lan Pappe on the beginning of the “disintegration” of Israel. A Solution is Needed

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

Some thoughts on this.

 

Ilan Pappe talks of what the future holds for Israel as the US colonial proxy disintegrates under intense pressure from the Palestinian resistance and the worldwide condemnation of its genocidal war. The Zionist Apartheid regime has already lost the war as it is in the process of bombing four countries at the moment with 80% of its weaponry coming from the US taxpayer. US offense industry profits are good. 

 

The Zionist regime is wreaking such havoc that it’s draining US supplies of weapons of mass destruction, “The Pentagon worries it could run out of its inventory faster than it can replace them…”the Wall Street Journal writes. In addition, since the beginning of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza the US has spent $1.8 billion launching interceptor missiles against attacks from Iran and also to stop what the US media refers to as attacks by Yemeni Houthis on shipping entering the Red Sea. It should be noted that the Yemeni regime has made it clear that the attacks will stop if the mass murder in Gaza stops.

 

This expenditure of weapons is not good the Journal adds as it leaves the US, “….vulnerable in a potential conflict in the Pacific.”   We can grasp how war is a natural by-product of the capitalist mode of production, it is integral to it.

 

Pappe refers to other examples of failed states and that it can be a long and violent process giving examples like Libya, Syria, and Iraq. It is worth noting that in all these examples, western Imperial power and its military arm, NATO is at the center of this disintegration. 

 

Pappe raises the idea of a one state solution, a democratic secular state. This is a valid option, even as Jews would be in a minority but in a state with democratic rights for all. In other words, with decolonization the Palestinian Arab population can be looked to as offering the solution. But, Pappe says, with the independence of former colonial countries, what he calls decolonization, the result has often been a worse or as bad regime than the colonial power. It’s not what people were fighting for.

 

From my point of view this is inevitable because these nation states, a product of capitalism and for the colonized states, imposed from without, capitalism cannot reverse itself. If we look at the states in Africa for example, they did not develop organically in the way that England or France did, from within. If we take Nigeria, the British put a box around a huge area within which lived many different tribes and people and called in Nigeria. Why would there not be problems with this? This is why tribal culture and identity, was so important in the early days; a national identity can’t be manufactured in a parliamentary office in London.

 

When Pappe talks of a one state alternative, a democratic state, he is referring to a capitalist or bourgeois democracy. But we see even in the advanced capitalist countries a serious crisis and the potential for these states to break up. Here in the US we are witnessing as so called elections are taking place, a serious divide and rise of dangerous right wing and semi semi-fascist ideas as the nation state begins to crack.

 

Capitalism cannot advance humanity, only destroy it. It cannot rescue itself from the abyss. The only solution, not only to regional crisis as we are witnessing in the Middle East, North Africa, Kashmir and other former colonial dominions, even Northern Ireland, is a mass movement and intervention of the working class. Not just regionally, but an international working class movement and a resulting global federation of democratic socialist states, workers democracies where the production of human needs is a collective process in which the means of producing those needs, deciding what is to be produced and how we distribute them is taken out of the hands of a tiny minority that set production in motion on the basis of profits and who’s control over society is threatening us with extinction. 

The Video US Government Doesn't Want You To See

Trump/Vance Are Empowering the Confederacy: We Must See It For What It Is

Frank Hammer, UAW/GM retiree, Detroit

 

These are the flags the Trump supporters were carrying at the Unite_the_Right_rally in Charlottesville, VA on August 11, 2017, the same rally where Trump blustered that there were “fine people” on both sides.  Presumably these were some of those fine people he was referring to. These people were in Charlottesville with two purposes - to rally the White Supremacist movement, and denounce the removal of the town’s  statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. It was there the next day that Heather Heyer was murdered by a white racist ramming his car at high speed into a march of counter-protestors. These people can’t wait for Trump to win.

Trump has never denounced these flags. Be prepared to see him with them, if he’s elected, and for the ascendancy of these fine people.  They will resurrect the 70+ Confederate statues where they’ve been removed, and then some.  At the 250th anniversary of the U.S. in 2026, look to a fine Confederate celebration in the Capitol, marking their ascendancy after 150+ years of trying.

The battle we are witnessing is not one between “Republicans” and “Democrats.”  What is unfolding is the culmination of a gravitational pull by the Right, resulting in a realignment of political forces in the U.S. The ultra-Right has taken over the Republican Party. The Republicans who were once dominant have been driven out, or left voluntarily.  Many are embracing Kamala Harris, and are being welcomed by the Democrats.   

Just as Trump hasn’t appeared in public with a display of confederate flags, the ultra-Right is not prepared to rename the Republican party.  But when they do, don’t be surprised if they call themselves  the “new” Confederate Party, because that’s what they’ve become. We don’t have to wait for  them; we should call out the Republican Party now, for what it’s become. 

