Beating Of War Drums

by Dr. Paul J Balles

Sunday, December 2nd, 2012

Either war is obsolete or men are. –Buckminster Fuller

Some of the important news gets reported quickly and is then forgotten just as hurriedly. The following, from CBS Chicago, reported on May 10, 2012, provides an example of an under-reported event:

“A handful of soldiers gathered Thursday morning at Vietnam Veterans Memorial Park on the Chicago River, to announce their opposition to NATO, and announce that they’re giving back their service medals on Sunday, at the start of the NATO summit.”

One such veteran, former Army Ranger Graham Clumpner, spoke to CBS of his disenchantment:

“I wanted so badly to believe in the idea of America. I wanted to believe that every war we ever fought, we won; that we were always just; that we were always doing the right thing, and trying to help, and save, and protect,” said Clumpner, who was deployed twice to Afghanistan. “And I bought into it hook, line, and sinker.”

Clumpner came to the realization that haunts many veterans during or after their stints on the battlefields. Jose Narosky tagged the realization made by many, reporting that

“In war, there are no unwounded soldiers.”

Why do our men in uniform start out believing that they’re “always doing the right thing, and trying to help, and save, and protect” and end up feeling deceived and disheartened.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle captured a mantra that once had merit but later became an empty slogan:

We make war that we may live in peace.”

The truth is closer to what Benjamin Franklin believed, that “there never was a good war or a bad peace.”

Our wars are no longer simply body-counts of our warriors killed or injured on the battlefield. We now must deal with what has come to be known as “Post-traumatic stress disorder” (PTSD) and with suicides.

Chaplain Mark Worrell noted that

“This year, 2012, there have been more suicides in the Army than combat deaths,”

Reported Jamie Crawford: “To date, the Army has confirmed 120 suicides for both active and non-active duty soldiers in 2012 with 67 other deaths suspected as suicides, but still under investigation. Twenty-five of those were attributed to soldiers who did not have any previous deployments. The Army reported 242 suicides in 2009, 305 in 2010 and 283 in 2011.”

Comments Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, Vice Chief of Staff of the Army,

“Suicide is the toughest enemy I have faced in my 37 years in the Army”

Adds Chaplin Worrell “The Army has been struggling to deal with the suicide problem since numbers began rising in 2004. This year, the average is nearly one soldier suicide a day.”
Nermeen Shaikh of Democracy Now notes that “The reasons for the increase in suicides are not fully understood. Among explanations, studies have pointed to combat exposure, post-traumatic stress, misuse of prescription medications, and personal financial problems.”

Explains Dr. Alex Liungerman, “People who’ve survived suicide attempts have reported wanting not so much to die as to stop living, a strange dichotomy but a valid one nevertheless… Pain mixed with guilt, anger, and regret makes for a bitter drink.”

Adds Dr. Charles Raison, “When a person is depressed, the entire world is disturbed and distressed, so there is nowhere to escape. And it is this fact that makes suicide so seductive, because it seems to offer the one available escape option.”

Observed Arthur Koestler, “
The most persistent sound which reverberates through men’s history is the beating of war drums.”

The best way to end military suicides is to silence the drums of American military adventurism.

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The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!

An American Spring?

by Dr. Paul J Balles

Sunday, August 5th, 2012

 The coming elections in America have become a contest between candidates who both try to be the leading panderer to Israel.

Watching grown men who aspire to lead America grovel and mollycoddle before Israeli puppet-masters is disturbing.

America is in the hands of a president who can’t decide whether to be imperious or fawning, an administration more devoted to Israel than to America, and a Congress that’s disdainful to most Americans and servile to AIPAC, ADL, AJC ZOA and 153 other American Jewish organizations.

The Republican candidate for the presidency is more deplorable than the legislature and the wretched administration combined.
Mitt Romney could hardly wait until he arrived in Israel before he started pampering Benjamin Netanyahu.

But then he was competing against Obama’s unpardonable generosity a day before when the President signed a bill giving Israel an extra 70 million dollars in military aid.

This, in addition to the 3 billion dollars Israel receives each year, comes out of American taxpayers’ earnings.  Most American taxpayers are unaware that, in per capita terms, the United States gives each Israeli a direct subsidy worth about $500 per year.

This largesse to individual Israelis should provoke deep resentment among thousands of unemployed in America as well as to those who lost homes during the financial crisis.

Israel’s pawns in the US Congress refuse to tax the wealthiest one percent. They refuse relief for home-owners, refuse to fund the hiring of needed teachers, police and firemen, and refuse to allocate funds for infrastructure maintenance of bridges, roads and national forests.

The Israeli shills in Congress don’t think twice about funding the war-mongers who pushed America into a 4-trillion dollar war in Iraq, and are pressuring for an encore in Iran.

If Obama loses the election, he could regret the generosity designed to attract the Jewish vote.
With typical political manoeuvring, Romney had to play one-upmanship to the Associated Press. They report:

“The Republican’s campaign” says Romney “is happy steps being taken to enhance security cooperation with Israel. But the bill “does nothing” to address whether Obama recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.”
Propagandising Americans and flattering Israelis, Romney insisted that “America’s support of Israel should make every American proud.”

In a sickening lie, Romney grunted “No country or organization or individual should ever doubt this basic truth: A free and strong America will always stand with a free and strong Israel.”

Neither America nor Israel is free. America will only be free when it’s rid of the albatross of Israel around its neck; and Israel will never be free as long as it’s an apartheid state stealing land for illegal settlers.
The more he attempted to justify Israel’s false needs, the more Romney revealed either the ignorance a presidential candidate shouldn’t have or himself as a pathological liar.

