A LETTER TO MY JEWISH FRIENDS

WITH A MAJORITY OF US VOTERS WANTING THE US OUT OF THE WAR, WHY DOESN’T THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY REPRESENT US?

I miss you. It has been a long time since we worked together in liberal and left politics in the US. Historically, we were together in the Democratic Party, and in the Socialist Party, in the New Deal, in the Civil Rights revolution and in Viet Nam peace marches. You guys, more often than not, provided the leadership, brains, money and enthusiasm for our efforts. I was honored to be invited to your annual Seders to celebrate metaphorically mankind’s universal, timeless struggle to be free.

We now seem unable to agree on public matters of critical importance. You and I need to examine how and why all of this came about.

Looking back, I see that our division began, not with the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, but with the 1967 Six Day War and the permanent occupation and settlement of the West Bank and Gaza far beyond the UN sanctioned borders of the legal State. From that time on, it seems to me, you have been obsessed and preoccupied with the preservation of the State of Israel beyond its legal borders and no matter what Israel does. This defense of Israel became your passion instead of mankind’s quest for justice. First it was Palestinians that you excluded from legitimately sharing mankind’s universal timeless wish to be free that we celebrated together in the Seder. Now your exclusion of people seems to include all Arabs, all Moslems everywhere. Beyond that, it seems to exclude me and everyone else who does not share your passion for the defense of a neo-con Israel, and wishes somehow to make things right for the Palestinians.

You will first attempt to deny this and the evidence that follows, and then you will make an argument for “balance.” As your ace in the hole, you will buttress that with the claim that those with whom you disagree, like me, like anybody who writes or thinks along the lines of this letter, is anti-Semitic.

For years after 1948 and 1967, we goyem were especially sensitive to the charge of anti-Semitism. Your denial, your argument for “balance,” and your charge of “anti-Semitism” worked successfully with us for a long time. We averted our eyes from what Israel was doing in the West Bank and Gaza. We wanted to ignore factual reality out of our long friendship with you and with our own knowledge of the long history of the persecution of the Jews.

This denial of factual reality no longer works for me. I am appalled with what the State of Israel has become domestically, and with what it does beyond its legal borders. I am especially concerned with the hammer-lock grip Israel has on American politics through the Jewish lobbies like AIPAC and the Anti Defamation League. I am appalled that my American Jewish friends uncritically support these lobbies in monolithic fashion, while Jews in Israel openly debate a wide variety of public positions.

Let’s first get at my alleged “anti-Semitism” out of the way. I was and am a passionate defender of Israel’s right to exist within its pre-1967 legal borders. If Jews want a theocracy and a powerful haven for oppressed Jews everywhere, so be it. The long history of antagonism toward the Jews beginning with the four gospels of the Christian New Testament, continuing with the Crusades in the middle ages, with the pogroms in Europe before WWII, with the discrimination against Jews, and with the holocaust makes some special powerful haven for Jews completely understandable, necessary and just.

However, if Zionism means Jewish imperialism outside of Israel’s legal borders, then I am anti-Zionist. That does not make me “anti-Semitic” unless you choose to make it so in your own eyes.

Israelis and Jews everywhere, like most Americans, have become more interested in preserving their material benefits than in justice for others. However, there is one critical difference. I have come to the tentative conclusion that Jews everywhere, because of history, have a kind of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome that partly explains their current attitudes and political behavior that I do not share. I have never experienced anti-Semitism. My grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins and were not gassed in Hitler’s death chambers. 6 million of my extended family was not recently put to death. I do not have current fears or nightmares that I will be harmed by anti-Semites be they Moslems, Arabs, or local David Duke types. I do not have the guilt and shame from the possibility that one of my ancestors may have been a capo or that others were so immobilized that they did not flee when they could have. Hence, I have compassion for Jews who have this experience and hopefully, some understanding. I thus understand why Jews say “never again,” and choose to arm Israel to the teeth. However, it may be that this Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome of Jews prevents them from acting rationally, realistically, and justly in their own self interest or in my self interest. Whatever the self interest of American Jews may be as now manifest in American politics, it is not in my self interest.

You my Jewish friends do not confront and you do not criticize the powerful Jewish Lobbies that pressure the US. You support and finance following positions of AIPAC, ADL and the other American Jewish lobbies and interest groups that are not in my self interest:

• Actively lobbying for the US to invade or bomb Iran
• Lobbied for the Gulf War
• Lobbied for the Iraq War and lobbies for the War to continue
• Lobbies for ever more monetary aid, loan guarantees, and armaments for Israel
• Supports the 15,000 new Jewish settlers in the West Bank and ongoing settlements outside the legal boundaries of Israel.
• Opposed every two state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict so far proposed
• Opposes any US intervention or brokering or pressuring or even handed mediation of the conflict
• Urges the US to veto any UN Resolution critical of Israel or sympathetic to Palestine.
• Opposes peace groups in the US and labels them “naïve.”
• Support Israeli spying in the US including the theft of atomic bomb secrets.
• Support for a War in Iraq and Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza that creates more and more enemies of the US that are full of rage.
• Opposes every Democratic candidate for Congress who stands for ending the Iraq War.

It is this last position that is grossly offensive to me. These Jewish Lobbies, through their neck-lock control of House and Senate Democratic leaders in control of campaign funds, have carefully selected pro-war candidates and successfully eliminated pro-peace Democrats in the primary elections. Let me be blunt: American Jews thus prevent the Democratic Party from implementing the wishes of a majority of rank and file Democrats that we get out of Iraq.

American Jews will say: “no that could not be true, or if peace candidates have been eliminated it is due to the power of the Armaments Lobby, many other K Street lobbyists, and the evil controlling power of money in American politics.”

The truth is that these other K Street lobbies do not have the kind of hammer-lock control of Congress that AIPAC does.

How does AIPAC get this level of influence and control of our Congress and of the Democratic Party?

There are many Democratic leaders in the House and Senate whose allegiance to Israel and AIPAC is so complete, that one suspects that their paramount loyalty is to Israel, and not to the United States. Let me name some of those persons: Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut; Senator Charles Schumer of NY; Senator Diane Feinstein of California; Senator Barbara Boxer of California; Senator Hillary Clinton of NY; Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi of California; Congressmen Tom Lantos, Howard Berman, and Harvey Waxman of California; Congressman Rahm Emanuel of Illinois.

Two of these persons are of critical importance now in the 2006 elections:

Senator Charles Schumer is Chairman of the Senate Campaign Committee and Congressman Rahm Emanuel is Chairman of the House Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and both have control of the massive millions available to help re-elect of new Democratic Congress.

In my own Congressional District a qualified, attractive veteran, Jeff Latas ran in the primary election on a platform of opposing the War. His primary election opponent was a young woman, Gabriel Giffords, a former Arizona State Representative. Gabriel chose conservative positions. She supported the War. She supported massive federal funding to build a fence on the Southern border to keep out hungry Mexican immigrants. Congressman Rahm Emanuel gave her lavish campaign money and gave Latas none. Latas, having insufficient funds, got only 7% of the vote. Giffords won. Continuing Democratic support of the War is assured. The majority of Tucson voters who oppose the War were denied political effectiveness. These disenfranchised rank and file Democrats were forced to vote for the “lesser evil” even though their principal concern was not implemented.