This development has, in turn, left a vacuum where the Republican Party once stood. The Democratic Party is rapidly shifting to the Right, to fill it in.  And they are bringing on board the Republican stalwarts who, not too long ago,  were identified as war criminals (think Dick Cheney). The Democratic Party is replacing the Republican Party.  The Left wing of the Democratic Party (and those to the left of the Democrats) have to fill in the space that the Democrats are leaving behind -  with a new party of our own - maybe the “New Democratic 
Party.” We’re not anywhere near there yet. 

The traitorous Nazi and Confederate flags displayed in Charlottesville have never been denounced.  With a Trump victory, they will become normalized and  even mainstream.  It is we who will be branded the “traitors.” Our country will witness a seismic shift.

Trump’s Confederate Party is one that merges fundamentalist Christian religion with  ultra-Right political ideology. Gone is the “secular” Republican party. Re-emerging is the  religious foundation normalizing the legitimacy of slavery & patriarchy, and the sanctity of secession. In the words of a prominent white Southern theologian in 1850: 

“The parties in this conflict are not merely abolitionists and slaveholders—they are atheists, socialists, communists, red republicans, jacobins, on one side, and the friends of order and regulated freedom on the other. In one word, the world is the battleground—Christianity and Atheism the combatants; and the progress of humanity at stake.” 

Those words laid the groundwork for the Civil War. What do they portend today? Those who make light of the difference between the two parties contending for the White House should re-examine their perceptions of our political landscape, and reach into U.S. history to understand what’s at stake.  Trump/Vance with their 2025 playbook make abundantly clear their intent to impose the Confederacy with the police and military, if necessary, all the while trashing the working class’ right to organize, the movements of oppressed peoples of color and women for human rights, the protections won in the fight to defend LGBTQ, immigrant and indigenous peoples’ rights, rights to public education, retirement security, healthcare, an environment that will sustain humanity and all living beings, and more. 

That’s why I am voting for Kamala, notwithstanding that she will be the first (Black) woman in 250 years to preside over the U.S. Let the would-be Confederates chew on that. 

Frank Hammer is the son of German refugees, some of whose family members were murdered in Nazi concentration camps.

 

If you missed the documentary "Trump's Unholy Alliance," view it here 

Israel is Losing This War. Why Doesn't The US Stop It?

 

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

HEO/GED

10-28-24

Some of us around this blog touched on this issue at our last Zoom meeting.  Speaking for myself here, I do not support the view that Israel is the tail wagging the US dog here. The US in my opinion is the driver and in answer to many people who ask why the US refuses to rein in Israel despite the rest of the world condemning its actions, I believe it is fairly obvious.

The Zionist regime is the only reliable ally in this vital part of the world. Not only is oil in abundance if we include Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Iran, Syria also, but it is a vital trade route to India and the far east. We can see the disruption to world trade a tiny country with a relatively small army of sorts can cause by attacking shipping entering the Red Sea. A defeat for Israel would be a humiliating defeat for US imperialism already under pressure from peer competitors, primarily China.

The US cannot rely on any other force to protect this foothold in the region, a product of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after WW1, that a British official once described as "Our loyal little Ulster in the Middle East". The revolutionary potential of the Arab working class from Syria to Mauritania is too great and the Arab regimes too unstable plus Saharan Africa is home to millions more Muslims and people's whose hatred of European/ US colonialism runs deep. We saw the potential power of the Arab working class with the eruption of the Arab Spring in 2011 when numerous US backed despots fell including Hosni Mubarak who Hillary Clinton referred to as a "friend" and "like family".

The Zionist regime heads a European colonial outpost, a settler state vital to US and western capitalism's interests. In a colonial outpost like this where a settler community is surrounded and outnumbered by those whose land it is and who resent the ethnic cleansing and assault on their culture and way of life, there develops a siege mentality, a constant fear of the "Other".  When this planted population is threatened and it always will be unless it ceases to be an occupying power and is integrated in to the whole,  the indigenous inhabitants are either driven out or thoroughly defeated in terms of resistance. The purpose of Israel's war in Gaza and the increased attacks in the occupied territories is to accomplish this goal.

To say that the US is the key player does not mean that the present right wing government of Netanyahu and his Neo-Nazi friends in the Knesset are on a short rein. There is no doubt that within the US body politic there are serious concerns about the Zionists go it alone policies. But what can they do? I say this because I cannot imagine the situation continuing if the US said that if there is not an immediate cessation of hostility from Israel there will be no more shipments of arms of any kind including spare parts and related items. We saw with the attack on Iran that the US's warning not to attack oil or nuclear facilities was obeyed by Israel.

