You speak with such a forked tongue Folktruther that it is comical. And you read selectively or you could not invoke my name and neocon in the same breath. Displays your stupidity.  You can suspect anything especially when you have no leg to stand on. A kind of mental paraplegic.  I have said the nearly the same thing as you about Palestinian statehood and why the US cannot stay out of the Middle East except Israel will not be able to inflict great destruction on the Middle East, not with Russia and China and the Arab coalition (who has untold number of wealth) pumping armaments into the hotspots.  Are you capable of getting real?  It is dubious.  I have said America needs to stop feeding the zionist leviathan machine.  Actually though, I do think all religions ought to be eradicated and the world would be safer.  Then neocons would by that virtue also be eliminated.  Then greedy corporate bosses could go although it is a toss up as to which ought to go first, the greedy corporate bosses or the violent religions. They both are totalitarian.  So you could legitimately call me an anti-something. 

My cat says it’s time for lunch!

I would never call you a retard, Shenonymous, not only because I don’t think you are one, but wouldn’t anyway even if I thought you were.  My tendency is to attck politically in order to get a truther’s attention, but vulgarity is only necessary for Gop and Dem neocons, which I suspect you are.

The US cannot “stay out” of the Mideast, or West Asia as the Chinese call it, because its vital concerns are involved.  The Middle East will not decimate itself, although it might be decimated by the US-Israel. 

The US should support the Palestinians in acquiring a state, the only historical solution to the problem.  This would involve getting the American population to distinguish between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, and stopping support of Israeli militarism.  This is much worse than wasting tax dollars, because the Israeli lobby has partially hijacked US foreign and domestic policy and has imposed an delusive neocon worldview on the mass media and on both political parties.

Also, before I forget, I don’t think you are anti-Semetic, Shenonymous, (nice pseudo-name) but that you have the common confusion between the two.  Because anti-Semitism has been inherited in the Christian religion, much more so than in the Muslim religion, irradicating it is an historical project.  It is prevalent in the US to a much lesser extent than other forms of racism, particularly anti-Muslim racism.

Guess once a closed mind always a closed mind that you appear to have Folktruther.  I am not for Zionism regardless of your charges and I have not tried in the least to justify Zionism.  You just can’t read.  I said there was viciousness on both sides and both sides pander their religion to absolve themselves of any blame.  Yes I am for a Palestinian state in spite of your misplaced pro-Israeli and anti-Semitic accusations.  That is ridiculous in my case since I have declared over and over to be an atheist coming from a catholic family, so you don’t know what you are talking about.  I couldn’t care less about any religious reason for statehood for any nationality.  I do care about oppressed people which the Palestinians are.  I would not call Israel an oppressed country, but I would declare they have a right to exist regardless of what you want to call that.  From my view it is you who is unyieldingly biased and blind. 

So with your undocumented statistic of 25-30% American families as Jewish, what would you do with them?  Or what do you want them to do?  Or do you want somebody else to do it for you?  You cannot believe for a minute they will go away or will not give support to Israel.  Not necessarily for a zionistic Israel however.  I know Jews who do not believe in that effort.  Sorry about your relatives, why don’t you just go and shoot them or do you just tolerate them?  And the destruction of Israel is a mania of yours, it just is not going to happen.  Even a retard can see that it does not look quite balanced though, Israel against the entire Arab coalition.  But I can see that you aren’t going to like that observation and will wring your hands at any evening up the sides and will likely try to call me a retard since you don’t have any real objective argument.

Furthermore, I cannot fathom why the right-wing Christians appear to support Israel and I believe it is a hollow advocation and deceitful.  Hagee is insane.  I haven’t the slightest inclination to wring my hands.  The Middle East will decimate themselves.  I’d just like the US to stay the hell out of it because there is nothing that can be done by outsiders and the other 70-75% non Jewish American families put a stop to it.  And quite frankly Scarlett, I don’t feel bad at all.  I resent seeing my hard earned tax dollars are going down a pisshole.