This is my local example. Senator Schuman gave campaign money only to vigorously pro war Senatorial candidates around the US who supported the War. Congressman Emanuel did the same for Congressional Districts across the nation. Of the 22 Districts where change is possible, Emanuel supported 20 hawks, even digging up a candidate to run against a popular anti-war Democrat in one case. 20 won. The fix was on. The War will certainly go on even if the Democrats win. See http://www.counterpunch.org/walsh10142006.html

Elected officials in Washington are terrified of AIPAC. If they propose that the US undertake balanced brokering between Israel and Palestine, if they falter in support of what Israel wants, or if they propose a little aid for Palestinians, AIPAC will throw its resources in to defeat that public official at the next election. AIPAC thus helped to defeat Congressman Pete McCloskey, Senator Charles H. Percy of Illinois, Congressman Bob Barr, and Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. Washington elected officials heard the message “loud and clear.” They cringe and dare not oppose AIPAC or risk having them labeled “anti-Semitic.”

An easy example of this power: AIPAC, several times a year proposes resolutions that uncritically support Israel in order to see if its influence is still effective and to demonstrate its power... No Senator or Congressman dares vote against these resolutions. The resolution giving unqualified support to Israel during its controversial invasion of Lebanon and urging Israel not to negotiate with Lebanon in August, 2006, is typical.

See the author’s blog for 2 other articles about the makeup and activities of AIPAC at

http://www.thenewliberator.blogspot.com/

John Walsh wrote in Counterpunch on October 14, 2006:

"’Democrats Split over Timetable for Troops; In Close Races, Most Reject Rapid Pullout,’ the headline atop page one of the Sunday Washington Post informed us as the election season got underway (8/27). Stories like this abound these days, and they should all be prefaced with the single word, "betrayal." Only 17% of rank and file Democrats are for "staying the course," 53% want immediate withdrawal and another 25% are for gradual withdrawal. Among all voters, only 30% want to stay the course, 37% want immediate withdrawal and 26% a "gradual withdrawal (Gallup poll - 9/24/06). According to recent Pew Polls, 52% of voters want a timetable for withdrawal while only 41% oppose setting a timetable.”

http://www.counterpunch.org/walsh10142006.html

So the military industrial complex and its money for campaign contributions and lobbying is one reason the United States cannot get out of the War. The reason the Democratic Party cannot lead the nation to get us out of the war, as the rank and file Democrats wish, and the cause of the Democratic Party’s betrayal of its majority rank and file base, is the Jewish Lobbies like AIPAC and ADL. It is also those of you who give uncritical support to Israel and AIPAC.

See also The Israel Lobby and The Peace Process by Marshall Windmiller, Professor Emeritus of International Relations San Francisco State University at

http://www.middleeast.org/marshall1.htm

So you and I are now taking profoundly different positions. Now I am in a conflict with you, a dangerous and potentially deadly conflict accompanied by libel and slander suits, political retaliation, loss of jobs, and by death threats against those of us who examine the facts. It is not I who has changed. It is you, my Jewish friends. We who wish to bring peace and justice to this planet will unfortunately have to find other allies. We miss you. We will continue to struggle to implement the metaphorical message of the Seder even if you do not.

Dated: November 2, 2006

Douglas R. Page

dougpage2@earthlink.net

AIPAC OUTLINE

THE AMERICAN ISRAEL PUBLIC AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

also known as

AIPAC

“AIPAC is America’s Pro Israel Lobby,” says its masthead. Its stated purpose is to lobby for policies and issues that are in the best interests of Israel and of America. It is a registered lobby. Fortune lists it as being the 2^nd most powerful lobby in Washington, AARP being the first. However, AIPAC is widely regarded as the most effective foreign policy lobby. It was created in 1951.

Membership is apparently open to anyone. There are now 100,000 members and it has grown rapidly since 9-11. The annual operating budget is $40 Million. Although, one apparently does not have to join a membership club, there are 6:

The Minyan Club for those who give $100,000 or more per year

The Chairman’s Council for those giving $36K or more

The President’s Cabinet for those giving $25K

The Senate Club for those giving $10K

The Capitol Club for those giving $3,600 or more

The Washington Club for those giving $1,500 or more

AIPAC’s Board of Directors consists of 46 persons. I could not find out how they are elected. Each is quite wealthy, and they contribute an average of $70,000 per year each. One Director gave $51 Million. The Board consists of Wall Street lawyers, stock brokers, heirs to family fortunes and real estate developers.

AIPAC’s 51 person Executive Committee is also called the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations CPMJO. It is supposed to represent a consensus of American Jews, but it is dominated by one man, Malcolm Hoenlein, a supporter of the Likud Party. He believes that Jews have a right to occupy and live in the West Bank permanently. According to the Jewish Bulletin, it is dedicated to the “unequivocal support of every Israeli government.” My research persuades me that this is also the objective of AIPAC.

CPMJO concentrates on lobbing the Executive Branch of the US government, the President, the State Department, the Department of Defense, the Intelligence Agencies, while AIPAC concentrates on Congress.

AIPAC has many satellite organizations or committees or separate organizations with which it works in tandem some of which are:

• PACs There are at least 61 (some say 100) separate pro Israel PACs ( Political Action Committees) with such names as Northern Californians for Good Government.

• CAMERA the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting which seeks to counter any media that portrays Israel in a way that AIPAC does not like….for example, it has put out or sponsored articles critical of Steven Spielberg’s new movie, Munich. AIPAC sees the movie as too partial to the Palestinians, although the main point of the movie seemed to me to be to show the idiocy of Mindless reciprocal retaliatory killing

• WINEP the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank.

• JINSA, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs whose purpose is to educate Americans about the importance of an effective defense capability, and to inform the American public affairs and foreign policy community about the important role of Israel in bolstering democratic interests in the Middle East.

• The American Israel Education Foundation that finances trips to Israel for Congress persons and students.

• AIPAC’s influence and power are compounded by the fact that it seeks policies and acts sought also by the Christian Right, the Military Industrial Complex, and by the Bush Administration.

US elected officials are terrified of AIPAC. Criticism of Israel or sympathy for Palestinians has become the “third rail of American politics.” The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles in a series of articles about AIPAC dated 10-28-05 raised the question: “Who is afraid of big bad AIPAC?” and answered: “Nearly everybody.” In Congress, every person, Democrat or Republican, with one or two exceptions votes the way that AIPAC requests.

So what does AIPAC ask of the President, the Department of Defense, and of Congress?

• It is now actively lobbying for the US to invade or bomb Iran
• It lobbied for the Gulf War
• It lobbied for the Iraq War and lobbies for it to continue
• It lobbies for ever more monetary aid, loan guarantees, and armaments for Israel
• Support for the 15,000 new Jewish settlers in the West Bank
• Opposed every two state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict so far proposed
• Opposes any US intervention or brokering or pressuring or even handed mediation of the conflict
• Urges the US to veto any UN Resolution critical of Israel
• Opposes peace groups in the US and labels them “naïve.”

AIPAC contributed much money for candidates opposing Congress people who were insufficiently supportive of Israel, or supportive of Palestine.

Some Israeli Labor Party members have been critical of AIPAC as being too supportive of the Likud Party. I can not find one single instance where AIPAC has supported a peace proposal. In my view, AIPAC’s policies and actions are consistent only with an objective of the permanent Israeli occupation of the West Bank, and of ever more Jewish settlers there. So what is to become of the Palestinians?

Polls show that a substantial majority of American Jews favor US involvement in the peace process.

Does AIPAC speak for you?

Does AIPAC deserve your financial support?

Does AIPAC contribute to the long term safety of Israel and of Jews? Of my safety and the safety of my grandson?

Dated: January 23, 2006

Doug Page dougpage2@earthlink.net

WHAT IS SO BAD ABOUT CAPITALISM?

What Is So Bad About Capitalism?

We have been so subject to propaganda that we never think of capitalism as a human creation, and never question its shortcomings.

Capitalism is an economic system whereby a wealth owning class of humans hires another class of humans who have little or no wealth to perform work to create as much profit as possible for the owning class.

Capitalism is not accurately described by the words, “free market economy” which suggests that our economic system is a sunny benign plaza where we simply trade our goods and services with each other on a relatively equal footing.