“With Hezbollah rockets aimed at Israel from the north, and Hamas rockets aimed from the south, with much of the Middle East in tumult, and with Iran bent on nuclear arms, America’s vocal and demonstrated commitment to the defence of Israel is even more critical.”

In a brazen show of how he would lead America into war, Romney insisted “We must lead the effort to prevent Iran from building and possessing nuclear weapons capability.”

No honest reference to Israel’s nuclear capacity, no reference to Israel’s killer instincts in attacks in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, Israel forces an American presidential candidate to join yet another Middle East blood-letting by Israel.

Unless the American President and Congress change course, 2013 may welcome an American spring.

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The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!

Blind to Injustice

by Dr. Paul J Balles

Saturday, June 16th, 2012    

Much of the public seems blind to the truth of major events and issues that have long needed to be addressed openly.

• The injustice of the occupation suffered by the Palestinians
• The doubts about the 9/11 commission findings
• The under-reporting of child sexual abuse
• The cover-up of Israel’s attack on the USS Liberty
• The lies about who holds power in a democracy

Does anyone care? The blind wear blinders.

Palestinians have been subjected to Israeli terrorism and colonial rule for more than six decades.

Israeli historian Ilan Pappe briefly describes what the victims suffer while the rulers rejoice:

Beginning with the ethnic cleansing of 80 percent of Palestine in 1948, and Israel’s occupation of the remaining 20 percent of the land in 1967, Palestinians in Israel are now enclaved in mega-prisons, bantustans, and besieged cantons, and singled out through discriminatory policies.”

Pappe reminds us that the peace process “has only increased the number of Israeli settlements in Palestine, from less than 10 percent of Palestine in 1936 to over 90 per cent of the country today.”

Does anyone care? The blind wear blinders.

Almost 11 years ago, the events now referred to as 9/11 shook America and most of the rest of the world. On November 27, 2002 the 9/11 Commission was set up.
When the commission’s report was released in 2004 Richard Posner of the New York Times observed that “the commission’s analysis and recommendations are unimpressive.” Part of the delay was due to the administration’s hold on documents.

Since that time, organizations like 9/11 Truth.Org have amassed an incredible collection of evidence challenging both the media and the commission’s reports.

Dozens of books, cover everything from tales of brave “first responder” to conspiracy theories and many unanswered questions like those posed by David Ray Griffin in The New Pearl Harbor.

None of the doubt and challenging questions posed by the books and alternative media has awakened the public enough to demand answers from the mainstream media. Meanwhile the media engages in repetitious trifling about presidential political candidates

Does anyone care? The blind wear blinders.

Sexual abuse of children has long been either unreported or under-reported. In a current trial in America, 15 years of child abuse went unreported until 2011.
A case now in America involves a former Penn State coaching assistant who faces charges that he sexually abused 10 boys over a 15-year period.
A number of people who worked with the coach revealed that they knew of instances of reported abuse. It took 15 years for the truth to see some daylight?

Does anyone care? The blind wear blinders.

One of the most duplicitous acts is the pretence of patriotism when a country celebrates its servicemen while sacrificing them for political gain.

On Memorial Day, America pays tribute to those who serve in the military and honours those who lost their lives in combat.

In a criminal attack 45 years ago, Israeli planes and torpedoes attempted to destroy the USS Liberty murdering 34 of the sailors. Those serving on the ship attempted to get help but were denied it by President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara.

It was “one of the classic all-American cover-ups,” said retired former Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Thomas Moorer.

Despite regular efforts to expose the truth on the internet, the mainstream media and the US government continue to refuse to expose the culprits.

Does anyone care? The blind wear blinders.

One of the most disingenuous positions of most Westerners holds that the only legitimate form of government is democracy.

Chris Hayes, an MSNBC anchor, regularly spouts the line that democracy “forces those in power to listen to those without power”
That statement is unadulterated rubbish. If there was any truth to the comment, it would apply equally to absolute monarchs who habitually listen to their subjects.

Hayes’s statement, however, is simply untrue as applied to democracy. In America, power rests in the hands of powerful corporations and lobbies who completely ignore those outside of their privileged circles.

Does anyone care? The blind wear blinders.

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The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!

Mindless Masses

by Dr. Paul J Balles
Saturday, May 19th, 2012

Living in America is becoming very difficult for anyone with a moral conscience, a sense of justice, or a lick of intelligence. –Paul Craig Roberts
“People without valid information are helpless, and that is where Western peoples are,” writes Paul Craig Roberts.
“The new tyranny is arising in the West, not in Russia and China. The danger to humanity is in the nuclear button briefcase in the Oval Office and in the brainwashed and militant Amerikan (sic) population, the most totally disinformed and ignorant people on earth.”

It’s well-worth following what Roberts has to say. He’s one of the most informed thinkers and writers in America.

Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He authored eight books and was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. His numerous academic appointments testify to his scholarship.

His experience and breadth of research provide the broad perspectives found in his articles. Roberts is a no-holds-barred writer.

He’s not a partisan writer. “If I had time to research my writings over the past 30 years, I could find examples of partisan articles in behalf of Republicans and against Democrats. However, political partisanship is not the corpus of my writings.”

Roberts has been a severe critic of the media, though he has contributed to the mainstream media like the Wall Street Journal.

He says, “Anyone who depends on print, TV, or right-wing talk radio media is totally misinformed. The Bush administration has achieved a de facto Ministry of Propaganda.”

Commenting on “Americans who rely on the totally corrupt corporate media have no idea what is happening anywhere on earth, much less at home.”

Focusing on Israel, Roberts ridicules the myth that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.

“In truth, Israel is a fascist state, one that has been in violation of international law and Christian morality during the entirety of its existence. Yet, in America Israel is a hallowed icon,” he observes.