Lastly, the constant equating of opposition to Israeli policies or Zionism itself as anti-Semitism is not taken seriously by millions of people. It is being used to silence opposition to the genocide, especially in Academia. It's bizarre to see so many academics harassed or fired from their positions at famous universities for their anti-Semitic views and so many of them are Jewish. It's equally bizarre to see British Labor Party members, some members for half a century or more, being expelled from the party for opposing Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. Not all Germans were Nazi's very few were I'm sure and not all Jews are Zionists. It is heartwarming to see that not only are Jewish academics speaking out but young Jews in the UK and US in particular are on the front lines of the protests supporting Palestinian rights.

Equating anti-Semitism with opposing something the state of Israel does, has made it harder to flush out genuine, what I call good old European Jew hating.

I am sharing this video below. I stress I am not endorsing this person and on checking out some history he is a bit of a controversial fellow. However, I think he raise a lot of points I agree with. No one that isn't an antiSemite would argue Jews don't belong in the Middle East. Jews have always been there and throughout what we call the Arab and Muslim world. Jews have lived in relative peace with Muslims for centuries and thrived in the main. When the Jews were expelled from Catholic Spain, they found a home and safety among the Muslims of North Africa. It is Christian Europe that discriminated against the Jewish population there and waged constant violence against them culminating in the mass extermination of two thirds of the population. The creation of the state of Israel by the British and the League of Nations was also an attempt of the European ruling class to rid themselves of what they refer to as the Jewish problem. So in that sense, Israeli Jews are also the victims of Western imperialism.

Boeing Workers Reject Another Contract. What Now?

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

HEO/GED

10-27-24

 

On September 13^th, 33,000 workers, members of the International Association of Machinists (IAM) rejected Boeing’s contract offer and voted to strike the company by a 95% majority.

 

On October 25^th, workers rejected the latest offer by a margin of 64%. This is the second contract that the workers have voted down and Boeing bosses, not to mention the Biden Administration, and I am sure the IAM local and international leadership as well, are deeply concerned.

 

Every strike is an important event for all workers, union or not. But I cannot stress the importance of this strike for working people and I’ll tell you why.  Despite the big business media, from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal, focusing on money, which doesn’t mean money or wages, are not important as we can’t feed our families without it, the sticking point in this class battle is the pension.

 

I am a retired public sector worker, and I have a defined benefit pension. It has enabled me to live a relatively secure and decent life. I do not intend to go in to detail about this subject so I will just add this short description:

“A defined benefit pension is a retirement plan that provides a fixed benefit to an employee at retirement. The benefit is based on the employee's earnings history, age, and years of service, rather than on the performance of the employee's investments”

 

For the hedge fund manager, the investor, the CEO’s of Blackrock and Goldman Sachs and other coupon clippers that do no productive labor, the market is god and today’s trade union hierarchy agree with them. But it isn’t. The market is a failure.

 

Over past decades, the employers have eliminated defined benefit plans pushing workers in to market based plans. It’s not because the employers think workers are savvy investors, it’s a cost cutting measure and relieves the employer of any obligation to provide a secure retirement after 38 years of loyalty to them. These days at U.S. companies, worker-driven savings accounts like 401(k)s have mostly replaced pension plans that provide fixed monthly payments to retirees.

 

The Unionized workforce is pretty much the last bastion of the defined benefit pension. From 1980 through 2008, the proportion of private wage and salary workers participating in defined benefit pension plans fell from 38 percent to 20 percent according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 1975 32% of pension plans were defined benefit plans.

 

Boeing ended the defined pension plan about ten years ago and getting it back is the major reason the contract was rejected again along with wages. After years of austerity. “I have put more time in this place than I was ever required to. I have literally blood, sweat and tears from working at this company…..” one 37 year old worker with 16 years at the company said after the vote,  “I’m looking at working until I’m 70 because I have this possibility that I might not get to retire based on what’s happening in the market.”

 

“The pension should have been the top priority. We all said that was our top priority, along with wage,…..”said another worker with 38 years at the company, ……“Now is the prime opportunity in a prime time to get our pension back, and we all need to stay out and dig our heels in.”

 

Boeing has offered bribes as bosses often do to get contracts passed, a $7000 signing bonus in this rejected deal, but it’s not worked yet. Along with this, the new CEO Kelly Ortberg is promising to change the culture at Boeing telling workers that he wants to “reset” the relationship between the bosses and the workers, “so we don’t become so disconnected in the future.”  It sounds real family like as he wants management to spend more time on the shop floor in order to know what’s going on so that they can, “…prevent the festering of issues and work better together to identify, fix, and understand the root cause.” He’s lying of course and workers know it. 