The following are some of the real characteristics of capitalism that exist despite the false public relations of the capitalists:

1. Capitalism Is Amoral and Immoral!

Capitalism has no moral basis or foundation. Capitalism is not designed and maintained to meet human need, but only to make a profit...profit for the few and not even profit for everyone. Capitalism is fueled solely by greed for profit and power. The human values of kindness, sharing, cooperation and loving thy neighbor as thyself have no place in capitalism. Capitalism is subject to no public control and it is not inhibited by culture or by tradition. Capitalism thus has no concern for human beings, human culture, the environment, or natural resources. There is no concern for meeting the needs of human beings. .

2. Capitalism Depends Upon Paying Employees As Little As Possible And Keeping Some People Jobless

Capitalists seek to pay employees as little as possible. Capitalists would use slaves if they could, as they did for 300 years prior to 1865. Capitalists move their workplaces anywhere in the world where they can get the cheapest labor, with neither concern nor obligation to the employees or the communities they leave behind. Capitalists do not want full employment, but rather favor a large pool of unemployed persons to compete hungrily with each other for the jobs that are available. This reduces their labor costs. In most parts of the world, there is little difference between being a slave and being a wage-slave employed by a capitalist. Prior to the Civil War, an aristocratic Southern Planter argued that since slaves were his property, he took better care of them than a Northern employer took of his employees, his wage slaves. Capitalism does not foster loving thy neighbor as thyself.

3. Constantly Increasing Inequality of Wealth Between the Rich and the Poor is An Ongoing Necessary Component of Capitalism.

The inequality between the capitalist hirer, and the employee existed at the very beginning of capitalism. The hiring class had to have money to hire the first employees. The employees needed money in order to survive. The inequality constantly increases because of the power of employers and their maximization of profits and the weakness of unorganized employees who must work to survive. So what is so bad about that?

The worst thing is that capitalism steadily and slowly impoverishes 80% of us who are not of the wealthy class. We either remain where we are or we get poorer and poorer. This happens slowly but we know it from official statistics, and we know it in our own families. Millions of people outside the United States know it. Our children have to work longer hours for an average standard of living than we did. We have been so brainwashed that over 82% of us hold the false belief that it is possible in America to pretty much be who you want to be. On the other hand, 49% of Americans believe that the gross differences in wealth that now exist are immoral.

4. Capitalism is Incompatible with Democracy

Another bad thing is the effect on democracy. We know that money talks, that the Golden Rule of Capitalism is that Gold Rules. In other words the rich and powerful control our government. We have wealth primaries where he who spends the most millions, wins the election. Our constitutional guarantee of self-government, with each voter having equal power with each other voter, is thwarted. The rich and the powerful use their governmental power to place the tax burdens and the financial burdens of government on the rest of us.

5. Capitalism Has No Concern For the Environment

The worldwide capitalistic system is destroying the environment in the pursuit of short-term profit. The devastation of the forests, the depletion of the fishes of the sea, the pollution of air, the waste of fresh water, and the mining of the soil are all occurring at rapid and uncontrolled rate. This is not only dangerous for our healthy survival, but it is immoral. It is not proper stewardship of creation.

6. Capitalism is Damaging Our Culture

Another consequence is the effect on communities' public schools and public facilities. The rich live in gated enclosures. The rich send their children to private schools. The rich do not need or want public parks, swimming pools or entertainment facilities. They can well afford to buy their own. They therefor do not wish to pay taxes to improve schools, colleges, leisure and entertainment facilities.

Another consequence is that the rich powerful class owns all of the media and dominate colleges and universities with the result that the rich and powerful control our minds and what is available for us to think about.

7.. Capitalism is grossly wasteful.

Since capitalism seeks only to maximize profit by selling more goods, capitalism has developed “planned obsolescence,” annual model “changes,” and unrepairable and shoddy products. Vast portions of the military budget are wasted. Public relations, advertising, fancy packaging, and legal services are almost totally wasteful. The mining of irreplaceable natural resources is wasteful. Pollution is wasteful. The loss of goods and services which are not produced by unemployed people is wasteful. The total of this waste is staggering...about one half of what we do produce or could produce is wasted.

8. Capitalism is a Perfect System for Preying Upon and Fostering Human Frailty.

Capitalism exists by appealing to our baser sides, to our greed, our selfishness, our excessive consumption, and to our weakness for gambling and lotteries. The amoral and immoral qualities of capitalism have come to dominate the world. Millions of people would trade freedom and democracy for a pair of Levi's, a bottle of Coca-Cola and a chance to get rich in a lottery. Capitalism causes an unquestioning addiction to consumer goods, to shopping until you drop. Capitalism makes sharing, cooperation and compassion useless and inappropriate. Most of our states now support the public schools by the lottery, and the financial burden falls on poor people of color.

9. Capitalism Cannot Exist Without Government Spending. We Pay the Bill

Capitalism would be constantly in flux, with cycles of expansion, recession, boom and depression unless the Federal Government constantly subsidized it. This is due in part to the fact that employers do not pay employees enough money to enable employees to purchase all that the capitalists produce. Henry Ford was a unique capitalist in his recognition of this hard fact when he raised wages in his factories to $5.00 per day, a staggering sum in 1914, so that his workers could buy new Fords! Employers as a class do not accept this concept. Employers have read Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes. Capitalists know that government spending can be used to keep capitalism out of depressions, and that the rest of us can be made to pay for this spending on behalf of capitalists. The only spending by the government that capitalists find appropriate (because of their need to keep the labor pool large, poor and docile) is corporate welfare and military expenditures.

10. The Benefits of Capitalism Come at An Immense Cost.

Although capitalism does produce an amazing proliferation of goods, which some of us enjoy, the price is very heavy... a constant lowering of our standard of living, the destruction of our culture, our environment, and our most cherished human values.... democracy and majority rule, liberty, equality, fraternity, freedom, and shared abundance.

11. Small business is not the problem.

This analysis applies to the richest 5% of our population, the large corporations, and the very large global corporations. It does not apply to small businessmen who hire a few people, and who remain a part of the local community, concerned with the welfare of their employees and of the community. This is the best side of the “free market economy.” We do question the wisdom and judgment of small businessmen and others who envy emulate and support the attitudes, conduct, political and economic ideas of the richest 5% when they are being harmed as much as the rest of us by the class warfare being waged by that 5% against us all.

For excellent analyses of capitalism past and present, check the following links

The site of Professor Douglas F. Dowd, former chairman of the Department of Economics at Cornell University and now teaching one half time in Bologna, Italy and one half time in San Francisco, California

http://www.vaivecchio.com/hi.htm

The site of Doug Henwood, author and publisher of the Left Business Observer

http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/LBO_home.html

The site of the Dollars & Sense Collective at

http://www.dollarsandsense.org/

Dated: April 26, 2006 dougpage2@earthlink.net

SPEAK TRUTH TO ISRAELI POWER

SPEAK TRUTH TO ISRAELI POWER.

INTRODUCTION: AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and Israel itself have spread an immense fog of misinformation, myths and lies about Israel’s acts policies and true objectives. We have been brainwashed. This is not simply a case of our psychological denial. AIPAC is the cause of our brainwashing, our failing to get accurate information from all main-stream sources. One of AIPAC’s functions through its CAMERA is to ridicule statements like this one, and falsely to label the authors and statements as “anti-Semitic.” With this awareness,, we choose to Speak Truth to Israeli Power, AIPAC power, US power and particularly to Jews and Liberals in the United States.

1. Because of the Holocaust, 1000 years of pogroms and anti-Semitism that continue to this day in Christian liturgy, and because of the shame of the world in refusing refuge to Holocaust victims, Israel and Jews everywhere have a legal and moral right to the State of Israel as granted in 1947 by the United Nations, with the boundaries existing until the 1967 War.

