To Marvin re: dialogue with race & hate baiter about CA schools

August 24, 2009

Marv,

Thanks for your rational and researched retort to Jim's irrational hate and blame scapegoating. You will never convince them with reason and facts.

I have some good friends with sons the same age as mine. The last time I visited them, they spoke the same words as Jim and I was surprised, as usual, that such words could spew forth from intelligent people's mouths. This is the popular issue for a certain subset of arch Republicans. I've heard such virulent hate and blame words from my friends before, yet we have maintained a cordial friendship. I just presume that they have been hypnotized or something, and try to see the merit in their viewpoint. I try to understand what part of them is fulfilled by crude-mouthed rage focused on race baiting. I presume they aspire to be one of the nobles in the neo-feudalistic new world they envision.

There is no way to reason with such people. They are convinced and enraged. It is all part of the fascist tide that the war profiteers are fomenting. If my friends got hypnotized into the frenzy, then the whole tide could become a tidal wave.

I'm glad you speak up to this frenzy with reason; even if you could never convince the fanatics, you can convince the bulk of the normals under the bell curve. I'm glad you speak up for facts, compassion, and reason.

In Peace

War with Iran Would Be a BIG Mistake

As I have already written, whether Obama wants war or not, the war profiteers will foment war and the USA will be sucked into it. That's a fact.

I heard on the news today that we may be at war with Iran in a couple of weeks. That would please the war profiteers because they make money no matter who wins. But the USA will not be able to beat Iran. The Iranians have learned their lesson and they are ready for us.

No sooner was the fascist Axis defeated in WWII than US Intelligence recruited the defeated Nazi war criminals to fight our allies, the Soviets. The resulting Gehlen Organization of Nazi master spies provided all the intelligence on the Soviet Union for the next decade. Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947 creating the CIA and the National Security Council (NSC) to oversee it. The initial CIA was populated by operatives from the Gehlen Organization. By 1948, the CIA created a secret wing called the Office of Policy Coordination to carry out "anti-communist" covert operations. I wonder why 3 years after helping us defeat the fascists, that suddenly our government decides to fight our allies, the communists, using our enemies, the Nazi fascists? What was so very wrong about communism that we needed to recruit our worst enemies into a covert wing of government to fight it?

In 1953, under the direction of Allen Dulles, the covert wing of the CIA, which was dedicated to defending freedom and democracy, overthrew the democratically elected center-left leader of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh. At that time, Iran was a budding democracy with a western-leaning population and a secular parliament. The CIA set up the brutal Shah of Iran who promoted Western corporate interests while ruthlessly repressing the Iranian people.

Twenty six years later, the Muslim fundamentalists managed to overthrow the Shah and take 66 Americans hostages. After releasing the women, sick, and people of color, 52 hostages remained. They wanted the Shah returned from the USA to face trial in Iran for his crimes against humanity. Some believe the hostage takers were paid by Reagan campaign conspirators; that's what it looked like to me at the time. The failure of peacemaker President Jimmy Carter to free the hostages led to his electoral defeat. The unintended consequences of the CIA's covert action against a budding secular democracy resulted in the creation of an avidly anti-American militant fundamentalist Muslim theocracy in Iran; our baby.

Once the Shah died, and Iraq invaded Iran, the hostage takers released the hostages moments after the inauguration of Ronald Reagan, supposedly as a statement against Carter's support for the brutal Shah. Reagan instituted economic sanctions against Iran and military support to Iran's enemy, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, causing the Iranian Muslim theocracy to work even harder to survive. In spite of the embargo and arming their neighbor, Iraq, CIA covert operations were selling arms to Iran, now known as the Iran-Contra Affair. The CIA used the funds to support the anti-democratic Contras of Nicaragua.

The Iranians have been victims of a series of anti-democratic interventions instigated by the USA. In spite of this, they have developed into the powerhouse of the Middle East. They signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty as well as weapons inspection treaties with the IAEA. Although they have used rhetoric against the state of Israel, they have not violated any rules or conventions without first being violated from abroad. Although Iran has not invaded their neighboring countries in the last century and has cooperated with efforts against nuclear proliferation, the United States chooses to make Iran the enemy.

