Okay, I understand the rage, but I do not understand the violence on either part. First of all, it is gonna take more than marches to turn this around. The so-called rulers are in the ivory towers far away from the turbulence. Burning, setting afire, and damaging another’s property to make a point to someone the property does not belong to, makes little meaningful sense to me.
If people are rising up and are the least bit bent on taking down the “System” what are they gonna replace it with?? Who’s weapons are they going to use to “kill” them and take them down? Whose mansions, yatchs, luxury hotels and resorts are they gonna raid and not face security of the utmost?
How is it that they have not taken note of what happened in North Africa, the failed attempts, the infiltrations, the lies and deceipt?
How is this method going to bring any harm, closure or revolutionary changes to anyone in the street?
And after it is all over, are the masses going to be like “Lord of the Flies” and turn on each other??
This is the so-called “order out of chaos” illuminati signature. Not that I believe that either, but I am just saying. Where is the reasonable action? The coming together of groups to form workable alliances where they can truly free themselves from the snakes that have bit them? Are these folks prepared to set up themselves independently or are they crying for the bloodsuckers to stop sucking their blood and change their ways toward humaness? Would not these blood suckers know how to, or at least what is humane??
A revolution fought on the streets stays in the streets. The PTB are not in their position because they took to the streets and convinced the masses to follow them. They met behind closed doors in quiet surroundings, and convinced each other, then implemented their plans.
As long as the masses continue to insist that the PTB change their strategy and take care of them better, they will remain slaves as morsels of legislation may (not) be implemented to appease them.
When the masses leave the streets and refuse to participate in the decadence of their societies around the world, it will shift control from the PTB to the masses. But without a viable plan, and a viable means of installing the plan, the merry-go-round will go round and round, till the next stop, not change, just stop.
Humanity has to realize its sovereignty and refuse to be enslaved.
The cry for freedom and justice has to come from within. Otherwise, these folks will force the hand of the PTB into conducting an outright take over and implementation of the so-called NWO which ain’t new at all.
Humanity has to go back to its village, city, towns and boroughs and organize themselves out of the teeth of the tiger and stand on its feet and stop expecting someone to give them a better chance.
These cries have been going on for centuries. We have wars to prove it, but what has it changed? As long as the masses continue to beg for their leaders to do for them, they will remain slaves and risk their lives, property, hopes and dreams in the process.
I’m sorry, but it just doesn’t matter if tens of thousands of people demonstrate in Paris. Oh,it might put a little pressure on Sarkozy to remonstrate a little harder with the Israeli government, but in the larger scheme of things it isn’t very significant.
Europe has ceded dealing with the Israelis to the United States.
The people of the United States have ceded dealing with the Israelis to the US Congress.
The US Congress generally abdicates its responsibilities when faced with large powerful single-issue lobbies such as the National Rifle Association, the Cuban-American pro-boycott organizations, and the Israel lobbies.
So Congress has ceded Israel, and indeed, most Middle East, policy to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and its myriad organizational supporters, from the Southern Baptist churches to the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.
The Israel lobbies take their cue on what is good policy from the Israeli government and the Likud Party.
What do do about it?
Cont’d
Single issue lobbies succeed in US politics when there is no organized opponent on the other side of the issue spending as much money and doing as much lobbying.
If all those people waving useless cardboard posters in the air really want to change things, they have to change the US domestic political equation. And it can’t be done with easy things like boycotts (which is negative, not positive action).
The Obama campaign, which, despite rightwing denials, really did make a breakthrough in raising small sums on the Web, has shown a way forward to fight pernicious single-issue lobbies. Politics has been a high-stakes poker game played by millionaires and billionaires (look at the US senate), where most of us can’t even get into the swanky casino much less actually play some cards. The Web 2.0 now allows people to get into the game for $50. And if 50 poorer people give that amount, it is like one wealthy person giving the $2500 allowed for support to a politician’s campaign. But that new model of Web 2.0 giving can only work if it is organized and consistent with regard to purpose.
Consistency is important. AIPAC often arranges for small-town congressmen only $4000 or so per campaign.