After our strike in 1985, our employer hired a consultant, paying him some, $50,000 to interview our negotiators and Executive Board to find out why we struck. After months of negotiations and a one-month strike they didn’t know apparently. I was the only negotiating team member that refused to speak to him. They wanted to get a clearer idea of divisions in the union leadership and who provided the best opportunity as a conduit to what was going on.

 

In response to the no vote, John Holden, president of District 751 of the IAM that represents the majority of the workers, told the media that he intends to, “….ask the White House to continue to try to help the parties find a resolution”. The White House was involved in the deal that was just rejected through Biden’s acting labor secretary Julie Su. This is another costly error.

 

Having a representative of the state and a Democratic Party official in negotiations does not strengthen the labor side; it’s just another management representative.  It does not encourage workers to rely on our own strength, not just in our own workplace, but in conjunction with our communities, the rest of the labor movement and workers as a whole throughout the nation and internationally. 

 

No serious worker thinks these people are independent observers in there to help the workers get a better deal. This appeal to class collaboration on the part of the IAM leadership is why they lost the pension in the first place and why organized labor has been driven backwards in general. Negotiations should be public and rank and file members should have elected representatives present.

 

Boeing is a major US corporation that employs 150,000 people and is a one of the nation’s largest exporters. The company makes commercial planes, military jets, rockets and spacecraft. (NY Times 10-25-24). The worker quoted above who said, ……“Now is the prime opportunity in a prime time to get our pension back.” Is right. But if we’ve learned anything over the past three or four decades it is that unionized workers have suffered under both Republican and Democratic Administrations and that no set of workers, no individual strike, can defeat the bosses’ efforts to place the crisis of capitalism on to the backs of the working class alone. Donating funds and sending messages of support are not enough. 

 

The strategy and tactics of the present union hierarchy have failed. Appealing to the Democratic Party has failed. Leaving workers on picket lines for weeks and months that don’t shut down production are a disaster and strengthen the incorrect argument that we are weak and the bosses strong. Isolating strikes is a failure.

 

I was reading yesterday that the AFL-CIO is hiring 1600 canvassers ($20-25 an hour) to go door to door to persuade workers why voting for the Democratic candidate in the coming election for President is the right thing to do. Good luck with that! A major reason millions of workers don’t vote is their disgust at both parties and the trade union leadership pushing a party on them that they abandoned long has contributed to the rise of Trump.

 

The AFL-CIO will spend hundreds of millions of dollars, billions over the years to get an antilabor antiworker regime in to office. Thousands of union staffers and volunteers will walk precincts and man phone banks. 

 

The IAM should make an issue of the defined benefit pension plan and the cost of living and flood Seattle and the area with striking workers and their allies  armed with a program that pledges union help and support for organizing the unorganized, increasing wages, demanding a national health system and speaking to workers needs in general. Workers at Starbucks, Amazon and other super exploited workplaces, Tesla for example are crying out for help. The Democrats won’t help them, ask a railroad worker.

 

The IAM could initiate a call for a national conference on reversing the tide, starting with their effort to bring back a defined pension for everyone union or not and one that people can live on. People retire in the US and then get another job. The ILA should join it and other major unions like the UAW and the ILWU. And public sector unions have tremendous potential power. We are not weak brothers and sisters, our leaders are. Their policy from the get go is concessions.

 

Instead of being a major campaigner for Kamala Harris, UAW president Shawn Fain should be appealing to the rank and file of the unions on strike and the union movement in general to struggle for such an approach to the capitalist offensive. Where leaders refuse to participate then appeals should be made over their heads to the rank and file of the movement. Yes, it’s a no-no by their rules but it’s necessary. 

 

When I was a delegate to the California State Labor Federation’s bi-annual conferences, Executive Secretary Jack Henning once proclaimed that we need global unionism to combat global capitalism. That’s a good start though he never did anything about it.

 

It is apparent that the US is awash with cash as we have sent billions of dollars of weaponry to various regimes, including one that the ICJ says is a genocide. We cannot limit our issues to those that affect one workplace or one union and we certainly cannot avoid foreign policy as the present trade union hierarchy does. We either stand together or we all die.

 

Just a few thoughts comrades.

US and UK, Starmer and Biden are complicit in Genocide.

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

HEO/GED

10-24-24

I am not sure what sort of commentary to add to this interview and the revealing by Al Jazeera of the level of assistance that the US and its sycophantic partners in Westminster are giving to the Zionist regime’s genocide in Palestine. And to think that the Prime Minister of Britain is the head of a part that refers to itself as a party of labor.