2. Israel has no legal, moral or historical right to a single square foot beyond the 1967 boundaries granted Israel by the UN.

3. Israel did not capture the West Bank and Gaza “fair and square” from Palestine. The Palestinians did not start the 1967 War and the War was not with them. Jordan Syria and Egypt were the nations involved in the 1967 War. Israel simply seized the opportunity provided by the War to capture and occupy the West Bank and Gaza in violation of International Law and the UN Charter in order to implement its Greater Vision of Israel. That vision was to capture all of Palestine for Israel as soon as possible.

4. Israel, for the last 39 years has been an imperialist military occupier of the West Bank and Gaza forcing 3.5 million of Palestinians to live under cruel military control, exploitation, poverty, humiliation and squalor. After 1967, Israel captured and occupied the West Bank and Gaza not for reasons of military security, but as a part of Israel’s “Greater Vision of Israel.” Israel did not simply establish military bases in the West Bank and Gaza so as better to defend itself from future attacks. Israel immediately destroyed 140 Palestinian water wells. Israel established Jewish civilian settlements in the West Bank, seized control of the available water, allocated 83% of the water to settlers and to Israel and provided a mere 17% to the millions of Palestinians. Israel destroyed many thousands of olive trees, 10,000 homes, and villages. Israel established dozens of civilian settlements which it then guarded with the IDF in order to “create conditions on the ground” implementing its Greater Vision in defiance of all negotiations and International Law. Israel has never agreed to accept the pre-1967 borders and has never accepted the right of Palestinians to have a state of their own. Israel has not sought peace at every turn and has not shown restraint when provoked. Israel has always attached preconditions to negotiations with Palestine and provided for endless negotiating sessions thereafter to insure that its future complete occupation of West Bank and Gaza would never really be impaired. Israel has never been concerned with the plight of the Palestinians.

5. Israel regularly imposes “collective punishment” and “targeted assassinations” on Palestinian men women and children. This can in no way be justified as “defensive” or “justified” retaliation because of the evil of a despairing, hopeless, humiliated, young male or female suicide bomber who kills himself or her self and a few Israelis. This is something like balancing the evil of a rebellious Black Slave in the Pre-Civil War South with the evil of the Institution of slavery implemented with the whips, guns and Ku Klux Klan lynching carried out by the White plantation owners. It is an attempt to “spin” the realities of immense Israeli military power and Israel’s covert objective of gaining ever more territory and control

6. The right wing neo-cons have seized control of Israel as they have of the United States with identical results. Israel is no longer a land of socialism, kibbutzim, and state owned businesses. The neo-cons have privatized Israel’s state owned businesses, reduced taxes for corporations and the rich, opened Israel to Western investors, abolished the kibbutzim, slashed social service benefits, raised the pension age, and enacted laws making it more difficult for employees to strike. As a consequence things have gotten worse for the average Israeli:

1. 28% of Israeli Children do not have health care.
2. Israel has spent $14 Billion on the rich settlements in the West Bank while 24% of the Israeli citizens live below the poverty line.
3. The neo-cons in the US and Israel eagerly support the Israeli occupation of the West Bank as a part of the US Plan to dominate and control the planet as outlined in the September, 2002 document The National Security Strategy of the United States of America..
4. These neo-con acts and policies foster anti-Semitic rage in millions of Arabs, threaten us all with a War of Armageddon proportions, and impoverish the citizens of Israel. Far from bringing peace and security to Israel, they portend disaster and suffering for us all.

7. Israel is no longer weak and threatened with extinction. Israel has become a military superpower in its own right. Its army and air force rival those England and France. Israel has become the world’s fourth largest nuclear power. It has an extremely effective Mossad, its “CIA.” Israel has a huge armaments industry and has become a major arms supplier to the world.

8. Arabs and Palestinians are not terrorists by nature any more than any other group of humans. Irgun, a Jewish terrorist organization, first established the practice of murdering innocent Arab women and children in 1937. This practice of Irgun soon found Arab and Palestinian imitators. It is, of course, continued today by Israel’s “collective punishment” policies and acts of the IDF in the West Bank.

9. Israel and Palestine will never have peace and security unless it is imposed upon them by the United States. Unfortunately the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, (AIPAC) has silenced those Jewish and liberal voters and office holders in the US who might normally push for justice. AIPAC fully implements this neo-con policy of capturing and controlling all of the West Bank and Gaza. AIPAC has political control of, and has silenced, every Congressperson and Senator, even those who would normally champion the cause of truth, justice, and peace. No elected person in the United States dares to support the Palestinians or to criticize Israel. So the one nation that could impose peace has been rendered powerless and impotent.

10. AIPAC has its “Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting,” a PR and propaganda arm which seeks to maintain the ongoing support of American Jews and non-Jews for neo-con right wing policies and complete control of the West Bank and Gaza. CAMERA does this by falsely labeling all criticism of Israel or support for Palestine as “anti-Semitic” by exploiting the memories of the Holocaust and by outright lies, “spin” about Israel’s true objectives and by repeating Israel’s own myths and falsehoods. AIPAC is enormously effective and is thought by Congress persons to be the most powerful lobby in Washington in the area of foreign affairs.

11. .Israel, Jews everywhere, all Nations and all of us owe the Palestinians massive, generous reparations, rebuilding, and apologies. We owe the Palestinians a viable modern state of their own, free of military incursions and Israeli control. We should all help to fund these reparations. We should seek their forgiveness. This is the only possible plan for peace and security for us all. The Palestinians today are paying the price of the Holocaust.

These are the truths that we must speak to power, to Israeli power, AIPAC power, U.S. Power, and to American Jewish and Liberal power.

Dated: April 20, 2005 Tucson, AZ

Douglas R. Page dougpage2@earthlink.net

Sources

AIPAC’s own website: www.aipac.org

For a scholarly documented comprehensive study of AIPAC and its power see The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt at

http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP06-011

See also The Israel Lobby and The Peace Process by Marshall Windmiller, Professor Emeritus of International Relations San Francisco State University at

http://www.middleeast.org/marshall1.htm

Regarding the rich West Bank settlements and poverty in Israel, my source is Michael Walzer Ph.D, Harvard University, 1961 and formerly Assistant Professor of Politics Princeton University and now an activist for Americans for Peace Now and Shalom Achshav. Contact him at apndc@peacenow.org

On neo-con privatizing in Israel see an article by Leila Khaled Moummar entitled: Privatizing Apartheid in Israel found at

http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2005-12/08

See an article Death of Kibbuz by Geoffrey Wheatcroft in the Guardian Unlimited for May 14, 2001 found at

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,490493,00.html

For an analysis of the real objectives of Israel, and the current need and opportunity for negotiating with Hamas, see the article by Henry Siegman, a Senior Fellow on the Middle East at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a former head of the American Jewish Congress and the Synagogue Council of America. He has served as general secretary of the American Association for Middle East Studies. His article is Hamas: The Last Chance for Peace in the New York Review of Books, April 27, 2006, page 42.

For a current example of the power and control of AIPAC over Congresspersons and Senators, simply examine the amazing array of Democratic and liberal sponsors of HR

a resolution opposing any negotiation with Hamas that was put forth by AIPAC. Lined up by AIPAC and listed as sponsors are such Congress persons as Waxman, Berman, Pelousi, and Rangel. See also see an article by Joshua Frank entitled Hillary Clinton, AIPAC and Iran in Counterpunch for January 3, 2006

For a typical example of AIPAC’s influence on the media and on journalists, a number of articles and letters to the press have been printed calling the Mearsheimer-Walt study cited above anti-Semitic. See for example the opinion article in the Washington Post on April 5, 2006 by Eliot A. Cohen entitled: Yes, It’s Anti-Semitic.