I know that your opinion is your own, Shenonymous, but it is the same one used by my brain-dead Zionist relatives. Your view, and theirs, is a spurious reasonableness that justifies a continuing and barbaric oppression.  There is viciousness on both sides.  Both sides used religion to condone violence.  Let us retreat into ancient history, discounting the apartheid state that has been developed with conscious intent by all the major parties of Israel, especially since the 1967 war.

You are for a Palestinian state, no doubt, like the Israelis have been the past thirty years while they despossess the Muslims and attack neighboring countires, and kill, starve and torture Arabs.  The Israeli power system is for a Zionist state the way Obama is for change you can believe in.

The major reason that the Isreali apartheid state exists is because 25 to 30% of the American ruling families are Jewish, and most of them unite with other neocons to support a repressive foreign policy. American Jews are among the most reactionary of Israeli’s when they move to Israel and are instrumental in forming what Petras calls the Zionisst Power Configuration.  Of which you are a part, like my relatives.

A major problem is that Christianity has made part of its preconceptions underlying its myths into an anti-Semitism that has been inculcated in children for many centuries.  This makes it difficult in the US, which is very backward ideologically, to separate anti-Semitism from anti-Zionism in the American population.

The distinction is consciously muddied by Aipac by, for example, featuring Rev Hagee as their principle speaker at their annual conference, because of his uniting right wing (and anti-Semitic) Christians for Zionism.  Hagee has publically preached that Hitler was doing God’s work in the mass murder of millions of Jewish men, women and children.

It is necessary to destroy the Israel apartheid state.  To frighten the Jewish population, this is conflated with massacring the Jewish population, leading to gridlock among Jews while the Jewish and Zionist powerful support a vicious oppression which may lead to a genicide of the Palestinian people.

I know you would feel bad about this.  You will wring your hands.  What you will not do is think clearly about the historical problem and help prevent it.

randyha, here is part of where I get my information, where do you get yours?

-’Land and Power’, Anita Shapira, 1992, p. ix.

-‘Domination and Resistance: Egyptian Military Activity in the Southern Levant,’ Michael G. Hasel, Brill, 1998.

-‘The Land of Israel: National Home Or Land of Destiny,’ Eliezer Schweid, Translated by Deborah Greniman, Published 1985 Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press, ISBN 0838632343, p.56.

-"Promise and Fulfilment: The Territorial Inheritance,” Paul R. Williamson, in Philip Johnston and Peter Walker (eds.), The Land of Promise: Biblical, Theological and Contemporary Perspectives (Leicester: Apollos, 2000), 20-21.

-Keith, Alexander. ‘The Land of Israel: According to the Covenant with Abraham,’ with Isaac, and Jacob, W. Whyte & Co, 1844.

-Schweid, Eliezer. ‘The Land of Israel: National Home Or Land of Destiny,’ translated by Deborah Greniman, Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press, 1985. ISBN 0838632343

-Sedykh, Andrei. ‘This Land of Israel,’ Macmillan, 1967.

-Stewart, Robert Laird. ‘The Land of Israel,’ Revell, 1899.

Folktruther, you are correct about perverted truths that might be fished from the bible.  I am merely stating why Israel is the way it is today, I am certainly not excusing their part in the Israeli-Palentinian problem.  Viciousness has happened on all sides.  And the Islamists do not shrink from violence.  The fact that you only want to focus on recent history is myopic.  I agree that the ”obvious solution” is withdrawal to originally mandated borders.  Zionists use the bible for their justification which in my mind is spurious and BS with a capital b and s.  But the Islamists avail themselves to their Qur’an to justify their warmaking and always has.  So push comes to shove it is a religious pissing contest, and the rest of the world suffers.  You might read my posts a bit more carefully to see where I stand on these matters, but my opinion is my own.

Oh no, Shenonymous, the Israeli-Palestinian problem is not too complicated to make terse comments, although you probably won’t like them.  Israel is an apartheid state with the Jewish power system viciously oppressing the Muslim population.  The Jewish population is kept in thrall by the existential fear of the destruction of the people, when the real problem is the destruction of the apartheid power system.