”Like Bush, Cheney, and Obama, millions of American ‘Christians’ worship Israel and believe it is ‘God’s calling’ for Americans to die for Israel,” Roberts adds.

“Washington cannot exist without conflict. Now that the ‘Muslim threat’ is wearing thin, Washington is stirring up a conflict with China,” argues Roberts.

“China will be presented by Washington and its prostitute media, especially the New York Times, Washington Post, and Murdoch’s collection of whores, as the rising threat to America,” Roberts predicts.

“The US government relies on secret evidence in its cases against alleged terrorists, claiming that national security would be threatened if the evidence were revealed. This is abject nonsense,” concludes Roberts.

“To the contrary, not presenting evidence jeopardizes the security of each and every one of us. Once the government can convict defendants on the basis of secret evidence, even the concept of a fair trial will disappear.”

Roberts challenges mainstream dogma about 9/11:

Having bought the government’s 9/11 conspiracy theory, Americans just want someone to pay. They don’t care who as long as someone pays.

“No more humiliating affront has ever been suffered by a major power than the US suffered on 9/11,” Roberts recalls.

”Yet, absolutely no one, not even some lowly traffic controller, was scapegoated and held accountable for what is considered to be the most extraordinarily successful terrorist attack in human history, an attack so successful that it implies total negligence…”

Occasionally intelligent, well-founded but unpopular views can be found on the internet. Those who have missed Paul Craig Roberts should enjoy the benefit of an awakening, rising above the mindless masses through his wisdom.

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The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!

Politics and the challenge of perception

By Paul Balles

Monday, December 26, 2011 at 1:50PM Gilad Atzmon

A FEW years ago, I was fascinated by this very short story.

One day a man opened the garage door, which startled a large butterfly.

It flew immediately to its perceived escape, the circle-topped window, where it frantically tried to exit through the invisible wall of closed glass.

The man raised the third car garage door in hopes of aiding its escape.

This caused the butterfly to fly higher and higher and become entangled in a spider's web.

Fearful that it would remain entangled in the web, the man selected a long-handled broom to assist him in escaping the tangled threads.

At this, the butterfly returned to furiously pumping his wings and banging into the glass, which was - in his perspective - the pathway of escape.

But he remained in his cage.

That story had me thinking about how much the butterfly's behaviour was a paradigm for human behaviour.

Not only butterflies have the problem of seeing new solutions. It's a challenge that applies to all creatures, large and small, including humans.

We only see what we want to see and we want to see what we already know.

Realisations like these have fed the spread of the clichŽ "thinking outside of the box".

This highlights the fact that it's nearly impossible to change others' perceptions of anything - of you or your favourite food, political candidate, TV programme or other pastime - without a complete change in the way they think.

Aldous Huxley, author of The Doors of Perception, wrote: "There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception."

The significance of the story and Huxley's comment is illustrated by another Huxley note: "To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries."

For instance, the ideas you have about the Israeli-Palestinian problem are incomprehensible to writers and commentators who have never visited Israel and Palestine.

Even those who have visited Israel with guides will have their perceptions pre-ordained to fit those of the guides.

This explains why American Congress members who have been on sponsored trips to Israel, but not to Palestine, have opened the doors of perception to only Israel.
"There are quiet places also in the mind. But we build bandstands and factories on them. Deliberately - to put a stop to the quietness," wrote Huxley.

In short, we resist opportunities to see things differently, to expand our visions beyond the familiar.

It is impossible for arch-Zionists like Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz to see that Gilad Atzmon in The Wandering Who? is prying open visions of Jewish identities of which Dershowitz can't conceive.

What makes Atzmon's awakening so difficult for some to understand is that it takes you outside the ordinary open doors of perception.

In America, President Obama's major problem is also one of perception. He needs to recall the public's perception of him when they elected him. Instead, he has been trying to change others' perception of him by being the negotiator with people who refuse to negotiate.
Obama was elected by voters who have no power other than the power to vote. He has been trying to please those in power only to be perceived as a weakling by both those in power and the voters.

William Blake wrote: "If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern."

We need to learn to see what others see, know what others know and feel what others feel.

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The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!

An America that's never wrong...

By Paul Balles, 
Posted on » Saturday, December 03, 2011


  "Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world." - Arthur Schopenhauer

Americans won't like this, but practically everyone else will: Americans simply can never admit they were wrong.

Ill-begotten wars from Vietnam to Afghanistan have accomplished nothing but increasing enemies towards American arrogance.
Nothing could have been more misguided than the Iraq war, based on a mythical collection of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs).
The lie, the war and the occupation cost the lives of 4,801 Americans plus 179 British lives and the deaths of 1,455,590 Iraqis. The WMDs never existed.

Instead of an admission that the Iraq debacle was wrong, the fraudsters made lame excuses in attempts to exonerate themselves.
"There is nothing less to our credit than our neglect of the foreigner and his children, unless it be the arrogance most of us betray when we set out to 'Americanise' him," wrote American sociologist Charles Horton Cooley.

On November 28, a Nato air attack killed at least two dozen Pakistani soldiers.
Instead of admitting that they were wrong, the US military suggested the Pakistanis shot first.
Referring to the incident, Fred Branfman warned: "Short-sighted US policy is creating a national security disaster in Pakistan."

Instead of apologising and admitting to a mistake, Branfman said the US was digging itself into a hole.
"The US policy of trying to win in tiny Afghanistan by extending its war-making into giant, nuclear-armed Pakistan including drone strikes, cross-border raids, illegal US ground assassination... threatens the greatest US foreign policy disaster...."

American arrogance has clearly found several avenues for acrimony.

