Riding the Bull

As I write this, we are in "heads on fire" territory with the rise and successful election of Donald Trump -- again, and this time with a more dangerous crew and a determination to seek revenge. But we must look at how we got here to rationally find a way beyond it.

First we have to place the blame on the Democrats who, since the Clinton administration, have taken up Reaganomics or neoliberalism and pushing global corporate dominance and U.S. hegemony. The Clintons created the rust belt, aiding the move of productive work to low-wage countries from China to Mexico to the Marshall Islands. They also destroyed the Democratic party moving it from the New Deal to the Raw Deal, destroying "welfare as we knew it" and crippling any safety net we had.

The Democrats, since the ascension of the Clintons have been deafened by their own class arrogance refusing to hear anything that didn't fit their agenda with most of their hatred and vitriol targeting progressives. Not only did they adopt and implement a failed economic model and stick to it, they joined with the neocon warmongers and, under Biden's boneheaded misleadership, stubbornly continue to arm genocide in Palestine and to push us into direct armed conflict with Russia -- WW III.

This year, after much cajoling, Biden was convinced to step aside, his foreign policies being unpopular and his cognition obviously failing. The Democratic leadership than foisted Kamala Harris on us warning all others against even thinking of challenging her in the most obviously pre-scripted "convention" in our history. This phony glee-fest, locking out decency demonstrated to anyone who cared to notice that, like the zombie ant fungus Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, the Democratic party has become a hollow zombie controlled fully by the Clinton DNC; no dissent would be heard, no integrity tolerated as it mechanically stepped to the right. Kamala Harris was a pure DNC product, a honed and controlled Stepford candidate, repeating her lines, triangulating on issues as instructed, all smiles (sneers reserved for anyone objecting to genocide). Walz was much the same, a putty-faced companion whose grand smile can go south morphing to monstrous scowl on a moment's notice. He who pushed that filthy tar sands pipeline through his own state.

At this crucial moment in history, moments from annihilation amid mounting atrocities and spreading war, inseparable from expanding climate catastrophe, we were presented with the stringently limited choice. Either the Maga fascists targeting women, minorities, immigrants, the gender disparate and national collapse or genocide, arrogant empire, WWIII and a likely nuclear annihilation.

Many understandably withheld support -- even while voting to protect abortion rights and to raise the minimum wage. As Dennis Kucinich opined shorty after the results were undeniable, the combination of a punishing economy, at least for the working class and poor, combined with Biden taking us to the rim of WW III and Harris not only refusing to distance herself from an ongoing genocide and lining up with neocons led to a massive repudiation and defeat.

The question is not if Democrats will learn anything, we know they will not. The more pressing question is what we will learn and do differently. Movements often begin as a reaction to terrible times. Can we build a left/labor/ eco-activist alliance around a simple shared vision for a more civilized and truly representative movement or are we too fractured and divided by sectarianism and identity politics?

As for the Democrats, the best possibility would be a formal split between corporate “centrists” and progressives with the formation of a progressive party or a progressive coalition party including DSA, progressive Democrats, Labor, the Poor People's Camapign. eco-activist groups and others of like mind.

Meanwhile, despite what terrified democrats and liberals fear, this is not Wiemar Germany or even the Zionist terror state. Most Americans didn't vote and the margin of victory, less than 2%,is hardly a popular mandate. As for the incoming gang, they have 2 years before the midterms to wreak what damage they can but are crippled from the gate.

While politics should not be likened to sports, this incoming administration reminds me of bull riding. In bull riding, the bulls are expected to be fearsome, unpredictable and dangerous. The trick is to know the creature and stay on for 8 seconds in hopes of winning money.

In this regard, and especially considering the venal and vacuous opportunists so far picked for cabinet positions, I see much resemblance between the Trump admin and bull riding. Trump is the angry and unpredictable bull here and the players are either those who feel, as Elon Musk, that they can profit by riding him as long as possible, the vacuous opportunists like Gabbard, and those trying to corral the mad beast and limit the damage. In any case, though damage will be done, it cannot be anything but a Vaudevillian carnival of competitive opportunism limited by it's own bumbling, fumbling, competitive myopic idiocy.

On what positive side there is, Biden's continuing efforts aside, we may have averted WW III. Also, whenever the Republicans are dominant, resistance and activism increase. We must make the best of that, building strength from solidarity and on vital issues, from human rights and labor rights, to climate action and of course economics. This moment necessitates the long overdue building Progressive Peoples Party, expanding our cultural and media outreach to counter the success of extreme-right brainwash media and building a movement to overthrow oppressive and ecocidal corporate rule.