An obvious solution is a withdrawal of Israel to the UN legitimate borders and the creation of a Palestian state.  It will never happen because the US has been supporting the Licud policy which threatens historically the genicide of the Palestinian people.  Thereforre the apartheid Israeli state will probably collapse within a few decades from moral weakness within and Palestinian pressure without.

It’s all quite simple really but the idea of Zionists is to bring in a mishmash of biblical and other diversions to make the unpalitable simple truth complicated enough so that people who don’t want to understand it, won’t.  So they won’t do anything about it.  It’s all so complicated!  I get so confused!  This bullshit will most likely lead to a bloody historical confrontation that has a simple, if politically difficult, solution.

And stay away from the inconsistent, childish truths and perverted values of the Bible.

Shenonymous, thank you for the biblical lesson but this has no historical bearing of whatsoever. But according to the bible, Abraham came to the land of Canaan and the only property he owned was a cave he bought to bury his wife Sarah. Also, the Canaanites are not the early Israelites, where did you get this from? Furthermore, modern day Israelis have no blood connection to the early Israelites. The vast majority of them are Slavs from the Kingdom of the Khazars who converted to Judaism. You’re right...stay informed

The original Zionist dream is a moot point.  If you are going to tell a story, Barry Landeau, tell at least a synopsis of the whole story.  Greater Israel, or Complete Land of Israel, Eretz Yisra’el Hashlemah, that you are talking about was land given to Abraham’s descendants by the Hebrew God (see Genesis 15:18-21).  Now a valid argument could be made that the Abrahamic Bible precedes the Abrahamic Qur’an, hence Israel preceded Islam.  But that would not provide a very fruitful argument.  Greater Israel today refers to parts of the West Bank, Golan Heights and Gaza Strip.  Eretz Yisra’el however is also referenced in Numbers and Ezekiel and describe a much smaller area of land and an even smaller territory noted in the Biblical books from Tel Dan to Beersheba.  But the borders of what has finally been decided was Israel is a relatively small part of what was god given.  Course a lot depends on whose god is taken as the God.

The establishment of the State of Israel was drawn as a direct line from biblical time to the now of 1947 when the declaration was made.  Eretz Yisrael was part of the official name of the land by agreement known as the British Palestine Mandate and was even minted on coins.  The British developed heart palpitations and eventual military dispute over the Suez Canal which gave impetus to the Mandate.  You all remember Lawrence of Arabia.  This area has been a hotbed of bloody conflict for centuries.  But the Canaanites (the early Israelites or Hebrews) had inhabited the territory for millennia as a people developing about 6200 BC!  Assumed by Babylonian, Persian, Greek and Roman Empires there were intermittent periods of independence for the Jews with a division of what was in 1916 the Ottoman Empire. 

There is a long history of the power structure of this region and the history of who occupied the land has been in flux for six thousand years!  The warring argument over the land has gone on since time immemorial and most likely will until some new agreements are made.  The British, French and Italians all had their hand in the partitioning.  What we are actually musing about today is kind of asinine due to speaking in ignorance.  Not only is this area on the brink of all out war as we sit comfortably at our computers, it is over matters that most westerners have no idea how deep the conflict goes.  And we are supposed to come up with an intelligent opinion of what is going on over there and make decisions that ruin our economy and kill our soldiers! Such is the power of American neocons and corporate masters.  The battles in the Middle East is both ancient religious and ancient territorial and it is hard to say if religion gives the excuse or the power of controlling the territory and its resources that keep the struggles going.  And historically the Christians do not have clean hands in the matter either with their bloody Crusades marching to Jerusalem and the recent Bush wars.  It is too complex an issue to cursorily make terse comments.  Sort of another Biff Bam Thank You Mam approach to putting in two cents worth of opinion.  Becoming informed is highly suggested.

Folktruther, Cynthia McKinney lost the election because she assaulted a United States Capital Police officer who was doing his job properly, and then lied about it.