More than 1,000 American military bases around the world have often been an unwelcome embodiment of American military power.

Next, not only do Americans display a belief in their superiority over other countries, their leaders' actions reveal an arrogant pre-eminence over the masses of the American public.

In an earlier article, "Ruled by Arrogance", I commented on an American tendency to discredit others' opinions with forcefulness aimed at dominating those considered weaker or less important.
Texas governor and Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry faulted a mixture of arrogance and audacity in the Obama administration.

"This administration in Washington...clearly believes that government is not only the answer to every need but it's the most qualified to make essential decisions for every American in every area," he said.
"That mix of arrogance and audacity that guides the Obama administration is an affront to every freedom-loving American."

Paradoxically, another American presidential candidate Rick Santorum criticised President Obama for looking apologetic rather than arrogant.

"Watching President Obama apologise last week for America's arrogance before a French audience that owes its freedom to the sacrifices of Americans helped convince me that he has a deep-seated antipathy towards American values and traditions," he said.

Earlier, in April 2009, a number of Republicans castigated President Obama for bowing before Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah.

Though the White House denied it, video of the meeting provided enough fodder for Obama's critics.
America has a history of arrogance reflected in racial and gender supremacy. The Ku Klux Klan provides an example of a superior white attitude reflected in American slavery.

In a country full of misogyny, it's ironic that Americans now belittle countries whose men treat women as lesser creatures.

If it's difficult to convince most Americans that they are guided by undeserved arrogance, those who know it seem undisturbed by it.

As I mentioned in an earlier article, look closely enough and you'll find groups in any country who believe they are superior to all others.

The problems come when the "others" resist being disadvantaged.


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Paul Balles: The Bouncer

Tuesday, November 15, 2011 at 9:49PM Gilad Atzmon

http://www.veteranstoday.com

Here’s a story to think about:
A bouncer at a night club doesn’t like the looks of one of the customers. What makes matter worse is that the customer is loud-mouthed and vilifying night club bouncers, saying that they are the ones who should be kicked out of the club.
The bouncer takes a night stick that he has for just such an occasion, walks over to the table where the noisy customer is ranting and raving.

Then, without further warning, the bouncer bashes the noisy customer’s head with the night stick. The customer falls to the floor, dead.

People who see what had happened ask the bouncer why he beat the customer to death.
“Shut up,” shouts the bouncer, “He was armed, and I had to stop him before he destroyed us.”
“Why didn’t you stop him at the door if you thought he was a danger?” asks one of the club’s patrons?
“I did,” argues the bouncer. “When I accused him of having a weapon, he denied it.”
The patron is flummoxed. “Why didn’t you search him?”

The bouncer, becoming impatient with the sceptical crowd, proclaims, “I told him to prove he didn’t have a weapon.”

“Eh?” questions another patron, “You asked him to prove that he didn’t have what he didn’t have?”
The bouncer insists, “That’s right, it’s called ‘pre-emptive’ challenges, leading to pre-emptive strikes, leading to pre-emptive elimination of pre-emptive dangers.”

Another patron chimes in, “Now that you’ve eliminated the pre-emptive danger, where’s the weapon that led to your pre-emptive strike?”

Becoming even more upset with the challenging questions of the patrons, the bouncer declares, “It doesn’t matter. He has a bad reputation for using weapons, and he could do it again in the future.”
Tell us who’s the bouncer with the clever justification for pre-emptive action by insisting that one must prove that he doesn’t have what he doesn’t have?

My friend, there are many bouncers. One of them, Condoleezza Rice appeared on Jon Stewart’s show a week or so ago and tried to convince an audience of dunces that the bouncer rationale was justification for the war on Iraq.

Hers was an echo of many cunning leaders who have used the same bouncer self-justification for the most heinous crimes. The list includes insidious leaders like George W Bush, Tony Blair, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

Feeding these treacherous leaders have been duplicitous Israeli firsters pretending to be American patriots, including figures like Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith.
Iraq wasn’t enough for the pre-emptive strikers. The next target using the same disingenuous arguments is Iran.

America knows that Iran does not have nuclear weapons; but the bouncers want to destroy all of Iran’s nuclear facilities so that no weapons will ever be made.

America has already made the bouncer’s demand, saying to Saddam Hussein: prove that you don’t have what you say you don’t have–an impossible demand, used only to provide an excuse for bouncers.
According to Mark Amstutz, “Pre-emptive attack is morally justified when three conditions are fulfilled: The existence of an intention to injure, the undertaking of military preparations that increase the level of danger, and the need to act immediately because of a higher degree of risk.”

The advocates of pre-emptive attack are attempting to meet those conditions with the flimsiest evidence and erroneous assumptions. Though Iran hasn’t attacked anyone for more than a hundred years, their detractors argue that Iran wants Israel driven into the sea.

If that’s not enough, stories have been fabricated about Iran’s purchase of material that can only have military use, attempting to give the lie to Iran’s stated objectives for nuclear energy.

Iran’s “undertaking of military preparations” has been no greater than those of any other developing military, and much less than any nuclear power. To assert that test firing a few rockets amounts to unacceptable military preparation completely ignores the vast superiority of Israel’s military might, including 200 to 400 nuclear bombs.

“The need to act immediately because of a higher degree of risk,” is a spurious argument that applies to all countries, Record pre-emptive strikes (in Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq and Syria), as well as colonial occupation and destruction of Palestine, makes Israel the consummate high degree of risk.
Meanwhile, Benjamin Netanyahu tries to rally cabinet support for an attack on Iran. Israel’s defence minister Ehud Barak and foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman are among those backing a pre-emptive strike to neutralize what the Israeli hawks dub Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Of course Lieberman would encourage a pre-emptive strike. His preparation for the foreign minister’s role? He was formerly a night club bouncer!