See also Robert Fisk’s article entitled The United States of Israel?

in Counterpunch on April 27, 2006 reporting on an interview with Walt and listing the intemperate, false charges made against Walt and Mearsheimer by such inviduals as Alan Dershowitz. http://www.counterpunch.org/

The late Edward W. Said in his 1979 book, Orientalism, surveyed the literature and culture of England, France, and Germany for the last 200 years for attitudes and beliefs of Westerners about Middle Eastern Arabs. Here is a collection of the racist attitudes that he found, common to all 3 of the nations: Arabs as a people are lazy, backward, dirty, crooked, devious, cruel, perverted, illogical, irrational, unreliable, incapable of being logical, and tending toward pedophilia. They need and benefit from instruction, guidance, and control from Western man although they can never learn enough to be his equal. On the other hand, Western man is bright, logical, kind, generous, orderly, clean, moral, capable of leadership, and a more evolved human. Said believed that these attitudes were an unconscious and automatic result of attitudes of a Western oppressor against the oppressed Arab. Since Israelis and many Jews in the US, a part of Western man, have a similar collection of beliefs and attitudes about Arabs and Palestinian Arabs, it may be that Israeli oppression and occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, is a cause of Israeli attitudes toward Palestinians.

Date: April 27, 2006 Douglas R. Page dougpage2@earthlink.net

Civic Caring & Shared Community

Abraham Lincoln declared that our nation was dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Men are obviously not equal. Some are strong, aggressive, talented and greedy, and others are weaker, ordinary and average. So what does it mean that our nation was dedicated to the proposition that men are created equal? We get the answer in part from the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...That to secure (this right), Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...”

So our government is dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal for the precise purpose of meeting the equal common needs of all men. Our government is dedicated to protecting every person from the strong, aggressive, talented and greedy and the power such persons get in the unregulated exercise of their liberty in earning money, building weapons and disseminating propaganda. It was Lincoln’s fervent hope that “this nation, so dedicated and so consecrated, of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Our government is not of the rich, by the rich and for the rich. It is of, by and for all people equally. It exists to protect us, and to meet the needs that humans have in common.

What needs do we humans have in common?

We need recognition and confirmation that each one of us is a worthy human being with an equal right to flourish.

We need recognition that every one of us is dependent on and connected with each other human.

We need recognition of our capacity for caring.

We need truth, fairness, honesty and transparency in our dealings with each other and from our government.

We need the preservation of our beautiful planet home.

We all need clean air, clean water, sanitary sewage treatment, public health and disease control, safe nutritious food, medical care and medicines.

We need a sustainable political economy that is designed to fit human beings and designed to provide a reasonable livelihood for the ordinary human together with a safety net.

If we are to have democracy, each adult human needs an equal fractional share of the aggregate of political power.

In order to govern ourselves wisely, we need reliable sources of truthful information.

In a word, we need protection from the jungle, the law of the jungle, and the “survival of the fittest.” We need protection from those who are more talented in making money than we are. We need protection from the unregulated planet wide market economy. We need both awareness of and protection from the submissive psychology and cultural erosion that this market economy creates in each of us.

But what constitutes the government? Its most important branch is us! “We the people,” as a practical matter, we voting citizens, are the source of our Constitution and our government. Since we elect our representatives and agents, we are the sovereign branch of government and we are ultimately in control. We get what we want, and we are privileged to implement our own vision, hope, caring, ethics, and spirituality. Lest we ignore the responsibilities that come with self-government, we each must answer the question: “Who do I want to govern me if I do not?”

The infrastructure, non-governmental institutions and government, including the sovereign fourth branch, “We the People,” that meet these common needs constitute our wealth in common, our common wealth. Our common wealth is founded on the value of equality and our caring for each other. It is our commonwealth.

The dangers ahead are daunting and we voters have been brainwashed and denied relevant wisdom for decades. We must avoid the mistakes of the past, whether they be Stalinism, Bush’s Oligarchy, racism, nationalism or materialism. We the people need Tikkun’s “transformation and healing” of our own inner psychology, of our attitudes, and our beliefs. It may be necessary for us to open ourselves.

We may have to recognize the 4 separate and important fields of knowledge identified for us by E. F. Schumacher in A Guide for the Perplexed.

1. What, really, is going on inside myself? (What gives me joy? What gives me pain? What strengthens me and what weakens me? Am I aware of my own capacity for greed, authoritarianism, vigilantism, and subtle racism and my own vulnerability to spin, propaganda and manipulation? Am I aware of the subtle ways that capitalism affects our psychology, our culture, and even what we think we know? We ask these questions of ourselves not to determine if we are “sinners,” but simply to open ourselves to more learning.

2. What is going on in the inner world of other humans around me? (One can know this only to the extent that one knows oneself. Can we try to put ourselves in “someone else’s shoes?”)

3. What would I see if I could see myself as others see me? (This is an effort to be more realistic about ourselves and our actions, and to confront our own delusions.)

4. What do I actually observe in the world around me? (The field of Rationality, Science and Reason. It is ironic that we do not use this field of knowledge more actively in evaluating the free market economy. How many humans benefit? How many humans are harmed? What is it doing to our planetary environment? What are its dynamics? Is there a way to reduce the disparity between wealth and poverty? What are its effects on democracy? Are the benefits worth the costs?)

These four fields of knowledge constitute an outline of what it takes to become truly adult, human and wise. It is simply not enough to have “good intentions,” and to be spiritual. We also need to become wiser if we are to have a “politics of meaning.” We need to be knowledgeable about what is really going on. We need an accurate diagnosis of ourselves and of our political economy.

Capitalism, Churches, Universities And Non-Profits

Pope John Paul II in his new book Memory and Identity accurately perceives the destructive effects of the uncontrolled market on our culture:

“… unless a vibrant public moral culture disciplines and directs the explosive human energies let loose by the free market, the market ends up destroying the culture that makes it possible.”

How and where exactly is this “vibrant moral culture” to emerge and function? Despite the Pope’s perceptive leadership, it is not coming from the Christian Churches…not from any of them. The Pope apparently believes that moral human beings and a moral Church can live comfortably with a free market that is not otherwise controlled or regulated. The Pope does not explain why moral human beings and a moral church have not “disciplined and directed” the free market after 2000 years.

My own “liberal” Episcopal Church, in an academic city, studiously avoids any topic that might be deemed “political.” As Christian writer Dorothee Soelle pointed out in her book Against the Wind, “An allegedly politics free religion ends up venerating power and its idols….” (Soelle p. 151) “Organized Christianity and the Churches are very busy privatizing our spiritual strength, to anchor it in the family and the individual. This arrests spiritual strength at the level of charity (charity being defined by the status quo and by what is tax deductible). Love of other humans that does not venture beyond horizon of the organized church, love that does not dare to search mercilessly for the foundations of terror (meaning power over the poor), is not love” (Soelle p 136)

In other words a politics free religion stands as a solid foundation for the status quo even when the status quo supports slavery, torture, preventive war, and foreign plunder of human beings and the environment.

I think that Pope John Paul II fails to perceive and understand the immense dynamism and power that capitalism as an institution creates. He recognizes and laments the effects of capitalism and sees “the explosive human energies that are let loose by the market,” but he does not see that the cause is the workings of capitalism itself. For that insight, we must turn to the Enlightenment.

Although a discussion like this is subject to a powerful taboo, the working dynamics of the free market are apparent to anyone who chooses to examine them in light of his/her own experience.

· The core characteristic of the free market economy, of capitalism, is that a person with money hires a person with little or no money for the lowest possible wage, in order to make as much more money as possible for the person who already has money.