 

I can say with absolute confidence though, that the UK and the US are complicit in the genocide and mass murder of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of people in Palestine, most of them civilians including thousands of children. Whole families have been eliminated and as I write, the Zionsist regime is in the process of starving the population of northern Gaza and in the occupied West Bank, the settlers with support from the Israeli army are waging a brutal campaign of violence against Palestinians there with the intent of driving them from the land altogether.

 

The former US ambassador to Egypt who is questioned in the video makes it clear that the US and the Biden Administration do not see this vital assistance to the Zionist regime as assisting genocide but as helping Israel defend itself; we know they are lying but the guys with the big stick can do that. The vast majority of the worlds people and the world’s nations see it for what it is; the defense of the European/Western proxy in the region.  This is an imperialist war.

One aspect of this genocide is that any credibility that the US had as the leader of the so-called free world and a champion of democracy is no more. Here in the US people are consumed with fears about which of the two Wall Street parties will govern the country for the next four years. For the Palestinians and other victims of imperialist war, it doesn’t matter whether Trump and the Republicans or Harris and the Democrats win this race. Both candidates are war hawks and will not easily abandon the only reliable ally US imperialism has in this vital part of the world.

 

We are living in dangerous times as capitalism comes ever closer to its shelf life.

Israel/Palestine: "We Have Lost All Credibility": Hala Rharrit on Quitting US State Dept

As human rights groups continue to call out war crimes committed by the Israeli military, we speak to the only U.S. diplomat to publicly resign from the Biden administration over its policy on Israel. We first spoke to Hala Rharrit when she resigned from the State Department in April, citing the illegal and deceptive nature of U.S. policy in the Middle East. 

"We continue to willfully violate laws so that we surge U.S. military assistance to Israel," she says after more than a year of Israel's war on Gaza. Rharrit says she found the Biden administration unmovable in its "counterproductive policy," which she believes has gravely harmed U.S. interests in the Middle East. "We are going to feel the repercussions of that for years, decades, generations."

Seymour Hersh: Will the killing of Hamas’s leader alter Israel’s war?

Will the killing of Hamas’s leader alter Israel’s war?

Seymour Hersh

Oct 22, 2024

∙ Paid

Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who was killed last week in Gaza by the Israel Defense Force, pictured during a ceremony for Palestinian fighters killed by Israeli air strikes at Yarmouk Stadium on May 24, 2021 in Gaza City. / Photo by Laurent Van der Stockt/Getty Images.

Now, two weeks before America elects a new president, there seems to be no way out of war in the Middle East.

The killing of Yahya Sinwar, the brutal leader of Hamas and mastermind of the October 7 attack, is not going to end Israel’s war against Hamas, and its devastation of the Palestinians in Gaza will continue.

I’ve heard nothing from contacts in Beirut close to Hezbollah—whose troops are putting up a stiff fight as they did in Hezbollah’s 2006 war against Israel—that suggests anything other than a long war ahead. 

President Joe Biden applauded the death of Sinwar and again urged Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to call for a ceasefire that might free the remaining hostages taken by Hamas, if any of them remain alive. That Sinwar was found and killed above ground and not in one of the tunnels under Gaza raised questions for me about the alleged brilliance of the Israeli intelligence community, which has at no time in the past year indicated that Sinwar was above ground, surrounded by a few aides or bodyguards and with a large chunk of cash. 

He may have come up from underground for a breath of fresh air, as some Israeli media reports have suggested, leaving the remaining Israeli hostages behind, but he also may have put on sunglasses and pulled down a New York Yankees baseball cap and joined the more unfortunate of his people in chow lines with a plate and spoon.

There’s no evidence that Sinwar was planning a getaway to safety, but the circumstances of his death should lead to serious questions about the capabilities of Israeli military intelligence. If I were a reporter for an Israeli newspaper, I would wonder if there were some intelligence officers who had been telling the command that Sinwar may have been operating above ground more than the Israeli public was being told, just as other officers repeatedly warned of the October 7 Hamas attack in advance. 

There was something reassuring about being told that the Hamas leader was flitting around in the tunnels, surrounded by Israeli hostages, but the fact that he was found and executed in entirely different circumstances is a glaring intelligence failure.

At this point it’s clear that Biden’s influence on Netanyahu’s wars has been limited to the delivery of bombs and other ordnance. On his congratulatory call to Netanyahu after the killing of Sinwar, according to a White House statement, Biden said the moment was similar “to the scenes witnessed throughout the United States after President Obama ordered the raid to kill Osama bin Laden in 2011.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken was less effusive in a telephone conversation with Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, the Saudi foreign minister: would the Saudi kingdom, with its vast wealth, still participate in the reconstruction of Gaza when the war has ended and Hamas is gone? An official State Department statement asserted that Saudi cooperation would be “a path for the people of Gaza to rebuild their lives and realize their aspirations.” The Biden administration has floated a plan for Gaza to become a Saudi protectorate, but any such prospect is a long way off as long as the bloodshed there continues. 