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Israeli thugs – organized criminals

July 17, 2011 by occupiedpalestine

By Paul J. Balles

A thug enters your home, decides to stay, makes you his servants and locks you up in the worst conditions.
When the neighbours complain about what’s going on in your home, the thug tells everyone that you are terrorists who want to destroy him and his family.
When the thug is told that he must treat you as equals in the house he has taken from you, he refuses, complaining that would leave him indefensible.

From VT

That’s Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister. He’s the latest in a long line of thugs who have burgled as many homes as arms from America could aid.
Krav Maga Instructor Nima Sirazi comments cogently on the double-talk used by burglars like Netanyahu to con the public:
“The oppressed becomes the oppressor, the culprit becomes the victim, occupation is security, illegal colonization is cultural liberation, aggressive expansion is righteous reclamation, genocide is self-defence, apartheid is justice, resistance is terrorism, and ethnic cleansing is peace.”
Netanyahu is not alone of course. An even worse thug is the ex-nightclub bouncer Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s foreign minister.

This larger-than-life burglar stole one of the settlement properties for himself, kicked out the Palestinian home owners, moved in, took over and insisted that the occupation was necessary as a defensible border for Israel.

Writing in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Gideon Levy reveals how Ilan Baruch, a veteran Israeli diplomat, acknowledged his inability to represent or explain Israeli policies. Last week he handed in his resignation letter.

Says Levy: “Our diplomatic corps today is comprised primarily of spineless propagandists void of values or a conscience.”

Levy points realistically to how Israel’s diplomats know what the world thinks of their country’s machinations, their thievery and attempts to cover it all up.

“They know that under Lieberman’s watch the Foreign Ministry has become a vessel of rage toward the entire world,” observes Levy. “They know that no ambassador is sufficiently adroit to explain the brutality of Operation Cast Lead, or the pointless killing on the Mavi Marmara ship.”
Israel’s diplomats “know that no country on the planet actually accepts the occupation, the settlements or the indications of Israeli apartheid,” adds Levy.

Despite what Israel’s diplomats know, they remain silent. After all, the leading thugs and robbers are their bosses.
If these thugs were Italian, they’d be called Mafioso, arrested and jailed for being guilty of organized crime.

But such a comparison with common thieves who steal others’ property is not possible for thugs who have protection.
The equivalent of organized crime judges being bought off can be seen in America simply by looking at the US congress who, like the family of a Mafia don, treat Netanyahu like the head of the Cosa Nostra.
How long can Israel’s thugs keep getting away with the travesty of justice that’s no better than organized crime in America?

“Although Jews constitute only two per cent of the American population, they have a disproportionate political impact: Pro-Israel interests have contributed 56.8 million dollars in individual, group and soft money donations to federal candidates and party committees since 1990,” reports activist-writer Bob Burnett.

Organizations like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the American Jewish Committee (AJC) do more damage to Jews than any organized Jew-hating group. They stimulate what they call anti-Semitism, meaning anti-Jew.
Notes writer Rand Clifford: “Americans have been so meticulously trained to ignore evidence in favour of what they want to believe, in conjunction with what they are wanted to believe, that too many have been rendered unable to objectively weigh evidence.”
They hold the position that nothing Israel does can be wrong, and everything their organizations do must be accepted – an extremely dangerous position to hold.

* Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. He’s a weekly Op-Ed columnist for the Gulf Daily News. Dr. Balles is also Editorial Consultant for Red House Marketing and a regular contributor to Bahrain This Month.

Last 5 posts by Paul J. Balles

• US Independence Day reflections – July 10th, 2011
• Islamophobia on the rise in USA – July 4th, 2011
• Changing cultures – June 20th, 2011
• Shifting focus – April 10th, 2011
• Israel, right or wrong – March 27th, 2011

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Islamophobia on the rise in USA

Long overdue has been the more honest label “Islamophobia” for those who wrongly vilify Islam and Muslims.

by Paul J Balles

Islamophobia is growing and spreading prejudice against Muslims in the US, a fact that is underlined by a recent report by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which has collected and relayed the facts and identified both vilifiers and supporters of Islam and Muslims.
In an earlier article I noted that evangelic preacher Pat Robertson, David Gaubatz, Paul Sperry and Daniel Pipes are Islamophobic cult leaders who take every opportunity they can to vilify Islam and Muslims.

They were all particularly vindictive following the shooting at Fort Hood by the psychopath Nidal Malik Hassan who also happened to be Muslim.

The fact that he was Muslim had nothing to do with his maniacal action. It was no more related to the teachings of Islam than the paedophilia of a few priests is connected with Catholicism or the acts committed by Rabbi Meir Kahane of the Anti-Defamation League were related to Judaism.

Reports of a number of incidents in the past year or so strongly reveal a spike in anti-Muslim hate crimes.

In May 2010, for instance, a bomb exploded at an Islamic centre in Jacksonville, Florida. In August, a man slashed the neck and face of a New York taxi driver after finding out he was Muslim.

Four days later, someone set fire to construction equipment at the future site of an Islamic centre in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. This March, a radical Christian pastor burned a Quran in Gainesville, Florida, leading to deadly riots in Afghanistan that left at least 20 people dead.

A few days ago, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) published a benchmark report on Islamophobia in America.

Islamophobia is close-minded prejudice against or hatred of Islam and Muslims. An Islamophobe is an individual who holds a closed-minded view of Islam and promotes prejudice against or hatred of Muslims.

CAIR identifies a number of individuals and groups who have rallied against Islamophobia as well as a number who can be identified as Islamophobes.