Think about this. Is this not axiomatic? If an employer can find an employee who must work for a lesser wage, he will find a way to discharge you. He must do so. In order to survive among competitors, the employer can have no objective other than maximizing his profit? This core dynamic is operative even if the Pope himself was running the business.

· The core dynamic produces a relatively small category of wealthy employer-humans and a much larger category of poor employee-humans. It creates a tremendous disparity of wealth between the employers (and those who invest with employers) and employees. Remember most of us are employees, dependent upon our jobs for survival.

We see the results of this. By 2006 all of the Fortune 400 will be billionaires. We see the fantastic salaries and benefits awarded to CEOs. We see that the wealth of the richest 1% multiplied 4 times over in the late 1990s. For exhaustive documentation of all this, see the 2002 book of Republican Kevin Phillips, Wealth and Democracy. The aggregate wealth of the top 1%, roughly 30,000 humans, is so vast that it is almost impossible to comprehend.*

· With wealth comes political power, and inevitably and ultimately, corruption. As the onetime Speaker of the California Assembly Jesse Unruh once said, “money is the mother’s milk of politics.

· Wealthy persons use their wealth to control legislation by hiring lobbyists, and PR persons, and by funding “think tanks.” Most importantly, they get elected officials to do their bidding by supplying them with the funds necessary for reelection, and funding opponents if they are betrayed. 80% of the “campaign contributions” in the 2002 election came from the wealthiest top 1% of us.

· Democracy is thus demolished. Democracy is founded on the concept that political power is allocated equally with a fractional share to each voter. It is the “one man one vote” concept. Capitalism allocates political power to those who have the most money. Thus even though we have the procedural right to vote, our votes carry almost no political power to get from government what we want and need. We cannot get affordable medicines and health care, for example. The wealthy and their lobbyists “persuade” our elected representatives not to vote for those items. We are, in fact, governed by an Oligarchy of the rich and powerful.

· With this accumulation of wealth and power, the very rich control the government…all branches of government, the CIA, the President, Congress, the Armed Forces, and finally the Courts.

We must recognize that everything that is now occurring is happening because the top 1% wants it to happen. This includes preventive war in Afghanistan and Iraq. It includes torture. It includes the concealment of torture. It includes all of the new curbs on our Constitutional liberties set forth in the “Patriot Act.” It includes tax relief for the very wealthy.

· With this accumulation of wealth and power, the very rich control the media, radio, TV, the newspapers. They control the advertising and PR agencies that create the advertising that are influencing us. They control the Journalists. They control the Universities. Because every Church, University and non-profit organization needs money, the very wealthy control those institutions as well. They have maintained IRC 501 C 3 to insure that all such institutions shall be non-partisan and non-political if they are to continue to get funding from the very rich. These institutions siphon off young humans who might otherwise challenge the dynamics of capitalism and compensate them with professional jobs. These professionals with jobs in 501 C 3 institutions are compelled by law to support the status quo.

This explains the taboo about the dynamics of capitalism. The information about the 6 core dynamics of the “free market economy” here set forth is not communicated by any non-profit organization like Common Cause, by any Church, or by any University. Their funding would be cut off if they did.

The Pope is not alone in this failure of perception. Across the entire civilized world, the engine of capitalism has created a self protective taboo so that its own inner workings and dynamics may not be studied, discussed or understood either in the Church or by most students of the Enlightenment.

*The total wealth for the top 1% of households, obtained from analyses of U.S. Census data is $13 Trillion. This is probably a conservative amount because much wealth is hidden, not reported, or stashed overseas. Also, we are considering only the top 1%. The total of the top 5% would be far larger.

$13 Trillion is a staggering amount of wealth, almost impossible to conceptualize.

A small businessman has a fascinating way of comprehending various levels of wealth (See http://www.davidchandler.com/lcurve}

A $100 DOLLAR BILL IS ONE MILLIMETER THICK.
A $25,000 stack of $100 bills is one inch high.
By his method of measurement:
A $250,000 stack is 10 inches high.
A $1 million stack is 39 inches high.
A $1 Billion stack is 3281 feet, or 6/10ths of a mile high.
The Wal-Mart family stack of $94 Billion is 58 miles high.
The $872 Billion total of the 2002 Fortune 400 richest is 542 miles high.
A $1 Trillion stack is 621 miles high.
The aggregate wealth stack of the $13 Trillion of the top 1% of households is 8073 miles high.

If this $13 Trillion held by the top 1% of persons was divided equally and distributed equally to every man, woman, and child in the United States, each person would get $40 Thousand! It is about twice the size of the total U.S. National Debt, which has accumulated over the years since 1790. Just the interest on $13 Trillion at 3% would raise enough money to cover every man woman and child in America with Single Payer Health Coverage. 4% interest on the $13 Trillion would raise enough money to send 1 million Americans through a 4-year college course costing $100,000 each, AND provide Single Payer Health Coverage for every single American. Every Senior Citizen in America could be provided with prescription drug coverage for ten years for only $168 Billion or a mere 1.5% of the $13 Trillion wealth of the top 1%. This top 1% has as much wealth as the bottom 95% of us.

So America is not poor. There is more than enough national wealth to meet our needs, the needs of the States, and the reasonable needs of the federal government. The problem is, as in the case of the Sam Walton family's $94 Billion, the top 1% siphons off wealth. Instead of meeting public needs, America's wealth is used to provide control of our government by the wealthy, private Jet airplanes for the Forbes 400 and 40 room mansions for Bill Gates and an unimaginable level of wealth and secret power for the top 1%.

The Human Tapeworm: Unregulated Capitalism

We humans have an alarming number of common, planet-wide problems that call for cooperative effort and cooperative solutions among all humans.
These include the population explosion, the depletion of fishes, oil, fresh water, and tillable soil, pollution, global poisoning, a widening gap between the rich and the poor, hunger, health, public health, corruption of our sources of information and wisdom, and the erosion of democracy.

All of these problems have a common root, a cause that may not be discussed. These common problems thus cannot be solved. That root is the unregulated market economy that now dominates the world. Its real name is capitalism, now multi-national capitalism.

Unlike European countries, the unregulated market economy is a holy sacred cow in the United States. It is not analyzed, criticized or evaluated in the media, in academia, or in any mainstream source ordinarily available to us. Nevertheless, there are some critical facts and characteristics that every thinking person should know. It is helpful to use metaphors from the animal world to describe the unregulated market economy. It is like the untouchable water buffalo in India. It may go where it pleases, eat what it pleases defecate where it pleases, and humans may not interfere. It is holy and sacred. By failing accurately to identify and discuss the common root cause, our major problems cannot be solved.

Another metaphor from the animal world is useful. The unregulated market economy, capitalism, has many features in common with the tapeworm that afflicts humans. Therefore, with awareness of the limitations, we set forth the dynamics of capitalism by comparing it to the tapeworm.

Capitalism, like the tapeworm, is a parasite. It requires a human host. It can exist only if we humans work for an employer and if we consume. It would die if we curtailed either our work as employees or our consumption. Like the tapeworm, capitalism will itself ultimately die as it weakens or kills its human host.

The “tapeworm” is concerned solely with making as much short-term profit as possible for those relatively few humans who are employers, or who invest with employers. The end product of the tapeworm for humans is the accumulation of material goods. “He who dies with the most toys wins.” The “tapeworm” can meet no human needs other than material goods that can be produced at a profit for employers. The “tapeworm” will not allow food or medicines to be produced unless they can be sold at a profit. Thus, although there is plenty of food, millions of people cannot afford to buy it. Thus the “tapeworm” cannot provide public education, universal health care, childcare, old age security, or communities or parks. The “tapeworm” has no concern whatever for human health, preservation of the resources of the planet, pollution or global poisoning, spiritual or religious values, human sharing cooperation, community, or culture.