I was told this week by a former Lebanese official who is close to Hezbollah’s leadership that the new leader of Hamas will be, as has been reported, Mohammed Sinwar, the 49-year-old younger brother of Yahya. Mohammed, like his older brother, was active at an early age in anti-Israel activities and, like Yahya, spent time in an Israeli jail. The former Lebanese official described him as “a hard fighter who was head of a military wing” of Hamas. The former official said that the new leader is “as intellectual as” his older brother: “he and his colleagues will seem like Che Guevara,” the Argentine Marxist who became a leader of the Cuban Revolution.

The former official said that in the current war with Israel Hezbollah has an asset that it lacked in 2006: the ability to bring the war to Haifa, Israel’s third largest city, founded in the fourteenth century BCE and thus a UNESCO World Heritage site. Hezbollah, he said, has chosen not to target civilian sites in Haifa and throughout northern Israel. Nonetheless, he added, Israelis “are suffering more than in 2006.” He was referring to the more than sixty-five thousand Israelis living in the north who have evacuated their homes under orders from the government.

Israel’s constantly expanding bombing target list—it attacked a large residential complex in Beirut a few days ago—is seen in Lebanon as evidence that the Israeli air force “has exhausted its list of military targets in Beirut.” Large areas throughout the city have been reduced to rubble, he said, and increasingly the Israeli bombs have been targeting “normal people” and not only those linked to Hezbollah. The official said the war “is a tragedy for Lebanon. It will be a long war.”

An American expert in Middle East conflict resolution told me he was aware that some fear that Netanyahu is intent on clearing the north of Gaza of all Palestinian residents, not just Hamas fighters, and will accede to demands of Israel’s far right and permit Israeli settlers to seek homesteads in the vacated zone. “I don’t think that is the goal among Israeli decision makers, but that could happen eventually due to realities.” He said that “a joyous remake of the north financed by the Saudis is also unlikely. Israel has no local partner or collaborator in Gaza to whom they can hand power. No Palestinian Authority to whom it can hand power, so they will hold onto it for the time being.”

As for the war in Lebanon, the American said he was skeptical of those who think Israel is having a hard time in that war. But, he said, “Israel has not launched a major invasion either so it is too early to tell.” Hezbollah “is not producing much media from that front, and so Israel is controlling the flow of information. So we don’t know what is happening, but it is possible that Israel is slowly achieving its goals. 

“Hezbollah has the ability to hit major cities, but it is not doing that—in part out of concern of the consequences Israel would unleash on Lebanese infrastructure and civilians. So it’s a strategic dilemma. You have the weapons but you cannot use them.” 

The American said that “Israel might be a pariah state but they think the whole world hates them anyway, and they are doing their best to make sure everybody hates Israel and Jews, so they might as well kick the can down the road for at least a generation—‘mowing the grass’ for a generation—at a regional level. It might work. No one is stopping them, and Iran does not want to commit suicide.

“I do not think it is likely Hezbollah can achieve a 2006-style ‘victory’. That war was short and had limited goals with clear political and financial goals at the end of it. This time Hezbollah entered the war naively thinking it could stop the killing in Gaza. It failed because that decision was entirely an Israeli one. And now Hezbollah is in a war without any clear goals and its enemy has license to do whatever it wants . . . no American president to rein it in, and in fact maybe some Americans see an opportunity here to remake the Middle East. So this will likely be long and terrible and regional.”

I don’t mean to make light of the terrible events that now dominate and threaten the Middle East and the world, but the other day when I asked a retired senior Israeli military official, who spent a long career often dealing with sensitive issues, about the war in Lebanon and the hatred of Netanyahu expressed by a prominent Israeli journalist I know, I got an answer that was surprising and funny.

My retired Israeli official said of the journalist: “Like our intelligence community, he is a realist. They and he despise Bibi. They consider Bibi dangerous for Israel. But we live in a democratic system, and a coup d’etat is out of the question.” He then turned to an event widely reported in Israel that some consider to be a message from Iran: one of its drones was spotted near the private home where Netanyahu and his wife live in a suburb of Tel Aviv. My friend said he expected more from the Iranians, “but they disappointed me today. The Iranians are not stupid. They demonstrated that they can get to our prime minister, thus making us feel vulnerable. At the same time they know that 50 percent know that Bibi is bad for Israel. Killing him, from their point of view, would be an idiotic mistake.”