Those who CAIR says

deserve recognition for their outstanding contributions to pushing back against Islamophobic trends during the period include: New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg; Loonwatch.com; Congressional Tri-Caucus; Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN); Jon Stewart, Aasif Mandvi and “The Daily Show”; Keith Olbermann and Countdown; Stephen Colbert and “The Colbert Report”; Media Matters for America; interfaith leaders; and Rachel Maddow and “The Rachel Maddow Show.”

Many are available on TV in Bahrain.

Some individuals, institutions and groups were at the centre of pushing Islamophobia in America during the period covered by the report:

Pamela Geller and Stop the Islamization of America; Robert Spencer and Jihad Watch; Brigitte Gabriel and Act! for America; Frank Gaffney and the Centre for Security Policy; Steven Emerson and the Investigative Project on Terrorism; Newt Gingrich; the four members of Congress who called for an investigation of Muslim Capitol Hill interns; Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaeda and other violent extremists; and Daniel Pipes.

According to those interviewed for the CAIR report, on a scale from 1 (best situation for Muslims) to 10 (worst possible situation for Muslims) Islamophobia in America stands at 6.4. Interviews were conducted in September and October of 2010.

The public’s favourable rating of Islam sank from 40 per cent in November 2001 to 30 per cent in August 2010, according to the Pew Research Centre. In late November 2010, the Public Research Institute found that 45 per cent of Americans agree that Islam is at odds with American values.
“Sources of Islamophobia are those individuals and institutions that produce and package materials, ideas or rhetoric about Islam in order to promote a skewed view of the faith and to induce fear, hate or prejudice in those who receive the materials,” says CAIR.

Islamophobic behaviour is being repeated in Europe and elsewhere. The much-needed CAIR report details its nature. The report can be accessed and downloaded from the internet.

CAIR’s work on Islamophobia has been a long time coming; too long, as the disease grows and spreads. Zionists scream “anti-Semitism” to silence critics of Israel. Long overdue has been the more honest label “Islamophobia” for those who wrongly vilify Islam and Muslims.

Related Posts:

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• THE MUSLIMS ARE COMING
• Ground Zero Mosque Not at Ground Zero and Not a Mosque
• Israel and the authoritarian side of the Bible

Short URL: http://www.veteranstoday.com/?p=119230

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Media Falsifiers

- 12. Jun, 2011

ED Note: Almost a decade ago I wrote an article titled Are we being spun? Nothing seems to have changed, in fact it seems to have gotten worse. I love it whenever I come across a piece of writing or speech that says something that encapsulates or perfectly nails a lie that is being committed and lays it out for all to see. “Witnessing the Truth.” It’s the only way to fight the ugliness that is put forth every day by the people that have bent the reality to their own uses.


Paul Balles observes we still have a long way to go before the lie is laid out for all to see, and for the media to stop the spin. The media lie of the moment reverberates through liberal TV channels pretending to report the news from all angles and from all points of view.


***

 Media falsifiers

by Paul Balles / My Catbird Seat

 I am not blaming those who are resolved to rule, only those who show an even greater readiness to submit. — Thucydides

Day after day, TV anchor after anchor has been boasting “News from all angles, from all points of view.”

There’s never been such an open campaign to convince television viewers they aren’t being brainwashed by the media’s restricted point of view.

In what appears to be an attempt to outfox the Fox News Network, which has never admitted the truth about their own political bias, the more liberal networks of NBC, MSNBC, CBS, ABC and CNN now propagandize their viewers with outright lies.

Dozens of liberal commentators, from MSNBC’s Chris Matthews to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, have been making a mantra out of “News from all angles, from all points of view.”

When a media spokesperson makes a claim like that, he or she should make sure of its truth or refuse to repeat the falsehood.

Those who have been misinforming their audiences are intelligent enough to know that they are deceiving their viewers. Is it possible, for example, that any news reporter would not know of the media’s anti-Islamic brainwashing?

How can they continue to report on events like the Quran burning or the objections to the planned Islamic centre in New York without exposing the Islamaphobia? Where has the Muslim angle or point of view in the news been?

The internet is full of examples of under-reported news. One source of such stories is Project Censored who lists the Top Censored Stories of 2011:

1. Global Plans to Replace the Dollar
2. US Department of Defense is the Worst Polluter on the Planet
3. Internet Privacy and Personal Access at Risk
4. ICE Operates Secret Detention and Courts
5. Blackwater (Xe): The Secret US War in Pakistan
6. Health Care Restrictions Cost Thousands of Lives in US
7. External Capitalist Forces Wreak Havoc in Africa
8. Massacre in Peruvian Amazon over US Free Trade Agreement
9. Human Rights Abuses Continue in Palestine
10. US Funds and Supports the Taliban

Harvard Professor Stephen Walt reports that as early as 2005, 78 percent of the news media, 72 percent of military leaders and 69 percent of foreign affairs specialists believed that backing Israel seriously damages America’s image around the world.

That factual revelation isn’t something you hear on TV. If 78 percent of the news media hold that belief, they are not reporting it.

Ex-Israeli author and jazz musician Gilad Atzmon writes regular internet columns on the Middle East. He has zero respect for the mainstream media, commenting:

Our independent websites and blogs are far more informative than the mainstream media. Collectively, we provide a source of information that people can trust, and we are rapidly becoming the main source of information.

Facebook, Twitter, online blogs and websites with alternative news and commentary are slowly making mainstream media obsolete.

Major stories have been censored by the mainstream media. Often the censorship raises questions about why an important story has been censored.
The media has kept the fact that Obama has cut domestic spending w
hile increasing military spending under wraps. Much military spending is unjustifiable and wasted.

