein; an Irish Nobel Peace Prize winner; and multiple artists, politicians, peace activists and humanitarians from around the world.
Perhaps it would be best if the New York Times reporters assigned, sought broader scope for information and analysis than Israel's office of Public Relations.
Mid-2008 there was a mutually agreed-upon ceasefire between Israel and Gaza's duly elected Hamas political leadership. This ceasefire, it was clearly understood, was to have lead to more confidence-building measures including the lifting of the blockade and the normalizing of political relations between the two sides.
Hamas abided by the ceasefire. Rocketfire fell from hundreds a month, to 11 rockets in-total for the months of July, August, September and October combined. Hamas is not the only political faction in Gaza. They did their very best to contain the desperate and suffering people from fighting back against the starvation imposed by Israel.
The entire time, Israel, behind their backs, girded for total destruction of Gaza, with plenty of arms, bombs and chemical weapons donated from the U.S. government, instead.
Israel broke the ceasefire mid-November.
Over 1,400 people were killed - most of them civilians - during Israel's assault, which they code-named Operation Cast Lead. Over 20% of Gaza's farmland, crucially important for Gazans to feed themselves - destroyed; chicken farms - and the chickens - destroyed; water wells - destroyed; a third of schools - destroyed; the U.N.'s main food and medicine warehouse - destroyed - and on, and on, and on.
The above are not acts of self-defense. They are acts of pure racial hatred and genocide.
Israel does not want normalized peaceful relations with the Palestinians. Really. It doesn't matter what the Palestinians do, the results always remain the same.
The two-state 'solution' itself is a trick. Israel has absolutely no intention of permitting the Palestinians to have any actual freedom to rule themselves.
Israel does not want peace. Israel wants to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians out. They have done an admirable job of it.
Do all Israelis support this? Of course not. But obviously, there are not enough who want peace to overrule those who want something else far more.
Isreal's right-wing extremists are not our friends. We have absolutely nothing in common with them. They are violent racists.
(See: PDF document by Israel's intelligence community, pg. six, graph on rocket fire month to month 2008:
http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/pdf/ipc_e007.pdf
*Any problems with above link, the same link, mid-page, can be accessed here:
http://www.mcloughlinpost.com/LinksAndResourcesOnGazaIsraelAndPalestine.html)
- writer, mcloughlinpost.com
````````````````````````````````````````````````
I am an independent writer, unaffiliated or supported in any way by any publisher or patron or think tank. If you found the
above to be something you wish you could read more of, please consider making a non-tax deductible donation. $1, $2, + your donation gives a much-needed boost of practical as well as moral support.
May 27, 2010
BP - Obama's watershed moment
by Diane V. McLoughlin; May 26, 2010
FTA: 'The laconic president is once more giving too much deference and trust to rapacious corporate scoundrels and failing to swiftly grasp and articulate the alarm of Americans.'
The above is a perfect description of the overall behavior of the Obama administration.
Deference; trust; friendships - these words are not in the handbook of ethical good governance - be it in private industry, the media or public service. Rather, they are words in that other handbook, the one which describes the ways in which we are led down the garden path to corruption and betrayal.
The President is scheduled to go to Louisiana on Friday. I predict it will be his watershed moment. Where 9/11 was seized to turn the country in the wrong direction, Obama must use the Gulf oil disaster to restore the country and make it whole again. He must get mad, take charge and clean house - save the Gulf, restore the government (and the Constitution.)
Obama must grasp hold of the country's problem and marshal the right people and resources to fix them; leaders such as Billy Nungesser, President of Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana - people who have the right stuff.
The one thing that must not happen is to assume we have the luxury of time.
------------------------------------------------
Commenting on, 'Of Top Hats, Top Kills and Bottom Feeders'; Maureen Dowd; May 26, 2010; NYT
FTA: 'The laconic president is once more giving too much deference and trust to rapacious corporate scoundrels and failing to swiftly grasp and articulate the alarm of Americans.'
The above is a perfect description of the overall behavior of the Obama administration.
Deference; trust; friendships - these words are not in the handbook of ethical good governance - be it in private industry, the media or public service. Rather, they are words in that other handbook, the one which describes the ways in which we are led down the garden path to corruption and betrayal.
The President is scheduled to go to Louisiana on Friday. I predict it will be his watershed moment. Where 9/11 was seized to turn the country in the wrong direction, Obama must use the Gulf oil disaster to restore the country and make it whole again. He must get mad, take charge and clean house - save the Gulf, restore the government (and the Constitution.)