There is currently a steamroller of anti-Iranian militaristic sentiment in the American news media to fight Iran, our unintended baby. Doesn't anyone see that we have meddled enough with Iran? If we start a war with Iran, it may be the last war that the USA ever fights. We have been at war for decades. Our resources are depleted; our national treasury is deep in debt. We have already mortgaged the futures of our unborn great grandchildren to pay for our current ongoing wars. What makes anyone think that we could defeat Iran, who has been preparing to defend themselves against us since we invaded Iraq in 1991? War with Iran at this time will be the biggest mistake ever made by the USA.

A History of CIA Covert Actions by Steve Kangas

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

We Are All Shemites

We are All Shemites
10/29/04

On DemocracyNow! on Friday, the portrayal of a silent kaleidoscopic view of Iraq from the viewpoint of an Iraqi was sublime. It was a human side of the war unseen anywhere else in America. What a nightmare!

At one point, seeing families carting home the dead bodies of their children and loved ones, I didn't know if I was looking at Israel, or Palestine, or any other place where inflexible, militaristic powers strive to dominate another people.

In Genesis 17, G-d came to Abraham and promised him the land of Canaan. That covenant was marked by the practice of circumcision. Ishmael was 13 years old, Abram, now Abraham, was 99. It was 3 years before the birth of Isaac. G-d told Abraham that he would be the father of many nations, and gave the land of Canaan to ALL of the seed of Abraham.

When Joshua crossed the Jordan River and invaded Canaan, the Bible says that they slaughtered all the Canaanites except for the family of the harlot. Save the possibility that the Palestinians might be her descendants, we will assume that the Palestinians are descendants of Ishmael. The Canaanites are gone.

Standing on the platform that G-d gave this land to us, the Israelis feel righteous in taking the land. But they forget that G-d gave this land to our cousins, the Palestinians, also. Ishmael received G-d's blessing 3 years before Isaac did, and again by Hagar's well. The Muslims worship the One G-d, they circumcise their males, they even daven when they pray.

In Genesis 6, the Nefillim walked the Earth and found the daughters of men to be lovely, and they fathered the heroes of old. It is unknown who or what the Nefillim were, but they were not humans but had genetic material that could mate with the aboriginal humans. The first great hero was Noah. Muslims and Jews are descendants of Noah's son Shem. We are all Shemites. We all carry that piece of genetic material from the Nefillin.

The children of Israel were chosen to promote the worship of the One G-d, and to be examples of righteousness to the people. Being chosen does NOT mean exclusive right of possession of the land of Canaan.

The Earth is rapidly shrinking. We are all together on this one lifeboat of a planet. Its the only one we have. We need to find a way to live together in Peace.

The Common Good is Not-For-Profit

The Common Good
11/14/05

There are some that say the purpose of national government is no more than to protect our national borders and to regulate interstate commerce. And for what purpose are our local governments? Some say to keep the peace and to protect the public safety. In fact, the purpose of government is to protect the Common Good.

The Common Good can be defined as those things that benefit all people equally. Usually it includes the police force, fire fighters, and forest rangers, infrastructure of our cities like roads, traffic lights, sewers, sidewalks, and water, gas and electric lines. Clean and safe water, air and soil are included in the Common Good because we all breathe, drink and eat food coming from the soil. Parks and game preserves are also for the Common Good as well as a just legal and political system. And many include the public airways and utilities that produce electricity in the Common Good. Considering that the World Health Organization has proclaimed that healthcare is a basic Human Right, I would also include healthcare in the Common Good.

Our local governments have created Public Utility Commissions to manage the common resources like air, water, rail safety, and electricity for the common good. They have also created sewer treatment plants and clean water facilities to benefit all people equally at a price that is not-for-profit. Yet our government doesn’t have any means to manage healthcare. Nor do they manage the soil. The food grown in our soil is only monitored for coliform bacteria. Organic farmers who try to produce completely safe food are overruled by courts that favor the petroleum fertilized fields growing genetically engineered crops for which long-term safety is unknown. The courts protect the rights of the corporations to use the unsuspecting American public as guinea pigs to test the long-term safety of their products.

A huge issue, which subverts the Common Good, is healthcare for profit. If health care is a human right, then rationing it out only to those who can pay is not serving the Common Good at all. I recently had an annual check-up. The doctor ordered a few lab tests. One test was the urinalysis. Having done many through my job over the years, I’m quite familiar with this test. It entails taking a small test strip out of a jar and dipping it into a sample of urine and then reading the colors compared to the key on the jar label. It takes about 120 seconds to complete the test and record the results. I was charged $80 for this test. This is healthcare for profit.