MAGA Redux 2024
A howling darkness descends –
Half-assed liberals
spout nonsense
missing their complicity
“misreading” truths and warnings
they cursed –
hypocrisies still echoing
between tears of hopeless defeat

The best of us must come together
united
in a common defiance forged
of militant love and solidarity

The promise of tomorrow’s backlash
begins today.

 

Matriotism: An Evolutionary Catalyst for a Living Future

The world, of which we are a part, is a dynamic, living thing, its circulating magma, drifting plates dynamic atmosphere and seas are organs of a living entity. Our position in relation to our star and our rich composition render Earth a Petri dish, or more accurately, a great Uterus, giving birth to life itself in all it's myriad and adapting forms. Very few single life forms can exist on their own and most are dependent on many others just to exist. Life on our small world is symbiosis, each form continuing to exist or dying out based on symbiotic balance and made possible by planetary forces and conditions we are only beginning to understand.

Countries and Nation States are very recent inventions of a particular species of territorial mammal which are us. In the relatively short time "nations" as we know them have existed, the results have been barbaric spreads of violence, mass murder and brutal subjugations. We call these "conquests" and "slavery" and they have lead to cycles of tyranny, resentments, resistance and more wars with designated "borders" ever changing. Our world is littered with the mass graves and broken ruins that define our history.

As we clever hominids learned to alter the elemental makeup of the world, we developed technology -- often at the expense of poisoning and despoliation, like a disease harming the larger body on which our existence depends. Our wars and our technology can no longer be separated from destructive harm to our great mother or to the symbiotic balance upon which life depends. We've even created and continue to stockpile weapons designed to end life on our world. We seem trapped in our cycle of destructive behavior driven by continuing resentments, outdated territorialisms, prejudices and fears. We are led by those who hoard the most of what we produce, who project power -- the Alphas among us who are revered and feared for possessing the most destructive potential. We have developed a system of planetary destruction which oppresses most of us just for food and shelter in orer to further enrich a very few. Such a system a system based on competitive growth in a world of finite resources is the basis of continuing wars for resource hegemony ignoring and destroying in the process the greatest resource of all -- life itself.

And we celebrate this. We wave various symbols and flags for which many would kill and die. We beat our chests with pride and revere our founding alphas even as we are divided and despise each other like soccer fans or turf-conscious gangs as our mutual air, water and food are poisoned, our personal resources always stressed and the fellow creatures on which we depend die off.

Is there a way out of this? Is it too late? I don't know but I believe it must begin by changing our basic concepts. Rejecting widely accepted concepts basic to existing power structures has always been considered blasphemy -- and I am a proud blasphemer rejecting bronze age mysticism, nationalism and hierarchical power based on greed or delusions of control. I understand that such basic concepts, destructive or constructive, are based in and fed by culture. Culture defines how we see the world and ourselves in it. It defines how we see and treat others. This is why I write and why I have published a literary journal the Blue Collar Review for over 27 years as a way of overcoing cultivated divsion and effecting cultural transformation. Those in power too understand culture and do everything they can to divide and manipulate us in order to maintain their dominance.

If we are to make the changes necessary for our survival, we have to understand and overcome our primary obstacle -- the rule of ecocidal corporate interests and their power over governments. Only then will we be able to bring our ways of living back into balance with our geophysical reality and the requirements of our living world, replacing endless growth with rational de-growth. Replacing Toxic nationalisms with healthy internationalism, replacing competitive oligarchy with cooperative bottom up democracy which nourishes us, rather than destroyng the living world of which we are a part.

We must reject blind loyalty to political systems and parties. We must reject the concept of nation states, recognizing them as an obsolete obstacle to needed global community. We need to reject technologies that threatens all life. We must replace loyalty to tribe and nation with love and loyalty to our Earth mother, to each other, and to restoring and protecting the symbiotic balance of all life, of which we are mutually dependent part. Thus, rejecting "patriotism," I am a Matriot and hope you recognize that you are as well, or will join in that identification as part of one big Earth family -- not just we humans, but encompassing all living things in our symbiotic biosphere for our mutual health and preservation. Together we need to build a Matriot Movement which must be a catalyst for needed change, a moment of evolution where our species can come of age and become truly civilized.

Patriotism is the ego-centric, hyper-national alliegacne to competitive destruction and death. Matriotism is the worship and loyalty to earth and to life.