Obama must grasp hold of the country's problem and marshal the right people and resources to fix them; leaders such as Billy Nungesser, President of Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana - people who have the right stuff.
The one thing that must not happen is to assume we have the luxury of time.
------------------------------------------------
Commenting on, 'Of Top Hats, Top Kills and Bottom Feeders'; Maureen Dowd; May 26, 2010; NYT
March 30, 2010
Comment on Moscow Bombing: State Terrorism and the Terrorist Response
by Diane V. McLoughlin, Mar. 29, 2010
main website: http://www.mcloughlinpost.com
Re: NYT's 'Moscow Attack a Test for Putin and His Record Against Terror';
Clifford J. Levy, Mar. 29, 2010
Scanning several pages of comments, along with the comments chosen to be highlighted by the editor, I am completely dismayed. Not one writer has taken the time to even quickly consult an encyclopedia to familiarize themselves with the history of Chechnya to ascertain for themselves whether or not the people of Chechnya are, or have ever been oppressed.
And, of course, the answer is that the history of Chechnya is rife with oppression and wars waged against them to gain control of the region, the people and their - what? Three guesses, you know the answer - their natural resources.
These people have SUFFERED and they continue to suffer. In the Second World War the ENTIRE population - I mean it boggles the mind - was forced out of their homes and shipped to Siberia by Stalin. A quarter of the population of Chechnya was destroyed.
Chechnya has always been ethnically distinct and it has always wanted independent autonomy to what? To be left the hell alone. Russia says no.
Why does Russia say no? Why have there been two wars by the giant bear Russia against the nothing-sized Chechnya? Two main reasons: Other regions might get it in their heads that maybe they could gain their independence, too - remember celebrating a little something called Independence Day? What for?
The second reason is that Russia does not want to relinquish control over Chechnya because, according to Wikipedia, Chechnya is a 'major hub in the oil infrastructure of the Federation'.
From all of the major human rights organizations we find that life for Chechnyans under Russian control is abhorrent. It is brutal. It is pitiless.
Now, it is time for Americans to wake up. Particularly after 9/11, Americans somehow decreed to themselves that the tough task of parsing out the causes and the effects of conflict was off the table. Any and all attacks on established powers was thrown under the rubric of 'terrorism' - but not, importantly, including the causes and effects of state terrorism, because that would bring the discussion uncomfortably close to having to examine what we have been doing to others ourselves; thus, leaving yourselves foundering around in the darkness of ignorance, fear, and with absolutely no effective means of making anything more just or right in this messed up world.
Remember the 'w's + 1/h' of reporting?: Who, what, where, when, how and why.
Ask yourselves, when was the last time that you found any major news publication in the entire U.S. including in their journalist reports - answers to the question,'why?'
Comment No. 268 Recommend/thumbs up at NYT
(*A note: The overwhelming majority of the hundreds of comments following the NYT article regarding yesterday's bombing of the Moscow subway support Russia. Early reports suggest it was committed by two 'Black Widow' Chechnyan women who blew up themselves and tens of Moscow civilians. They negate any possible motive, however misguided, the women may have had. The term 'black widow' to describe such violent actors refers to the suggestion that they are widows whose husbands were killed by the Russians or their proxies.)
main website: http://www.mcloughlinpost.com
Re: NYT's 'Moscow Attack a Test for Putin and His Record Against Terror';
Clifford J. Levy, Mar. 29, 2010
Scanning several pages of comments, along with the comments chosen to be highlighted by the editor, I am completely dismayed. Not one writer has taken the time to even quickly consult an encyclopedia to familiarize themselves with the history of Chechnya to ascertain for themselves whether or not the people of Chechnya are, or have ever been oppressed.
And, of course, the answer is that the history of Chechnya is rife with oppression and wars waged against them to gain control of the region, the people and their - what? Three guesses, you know the answer - their natural resources.
These people have SUFFERED and they continue to suffer. In the Second World War the ENTIRE population - I mean it boggles the mind - was forced out of their homes and shipped to Siberia by Stalin. A quarter of the population of Chechnya was destroyed.
Chechnya has always been ethnically distinct and it has always wanted independent autonomy to what? To be left the hell alone. Russia says no.
Why does Russia say no? Why have there been two wars by the giant bear Russia against the nothing-sized Chechnya? Two main reasons: Other regions might get it in their heads that maybe they could gain their independence, too - remember celebrating a little something called Independence Day? What for?
The second reason is that Russia does not want to relinquish control over Chechnya because, according to Wikipedia, Chechnya is a 'major hub in the oil infrastructure of the Federation'.