The ironic fact is that, despite the contempt for Netanyahu some in the Israeli military may have, current polling in Israel has shown a steady rise in the prime minister’s popularity over the past year of war. A poll published this month reported overwhelming support for Netanyahu’s decision to take the war to Hezbollah. Other polls have applauded the killing of Sinwar. Polls show that Netanyahu’s Likud Party would win more seats in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, if another general election was held. War remains a boon for politicians around the world.

 

The West's Colonial Racism That Enables The Gaza Genocide.

From the presenter:

Beyond the racism that Zionism is and how that one leads IDF soldiers to commit unspeakable crimes, there is a second type of racism at work that enables the Genocide in Gaza. The West's societally ingrained, colonial racism that implicitly accepts that lives of Palestinians (and Arabs in general) are worth much less than the lives of Israelis and hence their mass-slaughter as an acceptable outcome of a conflict dynamic.

 

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

HEO/GED

10-22-24

 

The guy in this video gives a very good explanation of the racism and bias of the western media when it comes to the present genocide in Gaza.  The clips of the interview with Bari Weiss are very telling. The mass media in the US in particular is very powerful and to a great extent unchallenged. Lame duck president, the demented Jo Biden as well as Kamala Harris and her opponent in the race for the White House, Donald Trump, deny there is a genocide, or that Israel is an Apartheid state and that it is merely defending itself against a bunch of savage terrorists. 

Why not? The US killed millions of Arabs and Muslims in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11^th 2001. “Pre-emptive strike” is a term that has its origins in the events of 911 and is a form of self defence even if others are thinking of harming US capitalism’s interests in any part of the world. Why a group of people (former friends of the CIA) would attack us like that was never a question worth considering. The answer is too damaging to the image of the US as the world’s greatest symbol of democracy and freedom. 

 

In order to colonize a people, they have to be demonized. England, and then Britain’s first colony was Ireland, a ferry ride across the Irish Sea. The Irish were the “savage race”. They were once referred to as “White Chimpanzees” by the British ruling class.  How else can a colonizing power drag its working class in to a predatory war that is not in their own interests if it doesn’t portray the colonized as less than human and a threat? Millions were tortured and murdered in the European colonies in Africa and India. Millions of indigenous people wiped out in the colonization of the Americas.

 

We don’t simply live in a “society”. We live in a particular type of society, a class society, a system of oppression where one class, a minority of the population, exploits and rules society, and where the wealth and power of this ruling class is made possible only by the exploitation of the other. Our society we know as a capitalist mode of production.

 

Colonialism is a by-product of this capitalist mode of production. Marx said of it, “The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere……… it creates a world after its own image.”

 

Malcolm X pointed out that “You can’t have capitalism without racism”. Racism is built in to the capitalist system. Skin color, religion, national traits, sexual preferences, and at all times the oppression of women are means of dividing working class people and maintaining this system of oppression.

 

Those that resist must be subjugated, dealt with. Even its own working class were faced with this fate. The propaganda talked about in the video above is necessary if working class people of the colonial power are to be convinced that the stubborn resistance of the foreigner is to be overcome and it is in their interests to participate.

 

The narrator says that we all know what’s going on in Gaza and occupied Palestine. But it is not easy to overcome the propaganda. And even when we see it and are horrified by it, what can we do? I think there is a powerful mood in the United States that there is nothing we can do to change things. This helpless feeling is a major cause of the alienation and despair that exists in our society. People seek refuge in drugs, alcohol, cults, and religion or just shut it all out, never seek information. Others lash out; the old saying, “You can’t fight city hall” is almost ingrained and it will take a huge movement to breach that psychological dam.

 

There are many crises in the world today that are evidence of capitalist decay but none where social media has such a presence as in the Palestine genocide as far as I can see. 

 

There is also the existence of some alternative challenges to the global domination of western and US mass media in particular with the popularity of Al Jazeera and also Indian media and Russia today and Chinese state media, particularly in the global south or what we might call former colonial countries. 

Trump is asked a question about food prices. Call The Medics.

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

HEO/GED

10-21-24

I spend very little time listening to, watching or worrying about the degenerate serial sexual predator Donald Trump. But what I think is important about this answer to an important question, is that there is no better evidence than this of the serious political crisis in the US. It is the culmination of decades, more than a century of the dominance of the two parties of capitalism over US political and economic life along with the refusal of the leadership of organized labor to provide workers and the middle class with an independent political voice.

 

This note could easily have been on the wall of the apartment home of the unnamed psychotic killer in the movie Seven. It is not so much Trump the individual that is cause for concern but the powerful and important figures that are backing him. This comment clearly reveals the mind of a man who is mentally unstable, incapable of reason. What will happen in the coming period is hard to envision. What is clear is that the two parties of capital are leading society down a very precarious road as the dominance of US capitalism on the world stage declines.

*********

Reprinted from the UK socialist website Left Horizons.