The “tapeworm” is voracious. It actively seeks new natural resources to devour and fresh humans who will do its work for lower wages. Its voracious characteristic often makes it one of the causes of war.

The “tapeworm” abhors human efforts to meet human needs by working together. Where humans have cooperated through the state or otherwise to build public power generating facilities or water supplies, it seeks to “privatize” them so that those humans who hire the labor of employee-humans can have yet another opportunity to accumulate wealth.

The metabolic cycle of the “tapeworm” is based on two classes of humans: those humans who employ other humans and those humans who are hired. The human with some money (whether inherited, stolen, obtained from slaves, or from whatever source) hires a human with little or no money for the lowest possible wage, to earn as much wealth as possible for the human who already has money. Over time, the metabolic cycle of the “tapeworm” thus makes the employer class of humans immensely wealthy while it weakens and impoverishes the class of humans who are employees.

The “tapeworm,” over time, also creates immense political power for humans who employ other humans. It gives the wealthy as much political power as they can buy. It corrodes the egalitarian basis of democracy based on equal sharing of political power among voters, and thwarts majority will.

The tapeworm has no sense of concern or responsibility whatever for its employees. It will quickly move its activities to whatever locality will provide employees who will work for a lower wage. It will substitute a machine or a computer for employees whenever possible. It abandons those employees who previously served it.

The “tapeworm” has no sense of propriety or ethical values. The “tapeworm” richly rewards those humans who are greedy selfish and aggressive, but it has no place for humans who are cooperative, generous or sharing.

The “tapeworm” takes exhaustive measures to protect itself. It creates a taboo so that it may not even be discussed. Its employee-humans, most of whom have no alternative source of food, clothing and shelter, are desperately dependent on the “tapeworm” for their jobs and their survival. Employee humans, even when they are organized together into unions, do not criticize or analyze the “tapeworm.” The employer-humans would quickly fire them for exposing the metabolic cycle of the “tapeworm.” Thus the “tapeworm” fosters a taboo based on fear among all employee-humans at every level of employment. The taboo infects journalists, college professors, preachers, public health workers, social workers, so that no one even uses the word “capitalism.”

Our “tapeworm” is a gigantic, planet wide institution that feeds on us humans and gradually enfeebles our minds and erodes our democracy and our health, security and well being. Let’s work together to understand it and to control it.

Truth And War

Adam Gopnik wrote an article entitled The Big One in the August 23, 2004 issue of The New Yorker about the causes and rationalizations for World War I. This bloody war had many justifications on both sides and all seem now to agree that it was an irrational, useless war, and that the thousands who died, died in vain.

He mentions a seeming paradox while the war was being fought: the more men died, the more urgently and desperately those financing, controlling and parenting the soldiers had to find a cause for men to die for and to justify the deaths of those who had already perished.

The rationalizations abounded: A war to end all wars. A war to defend liberal freedoms against authoritarianism. A war to make the world safe for democracy. A war to defend our women and children from rape and murder.

It is significant that Gopnik chose to write about this phenomenon as it applied almost 90 years ago when everybody involved is dead. Only when every human actually affected is dead can we look at the truth: The war was irrational and useless. We apparently cannot look at the truth when the deaths are still fresh in our minds.

It appears that while affected humans still live, the justifications for the deaths must be seen as valid and worthy. Humans simply cannot face the awful truth that the deaths are in vain. Humans cannot accept the truth that some humans may have grossly lied provoked a war and caused the deaths for financial or ideological or false theological reasons.

This may account for the strange passions about Kerry, the Swift Boat Veterans and Kerry’s telling the truth about the Viet Nam War at the time. Even though the chief architect of the Viet Nam War, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara now admits the lies that lead to a useless war and useless deaths, many of those veterans still alive who were actually involved cannot accept this truth.

This phenomenon may help to explain the strange lack of curiosity about 9-11. Most people simply do not want to know why Norad was shut down, who made the profits on stock market puts on United and American Airlines, what caused untouched WTC 7 to fall 7 hours after the twin towers fell, or why Bush has classified as secret every possible detail about those who aided or caused the 9-11 tragedy. This lack of curiosity includes prominent Democrats Lee Hamilton and Richard Ben-Veniste, the surviving firemen in the firehouse adjacent to WTC, and those in the adjacent Episcopal Church who treated the burns of workers weeks after the towers fell. We simply cannot face the fact that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were, of necessity involved in allowing 9-11 to happen or actually causing 9-11 to happen. Most cannot face the fact that our leaders could have been that lying, malicious and evil in causing 3000 deaths. We must find another cause for the deaths. We cannot see the leaders that we chose acting for secret malicious reasons.

The same phenomenon may account for the fact that most people support the Iraq war, when the President and all those around him lied to get us into the war, and when no WMD have been found, and when the war is an obvious quagmire probably worse than Viet Nam. We are again fighting for “democracy,” “freedom,” “ overcoming dictators,” and we seek a just revenge against somebody, anybody. Alan Penney, an American Editor for a Korean media company recently wrote:
“…1000 soldiers have now been killed in Iraq and to think that they have died for something dishonorable is too much to bear for most. That’s understandable. Who wants to believe that their son died because of oil and war profiteers?”

Jan Lundberg, in Culture Change e-Letter on Thursday 09 September 2004 wrote: “To most people in the U.S., any change that would disturb dominant society's definition of reality is frightening. In a stark portrait of an energy-deprived economic future, we lose our cars, computers, refrigerators, convenience foods, unending plastic objects, and most of the rest of modern life's accoutrements. To most watchers of TV news, this is not a realistic vision but a needless scenario of "doom and gloom."

Paul Krugman in NYT on 9-07-04 reviewed a new book by Chris Hedges, a veteran war correspondent, entitled WAR IS A FORCE THAT GIVES US MEANING. Quoting Krugman quoting Hedges: “’Lurking beneath the surface of every society, including ours, is the passionate yearning for a nationalist cause that exalts us, the kind that war alone is able to deliver.’ When war psychology takes hold, the public believes, temporarily in a ‘mythic reality’ in which our nation is purely good, our enemies are purely evil, and anyone who is not our ally is our enemy…..This state of mind works greatly to the benefit of those in power….The point is that once war psychology takes hold, the public desperately wants to believe in its leadership, and ascribes heroic qualities to even the least deserving ruler.”

Joe Bageant in an article The Covert Kingdom http://www.counterpunch.org/bageant05252004.html tells us of the beliefs of millions of born again fundamentalist Christians who support Bush, the War in Iraq and all of Bush’s policies because they see it all as predicted in the Bible. Israel must be established and maintained. Then Israel must occupy the Middle East as the return of Jewish Biblical Lands. Anyone who opposes Sharon is thus a tool of Satan. The combat death of the sons and daughters of these fundamentalists is viewed as a “holy martyrdom” who died implementing Biblical predictions, and protecting this country’s Christian values. Jesus will soon return to earth, take all believers with him to heaven, and wipe out the rest of the human race, Muslims, Jews, and all non-believers. This is the Armageddon predicted in the Bible that is now being implemented. These Fundamentalists can hardly wait.

Paul Tillich, a respected philosopher and theologian, taught that all humans have a profound anxiety about death and fate, about the unknown abyss of nothingness that follows death, about meaninglessness, and about guilt. We also have an anxiety about doubt. We deal with this profound anxiety in many ways: with depression, with happy optimistic talk, with phony inadequate views of God, with denial, and sometimes with anger and aggression. He taught that we need the courage to face all of this, and to choose to live despite all of this. In other words we need Courage to Be despite this profound anxiety. (The title of one of his most famous books.) It may be that Tillich provides some insight as to why we cannot face the gruesome causes of multiple deaths at the time that they are occurring.