Apart from any conspiracy theories about 9/11, serious questions about discrepancies in the official reports have been totally ignored by leading commentators.

Also censored by the networks are health risks in personal products like cosmetics and suntan lotion with nanotech particles.

Not satisfied with manufacturing cover-ups, the networks have now resorted to brainwashing viewers with lies about reporting the news from all angles and all points of view.

Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. He’s a weekly Op-Ed columnist for the GULF DAILY NEWS . Dr. Balles is also Editorial Consultant for Red House Marketing and a regular contributor to Bahrain This Month.

Read more

• PAUL BALLES : Double entendre

• PAUL BALLES : Village idiots

• PAUL BALLES : THE SILENCERS

• PAUL BALLES : Media moves the masses

• PAUL BALLES : Psychological warfare

• PAUL BALLES : GRAINS OF SAND, PART II

• PAUL BALLES : GRAINS OF SAND, PART I

• Debbie Menon : Are we being spun?

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PAUL BALLES: Dissent and Compromise

28. May, 2011

by Paul Balles

President Barak Obama is the great compromiser. For Obama, barter is so essential that he’s willing to sacrifice his integrity for compromise.
Obama is guided by beliefs like those of Israeli professor/writer Amos Oz:
“If we don’t stop somewhere, if we don’t accept an unhappy compromise, unhappy for both sides, if we don’t learn how to unhappily coexist and contain our burned sense of injustice – if we don’t learn how to do that, we end up in a doomed state.”

Obama’s biggest critics among once heads of state would be Margaret Thatcher who said, “If you set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.”

There’s no such thing as compromise for Benyamin Netanyahu. For Netanyahu absolute security is non-negotiable. Compromise means that you don’t get everything you want; and that principle is total anathema to Netanyahu.

Obama wants desperately to be liked. He wants the Palestinians, the Arabs generally, Europeans, Latin Americans, Asians and Africans to like him.

Despite the impossible conflict, Obama wants Israelis and American Zionists to like him.

Being liked doesn’t concern or move Netanyahu. Israel’s expansion and continued occupation of Palestine do.

Netanyahu can say to the great compromiser’s face that there will be no yielding of settlements or occupation or borders or return of refugees or Palestinian statehood.

For Obama, British statesman/philosopher Edmund Burke was right when he said, “All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.”

In his relationships with congress and with foreign countries, Obama models his behaviour on Governor Donald L. Carcieri’s belief that “Healthy disagreement, debate, leading to compromise has always been the American way.”

Author Robert Fritz had the prescription Netanyahu abides by: “If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise.”

What makes Netanyahu’s position untenable? What Israelis say and what they want are totally different things. The Israelis say they want “peace” and “defensible borders”. What they truly want is permanent occupation and total exodus of the Palestinians.

Netanyahu says no to Israel’s full withdrawal to the 1967 borders; no to the division of Jerusalem; no to the right of return for Palestinian refugees; and no to a Palestinian military presence in the new state.

That list of negatives makes a two-state solution impossible. Yet, Obama calls for a two-state solution to appease others.

Netanyahu looked Obama in the eyes; and referring to his Middle East speech told him, “A peace based on illusions will crash upon the rocks of Middle Eastern reality.”

Netanyahu on Palestinian’s right to return declared “It’s not going to happen. Everybody knows it’s not going to happen, and I think it’s time to tell the Palestinians forthrightly it’s not going to happen.”
It was clear that Netanyahu was slapping Obama in the face for the whole world to see.

For years, the West has been making furtive references to the 1967 borders as the basis for Israel-Palestinian negotiation.

The Palestinians may have bought it. Israel has never had any such intention. For them, the land grab translates into permanent annexation.

According to Netanyahu, Israel simply followed in the footsteps of America’s annexation of Texas in 1845. Says Netanyahu, “If America got away with it, I can see no reason why we cannot.”
Another slap in the compromiser’s face by the dissenter. Obama could learn from Margaret Thatcher that, at times, compromise achieves nothing.

____________________

Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. He’s a weekly Op-Ed columnist for the Gulf Daily News. Dr. Balles is also Editorial Consultant for Red House Marketing and a regular contributor to Bahrain This Month.

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PAUL BALLES: Nakba, the Palestinian Catastrophe

Posted on May 24, 2011 10:09 pm by Elias

by Paul Balles

One of my first students when I came to the Middle East was a young Palestinian boy. He had earned a scholarship to attend the university.
Remarkably, this young man had grown up in a refugee camp. His mother and father plus 11 brothers and sisters all lived in a tent. They had been victims of the Nakba (or “the catastrophe” in English).
Despite the difficulties this family encountered, my young student managed to study, earn good grades and win a scholarship to attend university.
Now, 63 years since the Palestinian catastrophe, there are more than seven million refugees whose forbearers were driven out of their homes and villages by terrorist gangs like the Haganah, the Irgun Zvai Leumi and the Stern Gang.
Are seven million Palestinians barely surviving in refugee camps any better off than six million Jews in German concentration camps?
The terrorist gangs, later called Israelis, destroyed and depopulated 418 Palestinian villages to be stolen and occupied by Jewish settlers.
Palestinians still living and working in Palestine and referred to as Israeli Arabs experience their own frustrations and hardships by submitting to the apartheid state of Israel.