From all of the major human rights organizations we find that life for Chechnyans under Russian control is abhorrent. It is brutal. It is pitiless.
Now, it is time for Americans to wake up. Particularly after 9/11, Americans somehow decreed to themselves that the tough task of parsing out the causes and the effects of conflict was off the table. Any and all attacks on established powers was thrown under the rubric of 'terrorism' - but not, importantly, including the causes and effects of state terrorism, because that would bring the discussion uncomfortably close to having to examine what we have been doing to others ourselves; thus, leaving yourselves foundering around in the darkness of ignorance, fear, and with absolutely no effective means of making anything more just or right in this messed up world.
Remember the 'w's + 1/h' of reporting?: Who, what, where, when, how and why.
Ask yourselves, when was the last time that you found any major news publication in the entire U.S. including in their journalist reports - answers to the question,'why?'
Comment No. 268 Recommend/thumbs up at NYT
(*A note: The overwhelming majority of the hundreds of comments following the NYT article regarding yesterday's bombing of the Moscow subway support Russia. Early reports suggest it was committed by two 'Black Widow' Chechnyan women who blew up themselves and tens of Moscow civilians. They negate any possible motive, however misguided, the women may have had. The term 'black widow' to describe such violent actors refers to the suggestion that they are widows whose husbands were killed by the Russians or their proxies.)
March 18, 2010
March 17, 2010
NYT comment 150 to Roger Cohens The Biden Effect
by Diane V. McLoughlin; Mar. 16, 2010
There is no contiguous space of Palestinian land in the West Bank anymore. That land has been stolen.
What we have witnessed is a race by Israel to transplant fanatical, racist, religious zealots all over the West Bank; constructing Jews-only roads to connect their military protected
enclaves both to each others' hilltop fortress compounds and with Israel, and then declare that really, it
would be too hard to undo it, so they must be there to stay.
If they stay, then what we have is either one state with equal rights for both Jews and Palestinians, or one state with no rights for Palestinians - which is what we have right now as far as the millions of Palestinians in the West Bank are concerned.
It is not a vital security interest to the U.S. whether there is one state or two, as long as an actual, bona fide peace with equal rights for all its citizens is the result.
I find it a false proposition to suggest that the only reason Americans
would care about the oppression of the Palestinian people
is that the anger directed toward us as a result is a threat to our soldiers currently in the field in the Middle East.
While heaven knows American foreign policy can get things disastrously wrong, fundamentally, the American people believe in equal opportunities, equal rights and fair play.
Americans care so much about Israel in part because they care about
what happened to the Jews in Nazi Europe. Americans would care no less to know that Israel oppresses others terribly in its own right, now.
Palestinians have experienced violent repression at the hands of Israel daily, for the past sixty and more years. The litany of violent actions and discriminatory practices against them is immense.
Palestinians are discriminated against because they are not of the preferred race.
Even though Israel's own intelligence proves that Hamas abided by the 2008 ceasefire, where Israel had agreed to easing its military blockade of Gaza, Israel betrayed that trust and attacked the civilian enclave of 1.5 million Palestinians instead. And still, today, three years in,
food, medicine and other vital supplies are only permitted to trickle in. The children, particularly, suffer: stunted growth; developmental delay; severe emotional trauma; and surprisingly, deafness, from Israeli military jet sonic booms.
In the West Bank under Israel's ongoing military occupation, settlers enjoy full rights of citizenship including the right to vote for rabidly right wing governments guaranteed to continue the occupation,
while the enslaved Palestinian people are denied the vote along with every other freedom.
Christians are routinely spit upon by ultra-orthodox Jews on the streets of Jerusalem. The ultra-orthodox force their way into Arab neighborhoods by having Palestinians expelled from their homes. Then to really make the point they do things like have loud
parties singing songs to celebrate Baruch Goldstein's 1994 slaughter of praying Muslims in a mosque.
Not all Israeli Jews agree with what has been going on, of course. Israeli civil rights organizations such as B'Tselem do an admirable job of trying to highlight, in as fair a way as possible, abuses committed
on both sides. Sadly, others continue to believe they can ethnically cleanse the Palestinians out because so far, they have been able
to do it, and we have in large part enabled it to happen with our good-hearted gullibility and our billions in annual tax and charitable donations. Can we force a peace deal? In the end, maybe not.
But we don't have to continue funding the status quo, either.
Recommended Recommended by 14 Readers What we have witnessed is a race by Israel to transplant fanatical, racist, religious zealots all over the West Bank; constructing Jews-only roads to connect their military protected
enclaves both to each others' hilltop fortress compounds and with Israel, and then declare that really, it
would be too hard to undo it, so they must be there to stay.