The Truth is Incontrovertible

Today will live on in history as a day that israeli Genocide is exposed. Thank you South Africa!

Standing with Palestine Against Israeli Genocide

This article as originally written in 2012 but updated

The 2012 attack on the Gaza strip by Israel began with its assassination of Hamas leader Ahmed al-Jabari. The last time, it began with Israeli shelling of a beach crowded with people just as Hamas was making overtures for peace. The militants in Gaza responded with largely ineffective missiles and, like last time, our President and press pontificate about Israel's right to defend itself. Never mind the rights of Palestinians living in what is an open air prison surrounded by guard towers and shot at regularly, to defend themselves. I take it personally. I find it unbearable.

As a Jew I was raised with an awareness of the horror of fascism. Most of my mother's relatives, Hungarian Jews, died in Auschwitz. Only a few survived; a cousin I met with a faded number tattooed on his arm and two others; cousins who walked back to Hungary only to find there was nothing for them to return to. They married to keep the family going and emigrated to Palestine and the newly forming Israel. My own sensitivity to and awareness of how nationalism, prejudice and religion are used to support Fascism continues to inform and shape my political perspective.

I was very religious in my youth. Growing up in an intolerant Christian area in California, I remember being taunted by schoolmates as a “Christ killer” and could count on being beaten up on Christmas and Easter. I know all to well about antisemitism and the bitterness of being hated. The Judaism I was raised with was rich with values. Do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with the Lord your God, as the prophet Micah said. We were proud to stand against racism and to have a cultural and racial rainbow of friends. We were a people of laws who knew first hand the horror of hatred and nationalism. That was before the real effect of nationalism took hold on us.

Though my own spiritual journey has taken me beyond any belief in deities, as a cultural Jew with many spiritual and philosophical influences, I still take it personally: What Zionism has done to us, distorting our culture and values; How the antisemitism that was once a European Christian phenomenon has grown globally because of it; The suffering of Palestinians chased from their homes and made permanent refugees tormented at checkpoints and endlessly harassed; The splitting up of families, the demolition of their homes, the uprooting of their orchards, the theft of their water; The teaching of hate and fear my grandchildren got in Sunday school. I learned it myself and it took a long time to get beyond it. It goes against thousands of years of our values and teachings. It echoes our own experience at the hands of others. Who should know better than us? Some of us do. I am not alone in my disillusionment and distaste for Zionism and the poison of nationalism – all nationalism. There are large organizations like the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Jewish Voice for Peace, Jews Not Zionists and others. I was deeply moved by the number of Jews attempting to bring humanitarian relief to Gaza aboard the small ship Irene, under the banner “Not In Our Name” back in 2010. The one American on board was Lillian Rosengarten, 75, a practicing psychotherapist from Cold Spring, N.Y, who fled the Nazis as a child in Frankfurt. Also on board, were Israelıs Reuven Moskovıtz, an 82 year old concentration camp survivor, and Ramı Elhanen whose child was killed by a suicide bomber in Jerusalem in 1997.

You should take it personally too. The continuing intransigence, human right abuses and regional aggression inflicted by Israel is our doing. We underwrite Israel's existence at over 3 billion dollars a year. That is enough to support every Israeli quite comfortably and it doesn't include military support. The rest of the world and the nations in the region are well aware of our support and responsibility for Israel's behavior and it earns us neither trust or friendship. We have the power and the responsibility to use it.

Friends don't let friends become monsters. If we really care about Israel's security, we should apply some tough love and help them out of a tight spot. Consider it an intervention. We should, as responsible benefactors, apply strings to our benevolent support by tying continued funding to a concrete schedule of real action toward a just peace that would bring them and ourselves security. Hamas may be militant but who can blame them? They are the product of injustice and confront the equal militancy of a much larger and better armed oppressor. No good will comes from brutal oppression. Hatred made powerful by injustice can be undermined with good will. Mistrust can be overcome, though it takes time.

I was pleased at the UN vote overwhelmingly supporting recognition of Palestine, reaffirming “the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and to independence in their State of Palestine on the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967.” This historic vote recognizes Palestine as a state and gives it observer status and the right to join U.N. agencies, including the International Criminal Court. It also allows Palestine to bring cases against Israel. It is an important moment. Unfortunately, Israel has responded to the UN vote by announcing the expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank and by seizing $120 million dollars of Palestinian funds. And they threaten to take more. The official UN recognition gives Palestine status that may afford them some protection and a long overdue degree of power in negotiating and defining their future but much depends on the response of the real power, which is our government.

