My childish belief in the goodness of our Nation (the US), that was reinforced throughout my early years of schooling, was gone by the time I was in my 20’s. My strong sense of curiosity, combined with a love of reading, led me to the works of Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. Their writings helped to clear up my confusion about the why’s behind historic events.
They opened my eyes to how all empires follow a pattern of unsustainable growth, leading to ultimate collapse, and how the corporate empires that control the US government today, are especially dangerous.
The corporations who own the mainstream media, serve to keep us distracted, thus unaware of who is really making our nation’s big policy decisions. The CNNs, NewNations, and other news giants either hype or downplay stories according to the dictates of their corporate overseers. But, of course, the coverage is always “fair and balanced.”
The bullshit especially flies during election years in the US.
The mainstream media reports that President Biden really feels for the innocents in Gaza, but ending the IDF’s bombing is not something that he can actually make happen.
Hmm, not according to IDF Major General Yitzhak Brick, who is quoted in a November 2023 interview in a pro-Israel publication:
“All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the U.S. The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability. … Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.”
So, President Biden, if you are so concerned about bombs dropping and children starving, why not cut off the weapons supply?
There is already a precedent for doing so. Remember President Reagan?
On 12 August, in what would later be dubbed “Black Thursday”, Israeli jets bombed Beirut for 11 consecutive hours, killing more than 100 people. That same day, a horrified Ronald Reagan placed a phone call to Menachem Begin, then Israeli prime minister, to “express his outrage” and condemn the “needless destruction and bloodshed”.
“Menachem, this is a holocaust,” Reagan told Begin.
Yes, an American leader used the H-word in conversation with an Israeli leader. Begin responded with sarcasm, telling the US president that “I think I know what a holocaust is.” Reagan, however, didn’t budge, insisting on the “imperative” for a ceasefire in Beirut.
Twenty minutes. That’s all the time it took for Begin to call back and tell the president he had ordered Sharon to stop the bombing. It was over. “I didn’t know I had that kind of power,” a surprised Reagan told an aide, upon putting down the phone.
But Biden won’t make that call to Netanyahu. President Biden wants to be reelected, so he won’t do anything to upset his big donors, like AIPAC (The American Israel Public Affairs Committee a lobbying group that advocates pro-Israel policies to the legislative and executive branches of the United States).
So, instead, Biden says he will build a pier to help out the people who are being starved and slaughtered in Gaza. By the time that pier is built, thousands more Palestinians will die, due to bombs, infections, exposure, disease and starvation.
That pier will eventually be beneficial to oil companies, though. The same companies who reap insane profits from endless wars. And the same companies who sponsor the mainstream media, the nightly news shows.
Democrat or Republican, Biden or Trump. Both candidates have already shown that they will support the on-going Israeli bombardment and displacement of the Palestinians. They both are pro-war.
The corporate media hardly mentions Cornel West, Jill Stein, and Claudia de la Cruz, all candidates running on anti-war platforms. Most people that I talk to cannot even name a third-party candidate, with the exception of the well-known RFK, Jr.
We have been brainwashed into believing that we must support the current two-party system. We are bombarded with Biden/Trump stories on the mainstream media, with an occasional story of the “threat” of RFK, Jr. taking some votes from the two major parties. (Unfortunately, he, like Biden and Trump, is not in favor of stopping the slaughter in Gaza).
We’ve been told in the past that if we don’t support Biden, we risk another Trump presidency. So folks voted Biden in 2020, and 4 years later . . . here we are faced with another probable Trump presidency.
Sit still for a moment. Turn off the TV, the phone, the tablet. Close your eyes and sit in silence. Feel your heartbeat. Breathe.
In your heart of hearts, do you really believe that bombing a school, where Palestinians are sheltering from the endless bombing, is justified because a Hamas operative may be in a tunnel beneath the school? Or that bombing a hospital is justified because, well, Hamas! ?
Imagine that your child’s school is surrounded by armed police because a terrorist is inside the school building making threats. (Unfortunately, not hard to imagine in the US). Frantically, you run to the school, but you are told that there is nothing anyone can do to save your child, because the entire school needs to be bombed to ensure that the terrorist not escape. “That terrorist is a danger to all of us, if he is allowed to escape,” is the message reported on the mainstream media. “We have a right to defend ourselves from terrorists.”
Welcome to the world of the Palestinians.