[pdf] Even its major contributions in 2008 are actually chump change as the
Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs points out. But a lot of US congressional races, which happen every two years, are close, and $4000 is very welcome, especially when there are no costs to signing AIPAC letters and supporting AIPAC positions because there is nobody to speak of on the other side. And if the money comes in every campaign, along with lots of office visits and letters and local community support, it builds loyalty over time.
AIPAC gets in before the ground floor, introducing potential candidates to big donors and has its supporters in the Democratic party machine, e.g., vet candidates.
Tom Hayden, a leftist American if there ever was one, had to be approved of by the Bermans to amount to anything in southern California Democratic politics, and it led to his taking an unfortunate stand on the 1982 Lebanon War of which he came to be ashamed. If all this is true for Hayden, imagine how it is with some used car salesman in southern Indiana.
Joe Lieberman would make an excellent object lesson when he next runs for the Senate. Saxby Chambliss too.
Coordination works, even with supposedly charitable groups outwardly forbidden to directly participate in politics. Southern Baptist churches and some proportion of synagogues are networked to get out literally millions of emails to Congress and the media on Israel-related issues. This networking seeps over into political work, since congregations get the cue as to how they should spend their campaign contributions.
So if opposition to things like the Gaza war is going to be effective, something like a Peace Public Affairs Committee would have to be established. It would then coordinate peace-oriented synagogues, Presbyterian Churchs, Catholic churches, Mennonite and Quaker communities, mosques, Buddhist congregations, Unitarian Universalists, etc., to get out emails to congress and the media demanding a genuine peace process and a rollback of Israeli colonization of the Palestinians.
A Peace Lobby is not partisan. Libertarians, Socialists, Greens and segments of the Republican and Democratic parties would all be constituents. It is not sectarian. Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Unitarian Universalists and others would all be constituents. No one owns peace. 90% of Americans have a vital interest in it. At a time when the US is the sole superpower, it is unconstrained by rival powers and therefore its leaders and the 10% who benefit from war are horribly tempted by it. Since international conditions do not produce restraint at this juncture, it is especially important that domestic politics throw up barriers to ever more ruinous wars and to US support for the ruinous wars of others.
I underline that such an organized push in American politics for more equitable policies in the Middle East is not anti-Israel, but rather intended to help Israel find a way forward with its neighbors that does not involve continued displays of sado-masochistic politics on both sides. Make no mistake. AIPAC and other rightwing Israel lobbying organizations are enablers and drug dealers, hooking Israeli politicians on the high of power and violence, and we can only heal Israel and Palestine by cutting off that supply.
Such an effort would also have wider implications for US foreign policy. In the coming two or three decades, the US military industrial complex will want to fight several ruinous wars on major oil-producing and gas-producing states not in the US political orbit, such as Iran. At the moment, the US public is helpless before such ambitions, because the War Lobby is even more effective than the Israel lobbies are.
Whenever I rant like this people want me to organize the thing, or they allege that it already exists and is working quite well in Peoria, Illinois, or that it can’t be done, and et cetera. I am not good at organizing, I am good at scribbling and putting ideas out there. It obviously does not already exist on a sufficient scale or we would see its effects. And it certainly can be done.
We lost 2.5 million jobs in the US last year. This effort would create jobs for progressives. In fact, the people who get in on the ground floor organizing it will likely get to be rather well off. And, it might prevent another big terrorist attack on the US, or prevent your child from being drafted and blown up near some godforsaken oil well in Khuzistan someday.
(Someone asked if I am talking about a third party. Heavens no. In first past the post electoral systems, third parties seldom amount to much. I am just talking about a standing Peace Lobby. We have a standing army, after all– an idea the Founding Fathers opposed. We have a standing military-industrial complex. We need a standing Peace Lobby. Otherwise we’re just reactive, and the big decisions are taken behind closed doors, and we are merely reactive, shivering in the street with some placard and a few other brave souls whenever anything happens, to little real effect. It isn’t a mystery. I’m saying
Organize!” It is just that poor Joe Hill did not have our access to a distributed information system, which is the very best way to organize, and can’t be broken up with a billy stick.)
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