In the USA, we have a system which trains doctors to serve their own profits rather than the Common Good. It is done by charging huge premiums for a medical education followed by the equally huge cost of setting up a private practice. It is not unusual for a new young doctor to begin practicing medicine with $50,000 debt in student loans and another $50,000 debt in costs associated with opening a practice. No wonder doctors often seem to favor costly interventions in conflict with serving the patient’s best interests. If medical education were not-for-profit, and the new young doctors could be immediately employed in the national health care system, we would be training practitioners that care about their patients’ good health more than about the next payment on their overwhelming debt burden. A system that reaps profits at the expense of public illness is a conflict of interest.

In addition, there is no agency other than the American Medical Association that monitors the safe practice of doctors. Truck and bus drivers, airplane pilots, air traffic controllers, train engineers, all get regular drug urine tests to insure the public safety, but not doctors. Anesthesiologists and surgeons have our lives in their hands, as well as having the means to write their own prescriptions for drugs of abuse, yet no one is charged with the job of monitoring their competence and ability to provide safe care for the benefit of the Public Good. Did your anesthesiologist get a drug urine test before your last surgery?

It would be unthinkable to most people that private corporations could buy up our public utilities like water and sewer and begin price gouging. But, why not? Our Congress has already passed the law (H.R. 6, Sec. 1273, Repeal of the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, Aug 8, 2005: Public Law No: 109-58) that allows for the privatization of public utilities. A private corporation will soon be coming to your town to make bids on the local water supply. After that, like with healthcare, it will be rationed out to those who can pay. A glass of clean drinking water could cost $80 like the urinalysis. Price gouging is fair and square among Social Darwinist corporatists. Only the richest shall survive. And when questioned about it, they lie.

I propose that it is the duty and obligation of governments to protect the Common Good not-for-profit. In order to carry out their charge, governments need the support of the people. Therefore governments levy taxes. Residents pay taxes, and their tax dollars pay for roads, bridges, sewer, water, gas and electric lines, police, highway patrol, firefighters, judges, courts, prisons, public health, public schools, public universities, public parks, and governments to administer all these public services. Taxes used to also pay for public hospitals, but such things have now all been privatized in the name of increased efficiency.

There is a small minority of ideological fanatics who believe that governments should be replaced with private corporations which will run everything more efficiently. Those industries that used to be operated for the common good not-for-profit, which have now been replaced by unregulated, for-profit corporations, have unanimously gouged money from the public while the quality of the product or service fell precipitously. The only net efficiencies derived from the privatization process were the ever increasing earnings-per-share for the stockholders.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not against private corporations. Competitive markets for commodities and goods are a good thing, but NOT when it entails those items that are strictly and exclusively for the Common Good. Consumer items like clothing, cars, furniture, bicycles, house paint and stereos all have a place in the competitive market. And corporations can also serve the public by producing good products that don’t pollute the environment. Corporations can limit the multiples for the compensation received by top administrators as compared with the lowliest employee. They can make sure their workers are not unfairly exploited and get fair wages and benefits. They can make sure that their workforce, including the Board of Directors and the top administrators, reflect the diversity found in the local area. Pure Capitalism exploits the workers until they can no longer work and then replaces them with a younger worker. Capitalism moderated by social controls prevents slavery, child labor, and discrimination based on gender, sexual preference, race, national origin or religion. Capitalism moderated by social controls provides a 40-hr week, minimum wage, paid leave, overtime pay, vacation time, maternity and family emergency leave, lunch-time, breaks, and much more.

Some corporations find they can’t compete in the global market because they have the extra financial burden of providing healthcare for their employees. This is the justification to move their factories offshore where they can pay lower wages without providing healthcare or other benefits. Essentially, off-shore factories are able to return to the days of pure Capitalism, where collective bargaining for workers did not exist. Yet, the real reason they can’t compete in the global market is because all other industrialized nations provide national healthcare for the Common Good rather than legislating it on to private businesses. Our current government gives tax advantages to factories that relocate offshore rather than providing national healthcare for the Common Good. Obviously, our current government is not fulfilling their duty to serve the Common Good.

Since healthcare is for the Common Good, it shouldn’t be the responsibility of employers to provide it. Healthcare should be provided like water, sewer, roads, police and firefighters, compliments of the government who serve the interests of the Common Good not-for-profit.