If they stay, then what we have is either one state with equal rights for both Jews and Palestinians, or one state with no rights for Palestinians - which is what we have right now as far as the millions of Palestinians in the West Bank are concerned.
It is not a vital security interest to the U.S. whether there is one state or two, as long as an actual, bona fide peace with equal rights for all its citizens is the result.
I find it a false proposition to suggest that the only reason Americans
would care about the oppression of the Palestinian people
is that the anger directed toward us as a result is a threat to our soldiers currently in the field in the Middle East.
While heaven knows American foreign policy can get things disastrously wrong, fundamentally, the American people believe in equal opportunities, equal rights and fair play.
Americans care so much about Israel in part because they care about
what happened to the Jews in Nazi Europe. Americans would care no less to know that Israel oppresses others terribly in its own right, now.
Palestinians have experienced violent repression at the hands of Israel daily, for the past sixty and more years. The litany of violent actions and discriminatory practices against them is immense.
Palestinians are discriminated against because they are not of the preferred race.
Even though Israel's own intelligence proves that Hamas abided by the 2008 ceasefire, where Israel had agreed to easing its military blockade of Gaza, Israel betrayed that trust and attacked the civilian enclave of 1.5 million Palestinians instead. And still, today, three years in,
food, medicine and other vital supplies are only permitted to trickle in. The children, particularly, suffer: stunted growth; developmental delay; severe emotional trauma; and surprisingly, deafness, from Israeli military jet sonic booms.
In the West Bank under Israel's ongoing military occupation, settlers enjoy full rights of citizenship including the right to vote for rabidly right wing governments guaranteed to continue the occupation,
while the enslaved Palestinian people are denied the vote along with every other freedom.
Christians are routinely spit upon by ultra-orthodox Jews on the streets of Jerusalem. The ultra-orthodox force their way into Arab neighborhoods by having Palestinians expelled from their homes. Then to really make the point they do things like have loud
parties singing songs to celebrate Baruch Goldstein's 1994 slaughter of praying Muslims in a mosque.
Not all Israeli Jews agree with what has been going on, of course. Israeli civil rights organizations such as B'Tselem do an admirable job of trying to highlight, in as fair a way as possible, abuses committed
on both sides. Sadly, others continue to believe they can ethnically cleanse the Palestinians out because so far, they have been able
to do it, and we have in large part enabled it to happen with our good-hearted gullibility and our billions in annual tax and charitable donations. Can we force a peace deal? In the end, maybe not.
But we don't have to continue funding the status quo, either.
http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/opinion/16iht-edcohen.html?permid=150#comment150
February 28, 2010
New York Times comment 329 by Diane V. McLoughlin to article by Frank Rich, The Axis of the Obsessed and Deranged
The level of rage and the violent imagery of some far-right speakers is deeply disturbing. Agreed.
However, there is too much over-generalization in your analysis and I find there is a certain over-zealousness in demonizing on the one hand, and lumping in on the other.
In the last federal election I did my own detailed analysis of all of the presidential candidates' political platforms. The candidates I endorsed were, in no particular order Ron Paul, Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel and Cynthia McKinney.
The one thing these individuals had in common that I was particularly interested in was a conviction that our foreign military adventures were wrong and that they would end them if elected president.
In light of this, many wondered whether Ron Paul was making a mistake remaining in the Republican Party, rather than running as an independent. Mr. Paul did respond to these concerns forthrightly by explaining that he always felt most at home ideologically in the republican camp.
I believe that it ought to give us pause amidst the din of the peripheral riff raff that Ron Paul won that recent straw poll at a republican party gathering - however narrow the margins. It was apparently enough to cause the republican party establishment to fall over themselves in their attempts to poo poo and minimize the significance of it.
If Mr. Paul beats out the rest of them by popular vote, it seems to me it has to have everything to do with what Mr. Paul stands for. And one of the most important things he stands for is the vision of America's founding fathers as a republic that encourages others to do good when it comes to foreign affairs, and certainly to enjoy trade with other nations, while limiting ourselves when it comes to military intervention rather than making enemies for ourselves all over the planet.
A note on Mr. Rich's sideswipe against 9/11 'truthers'. I find it more than just a little disappointing that Americans, including a group of over one thousand structural engineers who are trying to demand the investigation of evidence, of facts, on 9/11 - would be denigrated as nut jobs.