Writer/musician/ex-Israeli Gilad Atzmon discovered a moving poem, by an unknown author, that beautifully expresses the frustration and despair felt by Palestinians under the occupation. Here it is:

Can anyone hear me?
I’m sick of The Wall
I’m sick of the checkpoints between Palestinian cities
I’m sick of illegal Israeli settlers and settlements
I’m sick of having the Hebrew language on my ID card
I’m sick of people not knowing anything about our history but knowing so much about Jewish history
I’m sick of people ignoring the Palestinian Right of Return and accepting the Jewish Law of Return
Can anyone hear me?
I’m sick of the Oslo Agreement which no one here wanted in the first place
I’m sick of the Palestinian Authority having zero authority
I’m sick of watching my father being humiliated at checkpoints by people my age and younger
I’m sick of my international friends having to lie about coming to visit; being interrogated, strip searched and sometimes deported in the process
I’m sick of people not understanding what “Occupation” is
Can anyone hear me?
I’m sick of being scared all the time
I’m sick of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder being a normal state of being here in Palestine
I’m sick of how ineffective the UN has become
I’m sick of International Humanitarian Law not applying to the State of Israel
I’m sick of how fighting for basic human rights for Palestinians or being critical of Israeli policy is so often labelled “anti-Semitic”
Can anyone hear me?
I’m sick of the fact that everybody forgets I’m a Semite
I’m sick of hearing Israelis complain about discrimination when the State of Israel was founded on a principle of ethnic purity
I’m sick of living in a time when racial profiling has become acceptable
I’m sick of constantly being treated as a suspect
I’m sick of how mainstream media portrays us and our situation
Can anyone hear me?
I’m sick of the whole world caring about Gilad Shalit when there are more than 7000 Palestinians inside Israeli prisons
I’m sick of trying to defend myself, friends or countrymen and being labelled a terrorist
I’m sick of the fact that everywhere I go I can see The Wall, a settlement or Israeli soldier
Can anyone hear me?
I’m sick of 63 yrs of Israeli Occupation!
Whether in refugee camps, living in the West Bank or as Israeli Arabs, Palestinians have all suffered 63 years of being sick of Israeli occupation.

_________________________

Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. He’s a weekly Op-Ed columnist for the Gulf Daily News. Dr. Balles is also Editorial Consultant for Red House Marketing and a regular contributor to Bahrain This Month.

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PAUL BALLES: TRANSFORMED BY TRUTH

Via MCS

- 19. Apr, 2011

Those who read ‘Breakthrough: Transforming Fear into Compassion,’ by Rich Forer may discover that integrity is an antidote for fear of the truth.

Paul Balles / My Catbird Seat

RICH FORER VISITS THE WEST BANK SEPERATION WALL

Richard Forer joined AIPAC for the same reason that most Jews joined this Israel lobby.  He refers to what he calls “the primal fear of many Jews around the world–the fear of another holocaust.”

He felt strong support for Israel at the time of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and the capture of Israeli Gilad Shalit.  However some of his friends disagreed.

Retelling a story of his discussion with a friend, Forer raises every single argument and justification ever offered for the occupation of Palestine.

As a result, Forer decided to study the history, “something I’d never really done. What I found astounded me and blew all of my beliefs apart.”

He found out that everything he, as a Jewish American, had grown up believing was false.

He discovered that the propaganda about Israel wanting peace was not true. What Israel really wanted was more land. “That’s always been their primary objective; peace is secondary to that.”

He learned that Israel’s pre-emptive attacks on Egypt, Syria and Jordan in 1967 were based on a falsehood that they would have attacked Israel.

Forer discovered that stories put out by Bill Clinton and Dennis Ross after the 2000 Camp David summit were also lies about how Yasser Arafat “would not go along with a very fair and generous offer made by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.”

The entire history of Israel and the Palestinians put out by Israel is deceitful according to Forer.

Growing up, “I identified more as a Jew than as an American…I felt that Israel was the one place where Jews could go if ever they were persecuted again.”

In his book, Breakthrough: Transforming Fear into Compassion, Forer tells of how he changed his thinking about Israel as a benign and democratic state to a tribe of people dominated by fear.

“If Jews looked at the history and not at the fictions, their fear would crumble,” says Forer.

“They would realize that the Palestinians were not only human but that the Jews have dehumanized the Palestinians through their indoctrination.”

Forer’s transformation took place at the time of the second Lebanese war. The typical response to his transformation was to call him a self-hating Jew.
Forer makes the important point, after his visit to the West Bank, that the Palestinians and Arabs are not angry at Jews but at the Zionist ideology and the government of Israel that oppresses them.

“Every single person I met (in the West Bank) said it’s not about Jews or Muslims, it’s about human beings, it’s a human rights issue.”

Interestingly, Forer notes that the government of Israel does not represent the Jewish people. “That’s just an excuse they make.

Most of the Jewish people in Israel are apathetic.  They don’t know what’s going on.”

They don’t even know that the Separation Wall is built mostly in Palestinian territory.

“They just live in denial. If the Israelis were honest, they’d say if the Palestinians would just lie down and do what we tell them to do, then we’ll have peace and maybe we’ll give them 8 to 10 percent of Palestine.”

In his book, Forer debunks all of the arguments that people make to defend Israel against criticism.

He talks about Hebron, the only Palestinian community with a Jewish presence.  He writes about the Separation Wall and about settlements and the seizure of land by Israelis.

Virtually any argument that he heard before his transformation Forer goes into and shows what the truth really is.

A Jew, brought up on Israeli propaganda, had his early beliefs challenged by friends.  His honest study of the facts resulted in a monumental transformation.

His courageous decision to share that experience led to the publication of his book Breakthrough: Transforming Fear into Compassion.

The blind will continue to label Forer a self-hating Jew.  This will come from apathetic Israelis and Zionists who have fed on fear and falsehood.

Those who read his book may discover that integrity is an antidote for fear of the truth.

Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. He’s a weekly Op-Ed columnist for the GULF DAILY NEWS . Dr. Balles is also Editorial Consultant for Red House Marketing and a regular contributor to Bahrain This Month.

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