Trump is asked a question about food prices:

 

At a rally, Donald Trump was given the following pre-screened question, “Like my fellow Americans, my grocery bill has not gone down. Everything is still so very expensive. What steps will your administration take to help American families suffering from this inflation?” So what was Trump’s answer to this question that he, in fact, knew beforehand was going to be asked? I’ll post it in full.

 

So, you know, it’s such a great question in the sense that people don’t think of grocery. You know, it sounds like not such an important word when you talk about homes and everything else, right? But more people tell me about grocery bills, where the price of bacon, the price of lettuce, the price of tomatoes, they tell me. And we’re going to do a lot of things.

 

You know, our farmers aren’t being treated properly. And we had a deal with China, and it was a great deal — I never mentioned it because once covid came in, I said, that was a bridge too far because I had a great relationship with President Xi [Jinping]. And he’s a fierce man and he’s a man that likes China and I understand that. But we had a deal and he was perfect on that deal, $50 billion he was going to buy. We were doing numbers like you wouldn’t believe, for the farmer. But the farmers are very badly hurt. The farmers in this country, we’re going to get them straightened out. We’re going to get your prices down.

 

But you asked another question about safety and also about Black population jobs and Hispanic population in particular those two. So when millions of people pour into our country, they’re having a devastating effect on Black families and Hispanic families more than any others. I think it’s going to spread to a lot of other places.

 

I think it’s going to spread to unions. I think unions are going to have a big problem because, you know, employers are just not going to pay the price. They’re going to — and it’s going to be — it’s a very bad thing that’s happening.

 

So they’re coming in. Many are coming in from jails and prisons and mental institutions, insane asylums. That’s like, you know, step above, right? Insane asylum. And whenever I go, Hannibal Lecter, you know what I’m talking about. They always go — the fake news. That’s a lot of fake news back there, too.”

 

They always mention — you know, it’s a way of demeaning, they say, ‘Hannibal Lecter, why would he mention?’ Well, you know why, because he was a sick puppy, and we have sick puppies coming into our country. I figured that’s a lot — that’s better than wasting a lot of words. You just say, ‘Hannibal Lecter. We don’t want him.’ But. But they always sort of say, ‘Why would he say that?’ I do it for a lot of reasons.

 

But I do it because we are allowing some very bad people into our country. And they’re coming as terrorists. You know, you saw the other day, last month they had the record number of terrorists. I had a month — and I love Border Patrol.

 

Did you see they gave me a full endorsement two days ago? Border Patrol.

The Border Patrol. 

 

And they’re great. And, you know, they want to do their job. They don’t want to let these people come in. They look at them. They can tell. They can look at somebody, say good, bad. They say what’s coming into our country now, it’s having a huge negative impact on Black families and on Hispanic families and ultimately on everybody.

 

And we’re going to close that border so tight. It’s going to be closed. And I said the two things I’m going to do, first, we’re going to close that border — and people are going to come in. You want people to come in. We need people to come in. People are going to come into our country legally.

 

You know, it’s so unfair. You have people that are waiting on a system, in a line and they’ve been waiting in this line. You know how long? For years, 10 years, 12 years and they study and they take tests. And then people come. I actually say, ‘Why don’t you just go and just come on across?’ I tell people that it’s terrible, right? I said, ‘Go out. You’re incredible.’ They say, ‘What can I do to speed up the process?’ I say, ‘You know what, go to the southern border. I’ll see you on the other side.’ It’s so unfair.

 

But we’re going to have them come in legally. You have to see what they have to do. They take tests on, you know, who was the first one here? What date was this? What does 1776 mean? All this stuff.

 

And these other people are coming in and they’re affecting the school systems and they’re affecting the hospital system. I mean, if you take a look at what’s going on in Springfield, Ohio, a town of 50,000 people, they’ve just added 32,000 people. Illegal immigrants. And we’re not going to put up with it.

 

And we’re going to take care of your costs are going to come down, and you’re not going to have a problem with — because the biggest problem, and I’m hearing it from Black people and to a lesser extent right now, but it’ll be the same, Hispanic people.

 

And I’ll tell you what, our poll numbers have gone through the roof. With Black and Hispanic, have gone through the roof. And I like that. I like that. I like that. So we’re going to take care of it. You will be — I’ll tell you, if everything works out, if everybody gets out and votes on January 5th. Or before.

 

You know, it used to be, you’d have a date. Today, you can vote two months before, probably three months after. They don’t know what the hell they’re doing. But we’re going to straighten it all out. We’re going to straighten that out. We’re going to straighten our election process out, too. That’s going to be important, also. So thank you very much, darling. We’re going to get it straight. Thank you.

 

This is Trump’s plan to lower grocery prices.