Post-9/11 was one of the worst periods for lack of journalistic integrity in the history of the American press. There is no reason whatever not to recover from past mistakes. Some NYT readership will not be happy with the truth if it runs counter to assumptions or preconceptions. But if the world is to avoid any more war we must have the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
With Obama saying out of one side of his mouth that he wants to help reduce the number of nukes in the world, while agreeing to vastly increase the budget for nuclear bombs out of the other side, it is going to take all of us working together to see us all through to a better day.
At the moment, the parallels between Orwell's '1984' and the current American government grow starker. War is NOT peace. And Building Seven was not hit by any plane but it fell straight down in seconds anyway.
www.mcloughlinpost.blogspot.com
However, there is too much over-generalization in your analysis and I find there is a certain over-zealousness in demonizing on the one hand, and lumping in on the other.
In the last federal election I did my own detailed analysis of all of the presidential candidates' political platforms. The candidates I endorsed were, in no particular order Ron Paul, Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel and Cynthia McKinney.
The one thing these individuals had in common that I was particularly interested in was a conviction that our foreign military adventures were wrong and that they would end them if elected president.
In light of this, many wondered whether Ron Paul was making a mistake remaining in the Republican Party, rather than running as an independent. Mr. Paul did respond to these concerns forthrightly by explaining that he always felt most at home ideologically in the republican camp.
I believe that it ought to give us pause amidst the din of the peripheral riff raff that Ron Paul won that recent straw poll at a republican party gathering - however narrow the margins. It was apparently enough to cause the republican party establishment to fall over themselves in their attempts to poo poo and minimize the significance of it.
If Mr. Paul beats out the rest of them by popular vote, it seems to me it has to have everything to do with what Mr. Paul stands for. And one of the most important things he stands for is the vision of America's founding fathers as a republic that encourages others to do good when it comes to foreign affairs, and certainly to enjoy trade with other nations, while limiting ourselves when it comes to military intervention rather than making enemies for ourselves all over the planet.
A note on Mr. Rich's sideswipe against 9/11 'truthers'. I find it more than just a little disappointing that Americans, including a group of over one thousand structural engineers who are trying to demand the investigation of evidence, of facts, on 9/11 - would be denigrated as nut jobs.
Post-9/11 was one of the worst periods for lack of journalistic integrity in the history of the American press. There is no reason whatever not to recover from past mistakes. Some NYT readership will not be happy with the truth if it runs counter to assumptions or preconceptions. But if the world is to avoid any more war we must have the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
With Obama saying out of one side of his mouth that he wants to help reduce the number of nukes in the world, while agreeing to vastly increase the budget for nuclear bombs out of the other side, it is going to take all of us working together to see us all through to a better day.
At the moment, the parallels between Orwell's '1984' and the current American government grow starker. War is NOT peace. And Building Seven was not hit by any plane but it fell straight down in seconds anyway.
www.mcloughlinpost.blogspot.com
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by Diane V. McLoughlin, Mar. 17, 2010
McLoughlin Post
For Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to even think of announcing the West Bank an independent state while over 400,000 violently racist settlers live scattered throughout the depth and breadth of the West Bank on stolen Palestinian lands, and while 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza continue to starve nder Israel's three year and counting military blockade, suggests he is either completely delusional or a stooge for the Israeli regime.
As A, B follows. There is no possibility of a two-state solution. Palestinians and Jews live together all mixed in already if we look at a demographic map, but with a difference in rules based on race.
The two-state solution is a deliberately distracting illusion. What is real is that Israel is an Apartheid regime where one preferred race holds all the power and all the votes and wants to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians out of their homeland. The discarded race, the Palestinians, are denied the vote, are oppressed, and have their human rights violated at every turn.
You cannot be a democratic state and be a state dedicated to one race. 20% of Israel's citizenry is Palestinian, in addition to the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. And yes, because this is so there are those in Israel who espouse uprooting 20% of the populace and casting them out.
And American taxpayers are forced to give billions to Israel, that's billions with a 'b', each and every year in support of it. We give Israel the bucks, bullets and the bombs that pay for settlements, kill Palestinians, even burn them with white phosphorus bombs as we all witnessed on our television screens during Israel's betrayal of the peace process when Israel broke the ceasefire with Hamas. That's what the white streaky trails were falling out of the sky. Chemical weapons. Only these weren't Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons. Oh, no. Those were our chemical weapons being fired on a defenseless civilian population.
There is only one way to bring peace to this region. It is up to the people of the world, just as with South Africa's own Apartheid regime, to peacefully boycott, divest and sanction Israel ourselves until both the Jews and the Palestinians have equal rights to live free.