Taking flack for telling the Truth
Kerry Must not Resign over Israel Comment
Senator Ted Cruz, a far rightwing Republican charlatan from Texas, has called upon Secretary of State John Kerry to resign because of some remarks he made at the recent Trilateral Conference about the future of Arab/Jewish relations in Palestine/Israel. Speaking of the consequences that would result from the failure of the present talks between Israel and the Palestinians fail Secretary Kerry said that Israel would become an “Apartheid state.”
Senator Cruz says this remark shows that the Secretary of State is unfit to conduct American foreign policy, and Senator Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat who rarely agrees with the Texas Republican Cruz on anything has quickly joined him in criticizing Secretary Kerry, expressing horror that Israel, “the only democracy in the Middle East,” should be associated with a massive crime against humanity like South African Apartheid. Politics does indeed make strange bedfellows.
Cruz is an opportunistic charlatan whose political success is based on playing to the most extreme rightwing elements of the Republican base – including the “Christian Zionist” among the evangelicals – and his sympathies lie with Neo-Con hawks like Dick Cheney on foreign policy. And despite her progressive record on other issues Barbara Boxer is a standard-issue Democratic apologist for Israeli excesses. Like other members of Congress they are both prisoners of the Israeli Lobby.
This explains why they have both rushed to denounce Secretary Kerry’s remarks, and like a kid who has been chastised for wandering out of the yard without permission, Kerry has apologized for breaking the rules. Since what the Secretary of state said was true, the question before the American people is: Can the Secretary of State serve the best interests of the United States if he cannot even discuss issues critical issues candidly, especially when these issues involve American blood and treasure?
This imposed silence amounts to a form of censorship through political intimidation, orchestrated by the Anti-Defamation League. The League, which directs much of the activity of the broader “Israel Lobby” even as its Director, Abraham “The Inquisitor” Foxman, produced a book denouncing Professors Mearsheimer and Walt’s study and denying that the Israel Lobby exists – is clearly injurious to American national security, although everyone is in denial about this phenomenon.
I wrote about this imposed silence on the question of Israel’s support for Apartheid and the role they played in fingering Mandela in my Eulogy on Commentaries On The Times: ”Nelson Mandela: Freedom Fighter.”
“It is conventional wisdom that no….censorship exists in America, but if one’s work is critical of Israel the normal rules about free inquiry don’t apply. One need only look at the fate of scholars, both Jew and Gentile, who have written critically about Israel: the learned Jewish theologian Mark Ellis; the courageous investigative journalist Robert I. Freedman, the independent Jewish scholar Lenni Brenner, and especially the non-Jewish scholars John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, authors of the penetrating study The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.”
to read the complete article, see https://commentariesonthetimes.wordpress.com/2013/12/09/nelson-mandela-freedom-fighter/
The US government’s absolute refusal to criticize Israeli policies toward the Palestinians no matter how atrocious, coupled with promiscuous use of horrendous deadly force against Islamic peoples, and the atmosphere of intimidation that suppresses honest debate at home, is the main source of Anti-American hatred in the Muslim world that has made us the primary target of the modern Jihad. All Americans need to understand the process by which US policy toward Israel is shaped because there will never be peace in the Middle East until the Palestinians receive a just settlement from the Israeli government. Until then there will be constant wars and rumors of wars in the Middle East.
In order to gain a fuller understanding of this ongoing crisis, and why Kerry should stand up to the “Israel is always right crowd,” read my essay cited above and “The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy” by John Mearshimer and Stephan Walt, at The London Review of Books Online. The authors of this study are political science professors at two of the world’s most prestigious universities – Harvard and the University of Chicago – and they know whereof they speak!
“Why has the US been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state?” they ask. And their answers should outrage all patriotic Americans. “One might assume that the bond between the two countries was based on shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives, but neither explanation can account for the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the US provides. Instead, the thrust of US policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the ‘Israel Lobby.”
Based on this claim, we might reasonably ask whether those who actively seek to suppress honest debate on Israeli policies toward the beleaguered Palestinian people are a danger to US national security. For it is self-evident that the best interests of the US is not their paramount concern.
Senator Ted Cruz
Republican Charlatan!
Senator Barbara Boxer
Shameless Democratic Apologist for Israel
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Playthell G. Benjamin
San Francisco
April 29, 2014
Melting The Sun
Posted in Guest Commentators, Music Reviews with tags EchoCosmic-, Pink Floyd, Space Rock on April 20, 2014 by playthellChris Pendergraft of space rock band Echocosmic
Cosmic Salvation Songs
Down around the back of a former iron foundry in east Oakland’s post-industrial wasteland, if you can find the door and know the secret knock, it is possible of a Friday evening to catch the lyric melancholy and faster-than-light travel of the band EchoCosmic at play. Synching digital beats and mixing board effects with live instruments, these musicians bring well-honed skills and a constant quest for meaning to their music.
In 1997 a quest for meaning through music produced Root Beer, the early band in which brothers-in-music Chris Pendergraft and Mike Blodgett began to work together. Through the writing and performance of the band’s signature protest rock songs, Mike Blodgett’s guitar style developed lyric eloquence, with bright sprays of descending sounds arcing like brief light pulses in the cold and indifferent openness of deep space.
Inherent in the name Echocosmic is the powerful sense of great distance and vast lapses of time. Cosmic is defined as: the whole universe;immeasurably extended in space or time; vast; harmonious. All of these elements have a place in the band’s compositions. The word echo comes to us from the mythological Greek nymph who pined away for the beautiful, indifferent Narcissus until only her voice remained. With this etymology, it is no wonder that the echo carries an implicit sense of melancholy.
But an echo also relates to sound in a manner of interest to music-makers; it is uniquely produced by reflecting sound waves from a surface, where the returning sound may be only a fragment of the original. And herein lies the heart of the matter, for in the songs of Echocosmic we hear the report of the interstellar traveler, returning across inhuman distance and still more inhuman time.
These songs are evocative of struggle, mourning, and memory, chronicling the birth of black holes or the explosive nirvana of a star going nova. ”Red Shift” with its desending chords and cascading shower of deep notes, feels like we are listening to the recorded end of some ancient civilization or an entire planet, perhaps as viewed by an anguished alien race of future spacefarers.
A red shift refers to a change in light wavelengths, moving toward a slower, cooler portion of the spectrum. The sun is a frequent, even baseline reference in space rock, and Echocosmic heeds this tradition. Another of their songs is meant to communicate the point of view of bacteria colonizing a sun: in the heat of the solar flares, the space bacteria awaken, grow and make a new home.
In 1968, Set the Controls For the Heart of the Sun came out on the album Saucerful of Secrets by Pink Floyd, pioneering progressive rock’s shift toward what would be termed “space rock;” their solar fires and deep cold space attracted the attention of people ranging from NBA Hall of Fame star Dennis Rodman to Exorcist movie star Linda Blair.
Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun is a ten minute extravaganza of “out there” sound which builds to a violent end that actually comes, impossibly, as a climax. This distinctly disciplined approach to a pulsing momentum with abstract sound became a genre that encompasses much of Echocosmic today.
Drummer Eric the Mover
Keeps the rhythm out there!
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Mike Blodgett
Lead Guitar, a Sonic Space Cadet
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Merging technology and Music
Powering their Space Odyssey
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Their Rehersal Space is Also a Recording Studio
Which Blodgett built to Free the Band from the tyranny of record companies
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East Bay Artist Susannah Israel and Ray Heywood
Are Mesmerized by the Music
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Text by: Susannah Israel
Photos by: Playthell Benjamin
April 20th 2014
Oakland, California