I encourage a vote for however the wind blows ya.  But know that to vote outside either party, your vote is worthless really.  A statement?  Shout all you want.  It will be your voice in the wind.  Few will hear it and even fewer will care.

It is quite true, Fadel, that the Zionism of Obama-Biden makes them the enemy not only of the Arab world by the billion and a half Muslims around the world.  It puts them squarely on the track of the neocon Bushite policy, sloganized in the fraudulent War on Terrorism, that will continue the war on Muslims.

But they do not do this for the votes of the Jewish population, of which there are only a few million. Like everyone else in the US, Jews inherite from their families their political party orientation like their religious orientation; the Jewish population is most Dem and would vote Dem if Carter ran.

But the ruling class in the US is composed of Jewish families to the extent of 25 to 30% according to Robert Petras.  They support the Lichud agenda, a right wing party in Israel.  They fund Aipac and other organizaations and Gop Jewish journals like COMMENTARY, and Dem Jewish jounrals like NEW REPUBLIC, both neocon magazines.  the Editor of NEW REPUBLIC is Peretz, Al Gore’s, campaign manager, who inherited through his wife Singer Sewing Machine money.

Rich and powerful Jewish members of the ruling class hire Jewish and other members of the professional-managerial class to form both a Gop and Dem neocon power structure. The War on Terrorism was founded ideologically in a 1979 conference in Jerusilum attended by power figures of both the US and Israel.

It is the money and media of the neocon ruling class, sponosred and subsidized by Jews and non-Jews that has creaed the neocons and Zionism of both parties.  The average Jewish person has little more knowledge of these power arrangements as the average American.  We don’t know any rich and powerful so we have tended to think the whole story is just anti-Semtism.

Anti-Semitism is very strong in Western society, being inherited in the religious tradition.  Most Christians are not aware of this, but it is stronger historically among Christians than among Muslims, since Muslim power systems use to tax non-Muslims and thus treated Jews with more respect, which also is in its origins.

Obama-Biden, like McCain, are promoting the interests of the Elite consensus that finances and media’s them.  This is the consensus of the ruling class, not rank and file Jews.  It is necessary to get the American people to distinguish between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism in a progressive ideology.  Since the American ruling class has traditionally used racism to bridge class divisions, making the US a highly racist society, this will require an historical effort.

It can be begun by supporting McKinney for president, a stanch anti-Zionist, who was defeated for office largely by Zionist money.

Why not ask Biden himself, Mossada?  I’ve already said what I think of both zionists and jihadist Muslims.  I think both groups are anachronistically insane for a 21st century and forward world in creating a humanity that is mentally evolved.  Zionism has nothing to do with political orientation even if they insist on it.  Democracy is a political way of conducting the business of a populous state ethnically composed or not (many nations are primarily one ethnic group, it is nothing unusual) and is determined by the framers of that state.  Zionism is a religion-determined group.  Zionism and Islam are at odds because of their relative religious dogma.  Islam is without a doubt totalitarian; at least the zionist Israelis give the “impression” of being democratic and have elections. Sometimes the good guys win but not for long.  They get assassinated too.  The Palestinian also go through the motions of elections but they turn out to be meaningless in an intellectual and effectual way.  Do you think the Palestinian people want continuous war?  Their leaders do.

The history of the “mess” in the Middle East is much more ancient and even more exaggerated than you portray.  The United States only keeps its fingers in the eyes (or up its ass) of the Middle East because of its perceived strategic position.  It really is as simple as that. And being simple cannot be erased like a blackboard with one stroke, nor with wishes.  You know the old saying, wish in one hand, sh*t in the other and see which one gets filled first.  The Middle East has been a breeding ground of nasty circumstances since the Qur’an challenged the Torah and the Bible.  It is basically a religious jihad with death laden economic overlays once uncalculating money was perceived to be at stake.  Put religion and money together and everybody knows, in the prescient words (of a future world)… Leonard Cohen’s
Everybody Knows
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows

Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died

Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long stem rose
Everybody knows
...