Even in the unlikelihood that Israel removed its many settlements and its military forces from the West Bank, it has purposefully made a two state solution physically impossible over the last two decades. It seems to me that as even under the best situation with both states mutually dependent on limited resources, ultimately, a single combined state would be the best solution with equal citizenship and equality for all. Israel could do this by granting full citizenship to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza ending this festering crisis once and for all. The elected Palestinian leadership and parties could be granted representation in the Israeli Parliament, or Knesset. Israel has the advantage of a multi-party system where clear majorities are difficult and cooperation is a necessity. As citizens sharing the same country, common interests would override differences. Civic participation should be encouraged and the most militant segments on both sides, disarmed. This would be in Israel's best interest making them more secure, ending a costly occupation and undermining regional animosity. Treating others as we would want to be treated is more in line with Jewish cultural norms. As previously stated, zionism turns Akenai Jewish values the to their antithesis just as Evangilical Dominionism does to Chrstianity. Both are poisoned by nationalism. The undue influence of the diseased, neo-fascist sects support mass murder and make clais that anuone opposing it -- even Jews -- are "antisemetic." Both Evangelic Dominionism and Zionism, and especially that later, are antisemetic purveyors of anti-Jewsh animosity as well as of racism and genocide.

And yet, here we are today with the corporate, embedded U.S. media flooding us with greusome details, often false, of Hamas violence meant stir misplaced outrage and blind support for Israeli apartheid along with attacks on the "left" for standing in support -- not of the violent attacks -- but with Palestine, knowing that The attacks perpetrated by Hamas happen to Palestinians all the time with American weapons and support. We must stand against that. I am proud of those who do, especialy Jewish Voice for Peace, even against the outrage of fellow Jews and half-assed liberals.

As I add this in late December 2023, with well over 20,000 people murdered by Isreal with Joe Biden's avid assistance and support, The liegitimacy of Isreal as a state -- and of the U.S. is in question as the world witnesses and stands against this historic crime. Israel was imposed on Palestine and officially recognized as a state as recently as 1948. That error must be corrected and it’s official recognition rescinded. It has, by its own actions proven itself criminal and not a legitimate state. Instead, Palestine must be recognized and the U.S, must pay reparations to it – along with what we gave our colony annually, for at least 20 years. Both the Israeli and U.S. leadership must be tried for their crimes in the world court. So too the complcit propagandists of our embedded corporate mainstream media.

A Nat Turner Moment

As our warmongering president embraces the murderous thug Netanyahoo promising even more weapons and support without limits; as ships loaded with weapons head out to "defend" genocide in the racist Zionist apartheid monstrostiy, Isreal, the root of the cancer is made evident before the whole world. In the video below, Norman Finkelstein, one of my ultimate heroes and a man of unimpeachable integrity is interviewed by Chris Hedges on the issue.

Lies, Damned Lies and Military-Industrial Media

Again, we are being lied to by the embedded, corporate mainstream media about Ukraine, just as we were about every recent war from Vietnam, to Central America to Iraq as bone-headed cold-war delusional Joe Biden pushes us to World War III in a delusionally arrogant effort for global U.S. hegemony. Ray McGovern, retired long-time C.I.A. analyst who breifed seven presidents spills the beans --

And it's not just Ray McGovern's projection, as laid out in FAIR.

Sent to Joe Biden via the Whitehouse Contact Page

Dear President Biden,

I urge you to listen to what former CIA analyst and Presidential advisor writes about "off ramps" and the prevention of nuclear annihilation -- Ray McGovern

Russia is not the USSR, It does not seek expansion so much as security. You and you alone can end this today. Instead of upping the considerable risk to life on earth with increased weapons to Ukraine, you need to pull back NATO, missiles that can reach Russia, and assure Russia that Ukraine will not be a NATO state.

At the present moment, impending nuclear holocaust (even by accident) aside, our world is facing the rapidly expanding existential disaster of climate catastrophe -- already made worse by the sabotage of the Nordstream pipeline and the release of all that methane. If you are to have a legacy at all it's time to end this now while there is any chance of our survival. We feel for Ukraine but it isn't worth the sacrifice of all life on earth. What is needed here is sanity, a longer view, mutual security for all involved.

Will he listen or even see this? Not likely but the more of us that send anti-war letters and links that show we are aware of the lies, the history and the truths omitted by corporate embedded media the better. Of course writing is not enough. Action updates we can participate or have listed can be found at United National Antiwar Coalition.