The Slavery Roots of the Unconstitutional Electoral College

With the 2004 presidential election upon us, we must face the possibility or another selection of the President by his 5 conservative friends on the United States Supreme Court. We must face the possibility that the election will be stolen by modern day Tories using touch screen voting machines with no paper trail. Shall we again passively acquiesce or shall we resist? We urge here that it is our duty as sovereign voting citizens to resist with every means available to us.

Conservative “strict constructionists” should note that the Constitution gives the Supreme Court no power to deal with Presidential Elections. The Founding Fathers did not contemplate that the Supreme Court would declare laws enacted by Congress and the President “unconstitutional.” We sovereign voters never amended he Constitution to give the Supreme Court that power. The Supreme Court Justices arrogantly seized that power in the famous decision Marbury vs Madison in 1809. We the people passively acquiesced. Our sovereign ancestors made a big mistake. We sovereign voters made a similar mistake in 2000 by acquiescing in the arbitrary judicial selection of Bush as President in 2000 that overruled our majority votes. We have left the interpretation of our Constitution to lawyers.

Judges and Justices are always lawyers before they are appointed to the Courts. Both lawyers and Judges deal for most of their professional lives with the protection of individual property rights on a case-by-case basis. They thus have a narrow legalistic bias. They are unfamiliar and uncomfortable with our democratic sovereignty and concepts of equal protection of law. Lawyers who argue constitutional issues before the Supreme Court likely have a limited view of the concept of equality of voting power. We sovereign citizens suffer from no such professional biases.

The point of all of this is that the Constitution is our document, our guarantee of our sovereign power as voting citizens. It is our protection that we do not have to live by the law of the Jungle where persons with power and wealth always win. We cannot and should not accept the arbitrary rulings of corrupt Justices. The Constitution is our guarantee that our elected representatives, including Justices, are our agents and our servants. We, as sovereign citizens, have a right and a duty to interpret what the Constitution means for us. We can resist wrongful arbitrary undemocratic Judicial Orders by any means.

So let’s get ready with our position as sovereign voting citizens that the Electoral College is an unconstitutional relic of slavery that has fatal conflicts with our later amendments and precedents and that we have a sovereign right to elect a President by majority vote.

Everybody remembers the famous 3/5 compromise from the “Constitution” class in school. The founding fathers needed the ratification of the slave holding states in order to adopt the new constitution. There was a problem of representation in the House of Representatives. The South wanted its thousands of slaves to be counted for purposes of representation in the House. The North did not. So a compromise was reached: The thousands of slaves were each to be counted as 3/5 of a person. This gave the slave-holding states far more representatives in the House than there would have been if only the few white slave owners were counted. This same concept of counting the thousands of slaves each as 3/5 of a person was carried over into the election of the President. Each slave-holding state was given a larger number of electors by counting the slaves.

Until the Civil War, this enabled Southern States to have much Congressional power, much Congressional seniority, many committee chairmanships, a powerful advantage in the selection of president, and a very large voice in the selection of Supreme Court Justices such as those that could be relied upon to write the Dred Scott decision.

We sovereign voters have vastly changed the Constitution since then by Amendments and by well-established precedents of legitimate Supreme Courts.

In 1865, we sovereign voters freed the slaves with the 13th Amendment.

In 1868 with the 14th Amendment, we sovereign voters dictated that no State shall abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, and no State shall deny any person within its borders equal protection of law and due process of law. In Article IV Section 2 of the Constitution, we dictated: The citizens of each state shall be entitled to all of the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states.

In 1870 with the 15th Amendment, we sovereign voters dictated that the right to vote for any office, state or federal, could not denied by the United States or by any State by reason of former slave status.

In 1913 with the 17th Amendment, we sovereign voters provided that United States Senators shall be elected by we the people instead of by the State Legislatures.

In 1920 with the 19th Amendment, we then sovereign male voters dictated that the right of women to vote for any office, state or federal, shall not be denied by the United States or by any State.

In 1964 with the 24th Amendment, we sovereign voters dictated that the right to vote for the President or any federal representative shall not be denied by the United States or any State by reason of the voter’s failure to pay a poll tax or any other tax.

In 1971 with the 26th Amendment, we sovereign voters dictated that the right of 18-year-olds to vote in any state or federal election shall not be denied by the United States or any State.

We sovereign voters provided in Amendment V of the Bill of Rights: “No person shall….be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.”

From our position as sovereign voters, we give emphasis to parts of the Constitution that lawyers and Justices ignore. The very preamble of the Constitution supports the concept that we voters are sovereign: “We the people, in order to establish a more perfect union….do ordain and establish this Constitution…” Famed Chief Justice Marshall in 1819 recognized that we the people were sovereign in McCulloch v. Maryland:

“The government proceeds directly from the people and is ‘ordained and established’ in the name of the people…The government of the Union, then…is emphatically and truly, a government of the people. In form and substance, it emanates from them. Its powers are granted by them, and are to be exercised directly on them, and for their benefits…”

Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address reminded us that our nation was dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal and that ours was a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

For us as sovereign voters, the right to vote is a fundamental political right because it is preservative of all other rights. Because our nation is dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal for governmental purposes, every voter is entitled to an equal fractional share of the total voting power of all voters. The original theory and promise of the Constitution and now the actual words of our Constitution and our Amendments require equality of voting power, one-man one vote. Each of our citizens must have an equally effective share of governmental power.

The fatal unconstitutional vice of the Electoral College is that it denies this equal sovereign share of voting power. Under its requirements, a President is elected by a majority of the electors and not by a majority of the votes of all voters. The Electoral College heavily favors small states, because every state no matter how sparsely populated gets three automatic electors, one for each Senator and a House Member. This means that states that by population might be entitled to only one or two electoral votes wind up with three four or five electors. The voter in such a state with few voters has more voting effectiveness, more voting power, and more governmental power than a voter in a state with millions of voters.

We sovereign voters eliminated rationale for the Electoral College in empowering the slave states by freeing the slaves. While the original Constitution contemplated that each state could decide who got to vote, whether or not women could vote, and how much of a poll tax to impose, our Amendments to the Constitution have vastly changed all of that. Our Constitution is now truly of by and for the people, all people equally, with the political power to be determined by a simple majority of voters with equal voting power.

We should not passively acquiesce in any Judicial holding that there is no express constitutional right to vote for the President. Our right to vote directly for President underlies our concept of the Constitution and our Amendments. It implements the promise of the Constitution in the Preamble. Despite what the lawyers and Justices may say, we sovereign voters rendered the Electoral College unconstitutional when we adopted the concept of equal protection of law in 1870. The Electoral College was rendered unconstitutional because it denies us voters of equal protection of law, and of due process of law, the very foundation of which is equality of voting power. Our equal voting power is a fundamental part of our ordered liberty guaranteed by due process of law. Our equal voting power is far more vital than a privilege or immunity, and yet even equal privileges of each citizen are now guaranteed by our Constitution.

Our Founding Fathers were not stupid when they drafted our Constitution. We sovereign voters were not stupid when we ratified the Constitution. We all well knew that human beings are not in fact equal. Some are lucky, talented, aggressive, greedy and strong. Some have inherited wealth. Some have the power of a famous name. Despite this knowledge, we declared that for civic and governmental purposes “all men are created equal.” It is a vital part of our civic heritage that our government protect us all from those who are greedier, richer, stronger, more aggressive, luckier, or more talented that the rest of us. Without this governmental protection, most of us are vulnerable victims of those who have wealth and power. We are forced to live in a lawless jungle. Our lives, liberty, property and equality are lost to the stronger wealthier beings in the jungle.

We hope that Bush and the Tories will be defeated. However, even if Kerry wins the Presidency the vast concentrations of wealth and power that supported Bush also support Kerry. We have an immense job of re-education in the civic fundamentals in either case.