Everybody knows, everybody knows
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows

Oh everybody knows, everybody knows
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows

Everybody knows

Too bad the good guy (Vance) is deader than a doornail.  His approach to foreign policy emphasized negotiation over conflict with a special interest in arms reduction. How about a live replacement?  Isn’t Obama speaking those same words?  Talk is the starting point, then action.

Fadel, I’ll save you some time formulating your response to me by providing you with a template to use that fits your usual writing style. Just replace the (blah blah) sections with some other random thoughts.

“ (blah blah) zionist pig (blah blah) facist (blah blah) lying Bushies like you (blah blah) jewish masters (blah blah) Mossad (blah blah) Karl Rove (blah blah) zionist lies (blah blah) palestinian genocide (blah blah)”

Fadel, I’m an atheist, but I’ll take a Zionist over an Islamist any day. 

The Zionists have stated they want to carve out one relatively tiny piece of the middle east for jewish people, where they can live in relative security and govern themselves as an ethnic majority.

The Islamists have stated they want to expand everywhere until they have taken over the globe, destroyed all enemies of Islam, and subjugated the remaining people of the world under Sharia.

Now who is the real threat to world peace?  Let me see, one wants tiny Israel, the other wants global Islamic law.  Hmmm…

Only two problems selecting Biden?  Well then we are ahead of the game.  Schools have been falling apart for decades, and schools are being renovated and rebuilt.  I happen to teach in a very provincial school district where all the schools are the best I’ve ever seen, they have been rebuilt and built new.  Most of the kids are Hispanic.  There is no school falling apart in several counties that I’ve visited!  It is not the schools that are dilapidated, it is the bloody minds of whiners.  Y’all just don’t get it.  Israel is seen as having an essential and vital strategic position in the Middle East whether it is liked by all or not.  There are plenty of Americans, Jewish and not so Jewish, who agree.  I am not sure myself given the hotbed that exists there among the imperialistic Islamic Arab countries.  I am for a Free Palestine and the end of American aggression in the Middle East, but I do not agree Israel has to be sacrificed.  Politicians are by nature rotten, so you boggs are not saying anything we don’t already know.  Are you in the dark?  Are you eating bullsh*t?  Do you think you are alone?  Just exactly how would you run a presidency?

Mossada, it has to be business but not as usual.  There is no getting rid of business unless you want America to revert to caves.  Maybe you do?  Pakistan relinquished hands-off status when they started providing a haven for al Quaeda.  And yes it is always the oil stupid!  But at least Obama will support alternative energy projects unlike that hypocrite Geroge Bush who is making a pathetic show in San Antonio in preparation for another disaster in New Orleans that his administration still has not taken care of!  There is always these days money to be made from war, cold or hot!  The Kurds need more than the United States to help them.  And I agree they need help and protection.

Super Stalinists are by your definition the totalitarian fascists now known as neocons.  Neocons only care about government as far as their conservative beliefs rule the day. Neoconservatism is a political philosophy that emerged in the United States from the rejection of social liberalism and the New Left counterculture of the 1960s. It influenced the Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and the George W. Bush politics and policies and is used as a criticism against liberals who had “moved to the right.  Socialist critic Edward M. Harrington took his beliefs in a radical direction towards communism and socialism yet his revised notions were influential on Kennedy and LB Johnson’s War on Poverty.  However, becoming a fierce opponent of communism he was responsible for a criticism on the Port Huron statement was insufficiently anti-Communist and was considered one of “the” political opponents of Richard Nixon.  So politics becomes the big game from changing values.  Along with Max Shachtman, Harrington believed that the politico/economic concept of a just and fully democratic society called socialism could not be realized under the totalitarianism of authoritarian communism.  Whether or not socialism can deliver on that promise is a debatable issue and is still argued in rational societies.  Free ones, that is.  Democrats tend to be socialistic and articulate more equitable distribution of the wealth of a nation among the common people who work to earn that wealth or who by reason of inability to work, due to old age, illness, or lack of education cannot earn a livable wage.  That doesn’t mean Democrats are free from corporate shackles.

So what is the solution?  It is foolish to whine about an irreversible situation.  There are two candidates running for president.  There is only one choice.  In the final analysis, it doesn’t really matter what critics say of these two candidates.  One will be slightly better than the other. It is that slim edge that will be important for the world.  You know the world is not much better.  Just take a look around.

Two problems with the selection of Biden:

1. Since Obama is the so-called candidate for “change,” what cahange does he bring with Biden a 30-year DC establishment guy? Same old, same old.

2. I do not have a problem with Biden self-proclaimed zionizm. To each his/her own. Biden, however is a member of the Appropriation Committee responsible for foreign aid to Israel and other countries. He is responsible for my tax money going to Israel while schools are falling apart in this country.

I tend to agree with all the above comments.
We are about to vote for the best of a whole bunch of rotten.
Our old Washington is not about to let in a non-zionist for a run at the presidency.
I hope no one is under the illusion that this is supposed to be the peoples government. That slipped away from us years ago, when the elected started realizing they could keep the constituents in the dark and feed them Bullsh*t.

Over and over there is the usual unceasing, and unsuccessful, criticizing litany about Zionist Israel.  The video announcer said the Arab world has no illusions, the US won’t make a 180 degree turn.  So the turn of the dialogue is to another useless exercise, to ask what degree is an American Presidential or Vice Presidential candidate pro Israel?  As if a Vice President candidate could be selected by the Arab world!  Carter, who is pro Palestinian, said to Amy Goodman of Democracy Now that Biden was a perfect choice and that he, Carter, has confidence in Obama.  What is the reality?  The United States has a strategic stake in Israel and its zionism doesn’t really matter.  And it doesn’t matter who is elected president that is not a relationship that is going to change until a change between Israel and the Arab world changes.  The reciprocal economic trading between the west and the Arab world is almost nonexistent. The Arabs are as entrenched as are the Israelis and hamstring themselves from advancing in the commercial world.  It is the perfectly planned impasse to keep animosity at the front and peace as an illusion.  I could say sarcastically, so what?  Let the superpowers continue to make all those gains. 

What happens in the United States is almost inessential.  Perhaps the US does help Israel economically and militarily.  It is balanced out by the Russian’s and Chinese’s, and others’ help to the Arab nations.  Again it is a draw and always will be until changes within Israel and the Arab world take place.  I am not taking anybody side.  It is ridiculous for any American to do that.  It is beyond any American’s opinion ,even Jimmy Carter’s, who I think is the bestest.  To think anything else is delusional.  Surprise, and progress, I will add, would be if there were ever any measures toward peace by either side and the other side stepping toward it.  Whine all you want.  Both sides are blind by their own fixed, and false, beliefs.  Sort of in the words of Spike Lee, that’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it (he said story).

It’s really an irony that Joe Biden, who knows that he has only one house, to which and from which he travels by train daily from Washington, (as opposed to McCain who does not remember how many houses he has) has the audacity of declaring himself a Zionist! Just this one thing is sufficient for him to being designated as an enemy by 350 millions in the Arab world. Too much for this supposedly politician wrongly portrayed as having foreign policy experience! All he has is short-sightedness and short-term interest in pandering to the few million Zionists who might vote for his ticket on this account! This is business as usual under Obama-Biden administration and a mockery of the so-called “change” slogan they themselves are the first to betray!

If only there were some element at all among the US power elites who would advocate, not for Israel or Palestine, but just for neutrality. Unfortunately, the perception is universal that anyone who wants to be president has to worship at the altar of complete loyalty to Israel.

Unfortunately, there is not even a debate on this issue in the USA. This unswerving, unquestioning loyalty to Israel and the Likud coalition may end up having us in a war with Iran, Russia, or Syria. Actually, it could start another world war.

The solution? Neutrality and non-interventionism, as patiently explained by Ron Paul. But no one’s listening.

As a long time viewer of Aljazeera and Link T.V.; I think this program speaks very well for itself.  They are both a really great look in the mirror for those of us willing to look.